Ottis Toole:
The Serial Killer That Kidnapped, Tortured, and Beheaded Adam Walsh
Ottis Elwood, Toole was born on March 5, 1947, died on September 15, 1996, in Jacksonville, Florida. Toole's most famous victim was Adam Walsh, 6. He vanished on a hot, sunny day in a Mall in Hollywood, Florida. On July 27, 1981. His mother wanted to buy a lamp and left Adam playing video games in Sears. She was only gone for a short time. When she was done, she went to get him, but she couldn't find him. She runs around calling out his name and tells the store clerk to call him on the loudspeaker. But he never shows. For hours she franticly searched the mall, but no sign of Adam. She called the Hollywood Police. They searched but didn't find him.
The hours pass, the store closes, and night falls, but still no sign of Adam. The family's terror intensifies when they realize they may never see their son again.
Two weeks later, hundreds of miles from home, fishermen found Adam's severed head in a canal near Vero Beach. The rest of his body was never recovered.
Ottis Toole was a drifter, an arsonist, and a serial killer. He was on a crime spree that spanned more than twenty years. He murdered at least six people, but he liked to brag it was hundreds. He admitted to his first murder when he was 15, a traveling salesman who wanted him to perform sexually for him. Toole ran over him with the man's car.
Toole was raised by a single mother who was abusive and controlling. She was very strict with Ottis and his four sisters. His father was reportedly an alcoholic who abandoned the family when Ottis was a child. He stated his mother dressed him up in girls' clothes and called him Susan.
He claimed he had incest with a family member and had been sexually abused by a neighbor. He said his grandmother worshiped Satan. She called Ottis "The Devil's Child."
He kept running away from home and would sleep in abandoned buildings. He got sexually aroused by starting fires. At a young age, he was classified as developmentally disabled. He left school and started a life of crime. He couldn't read and had a 75 IQ, and to make money, he was a male prostitute.
In 1976 he met Henry Lee Lucas in a soup kitchen. Lucas was convicted of killing his mother. The two men became lovers and serial killers.
In 1977 Toole married, but his wife quickly divorced him after discovering he was gay and liked to crossdress.
Toole confessed to the Police that he helped Lucas in 109 homicides, But the Police never found evidence to support his claims. No one knows exactly how many murders he committed. But the Police determined most of the confessions were lies.
The two said they killed because they joined "Hands of Death," A satanic cult in Southern Texas. It was their job to find victims for sacrificial offerings for the cult Priests, and then he got rid of the bodies by eating their flesh.
In 1984 Toole was convicted of starting a fire in 65-year-old George Sonnenberg's apartment while he slept. He then locked the door. And the Murder of Ada Johns, in 1991. He pleaded guilty to four more murders. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Later it was commuted to life in prison. For a brief time, his cell was next to Ted Bundy's.
Was Toole's confession true? If not true, what reason would he have to confess to killing a six-year-old? What did he have to gain? Was his conscience bothering him now that he was so close to death? Did he want forgiveness from God? But if he did murder Adam, why recant his confession? Can we believe a known liar?
Later, Toole's niece told Adam's parents that her uncle confessed to killing Adam.
In 2008 the Police and Adam's parents, John Walsh, who hosted America's Most Wanted, and the mother, Reve, believed he was telling the truth. Toole died from cirrhosis of the liver on September 15, 1996, in Raiford Prison in Florida. He was 49. No one claimed his body.
Police lost Toole's impounded car with the machete inside and the blood on the carpet. The authorities had his two confessions, but because he recounted them, the Hollywood Police took until 2008 to "Officially" declare Ottis Toole as Adam Walsh's killer and then closed the case.
