Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. December nineteenth, nineteen fifty
nine, Osprey, Florida. After spending the day running errands and visiting a
family friend, twenty five year old Cliffwalker, his twenty four year old wife
Christine, and their two children, three year old Jimmy and twenty three month
old Debbie, head back home in separate vehicles. The following morning, the
family's bodies are discovered inside their rural house. They were each shot in the
head before de w was drowned in the bathtub, and Christine had been sexually
assaulted. Over the next several decades, investigators would look at a number of
different suspects, including Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who were responsible for murdering
the Clutter family in Kansas one month earlier, but in the end, no
one is ever conclusively linked to the Walker family murders. After that, the
path went Chile. So today we are going to be covering the Walker family
murders, a story which involves a married couple and their two young children being
brutally murdered inside their home as they were preparing for the holidays. The investigation
went uncover quite a few potential suspects, but there was no conclusive evidence to
point to anyone in particular. But the case has taken a very interesting turn
in recent years, as investigators have been exploring the possibility that the perpetrators might
be Perry Smith and Hiccock, who committed one of the most infamous crimes ever
when they murdered the Clutter family inside their farmhouse in Kansas, a story which
became the subject of Truman Capote's iconic true crime book In Cold Blood. There
are some striking similarities between the murders of the Clutters and the Walkers, and
compelling evidence that Smith and Hiccock were in Florida at the time the Walkers were
killed. However, an attempt to exume the killer's remains for DNA testing failed
to bring about a definitive conclusion. I originally covered this case on the Trail
Went Cold four and a half years ago, but there's since been another new
development with the DNA testing, which I'll discuss later on in this episode,
and we're going to explore all different possibilities about who might have been responsible for
this crime. So this one's horrifying because it's a whole family that's executed inside
their home, a place where they should have been safe. And it's really
interesting because they're out running errands and visiting a family friend and then drive home
in separate vehicles. I think, Okay, you know, maybe the husband
doesn't get killed and he's the one who did it, but no, the
whole family winds up back at home and is executed. So it's a horrific
case from the get go, and I'm praying that as technology advances, you
know, with cold cases, it's the only plus is time and this ability
to have new science and new ideas and new things coming to the case.
There's genetic genealogy and things that might be able to get the DNA of these
individuals that weren't able to get DNA from the exhumation or anything like that.
Yeah, because this case is nearly sixty five years old, but we're still
talking about it on the podcast, and it is refreshing to know that there
is still an active investigation trying to figure out who the perpetrators were. And
at this point, I think there's a good chance that whoever committed this crime
is now dead. It can never be arrested and prosecuted. But I do
like that they are trying to conclusively figure out what happens. But in this
case, there are just so many suspects to choose from that it's hard to
come up with the definitive conclusion about who the guilty party might be. Our
story begins in nineteen fifty nine in Osprey, Florida, a small town located
in Sarasota County which had a population of only a few thousand people. One
of our victims is twenty five year old Cliff Walker, who lives just outside
of Osprey with his twenty four year old wife, Christine Walker, and their
two children, three year old Jimmy and twenty three month old Debbie. The
couple have been married for five years and originally hailed from the town of Arcadia
before they decided to move to Sarasota County. The Walkers currently reside a Palmer
Ranch, a fourteen thousand acre property of land owned by one of the area's
wealthiest families. In exchange for working there as a ranch hand, Cliff and
his family are allowed to live rent free in an isolated farmhouse at a cattle
ranch on the property, which is located at the end of a two mile
dirt road and about a mile away from their nearest neighbors. On Saturday,
December nineteenth, the Walkers were prepared for the holidays, as a Christmas tree,
which they had not had time to decorate, was resting on their front
porch with wrapped Christmas gifts underneath it. On this particular day, the family
went into town to run several errands, which included visiting a couple of used
car lots and test driving a vehicle, as Cliff was looking to trade in
his family's older model car. The Walkers eventually went to visit Don and Lucy
mc cleod, who lived in another isolated farmhouse on the Palmer Ranch property about
twenty minutes away from the Walker residence. Like Cliff, Don worked as a
ranch hand in exchange for living on the property rent free, and the two
men spent part of the afternoon hunting together. When they returned to the mc
clod residence, Cliff started loading up a jeep with sacks of cattle feed,
which he needed to take back to his house. Christine would go on ahead
and drive back home in the family car, but since Jimmy and Debby wanted
to ride with their father and the jeep, the children stayed behind. Approximately
fifteen minutes after Christine left, Cliff finished loading up the cattle feed and drove
away from the McLoud residence with his children shortly before four pm. But this
would turn out to be the last time the McLeod saw them alive. It
shows how much someone would have had to target this family because the property is
huge and it's isolated. For example, they live down a two and a
half mile dirt road. They live twenty minutes away from the Walkers who live
on the same property, so it is a vast area. And to say
I'm going to go target this family, they had to have known their location
and that they would be in this farmhouse that was on the property. And
what else throws me for a loop is these little ones were so small.
It's not like two teenagers. You have a three year old and a nearly
two year old. What were they going to be able to tell anybody.
