Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Walker Family Murders Pt. One

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Walker Family Murders Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:31
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
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Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. December nineteenth, nineteen fifty
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nine, Osprey, Florida. After spending the day running errands and visiting a
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family friend, twenty five year old Cliffwalker, his twenty four year old wife
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Christine, and their two children, three year old Jimmy and twenty three month
0:57
old Debbie, head back home in separate vehicles. The following morning, the
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family's bodies are discovered inside their rural house. They were each shot in the
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head before de w was drowned in the bathtub, and Christine had been sexually
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assaulted. Over the next several decades, investigators would look at a number of
1:15
different suspects, including Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who were responsible for murdering
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the Clutter family in Kansas one month earlier, but in the end, no
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one is ever conclusively linked to the Walker family murders. After that, the
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path went Chile. So today we are going to be covering the Walker family
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murders, a story which involves a married couple and their two young children being
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brutally murdered inside their home as they were preparing for the holidays. The investigation
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went uncover quite a few potential suspects, but there was no conclusive evidence to
1:49
point to anyone in particular. But the case has taken a very interesting turn
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in recent years, as investigators have been exploring the possibility that the perpetrators might
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be Perry Smith and Hiccock, who committed one of the most infamous crimes ever
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when they murdered the Clutter family inside their farmhouse in Kansas, a story which
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became the subject of Truman Capote's iconic true crime book In Cold Blood. There
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are some striking similarities between the murders of the Clutters and the Walkers, and
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compelling evidence that Smith and Hiccock were in Florida at the time the Walkers were
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killed. However, an attempt to exume the killer's remains for DNA testing failed
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to bring about a definitive conclusion. I originally covered this case on the Trail
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Went Cold four and a half years ago, but there's since been another new
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development with the DNA testing, which I'll discuss later on in this episode,
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and we're going to explore all different possibilities about who might have been responsible for
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this crime. So this one's horrifying because it's a whole family that's executed inside
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their home, a place where they should have been safe. And it's really
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interesting because they're out running errands and visiting a family friend and then drive home
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in separate vehicles. I think, Okay, you know, maybe the husband
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doesn't get killed and he's the one who did it, but no, the
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whole family winds up back at home and is executed. So it's a horrific
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case from the get go, and I'm praying that as technology advances, you
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know, with cold cases, it's the only plus is time and this ability
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to have new science and new ideas and new things coming to the case.
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There's genetic genealogy and things that might be able to get the DNA of these
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individuals that weren't able to get DNA from the exhumation or anything like that.
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Yeah, because this case is nearly sixty five years old, but we're still
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talking about it on the podcast, and it is refreshing to know that there
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is still an active investigation trying to figure out who the perpetrators were. And
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at this point, I think there's a good chance that whoever committed this crime
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is now dead. It can never be arrested and prosecuted. But I do
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like that they are trying to conclusively figure out what happens. But in this
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case, there are just so many suspects to choose from that it's hard to
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come up with the definitive conclusion about who the guilty party might be. Our
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story begins in nineteen fifty nine in Osprey, Florida, a small town located
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in Sarasota County which had a population of only a few thousand people. One
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of our victims is twenty five year old Cliff Walker, who lives just outside
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of Osprey with his twenty four year old wife, Christine Walker, and their
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two children, three year old Jimmy and twenty three month old Debbie. The
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couple have been married for five years and originally hailed from the town of Arcadia
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before they decided to move to Sarasota County. The Walkers currently reside a Palmer
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Ranch, a fourteen thousand acre property of land owned by one of the area's
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wealthiest families. In exchange for working there as a ranch hand, Cliff and
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his family are allowed to live rent free in an isolated farmhouse at a cattle
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ranch on the property, which is located at the end of a two mile
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dirt road and about a mile away from their nearest neighbors. On Saturday,
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December nineteenth, the Walkers were prepared for the holidays, as a Christmas tree,
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which they had not had time to decorate, was resting on their front
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porch with wrapped Christmas gifts underneath it. On this particular day, the family
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went into town to run several errands, which included visiting a couple of used
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car lots and test driving a vehicle, as Cliff was looking to trade in
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his family's older model car. The Walkers eventually went to visit Don and Lucy
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mc cleod, who lived in another isolated farmhouse on the Palmer Ranch property about
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twenty minutes away from the Walker residence. Like Cliff, Don worked as a
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ranch hand in exchange for living on the property rent free, and the two
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men spent part of the afternoon hunting together. When they returned to the mc
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clod residence, Cliff started loading up a jeep with sacks of cattle feed,
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which he needed to take back to his house. Christine would go on ahead
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and drive back home in the family car, but since Jimmy and Debby wanted
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to ride with their father and the jeep, the children stayed behind. Approximately
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fifteen minutes after Christine left, Cliff finished loading up the cattle feed and drove
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away from the McLoud residence with his children shortly before four pm. But this
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would turn out to be the last time the McLeod saw them alive. It
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shows how much someone would have had to target this family because the property is
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huge and it's isolated. For example, they live down a two and a
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half mile dirt road. They live twenty minutes away from the Walkers who live
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on the same property, so it is a vast area. And to say
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I'm going to go target this family, they had to have known their location
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and that they would be in this farmhouse that was on the property. And
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what else throws me for a loop is these little ones were so small.
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It's not like two teenagers. You have a three year old and a nearly
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two year old. What were they going to be able to tell anybody.
