by JT Hunter
Disappointed with the inconsistencies of the DNA profiles and exacerbated by the contamination issues, McGath contacted a serology supervisor at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to ascertain whether the DNA suspect profile in the Walker case might be contaminated as well. After analyzing the data, the serology supervisor confirmed that the majority of the suspect DNA profile that had been used in the Walker investigation for decades actually belonged to Christine Walker, not her unknown attacker. Although he was not responsible for the fundamental error of analysis, the serology supervisor apologized that such a basic mistake had been made.
A forensic supervisor informed McGath that if she provided Hickock's and Smith’s boots for analysis, he would be able to make a direct comparison to determine whether the two men had been at the Walker house. He assured her that footwear impression evidence is “very reliable,” with some wear pattern comparisons considered to be “as reliable as fingerprints.”
Following her discussion with the forensic supervisor, McGath requested permission to try to obtain Hickock's and Smith’s boots from the KBI. On August 12, 2013, as the final log entry for her final investigative report, she recorded that her request to seek access to the boots was “not approved.”
Chapter 9: Awaiting Closure
Throughout her life, Christine Walker’s niece, Wendi Cascarella, had always tried to live up to her family’s memories of Christine, especially her “sweet and giving,” “kind-hearted” personality. But inside she harbored deep-seated resentment that her aunt had been prematurely taken away from them. It thus came as no surprise that Cascarella found herself drawn to working in law enforcement by becoming a corrections officer, perhaps compelled to do so by silent pleas for justice from Christine’s spirit, which Cascarella believes watches over her.
“Hickock and Smith did it! I know it,” Cascarella says emphatically. “Cops have a gut feeling, and I know it in my heart of hearts. The DNA is just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.”
*****
Don McLeod, the man who had the misfortune of discovering the Walker family’s bloodied bodies on a cold, dark December morning, hoped that the DNA testing of Hickock and Smith would at last bring certainty and closure to the case. Worn down by decades of investigation, whispered accusations, and accusing eyes, and haunted by the horrific images of the Walkers’ lifeless bodies, McLeod’s deep feelings of disgust for their killers still remains.
“Whoever they were, they were cold-blooded sons of bitches,” he says bitterly.
*****
Detective Kim McGath believes that “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” implicates Hickock and Smith in the Walker family murder, a belief apparently shared by the Leavenworth County judge who found that probable cause existed to conclude they committed the crime. Nonetheless, DNA inconsistencies, incomplete genetic profiles, and contamination issues prevented McGath from being able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Disappointed to her core to have “exhausted the extent of scientific testing available today” without definitively identifying the Walker family’s killer, McGath reluctantly inactivated the case “until new information becomes available,” or until more advanced technology and techniques for DNA analysis allow a clear-cut determination of whether Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were in the Walker house on December 19, 1959.
In announcing that the case would again be relegated to inactive status, Sarasota County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Wendy Rose made it clear that while “some uncertainty remains,” based on the “totality of the evidence,” sheriff’s investigators still consider Hickock and Smith to be the “most viable suspects” in the Walker family murders.
*****
The case may again go cold, but Wendi Cascarella insists that the Walkers “will never be forgotten.” Although the closure so desperately desired by the surviving family members remains out of reach, Cascarella cannot be doubted when she promises that Cliff, Christine, Jimmy, and Debbie will “forever be in all of our hearts.”
Epilogue
In his monumental “true crime” novel, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote wrote that Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were in Miami Beach from December 20 to December 26, 1959. Yet, the evidence gathered by the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office and other investigators disproves this account of Hickock's and Smith’s whereabouts. Capote wrote that the two men were staying in a Tallahassee hotel on December 19, 1959, the night of the Walker murders. Yet, multiple witnesses reported seeing them in the Sarasota area, approximately 325 miles away, on December 19 as well as on the following day.
Capote’s account of Hickock's and Smith’s activities during the pertinent time period includes a passage describing how Smith learned of the Walker family murders by reading an article about them in the Miami Herald while lounging in Miami Beach on Christmas Day. As conveyed by Capote in his novel, Smith expressed his amazement at the crime and then exclaimed that a copy-cat killer must have murdered the Walkers after reading about the Clutter killings that he and Hickock had committed a little more than a month earlier. However, Sarasota Sheriff’s Office investigators learned that the Miami Herald ran no such story in any December 25 edition of the paper. In response to Smith’s claim about a copy-cat killer, Hickock purportedly just grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and sauntered down to the shoreline, perhaps amused by the discrepancy between what he knew to be true and Smith’s attempt to deflect what Capote called the “exceptional coincidences” between the two shocking crimes.