It's tragic when you think about the fact that yes, mom and dad were
killed, but then these two little ones were killed, and in so many
ways, I think, like why they weren't going to be able to identify
people unless they knew them really well, and it was like Uncle Johnny,
right, unless they could tell who this person was. So a lot of
troubling issues right from the start of given how isolated and how cold blooded this
whole instance was. Yeah, as we're going to talk about, there are
a wide variety of suspects in this case, some of whom were personally affiliated
with the Walkers, while others would have been complete strangers. But you are
right that this was such an isolated location that I don't think anyone could stumble
upon a by pure chance. And as we're going to talk about, one
of the most prominent theories is that whoever was responsible was probably already waiting when
Christine arrived home, and that the crime may have been in progress when Cliff
and the children arrived, and that could be the reason that the children wound
up being murdered too. At five point thirty am on the morning of December
the twentieth, Don McLeod traveled to the Walker residence as he was planning to
gohag hunting with Cliff. When he arrived, Don was surprised to see that
the Sacks of cattle feed were still inside the park jeep, along with Cliff's
loaded hunting rifle. Don became concerned when he discovered that all the houses doors
were locked and no one would answer. He decided to use his pocket knife
to cut a slit through the screen on the back door and use the knife
to prop open the latch and enter the house. When Don walked inside,
he was shocked to discover Christine's body lying on the living room floor in a
pool of blood in the doorway to the dining room. Christine had been raped
and beaten by an unknown assailant before she was shot twice in the head with
a twenty two caliber gun. The bodies of Cliff and Jimmy were lying on
the floor in another section of the room. Cliff had been shot beneath his
right eye, while Jimmy was shot in the head three times, and there
were streaks of blood on the floor to indicate that the boy had crawled towards
his father after the first time he was shot. This prompted Don to flee
the house and find a payphone to call the Sarasota Police to apartment. When
they arrived at the house, the police followed another trail of blood into the
bathroom, where they discovered Debbie's body lying face down inside the bathtub. Debbie
had been shot once in the head, but someone had also stopped a sock
in the draid and filled the bathsub with four inches of water. It was
believed that the killer had right out of bullets after firing the first shot into
Debbie and decided to drown her in the tub in order to ensure she was
dead. Jimmy's cowboy hat was also found on the floor with a bullet hole
in it, so the killer may have used it to cover Debbie's face when
he shot her. That to me indicates that he did know her. Right.
Yes, it's a little girl, but he didn't have any empathy for
the little one. The other little boy who's crawling towards his dad, who's
dying. He shot him three times with no problem, but to drown the
little one and to look at her face when he shot her. It does
feel like it had to be someone who knew her, because otherwise the empathy
wasn't shown for anybody else. Exactly like you would think twenty three months old,
that the girl is not going to be able to talk or provide a
positive identification, but it could lend credence to the idea that this was someone
acquainted with the family. So theoretically, if the police said to Debbie,
can you point out whoever the killer was, and she would probably still at
that age, still have the wherewithal to do so. So that's why he
decided to kill her, even though it's possible he didn't even really want to.
But I mean, it wouldn't even stand up in court even if a
child that age could point to somebody, because there's so many different things that
can influence memory, and the communication of a nearly two year old wouldn't really
be something that would likely secure a conviction. I mean, maybe if that
person didn't have an alibi, and they were some of the that may have
had the motivation, or an interesting Christine, But to kill a little baby
that age, it just seems like overkill in that situation because I don't know
how verbal she was, But maybe it was that killing that really, for
some reason tugged on the killer's heartstrings. Maybe they knew them, maybe they
didn't. But killing a little baby girl that age, it just is so
brutal. It just hits me right like a gut punch. Oh yeah,
just all the details about this are so disturbing. And even Jimmy himself,
like, he was only three years old, so he's not going to be
much of a witness either. He's going to have a hard time verbalizing what
he saw. Yet this person had no hesitation about shooting this little boy three
times in this Three times that just seems like overkill. You would think one
would be enough for a child, would it not. Yeah, And he's
two and a half miles away from anybody else, so even if he ran,
like, is a baby gonna nowhere to go? And is he going
to make it without dying? It's just it's ridiculous. The killer had apparently
locked the door when they left the house, and a number of twenty two
caliber cartridges were found at the scene, so the second shot which was fired
into Christine was a thirty two caliber slug. A red cellophane cigarette wrapper from
a brand of cigarettes Cliff did not smoke, was also on the living room
floor. Cliff smoked cool brown cigarettes and had purchased a cart and on the
day that he was killed, but they were apparently taken by the person who
shot him. Cliff's pocket knife was also stolen, and strangely, the Walker's
marriage certificate, which normally hung inside a frame on the living room wall,
was also missing. Upon first glance, there didn't seem to be anything else
stolen from the house, but it was later discovered that a drum majorrette uniform
Christine wore in high school and ordinarily kept in a plastic bag inside a ceed
or chest, had been stolen. As well as far as physical evidence from
outside intruders. There appeared to be unidentified fingerprints on a baptub bosset, though
in later years it was determined that it was most likely a palm print.
Two hairs were also found which were inconsistent with anyone from the Walker family.