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It's tragic when you think about the fact that yes, mom and dad were
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killed, but then these two little ones were killed, and in so many
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ways, I think, like why they weren't going to be able to identify
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people unless they knew them really well, and it was like Uncle Johnny,
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right, unless they could tell who this person was. So a lot of
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troubling issues right from the start of given how isolated and how cold blooded this
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whole instance was. Yeah, as we're going to talk about, there are
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a wide variety of suspects in this case, some of whom were personally affiliated
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with the Walkers, while others would have been complete strangers. But you are
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right that this was such an isolated location that I don't think anyone could stumble
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upon a by pure chance. And as we're going to talk about, one
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of the most prominent theories is that whoever was responsible was probably already waiting when
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Christine arrived home, and that the crime may have been in progress when Cliff
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and the children arrived, and that could be the reason that the children wound
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up being murdered too. At five point thirty am on the morning of December
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the twentieth, Don McLeod traveled to the Walker residence as he was planning to
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gohag hunting with Cliff. When he arrived, Don was surprised to see that
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the Sacks of cattle feed were still inside the park jeep, along with Cliff's
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loaded hunting rifle. Don became concerned when he discovered that all the houses doors
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were locked and no one would answer. He decided to use his pocket knife
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to cut a slit through the screen on the back door and use the knife
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to prop open the latch and enter the house. When Don walked inside,
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he was shocked to discover Christine's body lying on the living room floor in a
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pool of blood in the doorway to the dining room. Christine had been raped
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and beaten by an unknown assailant before she was shot twice in the head with
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a twenty two caliber gun. The bodies of Cliff and Jimmy were lying on
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the floor in another section of the room. Cliff had been shot beneath his
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right eye, while Jimmy was shot in the head three times, and there
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were streaks of blood on the floor to indicate that the boy had crawled towards
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his father after the first time he was shot. This prompted Don to flee
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the house and find a payphone to call the Sarasota Police to apartment. When
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they arrived at the house, the police followed another trail of blood into the
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bathroom, where they discovered Debbie's body lying face down inside the bathtub. Debbie
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had been shot once in the head, but someone had also stopped a sock
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in the draid and filled the bathsub with four inches of water. It was
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believed that the killer had right out of bullets after firing the first shot into
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Debbie and decided to drown her in the tub in order to ensure she was
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dead. Jimmy's cowboy hat was also found on the floor with a bullet hole
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in it, so the killer may have used it to cover Debbie's face when
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he shot her. That to me indicates that he did know her. Right.
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Yes, it's a little girl, but he didn't have any empathy for
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the little one. The other little boy who's crawling towards his dad, who's
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dying. He shot him three times with no problem, but to drown the
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little one and to look at her face when he shot her. It does
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feel like it had to be someone who knew her, because otherwise the empathy
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wasn't shown for anybody else. Exactly like you would think twenty three months old,
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that the girl is not going to be able to talk or provide a
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positive identification, but it could lend credence to the idea that this was someone
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acquainted with the family. So theoretically, if the police said to Debbie,
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can you point out whoever the killer was, and she would probably still at
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that age, still have the wherewithal to do so. So that's why he
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decided to kill her, even though it's possible he didn't even really want to.
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But I mean, it wouldn't even stand up in court even if a
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child that age could point to somebody, because there's so many different things that
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can influence memory, and the communication of a nearly two year old wouldn't really
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be something that would likely secure a conviction. I mean, maybe if that
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person didn't have an alibi, and they were some of the that may have
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had the motivation, or an interesting Christine, But to kill a little baby
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that age, it just seems like overkill in that situation because I don't know
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how verbal she was, But maybe it was that killing that really, for
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some reason tugged on the killer's heartstrings. Maybe they knew them, maybe they
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didn't. But killing a little baby girl that age, it just is so
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brutal. It just hits me right like a gut punch. Oh yeah,
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just all the details about this are so disturbing. And even Jimmy himself,
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like, he was only three years old, so he's not going to be
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much of a witness either. He's going to have a hard time verbalizing what
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he saw. Yet this person had no hesitation about shooting this little boy three
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times in this Three times that just seems like overkill. You would think one
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would be enough for a child, would it not. Yeah, And he's
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two and a half miles away from anybody else, so even if he ran,
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like, is a baby gonna nowhere to go? And is he going
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to make it without dying? It's just it's ridiculous. The killer had apparently
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locked the door when they left the house, and a number of twenty two
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caliber cartridges were found at the scene, so the second shot which was fired
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into Christine was a thirty two caliber slug. A red cellophane cigarette wrapper from
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a brand of cigarettes Cliff did not smoke, was also on the living room
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floor. Cliff smoked cool brown cigarettes and had purchased a cart and on the
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day that he was killed, but they were apparently taken by the person who
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shot him. Cliff's pocket knife was also stolen, and strangely, the Walker's
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marriage certificate, which normally hung inside a frame on the living room wall,
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was also missing. Upon first glance, there didn't seem to be anything else
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stolen from the house, but it was later discovered that a drum majorrette uniform
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Christine wore in high school and ordinarily kept in a plastic bag inside a ceed
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or chest, had been stolen. As well as far as physical evidence from
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outside intruders. There appeared to be unidentified fingerprints on a baptub bosset, though
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in later years it was determined that it was most likely a palm print.
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Two hairs were also found which were inconsistent with anyone from the Walker family.
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One of them was a dark hair discovered inside the bathroom, while the other
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was a blonde hair inside Christine's dress. So when you look at the evidence
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here, remember Christine had been raped. The marriage certificate's missing, her majorette
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uniform is missing, and it seems as if she's the target. That someone's
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really angry that they didn't get what they wanted from her, and they're going
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to make her suffer the most and take away what matters to her, which
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is her husband and her two children, so it's really bizarre. Yes,
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a pack of cigarettes was taken, but that would be convenience. Someone went
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to look for an outfit and there's a hair inside her dress and things like
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that. So to me, it feels like she was the one that was
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most handled and harmed and victimized both physically and by the things that were taking
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in the house, compared to the dad and the two children. So you
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think that it was sexually motivated and the robbery was just like a tertiary motivation
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or resent resentment, like she's mine, I wanted her, I didn't get
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what I wanted, and so they come and they rape her, they kill
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everything that matters to her, and they take the marriage certificate as a like,
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well not anymore, you know what I mean, like someone who wanted
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to be with her, it didn't get that opportunity. And then shoot,
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if I walk by a pack of cigarettes, that's expensive, but take those
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with me. They'll be a twist later with the marriage certificate. So wonderful
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will change your opinion. Okay, Okay, go for it. Yeah,
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we'll talk about that later. But I still think that the drum major ATTE
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uniform is the weirdest detail because at least with the marriage certificate it would be
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out on the wall in the open, But to discover the majorte uniform you
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would actually have to go into a seat or chest, so it's not visible.
