Ottis Elwood Toole (March 5, 1947 – September 15, 1996) was an American drifter and serial killer who was convicted of six counts of murder. Like his companion Henry Lee Lucas, Toole made confessions which he later recanted, which resulted in murder convictions. The discrediting of the case against Lucas for crimes for which Toole had offered corroborating statements created doubts as to whether either was a genuine serial killer or, as Hugh Aynesworth suggested, both were merely compliant interviewees who police used to clear unsolved murders from the books.
Toole received two death sentences, but on appeal, they were commuted to life imprisonment. He died in his cell from cirrhosis, at age 49. Police attributed the 1981 murder of Adam Walsh to Toole on the basis of recanted statements. Lucas had backed Toole's confession to the Walsh murder, claiming that he had been in possession of the victim's severed head.
Early life
Ottis Toole was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. Toole's father was an alcoholic who abandoned him, while his abusive mother would, according to Toole, dress him in girls' clothing and call him Susan. Toole claimed that, as a young child, he was a victim of sexual assault and incest at the hands of many close relatives and acquaintances, including his older sister and a next-door neighbor. He also claimed that his maternal grandmother was a Satanist who exposed him to various Satanic practices and rituals in his youth, including self-mutilation and grave-robbing, and dubbed him the "Devil's Child". Toole claimed this abuse began when he revealed his homosexuality to his family.
Toole was often classified as suffering from mild mental retardation, with an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 75. He also suffered from epilepsy, which resulted in frequent grand mal seizures. Throughout Toole's childhood, he frequently ran away from home and often slept in abandoned houses. He was a serial arsonist from a young age and was sexually aroused by fire.
In the documentary which is titled Death Diploma, Toole claimed that he was forced to have sex with a friend of his father's when he was five years old. He felt he knew that he was gay when he was 10 years old, and claimed to have had a sexual relationship with a neighborhood boy when he was 12. Toole dropped out of school in the ninth grade and began visiting gay bars. He also claimed to have been a male prostitute as a teenager, and he became obsessed with gay pornography.
Toole claimed to have committed his first murder at the age of 14, when after being propositioned for sex by a traveling salesman, Toole ran over the salesman with his own car. Toole was first arrested at the age of 17 in August 1965 for loitering.
Much information on Toole between 1966 and 1973 is unclear, but authorities believe that he began drifting around the Southwestern United States and that he supported himself by prostitution and panhandling. While living in Nebraska, Toole was one of the prime suspects in the 1974 murder of 24-year-old Patricia Webb. Shortly after, he left Nebraska and briefly settled in Boulder, Colorado. One month later, he became a prime suspect in the homicide of 31-year-old Ellen Holman, who was murdered on October 14, 1974. With many accusations against him, Toole left Boulder and headed back to Jacksonville.
In early 1975, Toole returned to Jacksonville after drifting and hitch-hiking through the American South. On January 14, 1976, he married a woman 25 years his senior. She left him after three days, after discovering his homosexuality. Toole said during an interview his marriage was a tactic meant to conceal his true sexuality.
Murders and imprisonment
In 1976, Toole met Henry Lee Lucas at a Jacksonville soup kitchen, and they soon developed a sexual relationship. Toole later claimed to have accompanied Lucas in 1,008 murders, sometimes at the behest of a cult called "The Hands of Death". Police, however, discounted the uncorroborated claim of the cult's existence.
On January 4, 1982, Toole barricaded 65-year-old George Sonnenberg in a boarding house where he was living in Jacksonville and set the house on fire. Sonnenberg died a week later of injuries he sustained in the fire. In April 1983, Toole was arrested for an unrelated arson incident in Jacksonville. Toole confessed to the crime and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Toole signed a confession stating that he and Sonnenberg had begun a sexual relationship and, after the two had an argument, Toole set Sonnenberg's home on fire.
Two months later in June, his accomplice Henry Lee Lucas was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm. It was then Lucas began boasting about the murderous rampage orchestrated by the two. At first, Toole had denied involvement but later began backing up Lucas's confessions. Lucas also backed Toole's confession to the murder of Adam Walsh. Journalist Hugh Aynesworth and others investigated for articles that appeared in The Dallas Times Herald. It was calculated that Lucas would have had to use his 13-year-old Ford station wagon to cover 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) in one month i.e., around 370 miles (600 km) per day, to have committed the crimes police attributed to him. Lucas became widely regarded as a compliant interviewee who was used by police to clear up unsolved murders that he had not been involved in, aided by Toole giving false statements in collaboration.