One of them was a dark hair discovered inside the bathroom, while the other
was a blonde hair inside Christine's dress. So when you look at the evidence
here, remember Christine had been raped. The marriage certificate's missing, her majorette
uniform is missing, and it seems as if she's the target. That someone's
really angry that they didn't get what they wanted from her, and they're going
to make her suffer the most and take away what matters to her, which
is her husband and her two children, so it's really bizarre. Yes,
a pack of cigarettes was taken, but that would be convenience. Someone went
to look for an outfit and there's a hair inside her dress and things like
that. So to me, it feels like she was the one that was
most handled and harmed and victimized both physically and by the things that were taking
in the house, compared to the dad and the two children. So you
think that it was sexually motivated and the robbery was just like a tertiary motivation
or resent resentment, like she's mine, I wanted her, I didn't get
what I wanted, and so they come and they rape her, they kill
everything that matters to her, and they take the marriage certificate as a like,
well not anymore, you know what I mean, like someone who wanted
to be with her, it didn't get that opportunity. And then shoot,
if I walk by a pack of cigarettes, that's expensive, but take those
with me. They'll be a twist later with the marriage certificate. So wonderful
will change your opinion. Okay, Okay, go for it. Yeah,
we'll talk about that later. But I still think that the drum major ATTE
uniform is the weirdest detail because at least with the marriage certificate it would be
out on the wall in the open, But to discover the majorte uniform you
would actually have to go into a seat or chest, so it's not visible.
So that gives off the impression that whoever did this knew it was there.
And I'd assume it's quite like a cute little risque cheerleading outfit looking thing,
which back in that time, you know, a short skirt and a
little majorette sweater or something like that would to me be quite sexual as well.
Investigators attempted to read traced the victim's movements to figure out how the murders
might have taken place. Christine had left the McCloud residence and arrived home before
her husband and children, but it turned out she did not park the family
car in its usual spot in front of the house. This led to speculation
that the killer was already there and had parked their own vehicle in this spot
before Christine arrived. Indeed, a local resident who flew their plane over the
property that afternoon at approximately four to twenty pm recalled seeing two cars parked outside
the house. Unfortunately, When a deputy arrived at the scene, he parked
his car in that spot and may have destroyed tire track evidence from the killer's
vehicle. Christine's purse was hung up in the kitchen, grocery she purchased earlier
that day had been put away, and a Christmas card she received from Lucy
McLoud was on top of the refrigerator. This seemed to suggest that Christine may
have been familiar enough with her killer to invite him inside the house and allow
him to wait there while she performed her household tasks. A quilt from Jimmy's
bedroom was stained with blood, and the evidence showed that Christine was raped on
top of the bed before the killer fired his first shot at her, which
only grazed the top of her head. He then dragged Christine's body into the
living room and fired a second shot into her head. It seemed like the
killer was using the quilt to white blood from Christine's legs, but may have
been interrupted when Cliff and the children arrived home. One of Christine's high heeled
shoes was found on the porch while the other was in the bedroom, and
they both have blood on them and the bruises and abrasions on Christine's face indicated
that she had put up a fight against her attacker and attempted to use her
shoes as weapons. After leaving the McCloud residence in the jeep, Cliff and
the two children had been seen stopping at a gas station, so the approximate
time they would have arrived home was around four thirty. Cliff had been shot
from a distance, so he was likely ambushed and killed instantly the moment he
set foot in the house. A few months after the murders, bloody clothing
belonging to Cliff and Christine was found inside a shed about a mile from the
walk of residence, so the killer likely used it to clean themselves up when
they left, and they had to know where that shed was a mile away
from the house. Again, this property is so big, so how did
they find that little shed? Was it on the two and a half mile
drive down their driveway or is this somewhere off more obscure, Because the more
and more you hear about this, the more and more these people have to
know the family and the area, which is an important factor here. And
you got to think about these kids too. If Mom's already dead or she's
being killed. Dad walks in and is ambushed. Those two babies are standing
there watching their parents get killed before they're also murdered. Yeah, that's just
what's horrifying about it, And the idea that the killer went through this without
hesitation just kind of shows that they had no conscience. But you're right,
the fact that they found this shed does indicate that they had a familiarity with
the area. It's not entirely clear to me if it was on the Palmer
Ranch property or if it just happened to be in abandoned shed nearby, but
they obviously knew it would be a good hiding place while they got rid of
the bloody clothing. Do you know if the shed was visible from any road.
I'm not entirely sure. No, I don't really have any details,
only that it was a shed about a mile from the residence, because if
it was visible from the road, it may have just been a spot of
opportunity, and then we could just be looking into it like this is something
that has meaning and that they must have known the area or known the property,
known the walkers. But it's like whether it's one person or multiple people
leaving the scene we want to find summer to dispose of these clothes, and
they just happened to see this shed while they're escaping, and they're like,
Oh, this looks like a good place to dump this stuff, and then
they just leave it there. Unfortunately, the local police were woefully inexperienced with
handling a crime this nature. Believe it or not, They did not even
possess a good camera, so they had to get a news photographer to take
pictures of the crime scene for them. Bloody cowboy bootprints were also found at
the house, and for the longest time, it was assumed they belonged to
the killer, but it turned out that the prints were from a deputy who'd
accidentally stepped into a pool of blood in the living room. In addition,
if you look back at the original newspaper accounts of the case, you can
find statements from the Sarasota County Sheriff that Christine was not sexually assaulted, but
this was not true, as it turned out that Stephen was found on Christine's
underwear, which would eventually become crucial evidence in this case. You also have
to remember that they pulled into the parking spot right in front of their house
too, knowing that if there was an intruder who came into this house,
it is possible they came in a vehicle. You'd park further away from the
residents, hoping you could investigate right around the perimeter of the home and see
if there's footprints, tire track, things like that that are foreign. And
instead they're like, we're just gonna pull right up front door service, jump
out and start walking around here with our bare feet and see what happens.