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So that gives off the impression that whoever did this knew it was there.
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And I'd assume it's quite like a cute little risque cheerleading outfit looking thing,
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which back in that time, you know, a short skirt and a
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little majorette sweater or something like that would to me be quite sexual as well.
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Investigators attempted to read traced the victim's movements to figure out how the murders
15:01
might have taken place. Christine had left the McCloud residence and arrived home before
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her husband and children, but it turned out she did not park the family
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car in its usual spot in front of the house. This led to speculation
15:15
that the killer was already there and had parked their own vehicle in this spot
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before Christine arrived. Indeed, a local resident who flew their plane over the
15:24
property that afternoon at approximately four to twenty pm recalled seeing two cars parked outside
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the house. Unfortunately, When a deputy arrived at the scene, he parked
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his car in that spot and may have destroyed tire track evidence from the killer's
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vehicle. Christine's purse was hung up in the kitchen, grocery she purchased earlier
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that day had been put away, and a Christmas card she received from Lucy
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McLoud was on top of the refrigerator. This seemed to suggest that Christine may
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have been familiar enough with her killer to invite him inside the house and allow
15:56
him to wait there while she performed her household tasks. A quilt from Jimmy's
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bedroom was stained with blood, and the evidence showed that Christine was raped on
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top of the bed before the killer fired his first shot at her, which
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only grazed the top of her head. He then dragged Christine's body into the
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living room and fired a second shot into her head. It seemed like the
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killer was using the quilt to white blood from Christine's legs, but may have
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been interrupted when Cliff and the children arrived home. One of Christine's high heeled
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shoes was found on the porch while the other was in the bedroom, and
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they both have blood on them and the bruises and abrasions on Christine's face indicated
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that she had put up a fight against her attacker and attempted to use her
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shoes as weapons. After leaving the McCloud residence in the jeep, Cliff and
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the two children had been seen stopping at a gas station, so the approximate
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time they would have arrived home was around four thirty. Cliff had been shot
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from a distance, so he was likely ambushed and killed instantly the moment he
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set foot in the house. A few months after the murders, bloody clothing
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belonging to Cliff and Christine was found inside a shed about a mile from the
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walk of residence, so the killer likely used it to clean themselves up when
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they left, and they had to know where that shed was a mile away
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from the house. Again, this property is so big, so how did
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they find that little shed? Was it on the two and a half mile
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drive down their driveway or is this somewhere off more obscure, Because the more
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and more you hear about this, the more and more these people have to
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know the family and the area, which is an important factor here. And
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you got to think about these kids too. If Mom's already dead or she's
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being killed. Dad walks in and is ambushed. Those two babies are standing
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there watching their parents get killed before they're also murdered. Yeah, that's just
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what's horrifying about it, And the idea that the killer went through this without
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hesitation just kind of shows that they had no conscience. But you're right,
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the fact that they found this shed does indicate that they had a familiarity with
18:00
the area. It's not entirely clear to me if it was on the Palmer
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Ranch property or if it just happened to be in abandoned shed nearby, but
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they obviously knew it would be a good hiding place while they got rid of
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the bloody clothing. Do you know if the shed was visible from any road.
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I'm not entirely sure. No, I don't really have any details,
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only that it was a shed about a mile from the residence, because if
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it was visible from the road, it may have just been a spot of
18:27
opportunity, and then we could just be looking into it like this is something
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that has meaning and that they must have known the area or known the property,
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known the walkers. But it's like whether it's one person or multiple people
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leaving the scene we want to find summer to dispose of these clothes, and
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they just happened to see this shed while they're escaping, and they're like,
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Oh, this looks like a good place to dump this stuff, and then
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they just leave it there. Unfortunately, the local police were woefully inexperienced with
18:59
handling a crime this nature. Believe it or not, They did not even
19:02
possess a good camera, so they had to get a news photographer to take
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pictures of the crime scene for them. Bloody cowboy bootprints were also found at
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the house, and for the longest time, it was assumed they belonged to
19:15
the killer, but it turned out that the prints were from a deputy who'd
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accidentally stepped into a pool of blood in the living room. In addition,
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if you look back at the original newspaper accounts of the case, you can
19:26
find statements from the Sarasota County Sheriff that Christine was not sexually assaulted, but
19:33
this was not true, as it turned out that Stephen was found on Christine's
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underwear, which would eventually become crucial evidence in this case. You also have
19:41
to remember that they pulled into the parking spot right in front of their house
19:45
too, knowing that if there was an intruder who came into this house,
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it is possible they came in a vehicle. You'd park further away from the
19:52
residents, hoping you could investigate right around the perimeter of the home and see
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if there's footprints, tire track, things like that that are foreign. And
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instead they're like, we're just gonna pull right up front door service, jump
20:04
out and start walking around here with our bare feet and see what happens.
