Ottis Toole

Case record: Ottis Toole

Personal details

Ottis Elwood Toole (sometimes misspelled as “Otis”) was an American serial killer and serial arsonist.

He was born on March 5, 1947, and he died in his prison cell on September 15, 1996, aged 49, from liver failure. He was buried in a prison cemetery because no one claimed his body.

Toole was classified as suffering from mild mental retardation, with an I.Q. of 75.

Toole suffered from epilepsy, resulting in frequent grand mal seizures. He ran away from home often and often slept in abandoned houses. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade.

He claimed his mother was abusive, including dressing him in girls’ clothing and calling him Becky. He also claimed he was a victim of incest at the hands of many close relatives, including his older sister and next door neighbor.

His maternal grandmother was an alleged satanist who exposed him to various Satanic practices and rituals in his youth, including self-mutilation and graverobbing, and dubbed him “Devil’s Child”. Toole was also described as having learning disabilities, including dyslexia and ADHD, and as illiterate.

Toole felt he was homosexual when he was 10, and he claimed to have had a homosexual relationship with a neighbor boy when he was 12. He was said to have visited gay bars after dropping out of school, and he claimed to have been a male prostitute as a teenager. He was known to dress in drag.

Toole claimed he was sexually aroused by fire, and he was a serial arsonist from a young age.

Early life and alleged claims

In a documentary titled Death Diploma, Toole claimed he was forced to have sex with a friend of his father when he was five years old.

He claimed he committed his first murder at age 14. He said that after being propositioned for sex by a traveling salesman, he ran over the salesman with his own car.

Toole was first arrested at age 17 in August 1964 for loitering.

Between 1966 and 1973, much information about Toole was described as unclear. It was believed that he drifted around the Southwestern United States and supported himself by prostitution and panhandling.

Relationship with Henry Lee Lucas

Toole was an accomplice of convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Toole met Lucas in 1976 at a Jacksonville soup kitchen. They soon developed a sexual relationship.

Lucas later recanted his confessions, saying he made such statements only to improve his living conditions in jail.

The case narrative included claims that Toole later accompanied Lucas in 108 murders, sometimes at the behest of a cult called “The Hands of Death”.

Toole recanted and restated a number of confessions. He was convicted of three counts of murder, and he confessed to four more murder charges before dying in prison.

While serving his sentence, Toole briefly stayed in the cell adjacent to serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida’s Raiford Prison.

The offence(s)

Toole admitted to multiple counts of murder, rape, and cannibalism. He was also described as the suspect in several unsolved murders.

Toole’s statements included that he participated in killings with Lucas and later pleaded guilty to four more murders in 1991, receiving four more life sentences.

He was described as enjoying killing women whose cars had broken down on lonely roads, and he told police he considered them “free lunch.”

The narrative described bodies being left in remote areas, sometimes with no witnesses, and it described thefts of vehicles and movement across state lines to avoid detection. It also described assaults and the alleged use of fire as part of his criminal behavior.

Investigation and admissions

Toole was arrested on an arson charge in Jacksonville, Florida in April 1983.

On October 21, Toole confessed to the 1981 murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh. A few weeks after Toole made the confession, police investigating the case announced that they no longer considered him a suspect. John Walsh, Adam’s father, continued to maintain that he believed Toole to be guilty.

On December 16, 2008, Hollywood, Florida police announced Toole as the likely murderer of Adam Walsh and closed the case as a result. The police did not reveal any new physical evidence and pointed out that they still had no DNA evidence.

Public critics argued that lack of new (public) evidence and the inability of the defendant to defend himself left no definitive claim to his guilt.

Hollywood, Florida Police Chief Chadwick Wagner said Toole had been the prime suspect all along and stated, “If you’re looking for that magic wand, that one piece of evidence, it’s not there.”

John Walsh said, “We can now move forward knowing positively who killed our beautiful little boy.”

Specific killings described

George Sonnenberg

On January 12, 1982, Toole locked 64-year-old George Sonnenberg in his own home and set the house alight, killing him.

In April 1984, Toole was convicted and sentenced to death in Jacksonville, Florida for Sonnenberg’s murder.

Ada Johnson

Toole was found guilty of the February 1983 murder of 19-year-old Ada Johnson, a Tallahassee, Florida, resident, and received a second death sentence.

On appeal, both death sentences were commuted to life in prison.

David Schallart

During an interview, Toole admitted to killing 19-year-old David Schallart, a hitchhiker he picked up east of Pensacola, Florida.