So you can tell that they're not used to investigating cases like this. So
the investigation, at least five hundred and eighty seven people would be looked at
as potential suspects. We're going to start off by looking at potential suspects that
have since been cleared. One of them was Don McCloud, who originally discovered
the bodies. Another person of interest was Cliff's cousin, Albert Walker, who
lived around seventy miles away in the town of Wakula and just happened to show
up in Osprey on the day the bodies were found. When Albert arrived at
the murder scene, he broke out into hysterics and he had another emotional breakdown
at the family's funeral, where he fainted twice and had to be carried out
of the church. Some people found Albert's behavior suspicious and thought he might be
staging his emotional outbursts to cover up his own involvement, as there were rumors
that he was enamored with Christine. Albert also raised some eyebrows when he claimed
he traveled to Osprey in order to speak to Cliff about a Christmas party he
was hosting, but it turned out that Cliff was never planning to host any
party. Another odd detail was that when Albert originally arrived in Osprey, he
stopped at a local gas station asked for directions to the Walker residence, even
though he had briefly lived there on a previous occasion and should have known where
it was. However, both Albert and Don McLeod pass polygraph tests, and
in two thousand and five voluntarily submitted themselves to DNA testing. By this point,
he was determined that the semen found on Christine's underwear did not belong to
Cliff and was likely left by her killer when he raped her, But a
DNA sample taken from the seamen did not match don Or Albert and officially cleared
them as suspects, but there are some other persons of interest who have never
had their DNA tested. I will say something that the invesciators must have done
right is not jumped to conclusions, because when you do look, Albert sounds
very suspicious. There's a lot of bizarre behavior. Also, asking for directions
makes it seem like he's trying to have an alibi, like where he was,
and like I just want to make sure I'm seen around a place I'm
actually familiar with. But then he steps forward and he takes a polygraph,
he has his DNA tested, all of that, and that's at the scene
of the crime. And so it's you know, we look back at so
many cases and we can talk about wrong convictions, and it looks like here,
someone who's bizarre and makes some pretty questionable decisions regarding this family but might
not have been the killer, was cleared and not suspected of this crime after
passing these tests. So that's a good thing in this case, definitely,
And I am glad that for all the mistakes, they did preserve the semen
so they could do this DNA testing several decades later, though, as we're
going to talk about later on. There would be an additional complication with that.
Investigator looked at a meter reader named Stanley Mauk who serviced the Walker residence.
Well, there was no direct evidence to link Molk to the crime.
He spent time in a mental institution and received elector shock therapy because he claimed
he was sometimes overwhelmed by an uncontrollable urge to kill his wife and children.
Another detail which put Malk on the police's radar is that he also happened to
be the better reader at a house where another brutal murder took place only four
months earlier. On August seventh, nineteen fifty nine, the body of a
twenty two year old University of Florida student named Chandler Stephens was discovered inside a
house he was renting from his stepmother in Sarasota, which is located just ten
miles northwest of Osprey. Stephens was found hogtied and his head was completely wrapped
with his heesive tape. The killer had only left Stephen's nostril holes uncovered so
he could breathe, and then proceeded to torture him with a knife for hours
before his throat was cut. The crime became known as the Sarasota Mummy murder
and remains unsolved to this day. Other than the fact that Stanley malk was
a meter reader at both residences, there was nothing to link the Sarasota Mummy
murder to the Walker murders, and Mouk died of brain cancer in nineteen ninety
seven. So when you look at this one, the fact that there was
a the duct tape and the knife being used versus gunshots and drowning, Yes,
they're both brutal. Yes he was a meta reader at both, but
those are quite different methods of operation for killing somebody. Oh yeah, Like
one of these days, I think I want to do like my own individual
podcast episode on the Sarasota Mummy murder because it's creepy and it's bizarre, and
I don't think there are ever any suspects in that case. But that sounded
like the living hell to be tortured for hours. Will you're wrapped in tape
and only have your nostril hols uncovered so you're still alive. But it doesn't
seem like there's any connection between the two cases. But it is kind of
a weird coincidence that malk would be a meta reader. At both these residents
where murders took place, Investigators were told that a couple of different men from
the area had made inappropriate advances on Christine, but one person who stood out
was sixty five year old Wilbur took Her. Tooker lived about a mile from
the Walk residence, it was their closest neighbor, and he seemed to have
an obsession with Christine. On more than one occasion, took Her had stopped
by the house while Cliff was away and attempted to kiss Christine. When Cliff
found out about this, he became so angry that he reportedly had to be
talked out of killing took Her, but he still confronted him and warned took
Her not to come around their house anymore. On the day of the murders,
Tooker's whereabouts could be accounted for after five PM, as he had dinner
with a friend in Sarasota before going to a local high school to play the
violin in an orchestra at a concert later that night. However, Tooker technically
had no alibi between four o'clock and five o'clock, the exact time period the
Walkers were killed, and he passed away in March of nineteen sixty ten three.
