In Colder Blood

by JT Hunter

  McLeod’s heartbeat quickened as he moved closer to Christine’s body and saw the extent of her injuries. The vivacious young woman he had joked and laughed with hours before was sprawled on her back in the doorway leading to the dining room, her face battered, her hair discolored with blood. Just beyond her, McLeod could see Cliff lying equally lifeless, flat on his back on the living room floor with little Jimmy curled up beside him. Blood covered the floor on all sides of them. McLeod panicked at the thought that the killer might still be lurking somewhere in the house. He sprinted out of the room in terror, retracing his path through the kitchen and back door.

  Knowing that his truck was slowed by the horse trailer attached to it, he jumped into Cliff’s Jeep. Relieved to find the keys left in the ignition, he gunned the engine and darted down the road. As he drove, he noticed that the burlap bags of cattle feed that he had helped Cliff load were still in the back of the Jeep. This struck him as odd because he knew that Cliff always unloaded feed as soon as he got home. Something had compelled him to stray from his normal routine and head straight into the house.

  McLeod sped back to town intending to call the police from the IGA grocery store on Bay Street. But when he pulled up to use the payphone, he realized that he did not have any money. His mind raced frantically as he tried to figure out what to do. Suddenly, he spotted a woman opening up a nearby restaurant. When she heard the urgency in his voice and saw the desperation in his eyes, she did not hesitate in loaning him a dime.

  McLeod rushed back to the payphone and called the Sarasota Police Department. It was approximately 5:45 a.m.

  “Some people’s been hurt,” he exclaimed to the dispatcher on the other end of the line. “I think they’re all dead.”

  The city police department quickly notified the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, which dispatched all available deputies in the area to respond to the scene.

  McLeod paced anxiously at the IGA as he waited for the police to arrive. After what “seemed like an hour,” Deputy Russell Mize pulled up in his patrol car.

  *****

  Decades later, McLeod would be unable to shake the terrible images of the murder scene from his memory.

  “I can still see it plain as if it happened right now,” he told a reporter grimly. “You’ve never seen anything so horrible.”

  The gruesome deaths of the two Walker children were what haunted him the most.

  “They were such little fellers,” he said tearfully. “They were babies, really.”

  Chapter 4: Bodies and Blood

  A cold rain fell as Deputy Mize accompanied a still visibly shaken McLeod back to the scene of the crime. The bleak drizzle added to the paralyzing feeling of gloom that overcame McLeod as they pulled up to the Walker house. After parking beside Christine’s car, Mize walked around to the back of the house and followed the same route that McLeod had taken through the back door. Wary that the perpetrator might still be present, Mize moved cautiously, taking measured steps into the kitchen before making his way into the living room. He tried to brace himself for what awaited him, but the horrific scene still sent a chill down his spine.

  Christine Walker’s body lay face up on the wooden floor, her head turned a little to the side, resting just outside the doorway between the dining room and living room. Her dress and slip were scrunched together and pushed up around her hips, and her underwear had been pulled down to her lower legs. Both of her arms were stretched out above her head as if she had been dragged to the spot and abandoned there. Her eyes were wide open, as if still experiencing the terrifying moments of her violent death. A pool of blood that had seeped from her head was spread across the floor. A blood-stained towel was wadded up beside her.

  A few feet away, Cliff Walker’s body lay on the floor in the southeast corner of the living room. His head was tilted slightly toward the French doors that led to the front porch. The doors were closed and locked. Cliff lay flat on his back, still wearing his denim jacket, his right hand resting across his stomach, his left arm extended down in its natural position beside him. Eyes closed, his head was cradled in his cowboy hat, as if he had fallen straight back at the moment of his death. Trails of blood oozed from the lower inside corner of his right eye and from both of his nostrils.

  Dressed in a striped shirt and jeans, three-year-old Jimmy lay on the living room floor beside his father. His legs were slightly curled up, bent in at the knees, and he was on his left side, facing away from Cliff with his back against his father’s legs, his head toward his father’s shins. A thin, white lollipop stick was at his feet, the candy all eaten. A small toy plane was on the floor a few feet away from his head. Blood smears coated the floorboards around him and his head lay in a pool of blood. His eyes were closed, just like his father.

  Jimmy had been shot in the head three times: once beneath his right eye, in nearly the same spot that had killed his dad; once in the left eye with the bullet entering between his eyelids, and once in the upper left side of his head. This last shot propelled the bullet completely through his skull, sending it exiting behind his ear. As McLeod later described it, Jimmy’s “little brains were running outside of his head.”

  The boy’s green felt cowboy hat was on the floor a few feet from his body, a bullet hole clearly visible in a location that corresponded to where the bullet had entered the side of his head. Gunpowder burns on the hat and evidence of tattooing on Jimmy’s right eye indicated that the weapon had been only inches from the boy’s head when it was fired. Based on the extensive blood smears on the floor, as well as the angles at which the bullets struck him, investigators theorized that Jimmy had fallen to the floor after being shot the first time, the force of the bullet impact knocking the cowboy hat off of his head. Still alive after the first bullet pierced his head, but suffering immense pain, the scared little boy crawled in panic toward his dad, pleading for help. As Jimmy dragged himself to his already dead father, the killer shot him twice more in the head. The final shot ended his short life as he curled up in terror and agony against his father’s body. The little boy who wanted so much to be like his father bore a tragic resemblance to him in death.

