by JT Hunter
Chapter 5: Too Many Suspects
The shocking murder of the family of four dominated the front page of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s December 21 edition under the frightening heading, “Osprey Family Wiped Out.” The story continued on the paper’s inside pages with the equally disturbing header, “Killer’s Bullets Annihilate Family” along with graphic photos of sheriff’s deputies standing beside the bodies of Cliff and Jimmy Walker and staring grimly down at Christine’s battered body. Beneath the continued story, a photograph of a little girl sitting in Santa’s lap and smiling during a VFW Christmas party provided a stark contrast to the unimaginable crime, which had so suddenly shattered the holiday atmosphere, abruptly intruding upon a community’s shared sense of peace and goodwill.
News of the murders quickly swept through the small-town community of Osprey. People who had lived in Osprey all of their lives without ever locking their doors started locking them now. Long-time residents began sleeping with guns by their beds, fearful of being the next victim. Parents stopped letting their children play outdoors alone, while neighbors who had greeted each other every day with a wave and a smile, now secretly began to suspect each other of committing the crime. Even family members began to look at one another suspiciously.
On Tuesday, December 22, a funeral service was held for the four murder victims at Robarts Funeral Home in Arcadia. Nearly 500 friends and relatives attended the service, after which Cliff, Christine, Jimmy, and Debbie were buried side by side in Oak Ridge Cemetery in their home town of Arcadia.
The Palmer Ranch offered a substantial reward for information leading to the capture of the Walker family’s killer. Deedee Faltin, the Palmer Ranch supervisor who had hired Cliff, summed up the feeling of loss, describing him as the “nicest kind of cracker boy you could ask for. He didn’t drink. He didn’t carouse. We were all just stunned. You just couldn’t believe anybody would have any bad feeling toward Cliff and his family.”
*****
Over the frantic days and weeks following the murders, detectives investigated an ever-widening web of leads, interviewing suspect after suspect as rumors and suspicion swirled among the residents of the previously peaceful town. Osprey resident Sam Holland summed up the suspicious atmosphere surrounding the case.
“There’s been a lot of wild people that lived in Osprey,” he said. “There’s been a lot of good people too. There was a lot of different opinions about what happened.”
On December 24, State Attorney Mack Smiley stressed that while investigators had no “definite leads” in the case, they were following up every potentially relevant tip no matter how inconsequential it might seem.
“We’re not looking for any one person in particular,” Smiley said.
Amidst the tempest of police activity, a handful of individuals rose to the top of the Sheriff’s Office’s list of suspects: Elbert Walker, Cliff’s cousin; Emmitt Spencer, a serial killer who confessed to the crime; Curtis McCall, a high school boyfriend of Christine Walker; Wilbur Tooker, one of the Walker family’s closest neighbors; and Don McCleod, the family friend who had discovered the bodies.
*****
Years later, while discussing the scene of the crime, which he called a “hell of a mess” because deputies had allowed too many people to access the Walkers’ house, Elbert Walker recalled the cloud of suspicion that rapidly rose around him.
“When I showed up there on Saturday morning, I was automatically guilty,” he said, a tone of resentment clearly evident in his voice.
Elbert had quickly become a suspect because several witnesses reported that he had long been enamored with Christine and, in addition to this purported attraction, he had acted strangely after the murders. He broke down in near hysterics outside the Walker house when a deputy told him that he could not go inside because all of the family members were dead. Earlier that day, he acted like he did not know how to get to their house, asking for directions at a nearby gas station, despite the fact that he had lived there with Cliff and Christine for at least a month after getting out of the Army in 1958. And during the family’s funeral service, he wailed inconsolably, fainted twice, and had to be carried out. Many who witnessed the events thought that he was faking and had “put on a show” in an attempt to deflect suspicion from himself. Cliff’s brother, Clarence, candidly told detectives that Elbert was the “type of person who would commit a crime of this nature.”
Elbert remained a suspect despite passing several lie detector tests over the years. It would take half a century before DNA would clear his name, when testing that compared Elbert’s DNA profile to a DNA sample taken from semen in Christine’s underwear showed that he did not sexually assault her shortly before her death.
After reviewing the results of the DNA testing, Detective Ron Albritton pronounced Elbert innocent.
“Common sense says the person who assaulted her was the murderer, and Elbert didn’t assault her,” he said matter-of-factly.
*****
While on death row at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida, for a double homicide he committed two weeks after the Walkers were killed, serial killer Emmitt Monroe Spencer claimed to have killed the Walker family with the help of his girlfriend, Mary Hampton, and a phantom individual he referred to as “Johnny.” Spencer, dubbed the “Dream Slayer” because authorities found murder victims after he dreamed about murders and then described his dreams, claimed that Hampton had spotted Christine Walker in Osprey outside the grocery store, and then he, Hampton, and “Johnny” followed her home.
