Steven Lucas Kills His Mother

(“Step by Step,” Forensic Files)

Baker Steven Lucas III had two daughters, shaky finances, and a widowed mother worth $4 million.

So when Bette Lucas turned up dead near the bottom of a staircase in her house in Tyler, Texas, naturally investigators had some questions for her one and only child.

It took two jury trials and six years, but they eventually put her son behind razor wire.

Local princess. For this week, I looked around for an epilogue for the convicted killer, but first here’s a recap of “Step by Step,” the Forensic Files episode about the Bette Lucas case, with additional information from internet research.

Baker Steven Lucas III (known as Steven) was born in 1945, the son of Texas socialite Bette Calvert Lucas and Baker Steven Lucas Jr., who made a fortune in real estate before dying in a car accident in 1985.

Bette Calvert Lucas never remarried after the death of her husband, who in addition to being a businessman had served as mayor of their hometown of Tyler for eight years.

But she stayed active on the party and charity circuits and was known as something of a glamour gal in Tyler, a city of about 70,000 residents in Smith County.

Videocassette-era crime. Steven had some type of career in the oil business, but it wasn’t gushing cash. He was running out of money of his own and had borrowed $350,000 from his mother.

Bette reportedly had grown impatient and wanted repayment, but instead her son asked for another loan.

On June 6. 1988, Steven, age 43, and his daughter Stefani stopped by Bette’s house ostensibly to return a videocassette recorder.

But the VCR ended up damaged and Bette ended up deceased.

Steven claimed they were arguing because Bette insisted on carrying the VCR up the stairs, which connected to a balcony. Worried that the machine was too heavy for Bette, he tried to wrest it away from her, he said.

What’s the rush? As they struggled with the 30-pound VCR, Bette lost her balance and fell over the balcony’s guard rail, then landed on the staircase, Steven alleged. He didn’t explain how she flew through the air laterally to reach the adjacent steps.

Bette was alive but unconscious when the ambulance arrived. Instead of riding to the emergency room with Bette, her son and granddaughter stayed at the house to clean up blood at the scene.

Steven did swing by the hospital later, and directed the medical personnel to remove Bette from life support. He arranged to bury her almost right away, and the community seemed to accept her death as an accident.

But investigators didn’t buy it and put him on trial for murder in 1991 in Tyler, the county seat.

The jury had mixed opinions about the strength of the forensic evidence presented during the six-week trial and couldn’t reach a decision after 22 hours of deliberation. The judge declared a mistrial.

Yes, it’s a circus. The authorities exhumed Bette’s body and made sure not to skimp on the forensics for the second trial. It took place at the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts Building in Dallas in 1994.

The trial attracted more media attention than the first, with Court TV broadcasting the proceedings. (I couldn’t find any video on YouTube, but a commenter on the Injustice Anywhere Forum posted a Court TV transcript.)

The prosecution built a replica of the balcony and demonstrated how a woman of Bette’s height had a center of gravity too low to cause an accidental fall over a 3.5-foot-tall guard rail.

Forensics roll in. There was also the matter of the multiple head wounds, whose size and shape suggested that they were made with a candlestick from Bette’s house.

And Bette had no broken bones, an unlikely outcome for a 66-year-old who took a steep fall.

Not to mention that any intelligent person of her age would know to hold onto a railing when carrying something heavy. A friend of Bette’s who appeared on Forensic Files said it was unlike her to haul anything weighty anywhere in the first place.

Investigators believe Steven argued with his mother over money that day, lost his temper and beat her to death with the candlestick, then staged the scene to look like an accidental fall.

Estate plan. According to the crime show The New Detectives, Stefani admitted that her father and grandmother were arguing over something that day, but said she wasn’t paying attention because the two of them got into disagreements frequently.

Although it’s not clear whether or not Steven knew, Bette reportedly was planning to remove him from her will — an incentive for him to get her out of the way fast.

The second jury came back with a guilty verdict, and Steven began a 35-year sentence.

The next blip out of Steven Lucas came in 2004, when the 5th state Court of Appeals in Dallas rejected his bid for a third trial.

Free at last? But today the Texas Department of Criminal Justice does not list Steven as an inmate. (Note: Some sources give his name as “Steven Baker Lucas III,” but either way, he’s not on record as a current prisoner at any Texas facility.)

In 2011, a local radio station reported on the accidental death of a Steven Lucas in a car wreck on Highway 79 — but the age is off by a couple of years.

It’s more likely that Baker Steven Lucas III is alive, out of prison, and has relocated to El Paso, Texas, as reported on mylife.com — which gives the correct age for him.

Update: Thank you to the readers who wrote in to confirm that Lucas got out of prison in 2014.

That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Netflix