At the time I released my original Trail with Cold episode four and a
half years ago, no DNA testing had been performed in regards to took Her,
but investigators have since obtained DNA samples from his surviving descendants and compared them
to the DNA from the Seman evidence. While a conclusive match was not made,
took Her could not entirely be dismissed as a contributor either, So he
has never officially been ruled out. What does that mean? So, I
mean, I know, if you can't make a conclusive match, you can't
go forward with it with any kind of conclusion. But if he can't be
discounted as a contributor, the rates are so high when you match certain elements
of someone's DNA, So if he matches on some of these, what's going
on with the inability to rule him out? I'm not entirely sure. It
might just have to be with the quality of the evidence because it's so old
and it's degraded, and it may have been cross contaminated. They may have
found something like maybe some of the markers for ticker matches, but not all
of them. And maybe it's because they don't have a full DNA sample that
they can't say, well, it's definitely not him, or it's definitely him.
But yeah, this has only come about in recent years when DNA testing
has advanced a lot. But I guess they just weren't able to get like
a conclusive match, so they and it's not like they have to arrest him
and take him a trial because he's long dead at this point. So the
fact that they said that the match was not strong enough to announce that he
was the killer leads me to believe that there's still plenty of reasonable doubt.
That's true too. But you did have the other two men that the DNA
was cleared. I mean they said, no, you are not a contributing
factor. And so it's interesting to have another suspect where they say we can't
rule him out. It's like, oh my goodness, I guess it all
depends on DNA markers and how many of them are a match. Do we
know much about his personality because to rule him in, to think that,
like, is this the type of person that could in cool blood, I
guess in Colder Blood, which was the name of the book that was written
about this case later on. But to be able to kill a family of
four with two children, like one of them just under two years old,
the other three years old, to do that and then to show up and
to meet your friend for dinner and then go play violin in an orchestra and
to see they obviously would have talked to the people around him and said,
did he seem phased? Was he panicked? And I think that it would
shake most people to their core, even if you're unless you're a psychopath,
I can't imagine a situation where you wouldn't be showing some kinds of outward signs
of being very affected by the actions that you had taken in order to end
the life of a family of four. Yeah. That's the thing about Tooker
is that he's definitely alleged like he has a history of inappropriate behavior, But
I haven't heard anything about him having a history of violence. And he's sixty
five years old this point, so it's just kind of crazy that he could
live a normal life and then while he's a senior citizen, wipe out an
entire family including two young children, and then just show no emotion about it
whatsoever. So, I mean, there's a lot to think that took her
could be the guy, but the crime is just so brutal and cold blooded
that it just seems weird that someone with no known history of violence could just
do this at such a late stage in his life. Ash, did you
just shudder at the thought when you heard that this guy came to her house,
Christine's home while her husband isn't there, and then proceeded to try to
hit on her, not just one time, but two times, Yeah,
multiple times. Has no respect for her boundaries, has no respect for her
as a wife and mother, and just basically has the attitude that if I
want it, I'm going to get it. That seems like what he's going
to come to her home, He's going to force himself on her. I
don't blame her husband for being like almost irrationally outraged, like leave my wife
and my family alone. It crosses a horrific line and really violates Christine as
a woman, And at the time, there's not a whole lot of attentionion
around that. So she's sitting there, going, I have this man harassing
me and physically coming on to me, and I really don't have a way
to get him to leave me alone. Investigators were also contacted by the cousin
of a man named Curtis McCall, who believed that Curtis may have been conducting
a secret affair with Christine. Curtis was a former high school boyfriend of Christine's,
and two weeks before the murder, while Cliff was away at a rodeo,
Christine supposedly stopped by the home of one of Curtis's relatives in Arcadia to
look for him. A couple of Christine's friends claimed she'd asked them how to
terminate a pregnancy. Christine had actually experienced two miscarriages in nineteen fifty nine,
so there was gossip about the possibility of her becoming pregnant with his secret lover,
though the autopsy revealed she was definitely not pregnant at the time of her
death. Curtis was also believed who have owned a twenty two caliber pistol.
Was known for having a violent temper and reportedly appeared nervous and on edge following
the murders. When he was interviewed by investigators, Curtis denied ever having an
affair with Christine, and while he admitted to once owning a twenty two caliber
pistol, he claimed to have since sold it to someone whose name he couldn't
remember. Curtis was also given a polygraph test, and according to the results,
the only question he answered which indicated deception was have you withheld any information
from law enforcement officers about the Walker murders. There was ultimately no evidence to
implicate Curtis, but when police attempted to track him down for DNA testing in
two thousand and five, he could not be located. To be honest,
that question opens up a lot of possibility. Have you withheld any information from
law enforcement officers about the Walker murders? If I had just been on a
polygraph test, or I had been talking to the police before the polygraph test
and I had lied about my relationship with Christine, if I had lied about
not knowing the man's name that I gave the gun, to those types of
issues, and then they say have you withheld any information? Then I say
no, It's possible. The way my brain works and body reacts that I'm
admitting that, yes, I lied about something we talked about, but it
could be a more minor personal thing that had nothing to do with the murders
themselves and had to do with his dynamic with the family in general. I
think it tells us more probably that he was likely asked did you murder the
Walker family? And he didn't get deception on that because, like he said,
ashe it could be anything that he could be hiding that he thinks could
have contributed to the reason that they were murdered. It's just so difficult to
know, right, I mean, like, did they say was she pregnant?