When Spencer walked up to the front porch, Christine tried to hold the door shut, but he forced his way in and punched her several times in the face in an attempt to subdue her. He and Christine struggled until he forced her into a small bedroom, where he held her down while Mary Hampton “performed an unnatural sex act on her.” When Christine threatened them that her husband would kill them when he came home, they were alerted to his imminent arrival. Spencer waited in ambush, and shot Cliff from outside the small bedroom as he came into the house. They killed Christine next, then the two children. Spencer, who claimed to have taken part in at least 26 murders in total, asserted that the motive for the Walker murders was “sex and robbery.”
On December 4, 1960, Sheriff Boyer interviewed Spencer in prison but found that he could only provide general information about the murders, nothing more specific than what he could have gleaned from reading various newspaper accounts of the crime. Spencer offered Boyer an easy way to close the file, telling him to “write out what you want me to sign about the Walker murders and I will sign it.” If true, Spencer’s confession would have been a welcomed way for Boyer to declare the case solved, but his confession simply was not credible.
“There were a lot of questions he could not answer,” Boyer said after interviewing him. “If I am wrong, I will be the first to admit it, but right now I think Spencer is a liar.”
Additionally, investigation of Spencer’s whereabouts during the pertinent time period revealed that in 1959 he and Hampton had been in California on Christmas Day, and they were arrested in Crestview, Florida, on December 31, while on their way back from California. After assessing Spencer’s travels and confirmed locations during the month of December, Sheriff Boyer concluded that he could not have been in Osprey on December 19 and thus could not have killed the Walkers.
*****
Twenty-one-year-old Curtis McCall was known to have a quick temper, and some who knew him described him as a “no-good, trouble-making sort of person.” McCall was said to have dated Christine Walker during high school, and after her marriage to Cliff, Christine jokingly referred to McCall as “my boyfriend.” He had worked for a time at the Arcadia Police Department and later as a dispatcher for the Florida Highway Patrol in Fort Myers. He also worked at the Food Fair grocery store in Sarasota where Christine sometimes shopped. McCall’s own cousin told investigators he knew “for a fact” that Christine and McCall were having an affair. Some speculated tha
t McCall had been the cause of two miscarriages Christine had while married to Cliff, one in April 1959 and one approximately two months before her death.
One witness recalled seeing Christine and McCall at a secluded spot together in McCall’s car just a few days before the murders. Another remembered that two weeks prior to the killings, on a day when Cliff Walker was at a rodeo in Wauchula competing in a calf-roping event, Christine had shown up in Arcadia looking for McCall, telling people that it was “very important” that she talk to him that day.
McCall owned a .22 pistol at the time of the Walker murders, and witnesses reported that subsequent to the murders, he lost weight, seemed “very nervous,” and had problems keeping a steady job.
On July 14, 1961, Sheriff Boyer, accompanied by one of his deputies, travelled to Americus, Georgia, to interview McCall, who had relocated there for a job as a construction foreman. McCall came across as being “very nervous” and denied having ever dated Christine, either before or after her marriage to Cliff Walker. He also denied that Christine Walker had ever visited him at work in Sarasota, or that he had been in his car with Christine in the days before the murder. He admitted to owning a .22 pistol at the time of the murders but said that he had long since sold it to someone whose name he could not remember. McCall agreed to take a lie detector test, and although the test indicated that he was “extremely nervous,” it suggested that he had generally told the truth about his relationship with Christine. The sole question that he appeared to have falsely denied was, “Have you withheld any information from the law enforcement officers about the Walker murder?” Despite the red flag raised by McCall’s response to this question, based on the fact that he had passed the rest of the lie detector test, Sheriff Boyer decided that McCall was not responsible for the Walker murders.
*****
Sixty-five-year-old Wilbur Tooker, a retired railroad worker, lived about a mile away from the Walker house on Osprey Siding Road. As their closest neighbor, he had often visited them during their years living on the ranch. Don McLeod stated that he had personally seen Tooker drop by the Walker house forty or fifty times over the years. According to McLeod, Tooker usually parked his car by the railroad tracks outside the fence and then walked to the house.
One of Tooker’s friends said that he seemed infatuated by Christine and constantly talked about her. The infatuation had manifested in other ways too. During some of his visits to the Walker house, Tooker had made unwelcome advances towards Christine, one time going so far as grabbing her and trying to force her to kiss him. When Cliff found out about it, he had to be restrained from going after Tooker, and he forbid him from ever coming to the house again.
Sometime between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. on the evening of the murders, Tooker ate dinner with a friend of his, a dentist who lived in Sarasota. Tooker had no such alibi for the 4:00 to 5:00 time period in which the Walkers were actually killed.
*****
Like Elbert Walker, Don McLeod quickly became a suspect and remained one for decades despite passing several polygraph tests. McLeod was interrogated at the scene of the crime the morning he discovered the family’s bodies, questioned by State Attorney Mack Smiley for nearly an hour in a car right outside the Walker house. He was also the first suspect to take a lie detector test about the murders, a test he easily passed the same day. But it took DNA testing in the 21st Century to finally clear McLeod’s name when a 2004 analysis showed that his DNA did not match the suspect profile generated from the semen stain in Christine Walker’s underwear.