  Debbie, not yet two years old, had been shot once through the top of the head, near the doorway where Christine’s body was found. Bloodstains on the floor indicated that she had crawled over to her mother before the killer fired a bullet straight down into her skull. Strangely, a second bullet hole in Jimmy’s green cowboy hat corresponded to this shot in Debbie’s skull, suggesting that the killer covered her head with the hat before shooting her, not wanting to see the bullet’s violent impact to the little girl’s body. After firing that shot, the killer had apparently run out of bullets, evidenced by the fact that one of the recovered shell casings showed two firing pin markings on it in two separate spots. This indicated that the gunman had unknowingly attempted to fire an empty shell, unaware that all of the cartridges had been emptied of bullets.

  A trail of blood drops led from the location in the living room where Debbie had been shot, through the kitchen, and into the bathroom where her body was found. The blood trail suggested that Debbie did not die after being shot, and that after running out of bullets, the killer had carried the wounded girl to the bathroom to finish her off. There he placed Debbie in the tub, stuffed a sock in the bathtub drain to serve as a plug, and filled the tub with about four inches of water. Then he held her head underwater until she drowned.

  That was where Mize found her. Her tiny body, hair still curled, lay face down in the bathtub. Next to the tub, colorful depictions of cartoon penguins adorned the cabinet of the bathroom sink. The penguins were comically combing their hair and brushing their teeth, no doubt meant to encourage the kids to use good hygiene habits. In front of the sink, the trail of blood drops from the hallway terminated on the edge of the tub beside Debbie’s body. The scene was etched into Mize’s memory forever.

  “It was a sight I’ll never forget,” he murmured sadly years later.

  As
other deputies arrived and viewed the bloody crime scene, they were also “visibly shaken by what they saw.” Even Sheriff Ross Boyer, an officer with well over a decade of law enforcement experience, found it difficult to absorb the disturbing images.

  *****

  In light of the obvious violence that had occurred in the small house, investigators noticed some unusual aspects of the crime scene. The furniture, sparse as it was, seemed undisturbed, and it appeared that, after arriving home, Christine had taken the time to hang up her purse in the kitchen. It hung there still, seemingly untouched by the killer. Christine had also felt comfortable enough after arriving home to put away the groceries purchased during the family’s errands that day. She had even placed a Christmas card from Lucy McLeod on top of the refrigerator to display it.

  The location of Christine’s car was equally puzzling. According to her family and friends, she nearly always parked immediately to the left of the entry to the inner gate. She preferred parking there because, after getting out of the car, she only needed to take a few steps to walk through the gate and into the house. The fact that on the day of the murders she had parked two car widths away from the walk-in gate led investigators to theorize that another vehicle was parked in Christine’s usual spot when she arrived home. Upon finding the person or persons parked in her spot beside the gate, Christine, who “never met a stranger,” would likely have “invited them in to be friendly,” telling them they could wait inside the house until Cliff returned. It seemed equally reasonable to conclude that Christine was expecting, or had at least previously met, whoever was waiting in her spot.

  *****

  Deputy Billy Blackburn, who arrived at the crime scene shortly after Deputy Mize, searched within the fenced area of the Walker property for signs of automobile tracks that may have been left behind by a vehicle other than those of the police officers responding to the scene. Although Blackburn could not locate any tracks, he was unable to conclude with any certainty whether another vehicle had been there. Indeed, by the time Blackburn arrived, Deputy Mize had already parked in the spot directly beside Christine’s car, the exact spot where the killers’ vehicle may have been parked when Christine arrived home the day of the murders. That being the case, it seemed reasonable that any tire tracks left by the killer had been obliterated by Mize’s patrol car.

  *****

  Based on their ballistics analysis and reconstruction of the murders, sheriff’s investigators believed that Christine was shot first, while lying on the bed in Jimmy’s room immediately after being raped. Cliff was shot next, in “sniper fashion” from about ten feet away, as he walked into the house. The killer had most likely crouched behind a partially opened bedroom door to ambush Cliff as he stepped through the double French doors. The killer shot Jimmy third, and then either shot Debbie, or killed Christine with a second shot to the head directly from above. The second shot, the one that took Christine’s life, had been fired straight down, the bullet entering the top of her head and lodging at the base of her brain. Based on other evidence at the scene, including tissue fragments on the right pocket of Cliff’s shirt, the killing shot had most likely been fired execution style as she knelt over her fallen husband.

  Investigators later discovered that this second bullet differed from all of the other shots fired during the murders. The weight and grain of that bullet revealed it to be a .32 caliber slug, as opposed to the .22 caliber shots fired throughout the rest of the crime scene. Empty .22 cartridges were found alongside each of the four victims.

  Investigators theorized that Cliff and the two children pulled up to the house in the Jeep at around 4:45 p.m., disturbing Christine’s attacker during the sexual assault. Unaware of any danger, Cliff never thought of grabbing his loaded rifle and left it outside in the Jeep. Attempting to enter the house according to his normal habit of using the back door, Cliff had found it locked, so he walked around to the front of the house and entered through the front porch. As he opened the French doors and stepped into the living room, the cold-blooded killer struck. Before Cliff could even begin to comprehend what was happening, a single bullet struck him in the corner of his right eye. He died almost instantly and fell straight back onto the floor.

  A bloody high-heeled shoe was found on the front porch, where Christine, a “strong woman physically,” most likely used it as a weapon while trying to defend herself against her attacker’s initial assault. Bruises and abrasions on Christine’s face, forehead, and arm indicated that the killer struck her multiple times while she desperately struggled to fight him off. As they wrestled and fought, Christine’s attacker forced her into Jimmy’s bedroom and onto the bed where he sexually assaulted her. Once he finished raping her, he intended to kill Christine with a shot to the head, but the bullet was off target. Instead of killing her, it only grazed the top of her head, causing a two-inch long laceration before striking the wall behind the bed and falling into the window. Pieces of Christine’s hair and skull fragments found in the wall about four feet above the bed supported this reconstruction of events. Another blood-stained high-heeled shoe, a match to the one on the front porch, lay on the floor by the doorway into the bedroom, evidencing that Christine had continued trying to fight off her assailant as they moved into that room.

  An examination of Christine’s clothing revealed a seminal fluid stain on the lower rear portion of her underwear. Sheriff’s Bureau lab analysts concluded that, due to the condition of the stain and the fact that a number of intact sperm were isolated from the stain, Christine had worn the underwear “very little, if at all, after the deposit of the seminal fluid”.

  *****

  Bloodstains present on both sides of the glass-paned French doors indicated that they had initially been open during the commission of the crimes and were then closed by the killer. The fact that considerably more stains were present on the outside of the doors caused investigators to conclude that most of the shootings occurred while the doors were in their opened position, extended outward into the living room, likely due to Cliff having opened them as he entered the house. The door and doorway connecting the living room to the dining room were also splattered with blood, and the killer had apparently used a quilt blanket to wipe blood from Christine’s legs after dragging her body approximately three feet across the living room floor. Lacking any clear-cut reason, investigators could only speculate as to why the killer had cleaned off Christine’s legs.

  The bathroom floor and tub containing Debbie’s body were both spattered with blood, and what were believed to be fingerprints were recovered from the tub’s hot water faucet handle and the bathroom mirror. Much later in the investigation, analysts determined that the prints were more likely partial palm prints, not fingerprints as had long been assumed.

  In Jimmy’s bedroom, although a quilt was pulled up over the pillow on his bed, investigators discovered blood under the pillow when they pulled back the quilt. Strangely, the killer had taken the time to cover the blood with the quilt, as if that act might somehow undo what had happened.

  A red cellophane strip from a cigarette package was found lying on the dining room floor in the midst of several bloodstains. This suggested that the killer had smoked one of his own cigarettes since the Walkers were known to smoke only Kool cigarettes, a brand that did not have a red strip in its packaging. Cash and a pocket knife were missing from Cliff’s pockets, and the carton of Kool cigarettes that he had purchased during the family’s errands was also stolen. Yet, numerous Christmas presents were left untouched.

  Bloody boot imprints were found near the door of Jimmy’s bedroom, near the foot of the bed, and near Christine’s body. However, forensic examiners were unable to determine the type of boot or shoe that made the imprints.

  *****

  Investigating officers found several photographs among the Walkers’ personal items in the house, including a photo of Christine wearing a short-sleeved shirt, light colored shorts, and white drum-majorette boots with tassels. The back of t
he photo contained a handwritten note in pencil: “I will always love you with all my heart.” Another photograph, this one of the entire family, had a handwritten notation on the back: “August 28, 1958, Sonny’s Photos, Arcadia, Florida. Christine, Cliff, Jimmy, Debbie Walker. Our third Christmas on the Palmer Ranch.”

  Tragically, it would be a Christmas none of them lived to see.

  For Cliff’s uncle, Rob Walker, the killings of Jimmy and Debbie were particularly hard to understand. “I don’t know how a human being could shoot a child and put her in a bathtub,” he said sadly.

  *****

  On Monday, December 21, Christine’s mother received a letter from her daughter that had been postmarked in Osprey on December 18 at 6:00 p.m., less than twenty-four hours before Christine was brutally murdered:

  Dear Mother:

  I will write you a line or two. We are all fine. How is everyone over there? I am sorry that I haven’t wrote sooner but I have been so busy trying to get everything done before Christmas.

  Mother we will be over on Christmas eve night, so I will be so glad when it comes so I can see you again. I bought Debbie a pretty red and white dress for Christmas. She sure does look nice in it. I am going to have her hair fixed today. How is Charlie getting along? Tell him hello for me. Cliff caught 3 big hogs yesterday in the pasture. Boy I have a lot to tell you when I see you. One of my friends is making me a pretty dress and it fits like a tea.

  Love,

  Christine

  What Christine meant by having “a lot to tell” her mother, and whether it had anything to do with her death, no one would ever know.