Did you ever get her pregnant? And he says no, what if
he had or what if he didn't know? And he's thinking like maybe,
and he says no emphatically, and he's thinking on that question like, oh
my gosh, I've lied about a couple things out of you know, pride
and decency or respect for Christine or respect for her husband, whatever. And
then it's going to show deception because yes, I've withheld information. I lied
to you about a couple of things, but I didn't kill her and I
don't know. It doesn't necessarily mean he knows who did kill her, but
could have been deceptive about his story surrounding he and the family. There were
a number of other interesting leads which went nowhere. Emmett Monroe Spencer, a
convicted murderer on death row at Rayford Prison, sent a letter to police in
which he confessed to the Walker murders. However, his confession was soon discredited
once investigators determined that he was in California at the time the murders took place.
Spencer was known for being a pathological liar, and while his confession contained
enough accurate details about the crime to suggest he might be involved, it turned
out he had learned this information from newspaper articles. This was an unfortunate side
effect of the police using a news photographer to take pictures of the murder scene,
as a number of these photos were published in the newspapers and featured enough
details for Spencer to construct his false confession. In August of nineteen ninety four,
an anonymous woman called the Sarasota County Sheriff's office who claimed to be a
bartender from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. She said she was talking to one of her
regular customers, whom she described as a retired white male in his sixties who
worked odd jobs in the area. She said, he suddenly started crying,
and when the woman asked what was wrong, the man supposedly told her that
he had once killed some people named Walker in Osprey, Florida, many years
ago. The woman said she would call back later with more information, but
she never did, so this tip could not be verified. That is so
bizarre because she's up in Pennsylvania and she says that one of her regulars comes
in. She never gave them a name or any information. And I wonder
if she was able to give any facts that made it quite specific to the
murder. I mean, we know enough facts were out in the media because
of this false confession by the death Rowan made at Rayford. But if there
was a specific piece of information that she shared at the time, it would
make it a valid informant. But at I don't know. It's all the
way up in Pennsylvania, one of our regulars and she doesn't follow through.
It makes me think she's either actually more in touch and more personal with the
individual she's calling about, like a husband, a boyfriend, a dear friend,
or she's reaching for something. Why would you not give the information if
you were going to share it, unless you might have a dynamic with a
person that made you worried or heavy about trying to share that information with police.
And the weird thing about the possibility of this being a false tip is
that this was nineteen ninety four, thirty five years after the murders, and
it's the early stages of the Internet. So it's not like someone from Pennsylvania
could just google about this murder, which took place in Florida decades earlier.
So I don't know how widespread knowledge was about the Walker murders up in places
like Pennsylvania during the nineteen nineties. So maybe she legitimately he did hear someone
say they had killed someone in Florida named Walker, and maybe the person was
lying, but she still thought it was an important enough tip to call.
But then why would she hang up without providing more information. The most interesting
development would take place in twenty twelve, when the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office announced
that they were exploring the possibility that the Walker family murders might have been connected
to another family, which also happened to be one of the most infamous crimes
in American history. Many of you were probably already familiar with this story,
but here's a quick refresher. During the early morning hours of November fifteenth,
nineteen fifty nine, a pair of ex convicts named Perry Smith and Richard Hickock,
who had recently been paroled from the Kansas State Penitentiary, entered a farmhouse
located outside of Polcombe, Kansas. The occupants of the house were forty eight
year old Herbert Klutter and his forty five year old wife Bonnie, along with
their sixteen year old daughter Nancy and fifteen year old son Kenyon. The family
were woken up by the intruders before they were bound and gagged well incarcerated.
Smith and Hickock had been told by a fellow inmate that the Clutter family kept
a large amount of cash inside a safe at their farmhouse, but this turned
out to be untrue, as no such safe existed. The two men responded
by slashing Herbert Clutter's throat and then shot every single member of the family in
the head before fleeing the scene. Smith and Hiccock would remain fugitives for over
a month before they were finally captured in Las Vegas on December thirtieth. Both
men were subsequently convicted and sentenced to death for the murders before they were executed
by a hanging on April fourteenth, nineteen sixty five. As you probably know,
the case attained worldwide notoriety after noted author Truman Capodi published a book about
it titled In Cold Blood, which remains one of the most highly read true
crime books of all time. Now, given that the Walker family murders took
place during the period of time when Smith and Hiccock were on the run,
and there were a number of similarities with the Clutter family murders, investigators explored
the possibility that the two men may have been responsible for both crimes. There's
actually a brief section in Cold Blood where Capodi references the Walker murders, as
Smith is described as reading about the crime in the newspaper and remarking to Hiccock
that the murders or the Clutters may have inspired this. When Smith and Hiccock
were questioned about the Walker murders, they admitted to having traveled through Florida,
but denied ever visiting Sarasota County. Both men pass polygraphs, and In Cold
Blood seems to imply that they were eliminated as suspects because they had solid alibis
on the day of the crime. But in the years following its publication,
a number of factual inaccuracies have been discovered in the book, putting these so
called alibis. It's difficult to take anything from my book as saying, Okay,
this is fact, right. I mean, it's a great book,
but I could understand where you know, you're taking people's words for it.
