Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [124]
When he handed over the report to Wagner, he stressed the importance of the FDLE crime scene photos he’d had developed for the first time. Wagner was curious as to why such evidence had not been examined before, but Matthews couldn’t explain that one. He had had the devil’s own time even getting hold of the photos, he told Wagner, explaining that when he’d found them missing from the Hollywood file, he’d had to go to the FDLE himself to find the film and get the prints developed.
Why didn’t Sergeant Lyle Bean get these prints added to the department file? Wagner wanted to know. But again, Matthews couldn’t answer. Bean had claimed he’d requested the photos several times from the FDLE and was told that the photos did not exist, that’s all Matthews knew for sure. He tapped his report. “In the end, we got what we needed.”
“That may be so,” Wagner said. “But I’ll find out why it took so long to get those photos, rest assured of that.”
Whatever the upshot of any conversations with Bean regarding the matter, Wagner did not share it with Matthews, though the irony that it took an outsider to accomplish what no detective had in twenty-five years was clearly not lost on the chief. Matthews took the opportunity to point out that while he had gone back through the tool marking test procedures regarding the machete to no avail, DNA testing on that clearly blood-soaked handle had never been performed. Matthews could not authorize such testing, but the weapon was still in possession of the Hollywood PD, and the chief surely could.
And he would, Wagner assured Matthews. The day following, Matthews got a phone call from Sergeant Lyle Bean. The chief wanted that machete tested for DNA, Bean explained, and he was calling to talk about the matter with Matthews before he sent it out.
So far, Wagner had been as good as his word, Matthews thought. Matthews then explained to Bean that he’d spoken to a forensic geneticist after he’d seen the luminol indications on the wooden handle of the machete. That specialist suggested that the handle be drilled for samples, and not scraped as was normally done, based on the assumption that the blood had soaked into the wood over time. Matthews would never learn whether or not Bean passed his expert’s suggestions along, and furthermore, the results seemed to take forever in coming back. It was not until October 14 that Chief Wagner called Matthews to let him know the disappointing findings. The results were, in a word, “inconclusive.” Not negative. Not positive. Just, maddeningly, “inconclusive.”
All the while, Matthews continued to pore over the files, wondering if he might have missed something that, however small, or seemingly unimportant, might lead him to an unexpected find. He was reviewing the phone and e-mail tips that had come in to America’s Most Wanted following the airing of the episode on Adam in 1996, when one phone intake sheet caught his eye. On September 21, at 11:10 p.m., a call had come from someone named Wendy Sapp, identifying herself to an operator as a niece of Toole’s. The operator had noted, “In 1982 Ottis told caller and relatives that he killed Adam.” Matthews racked his brain, trying to remember. He’d talked to Sarah Patterson and to Joel Cockerman at some length, but as to a Wendy Sapp, he was drawing nothing but blanks.
There was certainly nothing in the file to suggest that anyone at Hollywood PD had followed up on this or any of the other tips AMW had supplied, but he could certainly talk to her now. He picked up the phone and launched into a series of calls, until finally he found himself talking to one Wendy Sapp Fralick. And, yes, her mother had been previously married to a man named Dickie McHenry, who, she believed, was a cousin of Ottis Toole.
“Uncle Ottis” had often babysat for her and her sisters, Fralick said, and she remembered quite clearly that one night he had told her