Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [75]
All this fuss over Ottis had resulted in an unbelievable amount of hounding of her and Rodney by the press, she told the detectives. That is why the two of them had moved in with her daughter, to get away from it all. It had all happened rather suddenly, she explained—omitting any mention of eviction proceedings—and quite a bit of their personal property was still stored in boxes. But she would find the bayonet, Mrs. Syphurs assured them, and as soon as she did, she would bring it to Lieutenant Redmond’s office.
The following day, Scheff and Fantigrassi went to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to check on the machete. There they discovered that Detective Terry had in fact turned over such a weapon to the FDLE for testing, but that the department’s labs had not been able to tie it definitively to Toole or the crime. Also that day, and somewhat to Detective Scheff’s surprise, Vinetta Syphurs actually showed up at the Clay County Sheriff’s Office with the bayonet in hand. Scheff arranged to have it sent to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office crime lab, where it would be tested for blood and the blade compared to markings on the base of Adam Walsh’s severed head.
Though the recovery of the bayonet from Mrs. Syphurs constituted the sum of the efforts of Broward County detectives in their pursuit of physical evidence and their interview with Toole, Sergeant Scheff concluded his report on the matter with the observation, “No review of this matter would be complete without a thorough understanding of the background of Ottis Toole’s original confession in the Adam Walsh case.” Scheff went on to reiterate that many of the confessions to other killings made by Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole had not been substantiated (there was no mention of the eighty-plus murders that had been attributed to the pair).
And while Scheff went on to point out that Toole was presently imprisoned “in reference to a Duval County murder,” he did not mention that Detective Terry had carried out the investigation upon which that conviction was obtained. However, Scheff did take the time to reiterate the details of the complaint that Jack Hoffman had lodged against Terry.
“Apparently believing that he could enrich himself,” said Scheff, “Terry entered into an arrangement with Ottis Toole in regards to book and movie rights to Ottis Toole’s life story. Detective Terry then provided Ottis Toole with confidential information he had obtained from the Hollywood Police Department.”
According to Scheff’s report, Terry then contacted Hollywood PD to let them know that Toole had confessed to the killing of Adam Walsh. “Detectives from the Hollywood Police Department . . . invested one year in the investigation before uncovering Detective Terry’s actions,” Scheff continued, and finished by noting, “Ottis Toole’s statements were dismissed, and Detective Terry was removed from the Homicide Unit.”
It was proof, said Scheff, “of the ease with which Toole, a brain-damaged and troubled man, can be manipulated by others. Ottis Toole now appears to be under the influence of Gerald Schaffer who may be using Toole for his own purposes.” As to the exact nature of the purposes of Schaffer—a convict with an IQ of 130, suspected in the deaths of thirty-four women in three states—Scheff was not clear.
Scheff’s conclusions might carry weight, save for the fact that at the time he compiled his report, only three days had passed since his interview with Toole. The analysis of possible new evidence in the case—i.e., the bayonet he had obtained from Vinetta Syphurs—had not even begun, and the complaint against Detective Terry, the man whose work had put Toole on death row in the first place, remained an unsubstantiated claim made by one of Scheff’s fellow investigators working just down the road from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. There is no evidence that Hoffman himself pressured Scheff to include his uncalled-for coda, but at the very least, its presence in the