He's where did Capoti get all of his information? So I wouldn't hold the
book as fact that these guys had a solid alibi. But I find it
interesting that you have Christine was sexually assaulted, and it seems like her murder
was very purposeful, and then the other ones were like getting rid of evidence,
right, So a quick shooting of the husband and quick shooting of the
son and drowning the daughter. It almost seems like the in Cold Blood there
was more of a like they're tied up and they're looking for money, they're
trying to get information out of the family. They to me, they feel
very different, where one is a like either sexually motivated and emotionally motivated goal
towards Christine and the family had to die as a collateral versus, we're tying
this family up for a purpose of this robbery, and then we're going to
execute people so we don't get caught. To me, I see them as
very different. It is true that the Clutter family murders were probably done out
of frustration, because both these men were under the pulse impression that they were
going to get rich and that there was a safe in the house, and
when they found out that this was a lie, they took it out on
the family and murdered all of them. But I know that the mos do
seem a bit different. But I definitely could see Smith and Hitcock murdering another
family if they were desperate enough, because they were two of the most wanted
fugitives in the United States at that time, so if they had the opportunity
to steal anything from the Walker residence, I could see them going through with
it. I mean, there isn't anything definitive, but it does seem like
quite a coincidence that we have these two separate family murders, which all took
place within a month of each other, and these two killers could be placed
in both areas at both times, and I think that motivations could change a
little bit from Okay, I think we're going to get rich to that of
desperation, possibly coupled with a sexual motivation, which we'll talk more about with
Hiccock later. There is that possibility there, I think, because when they
started out they'd been parolled, and when if they had committed the Walker murders,
they would have been on the lamb, so they would be desperate for
things like any type of money, food, cigarettes, things like that,
a place that they could just rest their head for a second. So it
could be that they started off with the one motivation and then as time went
on and desperation grew, their motivation kind of morphed into something else. The
timeline from in Cold Blood is that Smith and Hickock spent the evening of December
the eighteenth, nineteen fifty nine, sleeping in their car parked by the side
of the road near the Alabama Florida border. They then traveled through Florida the
following day and spent the evening of December the nineteenth at a hotel in Tallahassee,
but in actuality records showed that the two men had checked into a hotel
in Miami Beach on December the eighteenth and pay for one week's stay in advance,
and no witnesses could confirm having seen them in Tallahassee until the twenty first.
On the morning of December nineteenth, Smith and Hickock decided to check out
of the Miami Beach Hotel, even though management refused to give them a refund
on the additional days they had already paid for. Miami is located over two
hundred miles southeast of Osprey, but the two men would be spotted in Sarasota
County later that day, as they were seen purchasing items from a Sarasota department
store located only a few miles away from the Walker residence. The following day,
the owner of a gas station just outside of Arcadia claimed that two men
driving in nineteen fifty six Chevrolet Bellaire stopped to ask for directions. He would
later identify the two men as Smith and Hickcock, who were driving a stolen
Chevy bel Air at that time. But what's most interesting is that the witness
described Hiccock as having a badly scratched up face. Now this car is a
very important detail because, as you recall, Cliff Walker had been planning to
trade in his family car and frequented some used car lots on the day he
was killed, and one vehicle he expressed interest in was in nineteen fifty six
Chevrolet, So theoretically Smith and Hiccock could have gained access to the Walker home
under the pretense of arranging a trade for their car. When the two men
were arrested, one of them was carrying a pocket knife which was similar to
the one which was stolen from Cliff Walker, and on Christmas Eve of that
year, Smith and Hickcock sold two dolls wrapped in Christmas paper to a local
minister. There was speculation that these dolls may have originally been intended as Christmas
presents for Debbie and have been lying under the Walker's Christmas tree before they were
stolen. It really has you put things in perspective where there seems to be
opportunities where you do have these two men with different things, like the dolls
are very bizarre. Why would these two men have access to dolls? Like
why would they go buy those? That car is very highly concerning, And
the fact that they're lying about where their locations were, like why would you
lie about that you paid for these hotels? You found at other hotels.
