Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [72]
By October 12, having received no offers from any of the major outlets he’d written, Toole was drafting “To whom it may concern” appeals, trying to find anyone who might be willing to pay him for his story. “Dear Editor,” began one such. “My name is Ottis E. Toole. I am the one who kidnapped, raped, murdered and hacked to pieces the boy Adam Walsh in 1981. I also murdered 3 women and a man up around Holmes County, Florida.” Toole went on to explain that he had already written to the sheriffs of both Broward County and Holmes County, a rural enclave in a part of the Florida Panhandle often referred to as L.A. or “Lower Alabama,” claiming that he was ready to confess to the aforementioned five murders. Furthermore, Toole said, he had decided to invite one member of the media to sit in on the confessions to ensure that police did not abuse him in the process. “If your paper is interested then let me know,” Toole said in closing.
Copies of this letter and the one that had been sent to Sears were forwarded to Hoffman without apparent effect, but another letter sent to Broward County sheriff Nick Navarro finally prompted some action. In this missive Gerald Schaffer, a fellow inmate of Ottis Toole’s at Florida State Prison, explained that he was actually writing on behalf of Toole, owing to Toole’s difficulties in reading and writing. However, Sheriff Navarro should have no doubt: Toole was responsible for the murder of Adam Walsh and for other unidentified murders in Broward County, and he was willing to admit formally to his involvement.
There were conditions, said Schaffer, a former Martin County sheriff’s deputy serving two life terms for the murder of two teenage girls. He was to be present during all interviews with Toole; the interviews were to be of short duration; and both Schaffer and Toole wished to be relocated to the Broward County Jail. It may have seemed a presumptuous offer, but if most of the other letters that Schaffer wrote on Toole’s behalf were dismissed, this one received significantly more attention.
Monday, October 17, 1988
Shortly after Navarro’s office heard from Toole, on October 17, 1988, Captain Walter Laun, the commander of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office criminal investigations unit, summoned Detective Sergeant Richard Scheff, supervisor of the homicide unit, to a meeting where he handed over a copy of the letter they had received.
Laun instructed Scheff to take one of his men up to the Florida State Prison to meet with Schaffer and Toole and try to assess whether there was any validity to the claims. Because Laun was aware of Toole’s history of recanting his confessions, he wanted Scheff to try to extract some detail or form of evidence that would lend credence to Toole’s assertions.
Two days later, on October 19, Scheff and Detective Sergeant Fantigrassi made the five-and-a-half-hour drive north to Florida State Prison, the state’s maximum security facility. “Starke,” as it is sometimes referred to, for its proximity to that aptly named town, houses the inmates considered to be the most dangerous in the system. It is also the location of the death-row cell blocks, and while lethal injection would become the standard method of execution in 2000, at the time of Scheff and Fantigrassi’s visit, it was still “Old Sparky,” the electric chair, that held the preeminent place of prominence at Starke.
Scheff and Fantigrassi first met with Gerald Schaffer, who told the detectives that he had become acquainted with Toole while both were incarcerated there, and that at present he was functioning as Ottis Toole’s legal representative. Furthermore, Schaffer told them, he was interested