The first murder at 14 years old, the sect, the violence: Ottis Toole, the arsonist serial killer

Necrophilia, cannibalism, vilification of a corpse. These are just some of the crimes he was responsible for Ottis Toolean American serial killer little known abroad but the author of some of the most …


The first murder at 14 years old, the sect, the violence: Ottis Toole, the arsonist serial killer

Necrophilia, cannibalism, vilification of a corpse. These are just some of the crimes he was responsible for Ottis Toolean American serial killer little known abroad but the author of some of the most brutal crimes in the country. The official toll is six murders committed between 1961 and 1983, but according to experts – and based on what Toole himself confessed – the count could be much higher, even in three figures.

Childhood and adolescence

Ottis Toole was born on March 5, 1947 in Jacksonville, Florida. His father is an alcoholic who soon leaves the family, while his mother is a violent woman, who dresses him in women’s clothes at an early age and calls him Susan. The future serial killer’s childhood is not simple: he is in fact the victim of sexual abuse from close relatives and acquaintances: among others his older sister and a neighbor. But not only that: his mother is a religious fanatic, while his grandmother – he will declare to the police – is a Satanist who exposes him to satanic practices and rituals, including the theft of tombs.

School results are often insufficient and Ottis Toole is classified as suffering from a mild intellectual disability, with an IQ of 75. The relationship with his mother is tormented and on more than one occasion he runs away from home and goes to sleep in abandoned houses . A palpable malaise, certified by the tendency to start fires: Toole himself will reveal that he was a arsonist since he was a child and that he has always been sexually aroused by fire.

Around the age of 10, Ottis Toole revealed to family members that he was homosexual – for this reason he was often mistreated at home – while two years later he cultivated a relationship with a boy from the neighbourhood. Due to his great learning difficulties, he dropped out of school in the eighth grade and began to live as a vagabond, often frequenting a gay bar and working occasionally as a gigolo.

The first murder

The first murder by Ottis Toole dates back to 1961. At the age of fourteen, the vagabond-gigolo meets a businessman and receives sexual advances. After refusing his court, she hits him with her own car and immediately runs away, leaving no traces. Partly by chance and partly by luck, he manages to get away with it and will never be linked to that crime.

Toole entered prison for the first time while still a minor, when he was seventeen, for vagrancy. He gets by with little, leaves prison after a few months, and continues to wander around the southeastern United States, continuing to work as a gigolo and begging. In 1974 he ended up in the police sights for two murders: first for that of twenty-four-year-old Patricia Webb, then for that of thirty-one-year-old Ellen Holman, killed a month apart. Despite the charges against him, Ottis Toole manages to get away again and decides to leave Boulder (Colorado) to return to Jacksonville.

Ottis Toole becomes a serial killer

After a year of hardship, in January 1976 Ottis Toole married a woman twenty-five years older than him. A move to hide his true sexuality, but the outcome is catastrophic: three days after the wedding, his wife discovers everything and abandons him without thinking for a second more. A few months pass and Toole meets Henry Lee Lucas at a well-known soup kitchen in Jacksonville. A knowledge that turns the tramp’s life upside down from every point of view, but above all transforms him into a serial killer.

Ottis Toole will declare to the police that he killed 108 people in the company of Lucas, crimes committed at the request of a sect called “The Hands of Death”. The police will never confirm the existence of the criminal gang, but some murders are fully in line with reality. The first is that of January 4, 1982, the sixty-five-year-old victim George Sonnenberg: Toole locks him inside his house and sets it on fire. The man died seven days later from his injuries. Ottis Toole and his friend – perhaps lover – commit other heinous crimes, often without a motive. Toole prefers male victims and there would have been no shortage of episodes of necrophilia And cannibalismas confirmed in interrogations.

The arrest and confessions

Ottis Toole comes arrested in April 1983 for an arson attack unrelated to what happened at George Sonnenberg’s home. Despite this, he decides to confess and for that crime he will be sentenced to twenty years in prison: he and the victim had a sexual relationship and everything came to a head due to a violent argument. Two months later, in June 1983, the police also arrested Lucas for illegal possession of a firearm. But once he arrives in prison, Toole’s partner begins to brag about the murderous rampage orchestrated by the couple.

At first Ottis Toole denies any involvement, but as the days pass he begins to confirm the confessions by Lucas. The case of the murder of Adam Walsh, a six-year-old boy killed in 1981, is emblematic: Toole confesses to having kidnapped him in the Sears shopping center and decapitated him with a machete after driving aimlessly for an hour. The police, however, are unable to prove the veracity of the confession despite the presence of blood in the killer’s Cadillac. The case will be solved only in December 2008 thanks to advances in technology. And, again, Toole pleads guilty to four other murders in Jacksonville: John McDaniel, Jerilyn Peoples, Brenda Burton, Ruby McCary and Ada Johnson, all killed in Florida from 1980 to 1983.

Conviction and death

Ottis Toole was sentenced to death for the crimes committed, but the sentence was changed to life imprisonment.

The arsonist killer continues to confess to crimes, but only six are confirmed by the authorities, who categorically deny a toll of more than one hundred victims. Toole died on September 15, 1996, at the age of forty-six, of liver failure.