I mean, it's very confusing. They're a whereabouts back and forth. It
seems like they're very sporadic and very unorganized. Yeah, exactly. And I
could see them just happen to drive through Ausbrey that day, in crossing paths
with the Walker and then deciding to make an arrangement to trade cars, and
then thinking, hey, this is a good opportunity. They have an isolated
farmhouse that is miles away from anyone else. This is a perfect opportunity to
pull off some sort of murder. And like Jules talked about, since their
wanted fugitives trying to evade the lock, they could have been desperate enough to
try anything, even though obviously the Walkers were not a wealthy family and they're
not going to get a large haul. If they decide to rob them,
they could have run into them. Maybe they had the original plan in case
somebody would recognize the vehicle that they were in. Maybe they wanted to go
to a used car lot at extreme their vehicle. They could have met the
Walkers there and then made a later plan to go to their home and said,
well, this is where it's located. Because just something about the crime
says to me that there's two people, and I think part of it is
that whoever decided to go and sexually assault Christine obviously knew that there was other
people that lived there, and they felt comfortable enough. She probably said my
husband's coming home, like I'm sure that she would have, because to put
myself in that position, if you're scared and somebody's attacking you, you're going
to say, like you should leave, my husband's coming home. So this
person likely would have been aware of this fact. And the fact that they
then go and take her to the room and sexually assault her makes me think
that you feel comfortable enough that somebody else is watching that front door. Yeah,
that's what I'm thinking, because if they had encountered the walkers in town,
they obviously know that the husband and the children are going to come back
eventually, So for one of them to feel comfortable enough to commit sexual assault,
that would make more sense if they had backup. And of course no
other detail is that they found a thirty two slug at the scene which did
not match any of the other bullets, which could point to the possibility that
there were two guns used by two different people. One reason that Smith and
Hiccock did not seem like promising suspects during the initial investigation. Is that the
unidentified fingerprints found on the bathtub faucet in the Walker residence did not match either
of them. But like we mentioned earlier, it now seems likely that these
fingerprints were actually palm prints. And of course, while polygraph tests were given
a lot more weight sixty five years ago, modern investigators are well aware of
how unreliable they are, so they did not put much stock into the fact
that both men passed when they were originally questioned. Following their execution, Smith
and Hiccock were buried at Mount Munsey Cemetery in Lansing, Kansas, so this
Arizonta County Sheriff's Office made arrangements to exhume their bodies. They hoped to extract
some mitochondrial DNA from the bones to see if it matched any of the semen
evidence from Christine's underwear. While in August of twenty thirteen, the Sheriff's office
announced that the results were inconclusive. DNA was taken from Smith's feamer bone and
it did not match the DNA from the seamen, but only a partial DNA
profile could be extracted from Hickock's remains, and since the samples from the murder
scene were old and degraded, it could not be conclusively determined if Hickcock's DNA
was a match or not. It's worth noting that during the Clutter Family murders,
Hickcock had made an attempt to rape the teenage shod Or Nancy, but
Smith intervened and prevented this. If both these men were responsible for the Walker
murders, Hickock likely would have been the one who sexually assaulted Christine, So
the fact that Smith was excluded as being the source of the seamen's sample did
not necessarily rule him out as being involved in the crime. In spite of
these inconclusive results, Smith and Hiccock are still both considered to be viable suspects.
It goes back to that original investigation where you have things where they're looking
for a fingerprint to match, and if it was a palm print, then
you're never going to find a fingerprint that matches the palm print. And when
you do look at the idea that one of these suspects was sexually aggressive and
almost raped the teenager at the other home, and then He's the one who
they can't rule in or out as the DNA contributor that is highly concerning.
In a surprising turn of events, Cliff Walker's niece contacted investigators in November of
twenty twelve and revealed that Cliff and Christine's marriage certificate had turned up among some
items which were recently given to her by relative. It's not entirely clear how
the marriage certificate wound up there, but this development seemed to indicate that it
was not actually stolen by the killer. In twenty eighteen, the Sarasona County
Sheriff's Office announced that they were going to attempt to use genetic genealogy in hopes
of turning up a match to the DNA evidence. However, in recent years,
investigator have realized that some of the DNA found on Christine's underwear was similar
to an incomplete DNA sequence belonging to Christine, which was collected from her dress.
This meant that cross contamination had likely taken place, and Christine's DNA wound
up being mixed with the DNA belonging to her killer. In other words,
all the DNA testing which have been performed over the years was now meaningless as
it did not prove or disprove any of the suspects culpability. Just last year,
Cliff and Christine's remains were exhumed and sent to a private lab as there
is hope that their DNA can be identified and removed from the mixture found in
Christine's underwear. This would hopefully allow scientists to extract the killer's genetic code from
the sperm cell evidence and upload it to an ancestry website for the purposes of
genetic genealogy. However, as far as I can tell, this is yet
to take place, so after nearly sixty five years, the Walker family murders
continued to remain unsolved. So I guess you could say the path went Chile.
It would be hopeful that now with the technology we have, that they
could separate the male and the female contributor in a mixed or contaminated sample,
but who knows if that's possible. In this situation, it does make you
want to go back to the man who had not been ruled out. He
couldn't be conclusively excluded, but he wasn't a direct match, and wondering well
were certain markers of his present and so were Christine's and that's why he wasn't
a one hundred percent match. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of as
well with Wilbur Tooker, is that they just simply said that the results were
inconclusive, but he could not be excluded. So it's possible that some of
the markers did match. But if the markers that didn't match actually belonged to
Christine rather than the killer, that's why they could make a definitive conclusion.
So it would be interesting to see if this is successful and they were able
to extract the Killer's DNA and retested it against Hooker's d would it be a
more complete match. So I think this would be a good time to bring
it into Part one. But join us next week as we present part two
of our series about the Walker family murders. Robin, do you want to
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