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So you can tell that they're not used to investigating cases like this. So
20:12
the investigation, at least five hundred and eighty seven people would be looked at
20:17
as potential suspects. We're going to start off by looking at potential suspects that
20:21
have since been cleared. One of them was Don McCloud, who originally discovered
20:25
the bodies. Another person of interest was Cliff's cousin, Albert Walker, who
20:30
lived around seventy miles away in the town of Wakula and just happened to show
20:33
up in Osprey on the day the bodies were found. When Albert arrived at
20:37
the murder scene, he broke out into hysterics and he had another emotional breakdown
20:41
at the family's funeral, where he fainted twice and had to be carried out
20:45
of the church. Some people found Albert's behavior suspicious and thought he might be
20:51
staging his emotional outbursts to cover up his own involvement, as there were rumors
20:56
that he was enamored with Christine. Albert also raised some eyebrows when he claimed
21:00
he traveled to Osprey in order to speak to Cliff about a Christmas party he
21:04
was hosting, but it turned out that Cliff was never planning to host any
21:07
party. Another odd detail was that when Albert originally arrived in Osprey, he
21:14
stopped at a local gas station asked for directions to the Walker residence, even
21:18
though he had briefly lived there on a previous occasion and should have known where
21:22
it was. However, both Albert and Don McLeod pass polygraph tests, and
21:26
in two thousand and five voluntarily submitted themselves to DNA testing. By this point,
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he was determined that the semen found on Christine's underwear did not belong to
21:37
Cliff and was likely left by her killer when he raped her, But a
21:41
DNA sample taken from the seamen did not match don Or Albert and officially cleared
21:45
them as suspects, but there are some other persons of interest who have never
21:49
had their DNA tested. I will say something that the invesciators must have done
21:53
right is not jumped to conclusions, because when you do look, Albert sounds
21:59
very suspicious. There's a lot of bizarre behavior. Also, asking for directions
22:03
makes it seem like he's trying to have an alibi, like where he was,
22:07
and like I just want to make sure I'm seen around a place I'm
22:08
actually familiar with. But then he steps forward and he takes a polygraph,
22:12
he has his DNA tested, all of that, and that's at the scene
22:17
of the crime. And so it's you know, we look back at so
22:21
many cases and we can talk about wrong convictions, and it looks like here,
22:23
someone who's bizarre and makes some pretty questionable decisions regarding this family but might
22:32
not have been the killer, was cleared and not suspected of this crime after
22:37
passing these tests. So that's a good thing in this case, definitely,
22:40
And I am glad that for all the mistakes, they did preserve the semen
22:44
so they could do this DNA testing several decades later, though, as we're
22:48
going to talk about later on. There would be an additional complication with that.
22:52
Investigator looked at a meter reader named Stanley Mauk who serviced the Walker residence.
22:59
Well, there was no direct evidence to link Molk to the crime.
23:02
He spent time in a mental institution and received elector shock therapy because he claimed
23:07
he was sometimes overwhelmed by an uncontrollable urge to kill his wife and children.
23:12
Another detail which put Malk on the police's radar is that he also happened to
23:18
be the better reader at a house where another brutal murder took place only four
23:22
months earlier. On August seventh, nineteen fifty nine, the body of a
23:26
twenty two year old University of Florida student named Chandler Stephens was discovered inside a
23:33
house he was renting from his stepmother in Sarasota, which is located just ten
23:37
miles northwest of Osprey. Stephens was found hogtied and his head was completely wrapped
23:42
with his heesive tape. The killer had only left Stephen's nostril holes uncovered so
23:48
he could breathe, and then proceeded to torture him with a knife for hours
23:52
before his throat was cut. The crime became known as the Sarasota Mummy murder
23:57
and remains unsolved to this day. Other than the fact that Stanley malk was
24:02
a meter reader at both residences, there was nothing to link the Sarasota Mummy
24:07
murder to the Walker murders, and Mouk died of brain cancer in nineteen ninety
24:11
seven. So when you look at this one, the fact that there was
24:15
a the duct tape and the knife being used versus gunshots and drowning, Yes,
24:23
they're both brutal. Yes he was a meta reader at both, but
24:26
those are quite different methods of operation for killing somebody. Oh yeah, Like
24:32
one of these days, I think I want to do like my own individual
24:34
podcast episode on the Sarasota Mummy murder because it's creepy and it's bizarre, and
24:41
I don't think there are ever any suspects in that case. But that sounded
24:42
like the living hell to be tortured for hours. Will you're wrapped in tape
24:47
and only have your nostril hols uncovered so you're still alive. But it doesn't
24:51
seem like there's any connection between the two cases. But it is kind of
24:53
a weird coincidence that malk would be a meta reader. At both these residents
24:59
where murders took place, Investigators were told that a couple of different men from
25:03
the area had made inappropriate advances on Christine, but one person who stood out
25:08
was sixty five year old Wilbur took Her. Tooker lived about a mile from
25:12
the Walk residence, it was their closest neighbor, and he seemed to have
25:17
an obsession with Christine. On more than one occasion, took Her had stopped
25:21
by the house while Cliff was away and attempted to kiss Christine. When Cliff
25:26
found out about this, he became so angry that he reportedly had to be
25:30
talked out of killing took Her, but he still confronted him and warned took
25:33
Her not to come around their house anymore. On the day of the murders,
25:37
Tooker's whereabouts could be accounted for after five PM, as he had dinner
25:41
with a friend in Sarasota before going to a local high school to play the
25:45
violin in an orchestra at a concert later that night. However, Tooker technically
25:51
had no alibi between four o'clock and five o'clock, the exact time period the
25:56
Walkers were killed, and he passed away in March of nineteen sixty ten three.
26:00
At the time I released my original Trail with Cold episode four and a
26:03
half years ago, no DNA testing had been performed in regards to took Her,
26:08
but investigators have since obtained DNA samples from his surviving descendants and compared them
26:15
to the DNA from the Seman evidence. While a conclusive match was not made,
26:18
took Her could not entirely be dismissed as a contributor either, So he
26:22
has never officially been ruled out. What does that mean? So, I
26:27
mean, I know, if you can't make a conclusive match, you can't
26:30
go forward with it with any kind of conclusion. But if he can't be
26:36
discounted as a contributor, the rates are so high when you match certain elements
26:41
of someone's DNA, So if he matches on some of these, what's going
26:47
on with the inability to rule him out? I'm not entirely sure. It
26:52
might just have to be with the quality of the evidence because it's so old
26:56
and it's degraded, and it may have been cross contaminated. They may have
26:59
found something like maybe some of the markers for ticker matches, but not all
27:03
of them. And maybe it's because they don't have a full DNA sample that
27:07
they can't say, well, it's definitely not him, or it's definitely him.
