Twenty years ago on this date, September 15, 1996, a Satanist Serial Killer, Ottis Toole, died at Florida State Prison of cirrhosis. I will post information about this evil man from Wikipedia and other links.
Ottis Toole
|
|||
|
|||
Born
|
Ottis Elwood Toole
March 5, 1947 Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. |
||
Died
|
September 15, 1996
(aged 49)
Raiford, Florida, U.S. |
||
Cause of
death
|
|||
Resting
place
|
Florida State Prison Cemetery
|
||
Nationality
|
American
|
||
Criminal
charge
|
Arson, First-degree murder
|
||
Criminal
penalty
|
Death commuted to life in prison
|
||
Criminal
status
|
Deceased
|
||
Killings
|
|||
Victims
|
6 or more
|
||
Span of
killings
|
Unknown–1983
|
||
Country
|
United States
|
||
State(s)
|
|||
Date apprehended
|
April 1983
|
||
Imprisoned at
|
|||
Ottis Elwood Toole (March 5, 1947 – September 15,
1996) was an American
drifter who was convicted of six counts of
murder. Like his companion Henry
Lee Lucas, Toole made confessions he later recanted, but which resulted in
murder convictions. The discrediting of the case against Lucas for crimes in
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 whom 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, aged 49. Police attributed the murder of Adam Walsh to Toole on the basis of recanted statements. Lucas had backed
Toole's confession to the Walsh murder, claiming he had been in possession of
the victim's severed head.
Early
life
Ottis
Elwood Toole (sometimes misspelled "Otis") was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. Toole's mother was
abusive; Toole claimed she would dress him in girls' clothing and call him
Susan. His father was an alcoholic who abandoned him. Ottis 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 next door neighbor. He claimed that his maternal grandmother was a Satanist, who
exposed him to various Satanic practices and rituals in his youth, including self-mutilation
and graverobbing
and dubbed him "Devil's Child." Toole claimed this abuse began when
he came
out as gay to his
family.
He
was often designated as suffering from mild mental retardation, with an I.Q. of 75. He also
suffered from epilepsy,
which resulted in frequent grand mal seizures. Throughout his 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 Death Diploma, Toole claimed he was forced to have sex
with a friend of his father's when he was five years old. He felt he knew he
was gay when he was 10, 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 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 1964 for loitering.
Much
information on Toole between 1966 and 1973 is unclear, but it is believed 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 murder 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.
 |
|
Photograph of Lucas
and Toole together.
|
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 108 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 64-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. For that crime, he was
sentenced to 20 years in prison. While in custody, Toole confessed to killing
George Sonnenberg. Toole signed a confession stating that he and Sonnenberg had
begun a sexual relationship and, after the two had an argument, Toole lit
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 km) 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 commuted to
life in prison.
After
his incarceration, Toole pleaded guilty to four more Jacksonville murders in
1991 and received four more life sentences.
Confessions
On
October 21, 1983, while imprisoned for two unrelated murders, Toole confessed
to the 1981 murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh. A few weeks
after Toole made the confession, however, police investigating the case
announced that they had lost Toole's impounded car and machete. John Walsh, Adam's father, continued
to maintain that he believed Toole to be guilty. On December 16, 2008, 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 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 m) off I-10's eastbound lane, 5 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.
 |
|
Victim, Adam Walsh
|
Murder
of Adam Walsh
Twenty-seven
years after the 1981 murder of Adam Walsh, authorities officially named
Toole as the likely killer.
Toole
claimed to have picked Walsh up in a Sears mall parking
lot. Toole said he offered him candy and toys and that Walsh came willingly.
Walsh soon wanted to go home and began crying. Toole said he then punched him
in the face. Walsh started crying more, and according to Toole, he began to
"wallop" Walsh, knocking him out. Toole eventually pulled over in a
rural area and raped Adam for 2 hours, then decapitated Walsh with a machete.
He drove around for several days with Walsh's head, forgot about it, and once
rediscovering it, tossed it into a nearby canal. Police somehow lost his
impounded car and its bloodstained carpeting, hindering their ability to
proceed with the investigation.
Hollywood, Florida Police Chief Chadwick Wagner
said Ottis Toole had been the prime suspect all along, but went on to admit
that although Toole's case was weak, he could have been charged during the
original investigation. Wagner acknowledged that many mistakes were made by the
department and apologized to the Walsh family. Public critics of the indictment
argue that lack of new (public) evidence, and the inability of the defendant to
defend himself of the allegations, leaves no definitive claim to his guilt. To
this Wagner has stated: "If you're looking for that magic wand, that one
piece of evidence, it's not there." However, by reexamining previously
uncorrelated evidence, police and the Walsh family are satisfied with the new
report and existing evidence that points only 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 once Toole's niece told John Walsh that her uncle
confessed on his deathbed in prison that he had murdered and decapitated Adam
Walsh.
The
book Frustrated Witness, written by former Miami
Herald writer Willis Morgan, examines the Walsh case and cites evidence
that suggests Jeffrey Dahmer may have killed Adam 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 similar
to the one seen leaving the mall after Walsh's disappearance. A number of
witnesses reported seeing a man looking like Dahmer at the mall talking to
young boys.
Death
in custody
On
September 15, 1996, at the age of 49, Ottis Toole died at Florida State Prison of cirrhosis.
As his body went unclaimed, he was buried in the Florida State Prison Cemetery.
In
popular culture
A character based on Toole was
portrayed by Tom Towles in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
OTHER
LINKS:
No comments:
Post a Comment