Serial Suspect Said to Shoot From the Lip : Murders: Some wonder if mild-mannered handyman is taking the blame for crimes he didn’t commit because of some lust for notoriety.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. —  Police say the outwardly mild-mannered handyman led them to believe that he is a child killer and even drew a map showing where a body is buried.

Now some wonder if he’s taking the blame for crimes he didn’t commit because of some lust for notoriety.

Lewis S. Lent Jr. was charged in a recent botched kidnaping and a 1990 child-murder, and quickly became a possible suspect in other child disappearances, including that of a 12-year-old girl in Upstate New York.

An interstate task force tracking Lent’s past is getting daily police calls “from one end of the country to the other” checking for any ties to crimes in their areas, said FBI agent William McMullin, the team’s spokesman.

Investigators say Lent incriminated himself in the 1990 slaying of a 12-year-old local boy last seen near the movie theater where Lent worked. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder and an alleged Jan. 7 kidnaping attempt.

They say he also drew a map to show where they could find the body of the New York girl who vanished in August while bicycle riding. Questions about Lent’s credibility are being raised partly because after nearly two weeks of digging, searchers haven’t found a body or even a single clue.

Investigators, who have been tight-lipped about the case, must proceed cautiously.

It’s rare, but sometimes suspects who leap from anonymity may exaggerate their crimes or make false confessions “for self-aggrandizement,” said Eugene Levitt, a psychologist who has testified on the psyche of criminals.

“The news media are all around you; you might sell your story to Hollywood,” he said. “It is also possible for someone who lives on the edge of fantasy in any case to actually believe that he . . . committed a fantasized act.”

Questions about the case include:

* A 12-year-old neighbor says Lent once told him gruesome details about the 1990 slaying, but without implicating himself. The boy disappeared near the theater where Lent worked as a custodian, so Lent could have learned case details from co-workers and others questioned by police at the time.

The theater manager said Lent showed a similar fascination with a series of local child rapes for which someone else was later convicted.

* Newspaper reports, citing unidentified police sources, say Lent has claimed he has multiple personalities, including an evil alter ego named “Stephen.” That’s also the name of the alter ego that convicted “Hillside Strangler” Kenneth Bianchi blamed for his Los Angeles-area killings in the late 1970s.

Authorities concluded Bianchi faked his multiple personalities; documented cases are virtually unknown in the annals of serial killing.

* Serial killing experts say such murderers are usually intelligent young men who cleverly evade notice and capture. Lent is a 43-year-old high school dropout accused of trying to kidnap a girl in broad daylight at the busiest street corner in Pittsfield, a city of about 42,000.

She got away and a witness took down a partial license plate number of a truck Lent reportedly drove through two stoplights.

The best-known case of seeking notoriety for serial killings is Henry Lee Lucas, convicted of 13 murders in Texas and Florida. He once claimed involvement in more than 360 murders, but now says he killed only his mother.

“People like this do lie,” said Robert Keppel, chief investigator in the case of Theodore Bundy, who was executed for three Florida slayings. “They all read about each other. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if at some point a book about the ‘Hillside Strangler’ was in (Lent’s) possession.”