27:11
But yeah, this has only come about in recent years when DNA testing
27:14
has advanced a lot. But I guess they just weren't able to get like
27:18
a conclusive match, so they and it's not like they have to arrest him
27:22
and take him a trial because he's long dead at this point. So the
27:26
fact that they said that the match was not strong enough to announce that he
27:29
was the killer leads me to believe that there's still plenty of reasonable doubt.
27:33
That's true too. But you did have the other two men that the DNA
27:37
was cleared. I mean they said, no, you are not a contributing
27:40
factor. And so it's interesting to have another suspect where they say we can't
27:44
rule him out. It's like, oh my goodness, I guess it all
27:48
depends on DNA markers and how many of them are a match. Do we
27:51
know much about his personality because to rule him in, to think that,
27:56
like, is this the type of person that could in cool blood, I
28:00
guess in Colder Blood, which was the name of the book that was written
28:03
about this case later on. But to be able to kill a family of
28:07
four with two children, like one of them just under two years old,
28:11
the other three years old, to do that and then to show up and
28:17
to meet your friend for dinner and then go play violin in an orchestra and
28:22
to see they obviously would have talked to the people around him and said,
28:26
did he seem phased? Was he panicked? And I think that it would
28:29
shake most people to their core, even if you're unless you're a psychopath,
28:34
I can't imagine a situation where you wouldn't be showing some kinds of outward signs
28:41
of being very affected by the actions that you had taken in order to end
28:47
the life of a family of four. Yeah. That's the thing about Tooker
28:49
is that he's definitely alleged like he has a history of inappropriate behavior, But
28:55
I haven't heard anything about him having a history of violence. And he's sixty
28:59
five years old this point, so it's just kind of crazy that he could
29:02
live a normal life and then while he's a senior citizen, wipe out an
29:04
entire family including two young children, and then just show no emotion about it
29:10
whatsoever. So, I mean, there's a lot to think that took her
29:12
could be the guy, but the crime is just so brutal and cold blooded
29:17
that it just seems weird that someone with no known history of violence could just
29:21
do this at such a late stage in his life. Ash, did you
29:25
just shudder at the thought when you heard that this guy came to her house,
29:30
Christine's home while her husband isn't there, and then proceeded to try to
29:33
hit on her, not just one time, but two times, Yeah,
29:38
multiple times. Has no respect for her boundaries, has no respect for her
29:42
as a wife and mother, and just basically has the attitude that if I
29:45
want it, I'm going to get it. That seems like what he's going
29:48
to come to her home, He's going to force himself on her. I
29:52
don't blame her husband for being like almost irrationally outraged, like leave my wife
29:57
and my family alone. It crosses a horrific line and really violates Christine as
30:04
a woman, And at the time, there's not a whole lot of attentionion
30:08
around that. So she's sitting there, going, I have this man harassing
30:11
me and physically coming on to me, and I really don't have a way
30:15
to get him to leave me alone. Investigators were also contacted by the cousin
30:19
of a man named Curtis McCall, who believed that Curtis may have been conducting
30:25
a secret affair with Christine. Curtis was a former high school boyfriend of Christine's,
30:30
and two weeks before the murder, while Cliff was away at a rodeo,
30:33
Christine supposedly stopped by the home of one of Curtis's relatives in Arcadia to
30:38
look for him. A couple of Christine's friends claimed she'd asked them how to
30:42
terminate a pregnancy. Christine had actually experienced two miscarriages in nineteen fifty nine,
30:48
so there was gossip about the possibility of her becoming pregnant with his secret lover,
30:52
though the autopsy revealed she was definitely not pregnant at the time of her
30:56
death. Curtis was also believed who have owned a twenty two caliber pistol.
31:02
Was known for having a violent temper and reportedly appeared nervous and on edge following
31:07
the murders. When he was interviewed by investigators, Curtis denied ever having an
31:11
affair with Christine, and while he admitted to once owning a twenty two caliber
31:15
pistol, he claimed to have since sold it to someone whose name he couldn't
31:19
remember. Curtis was also given a polygraph test, and according to the results,
31:25
the only question he answered which indicated deception was have you withheld any information
31:30
from law enforcement officers about the Walker murders. There was ultimately no evidence to
31:37
implicate Curtis, but when police attempted to track him down for DNA testing in
31:41
two thousand and five, he could not be located. To be honest,
31:45
that question opens up a lot of possibility. Have you withheld any information from
31:49
law enforcement officers about the Walker murders? If I had just been on a
31:52
polygraph test, or I had been talking to the police before the polygraph test
31:57
and I had lied about my relationship with Christine, if I had lied about
32:02
not knowing the man's name that I gave the gun, to those types of
32:06
issues, and then they say have you withheld any information? Then I say
32:10
no, It's possible. The way my brain works and body reacts that I'm
32:15
admitting that, yes, I lied about something we talked about, but it
32:17
could be a more minor personal thing that had nothing to do with the murders
32:22
themselves and had to do with his dynamic with the family in general. I
32:25
think it tells us more probably that he was likely asked did you murder the
32:30
Walker family? And he didn't get deception on that because, like he said,
32:35
ashe it could be anything that he could be hiding that he thinks could
32:37
have contributed to the reason that they were murdered. It's just so difficult to
32:44
know, right, I mean, like, did they say was she pregnant?