During Toole's trial for murdering George Sonnenberg, Toole claimed that he did not light the home on fire and only signed the confession so he would be extradited back to Jacksonville. On April 28, 1984, a jury found Toole guilty of first degree murder and sentenced him to death. Later that year, Toole was found guilty of the February 1983 strangulation murder of a 19-year-old Tallahassee, Florida woman, and received a second death sentence; on appeal, however, both sentences were later commuted to life in prison.
After his incarceration, Toole pled guilty to four more Jacksonville murders in 1991 and received four more life sentences.
Murder of Adam Walsh
On October 21, 1983, while he was imprisoned for two unrelated murders, Toole confessed to the 1981 murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh. A few weeks after Toole made the confession, however, police officers who were investigating the case announced that they had lost Toole's impounded car and machete. John Walsh, Adam's father, continues to believe that Toole was guilty. On December 16, 2008, 27 years after the 1981 murder Hollywood, Florida, police announced Toole as the murderer, and the Adam Walsh case was closed. The police did not reveal any new physical evidence and pointed out that they still had no DNA evidence.
In 1984, Toole confessed to two unsolved northwest Florida slayings, including one of the I-10 murders. During an interview, he admitted to killing 18-year-old David Schallart, a hitchhiker who he picked up east of Pensacola. Schallart's body, bearing five gunshot wounds in the left side of the head, was found on February 6, 1980, approximately 125 feet (38 meters) off I-10's eastbound lane, five miles (8.0 km) east of Chipley. The second confession involved the death of 20-year-old Ada Johnson. Toole confessed that he shot her in the head on a road outside of Fort Walton Beach after kidnapping her at gunpoint at a Tallahassee nightclub. Psychiatrists Dr. Urbina and Dr. Sanches testified at Toole's 1984 Florida Supreme Court appeal that he was extremely impulsive and exhibited antisocial behavior as a result of a personality disorder and that he was a pyromaniac. The court found sufficient evidence that Toole was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.
Toole claimed that he picked Walsh up in a Sears mall parking lot. Toole stated that Walsh came willingly because he offered Walsh candy and toys. Walsh soon wanted to go home and began to cry. Toole said that he then punched Walsh in the face. Walsh started to cry again, and according to Toole, he began to "wallop" Walsh, knocking him out. Toole eventually pulled over in a rural area and decapitated Walsh with a machete. He drove around with Walsh's head for several days, forgot about it, and, after he rediscovered it, he tossed it into a nearby canal. Police officers inexplicably lost Toole's impounded car and its bloodstained carpeting, hindering their ability to proceed with the investigation into Adam Walsh's murder.
Hollywood, Florida Police Chief Chadwick Wagner said that Toole had been the prime suspect all along, but he went on to admit that although Toole's case was weak, he could have been charged during the original investigation of it. Wagner acknowledged the fact that many mistakes were made by the department and apologized to the Walsh family on its behalf. Wagner also acknowledged the fact that the lack of new evidence and the inability of Toole to defend himself could provide room for skeptics to doubt Toole's guilt, saying, "If you're looking for that magic wand, that one piece of evidence, it's not there." However, after the police reexamined previously uncorrelated evidence, they and the Walsh family were both satisfied with the new report and the existing evidence which only points to Ottis Toole.
In response to the naming of his son's alleged murderer, John Walsh stated: "We can now move forward knowing positively who killed our beautiful little boy."
The decision was finally reached when Toole's niece told John Walsh that her uncle confessed that he had murdered and decapitated Adam on his deathbed in prison.
The book Frustrated Witness, written by former Miami Herald writer Willis Morgan, examines the Walsh case and cites circumstantial evidence which suggests that another serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, may have killed Walsh. At the time of Walsh's murder, Dahmer was living a short drive away in Miami Beach and working at a sub shop where he had access to a blue van which was similar to the one which was seen leaving the mall after Walsh's disappearance. A number of witnesses reported seeing a man who looked like Dahmer talking to young boys at the mall. When he was interviewed about Adam in the early 1990s, Dahmer repeatedly denied his involvement in the crime, even stating; "I've told you everything—how I killed them, how I cooked them, who I ate. Why wouldn't I tell you if I did it to someone else?" After this rumor surfaced, John Walsh stated that he had "seen no evidence" linking his son's kidnapping and murder to Dahmer.
Death
Toole died of cirrhosis at the Florida State Prison on September 15, 1996, at the age of 49. His body went unclaimed and he was buried in the Florida State Prison cemetery.
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