Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [56]
As Hoffman was conducting these interviews at Raiford, Buddy Terry took the machete that Hoffman had picked up at Bennett Motors to the FDLE offices in Jacksonville to have it tested for blood. Technicians had already identified eight different areas of carpet and padding from the floorboards of Toole’s Cadillac to test for blood as well.
Terry was hopeful that something would come of the tests, of course, but his mind kept wandering to what awaited him at his next stop. A call had come into his office the previous evening from Ottis Toole, something Terry was hardly expecting, given the public pronouncements of his newly appointed attorney.
Toole had said that he needed to speak with Terry right away. He was upset with this lawyer from Miami who’d come up to talk with him. According to Toole’s message, the guy was actually trying to get him to say he wasn’t guilty of the murder of Adam Walsh.
Jacksonville, Florida—November 3, 1983
Ottis Toole’s seventh recorded statement to police regarding the murder of Adam Walsh began shortly after noon on November 3 with a preamble from Detective Terry. “I came to the county jail to talk to you because you contacted Detective Ron Carool and told him that you wanted me to come over and talk to you,” Terry said. “Is that correct?”
It was indeed correct, Toole assured him. “The lawyer I had from Miami and the lawyer I got in Jacksonville told me that I don’t have to talk with you at all,” Toole said, “but I still want to talk to you. And the detective is trying to get me to say I ain’t guilty on the Adam Walsh case.”
Terry looked at Toole closely. “The detective, or the attorney?” he asked.
“I mean the attorney,” Toole answered. “I really know myself that I really did kill Adam Walsh but the lawyer I got from Miami, he’s trying to tell me I didn’t kill Adam Walsh.”
Though it was frustrating, Detective Terry told Toole that he was sorry, but they could go no further. They couldn’t talk about Adam Walsh anymore, not without Toole’s attorney present. Whether he liked it or not, Toole had a lawyer now. They could talk about other things, Terry said, but their private conversations about Adam Walsh were at an end.
That same afternoon, Detective Hoffman drove from Raiford another three and a half hours south to a State of Florida foster care facility in Lakeland, Florida, where he interviewed Frank Powell, Ottis Toole’s nephew and brother of Frieda “Becky” Powell. Young Frank told Hoffman that he had not seen Ottis Toole since they all were separated one night on their way up to Maryland back in July 1981.
He told Hoffman that he often rode around Jacksonville with his uncle and that he had been with him on several visits to Reaves Roofing and Southeast Color Coat, when Ottis used keys on his ring to unlock the gates so that he could fire up the tar kettles and such. And Frank also remembered that Ottis kept a leather-sheathed hunting knife under the front seat of his black-over-white Cadillac. He’d had the car in 1980 and ’81, Frank said, and had used it even after he’d had to give it back to Mrs. McNett.
All the information seemed to confirm that Toole in fact had access to a car that he could have used to drive to Miami, one with a resemblance to a car seen in the vicinity of the abduction of Adam Walsh. Also, it seemed that Toole probably had kept a sizable bladed weapon of some sort under the seat of that car. But aside from the reported