32:46
Did you ever get her pregnant? And he says no, what if
32:49
he had or what if he didn't know? And he's thinking like maybe,
32:52
and he says no emphatically, and he's thinking on that question like, oh
32:57
my gosh, I've lied about a couple things out of you know, pride
33:00
and decency or respect for Christine or respect for her husband, whatever. And
33:05
then it's going to show deception because yes, I've withheld information. I lied
33:07
to you about a couple of things, but I didn't kill her and I
33:10
don't know. It doesn't necessarily mean he knows who did kill her, but
33:14
could have been deceptive about his story surrounding he and the family. There were
33:19
a number of other interesting leads which went nowhere. Emmett Monroe Spencer, a
33:22
convicted murderer on death row at Rayford Prison, sent a letter to police in
33:27
which he confessed to the Walker murders. However, his confession was soon discredited
33:31
once investigators determined that he was in California at the time the murders took place.
33:37
Spencer was known for being a pathological liar, and while his confession contained
33:40
enough accurate details about the crime to suggest he might be involved, it turned
33:45
out he had learned this information from newspaper articles. This was an unfortunate side
33:50
effect of the police using a news photographer to take pictures of the murder scene,
33:53
as a number of these photos were published in the newspapers and featured enough
33:58
details for Spencer to construct his false confession. In August of nineteen ninety four,
34:02
an anonymous woman called the Sarasota County Sheriff's office who claimed to be a
34:07
bartender from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. She said she was talking to one of her
34:12
regular customers, whom she described as a retired white male in his sixties who
34:16
worked odd jobs in the area. She said, he suddenly started crying,
34:21
and when the woman asked what was wrong, the man supposedly told her that
34:23
he had once killed some people named Walker in Osprey, Florida, many years
34:28
ago. The woman said she would call back later with more information, but
34:32
she never did, so this tip could not be verified. That is so
34:37
bizarre because she's up in Pennsylvania and she says that one of her regulars comes
34:42
in. She never gave them a name or any information. And I wonder
34:47
if she was able to give any facts that made it quite specific to the
34:52
murder. I mean, we know enough facts were out in the media because
34:54
of this false confession by the death Rowan made at Rayford. But if there
35:00
was a specific piece of information that she shared at the time, it would
35:04
make it a valid informant. But at I don't know. It's all the
35:07
way up in Pennsylvania, one of our regulars and she doesn't follow through.
35:12
It makes me think she's either actually more in touch and more personal with the
35:15
individual she's calling about, like a husband, a boyfriend, a dear friend,
35:21
or she's reaching for something. Why would you not give the information if
35:25
you were going to share it, unless you might have a dynamic with a
35:28
person that made you worried or heavy about trying to share that information with police.
35:35
And the weird thing about the possibility of this being a false tip is
35:37
that this was nineteen ninety four, thirty five years after the murders, and
35:42
it's the early stages of the Internet. So it's not like someone from Pennsylvania
35:46
could just google about this murder, which took place in Florida decades earlier.
35:51
So I don't know how widespread knowledge was about the Walker murders up in places
35:55
like Pennsylvania during the nineteen nineties. So maybe she legitimately he did hear someone
36:00
say they had killed someone in Florida named Walker, and maybe the person was
36:05
lying, but she still thought it was an important enough tip to call.
36:07
But then why would she hang up without providing more information. The most interesting
36:14
development would take place in twenty twelve, when the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office announced
36:20
that they were exploring the possibility that the Walker family murders might have been connected
36:24
to another family, which also happened to be one of the most infamous crimes
36:30
in American history. Many of you were probably already familiar with this story,
36:34
but here's a quick refresher. During the early morning hours of November fifteenth,
36:38
nineteen fifty nine, a pair of ex convicts named Perry Smith and Richard Hickock,
36:45
who had recently been paroled from the Kansas State Penitentiary, entered a farmhouse
36:50
located outside of Polcombe, Kansas. The occupants of the house were forty eight
36:53
year old Herbert Klutter and his forty five year old wife Bonnie, along with
36:59
their sixteen year old daughter Nancy and fifteen year old son Kenyon. The family
37:04
were woken up by the intruders before they were bound and gagged well incarcerated.
37:08
Smith and Hickock had been told by a fellow inmate that the Clutter family kept
37:13
a large amount of cash inside a safe at their farmhouse, but this turned
37:17
out to be untrue, as no such safe existed. The two men responded
37:22
by slashing Herbert Clutter's throat and then shot every single member of the family in
37:28
the head before fleeing the scene. Smith and Hiccock would remain fugitives for over
37:32
a month before they were finally captured in Las Vegas on December thirtieth. Both
37:38
men were subsequently convicted and sentenced to death for the murders before they were executed
37:44
by a hanging on April fourteenth, nineteen sixty five. As you probably know,
37:49
the case attained worldwide notoriety after noted author Truman Capodi published a book about
37:54
it titled In Cold Blood, which remains one of the most highly read true
37:59
crime books of all time. Now, given that the Walker family murders took
38:02
place during the period of time when Smith and Hiccock were on the run,
38:07
and there were a number of similarities with the Clutter family murders, investigators explored
38:12
the possibility that the two men may have been responsible for both crimes. There's
38:16
actually a brief section in Cold Blood where Capodi references the Walker murders, as
38:22
Smith is described as reading about the crime in the newspaper and remarking to Hiccock
38:27
that the murders or the Clutters may have inspired this. When Smith and Hiccock
38:31
were questioned about the Walker murders, they admitted to having traveled through Florida,
38:37
but denied ever visiting Sarasota County. Both men pass polygraphs, and In Cold
38:42
Blood seems to imply that they were eliminated as suspects because they had solid alibis
38:46
on the day of the crime. But in the years following its publication,
38:52
a number of factual inaccuracies have been discovered in the book, putting these so
38:55
called alibis. It's difficult to take anything from my book as saying, Okay,
39:00
this is fact, right. I mean, it's a great book,
39:02
but I could understand where you know, you're taking people's words for it.