Capote also wrote that Hickock and Smith each took a lie detector test regarding the Walker murders on January 20, 1960, and that both tests were “decisively negative.” However, McGath found that the tests were actually administered several months later, on or about April Fool’s Day. Moreover, in 1987, a polygraph expert for the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office opined that lie detector tests administered during the 1960s and earlier decades were essentially worthless due to their inherent unreliability. Other polygraph experts have similarly referred to tests given in the 1960s as “primitive and unreliable.”
Aside from the multiple inaccuracies contained in Capote’s novel, there is a remarkable lack of discussion about the Walker murders, other than a few short passages in the text. It is widely acknowledged that Capote developed a close, personal relationship with the two Clutter family killers while writing In Cold Blood, and that he became particularly attached to Perry Smith. Additionally, Capote admitted with exasperation that he could not have a proper ending for the story, and therefore could not complete his novel, until Hickock and Smith were executed. Capote was no doubt well aware that implicating them in the Walker murders would bring another trial and with it a lengthy delay in their execution, and correspondingly, a considerable delay in the resolution of Capote’s story.
One wonders whether, in the interests of completing his novel, Capote chose to remain ignorant of Hickock's and Smith’s ties to the Walker case, or even deliberately downplayed their connections to the crime.
About the Author
JT Hunter is an attorney with over fourteen years of experience practicing law, including criminal law and appeals, and he has significant training in criminal investigation techniques. He is also a college professor in Florida where his teaching interests focus on the intersection of criminal psychology, law, and literature.
JT is the bestselling author of The Devil In The Darkness, The Vampire Next Door: The True Story of The Vampire Rapist John Crutchley and The Country Boy Killer: The True Story of Serial Killer Cody Legebokoff
Optioned May 2018 by a Major Production Company to be made into a Motion Picture
He was a hard-working small business owner, an Army veteran, an attentive lover, and a doting father. But he was also something more, something sinister. A master of deception, he was a rapist, arsonist, and bank robber, and a new breed of serial killer, one who studied other killers to perfect his craft. He methodically buried kill-kits containing his tools of murder years before returning to reclaim them. Viewing the ent
ire country as his hunting grounds, he often flew across the country to distant locations where he would rent a car and drive hundreds or even thousands of miles before randomly selecting his victims. Such were the methods and madness of serial killer Israel Keyes. Such were the demands of the 'Devil in the Darkness'.
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He was the friendly, baby-faced, Canadian boy next door. He came from a loving, caring, and well-respected family. Blessed with good looks and backwoods country charm, he was popular with his peers, and although an accident at birth left permanent nerve damage in one of his arms, he excelled in sports. A self-proclaimed “die hard” Calgary Flames fan, he played competitive junior hockey and competed on his school’s snowboarding team. And he enjoyed the typical simple pleasures of a boy growing up in the country: camping, hunting, and fishing with family and friends. But he also enjoyed brutally murdering women, and he would become one of the youngest serial killers in Canadian history.
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While he stalked the streets hunting his unsuspecting victims, the residents of a quiet Florida town slept soundly, oblivious to the dark creature in their midst, unaware of the vampire next door.
John Crutchley seemed to be living the American Dream. Good-looking and blessed with a genius level IQ, he had a prestigious, white-collar job at a prominent government defense contractor, where he held top secret security clearance and handled projects for NASA and the Pentagon. To all outward appearances, he was a hard-working, successful family man with a lavish new house, a devoted wife, and a healthy young son.
But he concealed a hidden side of his personality, a dark secret tied to a hunger for blood and the overriding need to kill. As one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, Crutchley committed at least twelve murders, and possibly nearly three dozen. His IQ eclipses that of Ted Bundy, and his body count may have as well.
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References
The following sources were consulted in whole or in part in researching and writing this novel:
Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office case file regarding the Walker family murder (Case No. 59-4756/07-83553) (December 1959 – May 2015), consisting of investigator reports, notes and summaries of witness interviews, Florida Sheriff’s Bureau/Florida Department of Law Enforcement correspondence and reports, emails, and other documents relating to the investigation.
Recorded interviews of suspects and witnesses conducted by Sheriff’s Office detectives.
Physical evidence relating to the Walker murders, as maintained in the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office evidence vault.
Crime scene photographs.
Newspaper articles regarding the Walker family murder, the exhumation of the bodies of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, and DNA testing of suspects, as reported in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, the Sarasota Journal, The Sarasota News, the Tampa Bay Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Brandenton Times, the Wichita Eagle, The Washington Post, and other news media sources (time period spanning December 1959 through August 2013).
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
Email and phone conversations with Detective Kimberly McGath.