Schallart’s body, bearing five gunshot wounds in the left side of the head, was found on February 6, 1980, approximately 125 feet off I-10’s eastbound lane, five miles east of Chipley, Florida.

Toole’s second confession involved the death of Ada Johnson. He confessed that he shot her in the head on a road outside of Fort Walton Beach, Florida after picking her up at a Tallahassee nightclub.

Adam Walsh (confession and later identification)

Toole confessed to the murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh on October 21, and later was identified as the likely murderer in 2008 by Hollywood, Florida police.

In the narrative of the Adam Walsh case, Adam Walsh’s severed head was later recovered from a Vero Beach canal on August 10, after his disappearance from a Hollywood, Florida, shopping mall on July 27.

Lucas returned in October, discharged from a Maryland jail, and together the men contrived Frieda Powell’s escape from a Polk County juvenile home. By January 1982, authorities were looking for Frieda Powell in Jacksonville, and she fled westward with Lucas.

The narrative stated that they were gone two days before Toole learned of their departure, after which Toole lapsed into “a world of his own,” pacing the floor and muttering over Henry’s betrayal.

Trial and sentencing

Toole was convicted and sentenced to death in Jacksonville, Florida in April 1984 for the murder of George Sonnenberg.

He later received a second death sentence for the murder of Ada Johnson.

Experts at his trial had testified that Toole suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Later that year, he was found guilty of Ada Johnson’s murder and received the second death sentence.

On appeal, both sentences were commuted to life in prison.

In 1991, Toole pleaded guilty to four more murders in Florida and received four more life sentences.

Appeals

Both death sentences for Sonnenberg and Johnson were commuted to life imprisonment on appeal.

Outcome and status

Toole’s death followed his life sentences. He died in prison on September 15, 1996 from liver failure, aged 49.

He was buried in a prison cemetery as no one claimed his body.

The narrative also stated that Toole’s accomplice, Henry Lee Lucas, died earlier in custody from cirrhosis of the liver while serving out his sentence.

Aftermath

In connection with the Adam Walsh case, the narrative stated that the case remained officially unsolved despite police and family convictions, and that Adam’s parents and a number of police investigators were convinced of Toole’s guilt.

It also stated that authorities were embarrassed to learn that traces of critical DNA evidence had vanished from their files, and that Toole’s name was seldom mentioned in the controversy surrounding Henry Lucas’s confessions and later change of heart in April 1985.

Film depiction

A character based on Toole was portrayed by Tom Towles in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Other details

Time in custody adjacent to Ted Bundy

Jail interview narrative (verbatim statements)

The record contained a long interview scene with verbatim exchanges. The relevant quoted dialogue included:

“I’m Billy Bob. Is it true you eat people or that is just bullshit?”
“You look damn tasty. If I had me a knife I’d slit your throat and drink some blood.”

“First I go out and catch me a little boy, maybe go down to a mall or shopping center and grab one there...grab him, tie him up, use a gag, put him in the trunk of my car and drive him to my place out in the swamps. Nobody to bother me way out there.”

“Yeah, I give it to 'em in the butt.”

“Cut off the head. Let the blood drain.”

“Tell me how you cook a young boy or girl.”

“After the fucking then you strip them naked and hang them upside down by ankles; then slit their throat with a knife, slit the belly and take out the guts, the liver, the heart. Cut off the head. Let the blood drain.”

“Do you really expect me to believe you saw 13 virgins sacrificed at one time? There aren't even 13 virgins left in America. Give me a fucking break, Ottis!”

“It's not all at once. One at a time, all night long because each ceremony, at sundown and the last, at sunrise which is about an hour.”

“Henry is going to be executed but I'll be alive surrounded by cute fuck-boys. I have everything I want in prison.”

Parole/commutation and deathbed narrative

The narrative stated that police later announced Toole as the murderer in the Adam Walsh case, and it also stated that the decision was reached once Toole’s niece told John Walsh that her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he had murdered and decapitated Adam Walsh.

Additional verbatim quote between Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas

The narrative included a verbatim exchange, recorded on a tape by Texas Rangers in November 1983:

TOOLE: “Remember that one time I said I wanted me some ribs? Did that make me a cannibal?”
LUCAS: “You wasnt a cannibal. Its the force of the devil, something torced on us that we cant change. Theres no reason denying what we become. We know what we are.”
TOOLE: “Remember how I liked to pour some blood out of them?”
LUCAS: “Ottis, you and I have become something people look on as an animal Theres no way of changing what we done, but we can stop it and not allow other people to become what we have. And the only way to do that is by honesty.”