Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [116]
Following those statements, on Friday, October 21, Hoffman flew with Toole to South Florida, where Toole guided detectives to the Hollywood Sears store where Adam was taken, and then to the spot near mile marker 126 on Florida’s Turnpike where he said he had decapitated and dismembered Adam. Finally, he identified the canal at mile marker 130 as the spot where he disposed of Adam’s head. At the time, Matthews noted, the only person in the party who knew Toole had ID’d the very place where fishermen had found the severed head was Jack Hoffman.
It could have been the end of the matter then and there, Matthews thought, but it was not to be. On the following Wednesday, October 26, Hoffman returned to Jacksonville to take a fourth statement from Toole, ostensibly to clarify the suspect’s movements from the time he left the hospital in Newport News, Virginia, and his arrival at the Sears store in South Florida shortly thereafter. It was during that fourth statement that Toole broke down and told Hoffman, “I’m not really sure that I really did kill Adam Walsh.”
It occurred to Matthews that Hoffman might well have responded by asking Toole how he could have known, for instance, where Adam’s head was discarded or how many blows it took to sever his head from his body, but he did not. Instead, Hoffman concluded his interview and walked out, leaving Buddy Terry to calm Toole down.
Not fifteen minutes later, Toole asked Hoffman to return so that he could tell the truth. Indeed, he had committed the crime, he assured Hoffman. He’d simply been upset there a few minutes ago: “I couldn’t get my head together,” he said. In this fifth statement, Toole went once more through a detailed account of the crime, including a graphic description of his disposal of Adam’s head. After he’d driven north for five or ten minutes following the dismemberment, Toole said, he pulled off the turnpike again:
“I seen a little . . . a little bridge down there and I walked down there and I throwed it in, throwed it in the water.”
And what happened next? Hoffman wanted to know. He probably meant to ask what Toole did after he threw the head in the water.
But Toole took Hoffman quite literally. The head sank, he said, simply.
There was a pause. “You’re positive about that?” Hoffman asked.
“Positive.” Toole replied. And shortly thereafter, the interview was concluded.
Matthews tossed the transcript down on his desk, shaking his head. That exchange might as well have been typed in red, with double underlining. If a cop needed any further assurance that Toole had done just what he said he’d done, there it was on the page before him.
“It sank,” Matthews repeated. Yes, that’s exactly what would have happened. Adam’s head would have hit the water and sunk like a stone. If Toole had been making his story up, he’d have probably said something like, “It went floating off,” or “It went under for a second and then it bobbed right back up.”
Matthews had investigated a murder case once and had known something was wrong from the moment he heard the tape of the 911 call. “Help. I think my husband’s dead. He’s just floating there facedown in the pool.” Yeah? Not unless he was lying on the bottom for a couple of days first, lady. Dead bodies—and body parts—hit the water and go down like lead. After a couple of days and enough decomposition, gases form in cavities and then gruesome things float to the surface.
Nor were such oversights the only oddities Matthews found during his examination of Hoffman’s records. Along with the failure to include Toole’s drawing in the case file and the failure to request that the Walshes come in to identify the items of clothing