39:07
He's where did Capoti get all of his information? So I wouldn't hold the
39:12
book as fact that these guys had a solid alibi. But I find it
39:15
interesting that you have Christine was sexually assaulted, and it seems like her murder
39:22
was very purposeful, and then the other ones were like getting rid of evidence,
39:27
right, So a quick shooting of the husband and quick shooting of the
39:30
son and drowning the daughter. It almost seems like the in Cold Blood there
39:34
was more of a like they're tied up and they're looking for money, they're
39:38
trying to get information out of the family. They to me, they feel
39:42
very different, where one is a like either sexually motivated and emotionally motivated goal
39:47
towards Christine and the family had to die as a collateral versus, we're tying
39:52
this family up for a purpose of this robbery, and then we're going to
39:54
execute people so we don't get caught. To me, I see them as
39:58
very different. It is true that the Clutter family murders were probably done out
40:01
of frustration, because both these men were under the pulse impression that they were
40:06
going to get rich and that there was a safe in the house, and
40:07
when they found out that this was a lie, they took it out on
40:10
the family and murdered all of them. But I know that the mos do
40:15
seem a bit different. But I definitely could see Smith and Hitcock murdering another
40:20
family if they were desperate enough, because they were two of the most wanted
40:23
fugitives in the United States at that time, so if they had the opportunity
40:27
to steal anything from the Walker residence, I could see them going through with
40:30
it. I mean, there isn't anything definitive, but it does seem like
40:35
quite a coincidence that we have these two separate family murders, which all took
40:38
place within a month of each other, and these two killers could be placed
40:42
in both areas at both times, and I think that motivations could change a
40:47
little bit from Okay, I think we're going to get rich to that of
40:52
desperation, possibly coupled with a sexual motivation, which we'll talk more about with
40:58
Hiccock later. There is that possibility there, I think, because when they
41:04
started out they'd been parolled, and when if they had committed the Walker murders,
41:08
they would have been on the lamb, so they would be desperate for
41:13
things like any type of money, food, cigarettes, things like that,
41:17
a place that they could just rest their head for a second. So it
41:22
could be that they started off with the one motivation and then as time went
41:25
on and desperation grew, their motivation kind of morphed into something else. The
41:30
timeline from in Cold Blood is that Smith and Hickock spent the evening of December
41:35
the eighteenth, nineteen fifty nine, sleeping in their car parked by the side
41:38
of the road near the Alabama Florida border. They then traveled through Florida the
41:44
following day and spent the evening of December the nineteenth at a hotel in Tallahassee,
41:49
but in actuality records showed that the two men had checked into a hotel
41:52
in Miami Beach on December the eighteenth and pay for one week's stay in advance,
41:58
and no witnesses could confirm having seen them in Tallahassee until the twenty first.
42:02
On the morning of December nineteenth, Smith and Hickock decided to check out
42:07
of the Miami Beach Hotel, even though management refused to give them a refund
42:10
on the additional days they had already paid for. Miami is located over two
42:15
hundred miles southeast of Osprey, but the two men would be spotted in Sarasota
42:21
County later that day, as they were seen purchasing items from a Sarasota department
42:24
store located only a few miles away from the Walker residence. The following day,
42:30
the owner of a gas station just outside of Arcadia claimed that two men
42:34
driving in nineteen fifty six Chevrolet Bellaire stopped to ask for directions. He would
42:39
later identify the two men as Smith and Hickcock, who were driving a stolen
42:43
Chevy bel Air at that time. But what's most interesting is that the witness
42:47
described Hiccock as having a badly scratched up face. Now this car is a
42:52
very important detail because, as you recall, Cliff Walker had been planning to
42:58
trade in his family car and frequented some used car lots on the day he
43:01
was killed, and one vehicle he expressed interest in was in nineteen fifty six
43:07
Chevrolet, So theoretically Smith and Hiccock could have gained access to the Walker home
43:13
under the pretense of arranging a trade for their car. When the two men
43:16
were arrested, one of them was carrying a pocket knife which was similar to
43:21
the one which was stolen from Cliff Walker, and on Christmas Eve of that
43:24
year, Smith and Hickcock sold two dolls wrapped in Christmas paper to a local
43:30
minister. There was speculation that these dolls may have originally been intended as Christmas
43:35
presents for Debbie and have been lying under the Walker's Christmas tree before they were
43:38
stolen. It really has you put things in perspective where there seems to be
43:45
opportunities where you do have these two men with different things, like the dolls
43:52
are very bizarre. Why would these two men have access to dolls? Like
43:55
why would they go buy those? That car is very highly concerning, And
44:01
the fact that they're lying about where their locations were, like why would you
44:05
lie about that you paid for these hotels? You found at other hotels.
