Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [62]
Hoffman’s notes do not indicate whether or not his heart quickened at this chance comment of Toole’s, but if it did not, one would surely wonder why. Finally, after all the fruitless searching, Ottis Toole had unknowingly suggested that Hoffman was in possession of a piece of evidence that would directly link the killer to the crime.
Asked to describe this machete further, Toole told Hoffman that it was in a green canvas holster that kept the blade covered, and that he had wrapped tape on the wooden handle, “to keep from getting blisters from chopping.” It seemed a perfect match to the machete that Hoffman had confiscated at Bennett Motors: the handle had been taped, the grips were wooden, the blade was housed in a green canvas sheath, and one of the substances on the blade looked very much like tar, indicating its use by someone involved in the roofing trade.
Hoffman next asked Toole where he had stayed between the time he took the Cadillac back to the roofing company on the evening of July 28 and the afternoon of July 31, when he moved into one of Betty Goodyear’s houses with Rita. Toole wasn’t too sure. He might have slept in a portion of his mother’s house that still had its roof, or he might have slept in one or another of the parks in the area.
Hoffman concluded the interview at 11:08 that morning, asking Toole to explain why he had lied before about burying Adam’s body down near mile marker 126 on Florida’s Turnpike. Toole didn’t say anything about the sandwich that Hoffman had slapped out of his hands the day he’d led detectives to the site where he’d decapitated Adam. Nor did he mention that it pissed him off mightily that Hoffman had called him an asshole and a retard on numerous occasions.
Yes, he had told Hoffman that he cut off Adam’s head and buried his body nearby on that day, he admitted, but there was a very simple explanation: “I was just fucking around with the police department,” he said.
Saturday, November 19, 1983
Following that interview with Toole and a break for lunch, Hoffman and his fellow officers from Hollywood tracked down David Gillyard, who’d worked as sales manager for Wells Brothers Used Cars, starting in November 1982. He remembered taking in the 1971 black-over-white Cadillac, Gillyard told the detectives, and recalled very clearly that there was no carpeting in its trunk. Rather than go to the expense of paying for new carpet for such an old vehicle, he had ordered one of his lot men to simply “paint splatter” the trunk to give it some appearance of finish for sale.
After they’d spoken to Gillyard, the detectives went back to Faye McNett, just wondering, they said, if the Cadillac she’d sold to Ottis Toole had carpeting in its trunk. Indeed it did, McNett told them. What kind of a question was that, anyway?
On Sunday, Hoffman, accompanied by Lieutenant Smith and Sergeant Stanley, took a drive to the North Jacksonville dump, where they took photographs of the area—with more than two years of trash heaped on the site since Toole said he had disposed of the body there, it seemed little else could be done.
Early Monday morning, seeking further corroboration of what Toole had told them, the detectives spoke with the Jacksonville Fire Department arson specialist who had investigated the burning of Toole’s mother’s house at 708 Day Avenue in June of 1981. The lot had been leveled back on December 10, 1982, by an outfit called Realco Wrecking. But as to what had and had not remained standing after the fire, there were numerous photographs in the files, Captain Hinkley said. The Hollywood detectives were welcome to them.
At about nine thirty that morning, Hoffman interviewed Robert L. Hammond, who owned Hammond’s Grocery at 700 Day Avenue, next door to Toole’s mother’s house. Yes, he knew both Toole and Henry Lee Lucas, Hammond told the officers, and he well remembered the day that Toole’s mother’s house burned down.