Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [64]
On Wednesday, November 30, 1983, Detective Hoffman reached a clerk named Filiore in the Jacksonville Water Department, who confirmed that water service to the home of Toole’s mother at 708 Day Avenue had in fact been disconnected for nonpayment, but not until September 9, 1981. “This information was needed in order to verify a part of Ottis Toole’s confession in which he indicated that he used the hose in the rear of his mother’s residence to wash out the 1971 Cadillac trunk area in which there was trace evidence of blood,” Hoffman wrote in his notes, adding that the information did corroborate Toole’s claim that there was water available to him on the date in question.
Later that day, Hoffman phoned Dennis Bedwell, supervisor of the City of Jacksonville Sanitation Department. Since Toole had claimed that he disposed of the body of Adam Walsh in the North Jacksonville dump on the morning of July 28, 1981, Hoffman needed Bedwell to provide the names of the employees who were on duty between the time of that facility’s opening and, say, 3:00 p.m. Bedwell checked his records and came up with a couple of names and phone numbers for Hoffman, but there is no indication that the detective ever spoke to either employee or searched sanitation department records (or those of other landfill operations) for any information that might have confirmed a visit by Toole at the time he claimed to have been there.
The following day, Thursday, December 1, Hoffman took the machete he’d found at Bennett Motors to the Metro Dade Police Department crime lab with a request that technicians perform tool marking tests on the weapon. Though the blood tests were inconclusive, Hoffman hoped that the striations found on the spinal column at the base of Adam Walsh’s skull could be matched to the blade.
The Broward County medical examiner’s office had also found a couple of embedded “paint chips” during their further cleanup of Adam’s skull, and Hoffman brought the fragments along for Metro Dade’s analysis as well. If the chips could be identified as paint or other materials traceable to the 1971 Cadillac, that too might serve as evidence linking Toole to the crime.
The following Tuesday, December 6, Hoffman and Lieutenant Smith traveled to the Williamson County Jail near Austin, Texas, where Henry Lee Lucas was being held, hoping that Lucas might be able to implicate Toole in the killing of Adam Walsh. Lucas told Hoffman and Smith that it was quite possible that Toole could have been responsible for such a crime, for he and Toole had traveled various parts of the United States together at one time or another and had committed any number of murders both independently and as a team. However, as to this particular crime, Lucas said he had no knowledge of it whatsoever.
On that Friday, Hoffman received more disheartening news, this from the Miami Dade crime lab, advising that their “best efforts to date” had not been able to produce a positive identification of the tool markings on Adam’s vertebrae as having been made by the machete he’d submitted. Analyst Bob Hart had “worked the evidence with great vigor,” Metro Dade crime lab commander Edward Whittaker assured Hoffman, but all the physical factors combined appeared to be leading to no positive identification.
As to the “white fragments,” or paint chips, that Hoffman had submitted, those were still being analyzed. Though the chips did not appear to be composed of automotive paint, the report said, they had obviously come from something, and the fracture patterns observed at the edges of these chips were deemed very likely sufficient to permit an absolutely positive ID if whatever material they had broken from could be recovered. Thus, “the questioned vehicle should be searched with extreme care for such material and if found, for any defect or break in any surface.”
A few days later, however, on December 14, lab commander Whittaker called to inform Hoffman that in fact the examination of the machete against the markings on