Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [115]
Terry recounted to Matthews the details of the various interviews he had witnessed where Toole confessed to the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh, and went back over the visit he’d made to South Florida, accompanying Toole on his tour of the crime scenes. From the outset, Terry said, he was not sure why Detective Hoffman was so reluctant to view Toole’s confession as truthful, for it seemed clear to every other detective who’d been involved that Toole knew things that only Adam’s killer could possibly have known.
As to Hoffman’s accusations that he had cut a book deal with Toole, Terry was comforted to hear what Matthews had discovered about the real partners in that undertaking, but he was still indignant. He felt that he’d been used as a scapegoat in the matter, Terry said—there was so much public outcry at the lack of progress in the case that his own department was happy to let Hoffman’s claims go unopposed. Though an internal affairs investigation eventually cleared Terry of Hoffman’s allegations, and the detective was offered his old job back, the department never issued a formal statement on the matter. To Terry, it seemed that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was perfectly willing to have it seem as if he had manufactured Ottis Toole’s various confessions out of whole cloth.
Yes, practically speaking, the investigation was in the hands of Jack Hoffman and Hollywood PD, but if his own superiors had been more forceful in refuting Hoffman’s trumped-up charges, more attention might have been given to Toole’s statements that clearly proved his involvement in the crime.
To that day, there remained no doubt in Terry’s mind that Toole was responsible. “He even drew us a little stick-figure diagram of the area where the killing took place and how he stood over Adam with his machete to cut his head off,” Terry told Matthews. Hoffman took the diagram away with him, Terry said, but as Matthews discovered, no such drawing had found its way into the case file. Somehow, he was not surprised.
When he had concluded his interview with Detective Terry, Matthews once again pulled out copies of the various interviews that Jack Hoffman had conducted with Toole at the Duval County Jail: the first had taken place just before midnight on Wednesday, October 20, 1983, and during that conversation Toole had described the Cadillac he was driving, the Sears store from which he took Adam, and the force he employed in rendering Adam unconscious. He had used a “bayonet” to decapitate Adam, Toole told Hoffman, and during that interview, he also claimed that Henry Lee Lucas was present during the abduction and killing, and that Lucas had sex with the decapitated head.
In the course of his statement, Toole told Hoffman that he had been “window shopping” in the mall before he made his way to the Sears store and remembered looking at some of the wigs displayed in a nearby shop. Broward County state attorney’s investigator Phil Mundy had later ascertained that there was indeed a wig store operating in the Sears Mall at the time of Adam’s abduction. It might have seemed an inconsequential detail, but Matthews knew there had been no mention of “wig shops” in any of the press coverage of the case. How could Toole—cross-dresser and wig fancier that he was—have known there was a wig shop in that mall unless he’d been there and seen it with his own eyes?
When Hoffman and his partner Hickman left the room following that first interview, Detective Terry had confronted Toole about his contention that Henry Lee Lucas had taken part in the crime. Toole admitted lying about that and asked to speak with Hoffman and Hickman again to clarify the matter. Shortly after midnight, the Hollywood detectives took their second statement from Toole, during which he once again described using “four or five” blows to sever Adam’s head from his body, though in this