*****
During its decades of on-again, off-again investigation of the Walker case, the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office would investigate nearly 600 suspects. None led to a resolution of the case.
*****
A couple of months after the murders, Osprey resident Pearl Strickland and her daughter found two shirts and a skirt hidden in a shed on Strickland’s property, which was located less than two miles from the Walker house. One of the shirts had obvious blood stains on it in several places. The following day, Cliff Walker’s sister identified the shirt as having belonged to Cliff.
A blouse and handkerchief were subsequently discovered in the same location. Both were also blood-stained.
*****
One year into the investigation, Boyer referred to the Walker murders as the “most vicious crime” he could recall in his career as a law enforcement officer, and it was one that he pledged to solve.
“This case still has top priority in my office. The only time we will quit working on the case is when the murderer is brought to justice,” he vowed. “After a year of reading and studying our investigation, it seems like a dream,” Boyer said. “It seems that I can see the whole story unfold – except the man who pulled the trigger and walked away.”
Boyer’s wife reported that he had been so focused on solving the crime that he canceled a planned Christmas party shortly afterward, declaring, “We’re not going to have any parties until this case is solved.”
*****
As the years passed with the identity of the Walkers’ killer still unknown, new cases and emergency calls increasingly demanded the attention of the sheriff and his deputies. However, Boyer made sure that the investigation of the Walker case remained active. On December 18, 1963, nearly four years after the Walker family murders, he directed the release of a statement:
Not a day goes by but we of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office feel that we are moving closer to the killer. During these four years of investigation dozens of suspects have been questioned and released; hundreds of persons have been interrogated. Scores of clues, real and worthless, have been run down.
. . . . .
No case in the history of this office has ever been investigated so thoroughly for so long by as many officers as we have assigned to this crime. We are confident that the Walker murders will not go unsolved.
Cognizant of rumors that continued to run rampant in the community, Sheriff Boyer added a personal comment, stating
We haven’t stopped and we aren’t going to until the case is solved. There is nothing I or my men would rather do than break this one. Not only as law officers but as men horrified by what we saw. Many people have formed their own conclusions as to who did the killing, why, and how. Speculations and hastily drawn conclusions will not suffice in this case. Only cold, hard evidence will ever bring the killer to court.
Photos
Source: Sarasota County Sheriff's Office Case File
Map showing Arcadia, Sarasota, Osprey and Miami, Florida
Cliff, Christine, Jimmy, and Debbie Walker outside their home in Osprey, Florida
Exterior of Walker house showing entry gate
Outside of Walker house the day their bodies were discovered
Removing Christine Walker's body (top) Don McLeod (bottom)
Bodies of Cliff, Christine, and Jimmy Walker
Bodies of Cliff, Christine, and Jimmy Walker (2)
Different view of bodies of Cliff, Christine, and Jimmy Walker
Body of Christine Walker where she was dragged by her killer
Body of Debbie Walker
Bullet wounds to Jimmy Walker
Sheriff Ross Boyer pointing to bloody boot imprint
Sheriff's deputies and detectives standing over Walkers' bodies
Trail of blood leading to Debbie Walker's body
Booking photo of Dick Hickock after his arrest
Booking photo of Perry Smith after his arrest
Chapter 6: New Blood, Renewed Direction
Sarasota County Sheriff Ross Boyer died in 1973. The twenty-year lawman who witnessed firsthand the brutal crime scene and bloodied bodies of Cliff and Christine and their two young children had handled many key aspects of the early investigation himself. Just prior to his death, Boyer told his wife that the one thing he wished he could have accomplished with his life was solving the Walker case.
*****
In 1981, someone else with a vested interest
in identifying the killer took over the investigation. Fifty-year-old Ron Albritton, a distant cousin to Cliff Walker who joined the department a few years after Boyer’s death and worked his way up to detective, presided over periodic spurts of investigative activity in the frequently inactive cold case for the next two decades.
*****
On August 5, 1994, an anonymous caller left a voice message on the answering machine of a Sheriff’s Office detective. The caller advised that she wanted to provide information about a “possible murder that occurred in Osprey, Florida, many years ago,” but she was scared and too frightened to give her name or phone number. She explained that she worked as a bartender in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and that during her work shift the previous night, one of her regular customers, a “white male in his 60s” inexplicably began to cry while talking to her. She asked him why he was crying, and he told her that when he was a young man he had killed “some people” in Osprey, Florida. He said that Osprey was near Tampa and he mentioned the name “Walker”.
The caller said that she thought the customer was a “gun buff” who did odd jobs around town. She said she would get the name and vehicle tag number of the customer’s car and then call back after 3:00 p.m. on August 9 with the information. However, she never contacted the Sheriff’s Office again, and subsequent attempts to track her down were unsuccessful. Even a series of stories about the anonymous call, requesting the public’s help in identifying the caller, which were printed in Pennsylvania newspapers at the urging of the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office, failed to generate any new information. The unnamed caller and her remorseful unknown customer faded back into anonymity.