44:08
I mean, it's very confusing. They're a whereabouts back and forth. It
44:14
seems like they're very sporadic and very unorganized. Yeah, exactly. And I
44:19
could see them just happen to drive through Ausbrey that day, in crossing paths
44:22
with the Walker and then deciding to make an arrangement to trade cars, and
44:27
then thinking, hey, this is a good opportunity. They have an isolated
44:30
farmhouse that is miles away from anyone else. This is a perfect opportunity to
44:35
pull off some sort of murder. And like Jules talked about, since their
44:37
wanted fugitives trying to evade the lock, they could have been desperate enough to
44:42
try anything, even though obviously the Walkers were not a wealthy family and they're
44:46
not going to get a large haul. If they decide to rob them,
44:51
they could have run into them. Maybe they had the original plan in case
44:54
somebody would recognize the vehicle that they were in. Maybe they wanted to go
44:58
to a used car lot at extreme their vehicle. They could have met the
45:01
Walkers there and then made a later plan to go to their home and said,
45:05
well, this is where it's located. Because just something about the crime
45:08
says to me that there's two people, and I think part of it is
45:13
that whoever decided to go and sexually assault Christine obviously knew that there was other
45:16
people that lived there, and they felt comfortable enough. She probably said my
45:21
husband's coming home, like I'm sure that she would have, because to put
45:24
myself in that position, if you're scared and somebody's attacking you, you're going
45:29
to say, like you should leave, my husband's coming home. So this
45:31
person likely would have been aware of this fact. And the fact that they
45:36
then go and take her to the room and sexually assault her makes me think
45:39
that you feel comfortable enough that somebody else is watching that front door. Yeah,
45:45
that's what I'm thinking, because if they had encountered the walkers in town,
45:47
they obviously know that the husband and the children are going to come back
45:52
eventually, So for one of them to feel comfortable enough to commit sexual assault,
45:57
that would make more sense if they had backup. And of course no
46:00
other detail is that they found a thirty two slug at the scene which did
46:02
not match any of the other bullets, which could point to the possibility that
46:07
there were two guns used by two different people. One reason that Smith and
46:12
Hiccock did not seem like promising suspects during the initial investigation. Is that the
46:17
unidentified fingerprints found on the bathtub faucet in the Walker residence did not match either
46:22
of them. But like we mentioned earlier, it now seems likely that these
46:27
fingerprints were actually palm prints. And of course, while polygraph tests were given
46:31
a lot more weight sixty five years ago, modern investigators are well aware of
46:37
how unreliable they are, so they did not put much stock into the fact
46:40
that both men passed when they were originally questioned. Following their execution, Smith
46:46
and Hiccock were buried at Mount Munsey Cemetery in Lansing, Kansas, so this
46:52
Arizonta County Sheriff's Office made arrangements to exhume their bodies. They hoped to extract
46:58
some mitochondrial DNA from the bones to see if it matched any of the semen
47:01
evidence from Christine's underwear. While in August of twenty thirteen, the Sheriff's office
47:07
announced that the results were inconclusive. DNA was taken from Smith's feamer bone and
47:13
it did not match the DNA from the seamen, but only a partial DNA
47:16
profile could be extracted from Hickock's remains, and since the samples from the murder
47:22
scene were old and degraded, it could not be conclusively determined if Hickcock's DNA
47:27
was a match or not. It's worth noting that during the Clutter Family murders,
47:31
Hickcock had made an attempt to rape the teenage shod Or Nancy, but
47:35
Smith intervened and prevented this. If both these men were responsible for the Walker
47:39
murders, Hickock likely would have been the one who sexually assaulted Christine, So
47:45
the fact that Smith was excluded as being the source of the seamen's sample did
47:49
not necessarily rule him out as being involved in the crime. In spite of
47:53
these inconclusive results, Smith and Hiccock are still both considered to be viable suspects.
48:00
It goes back to that original investigation where you have things where they're looking
48:02
for a fingerprint to match, and if it was a palm print, then
48:06
you're never going to find a fingerprint that matches the palm print. And when
48:09
you do look at the idea that one of these suspects was sexually aggressive and
48:15
almost raped the teenager at the other home, and then He's the one who
48:20
they can't rule in or out as the DNA contributor that is highly concerning.
48:24
In a surprising turn of events, Cliff Walker's niece contacted investigators in November of
48:30
twenty twelve and revealed that Cliff and Christine's marriage certificate had turned up among some
48:36
items which were recently given to her by relative. It's not entirely clear how
48:40
the marriage certificate wound up there, but this development seemed to indicate that it
48:45
was not actually stolen by the killer. In twenty eighteen, the Sarasona County
48:50
Sheriff's Office announced that they were going to attempt to use genetic genealogy in hopes
48:53
of turning up a match to the DNA evidence. However, in recent years,
48:59
investigator have realized that some of the DNA found on Christine's underwear was similar
49:04
to an incomplete DNA sequence belonging to Christine, which was collected from her dress.
49:08
This meant that cross contamination had likely taken place, and Christine's DNA wound
49:15
up being mixed with the DNA belonging to her killer. In other words,
49:19
all the DNA testing which have been performed over the years was now meaningless as
49:22
it did not prove or disprove any of the suspects culpability. Just last year,
49:29
Cliff and Christine's remains were exhumed and sent to a private lab as there
49:32
is hope that their DNA can be identified and removed from the mixture found in
49:37
Christine's underwear. This would hopefully allow scientists to extract the killer's genetic code from
49:43
the sperm cell evidence and upload it to an ancestry website for the purposes of
49:47
genetic genealogy. However, as far as I can tell, this is yet
49:52
to take place, so after nearly sixty five years, the Walker family murders
49:57
continued to remain unsolved. So I guess you could say the path went Chile.
50:04
It would be hopeful that now with the technology we have, that they
50:07
could separate the male and the female contributor in a mixed or contaminated sample,
50:13
but who knows if that's possible. In this situation, it does make you
50:16
want to go back to the man who had not been ruled out. He
50:21
couldn't be conclusively excluded, but he wasn't a direct match, and wondering well
50:27
were certain markers of his present and so were Christine's and that's why he wasn't
50:31
a one hundred percent match. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of as
50:35
well with Wilbur Tooker, is that they just simply said that the results were
50:38
inconclusive, but he could not be excluded. So it's possible that some of
50:43
the markers did match. But if the markers that didn't match actually belonged to
50:46
Christine rather than the killer, that's why they could make a definitive conclusion.
50:52
So it would be interesting to see if this is successful and they were able
50:55
to extract the Killer's DNA and retested it against Hooker's d would it be a
51:00
more complete match. So I think this would be a good time to bring
51:05
it into Part one. But join us next week as we present part two
51:07
of our series about the Walker family murders. Robin, do you want to
51:13
tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The
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51:39
original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon and if you join our highest tier,
51:44
Tier three, the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer
51:47
is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries, where you can
51:52
download an audio file and then moot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon
51:58
Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background,
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where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode.
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And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
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the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track
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in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure
52:20
to join Tier three. So I want to let you know a little bit
52:22
about the Jewels and Nashty Patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The
52:27
Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over
52:30
an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
52:34
turn into a series and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll
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check out those patreons. We'll link them in the show notes. So I
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want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share
52:44
us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
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You can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can
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reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure
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to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothes. Music
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by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy