Walker Family Murders
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Back in 1959, five days before Christmas, Daniel woke up early to go hunting with one of his closest friends. They lived on a ranch in Osprey, Florida.

Life was simpler back then, or so it seemed. As Daniel approaches his friend's home, he feels an eerie sense. Something doesn't seem right. The family with two young kids is usually running around full of life. He knocks, but no response. He then notices unopened Christmas gifts scattered around the porch. He enters the house and makes a horrific discovery. The entire family has been murdered.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 155, The Walker Family Murders. ♪♪ ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth, fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. As a thank you for supporting the show, you'll get early ad-free access to weekly episodes, shout-outs and episodes, priority on case suggestions, and access to weekly bonus episodes.

To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now let's get to this week's episode. December 20th, 1959, five days before the Christmas holiday, it started as a typical morning for Daniel McLeod.

That cold morning, he woke up on his ranch in Osprey, Florida, a small town with only a few thousand people living there at the time. Most people who lived there enjoyed a quiet, slow-paced lifestyle. Daniel McLeod woke up to start his day like he did every morning. He planned to meet his friend and co-worker, Cliff Walker, to go hog hunting in the woods, something that he and his friend did whenever possible.

That morning was a little cold, but it wasn't too cold to hog hunt. Daniel McLeod got everything ready. He hooked up the horse trailer, loaded his horses, and went to Cliff Walker's house. He parked his trailer outside the Walker's home when he arrived. But something about his friend's house seemed off. The place looked darker and quieter than usual.

The Walker family consisted of 25-year-old Cliff Walker, his wife, 24-year-old Christine Walker, and the couple's two young children, three-year-old Jimmy and one-year-old Debbie. When Daniel McLeod usually pulled up to the Walkers' home, it was bright and loud. With two young children, the place was always busy. But the house was eerily quiet on this particular morning in December 1959.

After Daniel parked his trailer and horses outside the house, he walked up to the front door. He knocked, but the place was still quiet. So he knocked again, this time a little bit louder. Still no answer. Initially, he thought maybe the family was still asleep and they didn't hear the knocks. But he knew his friend Cliff Walker. He knew his friend wasn't the type to sleep in late or forget about their plans together.

Cliff had always been known to be an early riser. And with two young children, both of them under the age of three, one of them had to be awake. So when no one answered the door, he knew something was wrong. After waiting at the front door for several minutes, he decided to walk around the house to see if he could see anyone inside. The first thing he noticed as he walked around the property was the family's car wasn't parked where it usually was.

He also noticed a few Christmas gifts lying on the front porch next to a freshly cut fire log. He then peered through the windows to see if he could see anyone, but the house was dark. Fearing something might be wrong, Daniel decided to cut the walker's screen door to get inside and see what was happening. The best case scenario was his friend was still asleep or simply not home, and he could apologize for breaking the screen door later.

But the worst case was something happened that prevented his friend from opening the door. And that's exactly what happened. When Daniel McLeod got inside the house, he discovered the entire Walker family was dead. 24-year-old Christine, 25-year-old Cliff, and their two children, one-year-old daughter Debbie and three-year-old son Jimmy. They had all been murdered.

The first person Daniel found was Christine. Directly in the doorway to the living room, Christine was lying in a pool of blood. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the head. In the corner of the room were Cliff and three-year-old Jimmy. They both had also been shot in the head, but someone was missing from the living room, one-year-old Debbie. She was found dead in a blood-filled bathtub upstairs.

Debbie, not even two years old yet, was shot inside the family's bathtub. As soon as he realized his friend's entire family had been murdered, Daniel ran out of the house and called the police. This small town in Florida had never seen a crime like this before.

When the police arrived, they searched the house and collected evidence. One of the first things the detectives noticed was that several items were missing from the house. And the items that were missing seemed strange. First was Christine's high school uniform. The second was Cliff's pocket knife he always carried with him. Third, and most strangely, Cliff and Christine's marriage license was mysteriously missing.

Initially, the police suspected one of Christine's ex-boyfriends might be responsible for the murders. Or maybe she was having an affair and her lover took revenge on her and her family. At first, the police couldn't think of any other reason why someone would murder an entire family and steal the couple's marriage license. But the police didn't find any evidence Christine was having an affair or had a crazy ex-boyfriend.

Once that was ruled out, the police moved on to their next theory. The Walker family knew their killers. All four members of the Walker family were shot in the head. This is an extremely up-close-and-personal style of killing. This suggested to investigators that the murders were personal. Whoever did this knew the family and they were targeted.

The police also didn't find any signs of forced entry, so they thought maybe Christine or Cliff had let their killers inside. This was another major clue that the family knew who did this. It wasn't only missing items that the police noticed. They also found several clues inside the house left behind by the killer. The first was a bloody cowboy hat, presumably left behind by the shooter.

The second item they found was a cellophane strip from a cigarette wrapper. The third was a fingerprint on the bathtub faucet. Fingerprints have been used in criminal investigations since the late 1800s. But in 1959, the biggest problem was matching the fingerprint to a suspect. If police in the late 1950s found a fingerprint at a crime scene, they could only compare it against known suspects.

There was no shared fingerprint database for police departments to match the prints against. The first database wasn't created until many years later in the 1980s. So when the police found the fingerprint on the bathtub faucet, it was a start, but they needed to match it to someone. Based on the evidence, the police reconstructed what they thought happened to the walkers.

They also thought that the Walker family murders had to have been done by more than one person. The police think the family was out running errands on the afternoon of Saturday, December 19th, the day before their bodies were found. They believe the wife, 24-year-old Christine Walker, arrived home around 4 o'clock p.m., but they didn't think she was attacked immediately.

Police found evidence that Christine had put away the groceries she bought earlier that day. The police don't know if the killers were already inside the house or if they broke in sometime after Christine got home. Or maybe Christine had let them inside if she knew them. But she was attacked sometime after arriving home and putting away the groceries.

Based on her injuries, Christine fought back. She had defensive wounds on her hands and arms, and her high-heeled shoes had blood on them, suggesting that she had used her heels to hit her attackers. There was even evidence that she tried getting out of the house, but was dragged back inside. The killers then took Christine to Jimmy's bedroom, where they sexually assaulted her. After the assault, they shot her once in the head with a .22 caliber gun.

Not long after Christine was shot and killed, her husband Cliff came home with their two children, Debbie and Jimmy. The police think that once Cliff got inside the house, he was shot in the face immediately. He might not have even seen what was happening or who shot him because it happened so quickly. Within moments of Cliff walking into the house and being shot, Jimmy was shot. But the first shot didn't kill him.

When his killers realized he wasn't dead, they shot him twice in the back of his head as he knelt next to his father. Finally, the killers went for Debbie. They took her to the bathtub, where they shot her and drowned her in the bathtub. The forensic evidence the police collected pointed to more than one killer. Besides the fingerprint on the bathtub faucet and bloody cowboy hat, the police found more evidence.

They found dark colored hair in the bathroom, but they also found long blonde hair inside Christine's dress. But like the fingerprint, the police had no way of testing or comparing the hairs back in 1959. News about the murders of four family members rocked the community. No one could believe that an entire family could be gunned down inside their home only a few days before Christmas.

newspapers reported the story of the Walker family murders, saying that there was a Christmas tree full of wrapped presents only a few feet away from their bodies. Early on in the investigation, the police operated under the assumption that the Walkers knew their killers. It wasn't only because of how they were killed. There was also other evidence to suggest the murders were personal.

When Daniel McLeod arrived at the house on December 20th, he first noticed that the family's car wasn't parked where it usually was. So the police had a theory about this. They thought Christine might have let the killers inside the house on the afternoon of December 19th. They think it's possible that when Christine got home from the grocery store, someone was parked where she usually parks the car. So she parked her car somewhere else.

If Christine knew whose car was parked there, she wouldn't be alarmed, and she would have let them inside. But she was attacked once she got inside and put away the groceries. The first suspect the police considered was Daniel McLeod. He was the person who discovered the bodies and called the police. So naturally, he was considered a suspect.

Daniel McLeod also knew the Walkers quite well, and it was assumed that Christine would have let him inside that day. But after the police sat down and questioned him, he was quickly ruled out. The second suspect the police considered was one of Cliff's cousins. The police learned that Cliff's cousin had a lengthy criminal record, including violent offenses. But like Daniel McLeod, he was also ruled out. He even passed a polygraph.

The third suspect was a guy named Wilbur Tooker. Wilbur Tooker lived nearby the Walkers and was seen by many community members as a local pervert. The police learned that several months before the murders, he tried to kiss Christine. Cliff threatened to kill him if he ever got near his wife again, but Wilbur had an airtight alibi for December 19th.

He might have been known as the local pervert in town, but he wasn't responsible for four murders. Not long after the police ruled out their first few suspects, the case went cold. Despite the public and the police's desire to solve a quadruple homicide, they just didn't have any leads. They couldn't find anyone who knew the Walkers personally who would want them all dead. Their initial theory that the family knew their killers was beginning to fall short.

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For several months, the investigation was stalled and the case was cold until a promising suspect came along, Curtis McCall. After the bodies turned up, the police learned there were rumors that Christine may have been cheating on her husband Cliff and the person who Christine might have been having an affair with was Curtis McCall.

Curtis McCall wasn't exactly your upstanding citizen. He had a history of violence and a lengthy criminal record of abusing women. But his history of violence wasn't what stood out to investigators or his alleged affair with Christine. It was the fact Curtis McCall also owned a .22 caliber gun that was remarkably similar to the one used in the murders.

When the police brought McCall in for questioning, he denied everything. He denied having an affair with Christine. He denied owning a .22 caliber gun. He told the police he sold it years before the murders. And he adamantly denied having anything to do with the murders. Curtis McCall was so certain of his innocence that he agreed to three separate polygraph examinations administered by the police. But the results weren't in his favor.

During each of the three polygraphs, the results came back inconclusive. He was so nervous that the polygraph administrator couldn't reach any conclusive results from his answers. But there was also something else. All three tests showed he was lying when asked if he had withheld any information from the police.

but without any evidence other than inconclusive polygraph test results, the police couldn't arrest him, and Curtis McCall was free to go. A few months after the murders, crucial evidence surfaced. The police found bloody clothing belonging to Cliff and Christine in a shed not far from their house.

The bloody clothes included a shirt, a blouse, and a pair of pants. They all belonged to Cliff and Christine, and all of the items were soaked in blood. But the clothes weren't what Cliff and Christine wore when they were murdered. They were other clothes. The police theorized that the killers took the clothes from the walkers and used them to wipe blood off themselves. Cliff, Christine, and the kids were all shot from close range.

There was also evidence that Christine fought back and tried stabbing them with her high-heeled shoes. This meant that the killers were likely covered in blood after the murders. It might have been cast-off blood, or they might have been injured during the attacks. So the police theorized the killers used the clothing to clean themselves and dump them in a shed. But the location of the shed was also important to investigators.

The location meant the killers were familiar with the area. The police interviewed and polygraphed hundreds of people over the years, but nothing turned up. They couldn't match anyone to the fingerprint found on the bathtub, and they couldn't match anyone to the hair evidence. Everyone the police spoke to either had an alibi or passed a polygraph. For the first couple of years, the police continued to receive tips and leads.

But as soon as a tip came in, it was exhausted. And the leads didn't lead anywhere. Until all of that changed in 1962. In 1962, the police thought they might finally have found something. A man named Emmett Monroe Spencer came forward and confessed to the Walker family murders. Emmett Monroe Spencer wrote a letter addressed to the police claiming responsibility.

The letter seemed promising. Spencer was a convicted serial murderer, so the police thought the Walkers might just be another one of his victims. But the police quickly learned that there were some serious flaws with his confession.

After carefully considering Spencer's confession, the police found he lied and made everything up. He had nothing to do with the Walker case, and everything he knew about the murders came from either newspapers or crime novels he liked to read. So just as quickly as Spencer's confession came in, it was dismissed. Emmett Monroe Spencer didn't murder the Walker family.

After Spencer, the trail went cold again until several decades later. No one could figure out who killed this entire family. In 1994, 35 years later, a promising tip came in. A woman called the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department in Florida and said she was a bartender in Pennsylvania. She told the police that a man had come into her bar drunk one night and confessed to the murders.

She said the man was crying and needed to get it off his chest. But when the police tried tracking the man down, the woman said came into the bar that night, they couldn't find him. After 1994, there was another long stretch of no progress in the case until 2012, over 50 years after the murders. In 2012, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department began investigating the case again.

They started looking into the Walker family murders after they received a tip that the murders might be linked to four other murders miles away in Holcomb, Kansas. On the morning of November 15th, 1959, the same year the Walkers were killed, four members of the Clutter family were murdered inside their home. They were Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and their teenage children, Kenyon and Nancy.

Two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, were found guilty of the murders and both sentenced to death in April 1965. In the Clutter family murders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok had recently gotten out of state prison.

While in prison, Richard Hickok's former cellmate had worked for the Clutter family and told him that the father, Herb, always kept a large amount of cash in the house. So when they got out of prison, they devised a plan to drive over 400 miles across the state of Kansas to steal their money. When they arrived, they entered the house through an unlocked door while the family was asleep.

They searched the entire house for the cash, but they didn't find any. It turned out Hickok's former prison cellmate didn't know what he was talking about because Erb never kept large amounts of cash inside the house. All his business was made by check. Angry that they didn't find any cash that they had driven over 400 miles looking for, they woke the family up.

They forced Bonnie and the two kids into a second floor bathroom, then took Herb into his office. All four were bound and gagged as the two men continued to search the house looking for any money, but they still didn't find anything.

Once they realized there was no cash in the house, Smith and Hickok knew they couldn't leave any witnesses behind. The entire Clutter family had seen their faces and they would be able to identify them to the police. So instead of letting that happen, they decided they needed to kill the entire family. One by one, the Clutter family was murdered. They killed the father, Herb, first. They slit his throat and then shot him in the head.

Next were Bonnie, Kenyon, and Nancy. They were also shot and killed. Before leaving the house, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok stole a radio, a set of binoculars, and less than $50. They started their journey searching for large amounts of cash, but instead, they murdered a family in cold blood. The two men were eventually arrested six weeks later after the murders in Las Vegas, Nevada.

After they were arrested, they were both found guilty of the murders and executed by hanging on April 14, 1964. The Clutter family murders inspired one of the most popular true crime novels of all time, In Cold Blood. The book was published one year after their executions.

In 2012, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department reconsidered the possibility that Perry Smith and Richard Hickok might have also been responsible for the Walker family murders. Both cases had a lot of similarities. They happened in the same year, 1959. The Clutters were killed in November and the Walkers were killed one month later in December. Both cases involved the murders of an entire family.

Both families were shot and killed execution style, and in both cases, strange items were taken from the house. Police in Florida considered the two men in the Walker family murders immediately after they were arrested for the clutter murders, but there was no solid evidence linking them to Florida. But by 2012, over 50 years later, they reconsidered the possibility.

Sarasota County Sheriff's Detective Kimberly McGath reopened the Walker family file and investigated this theory for the next five years. She looked for anything that could connect the killings. According to police reports taken in 1959, the Walker family was considering buying a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air around the time of the murders.

A 1956 Chevy Bel Air was the same car Smith and Hickok had stolen back in Kansas. The police theorized that the men decided to ditch the stolen car, and that's when they met the Walker family.

It's unclear how they met, but the police believe the men either contacted the walkers because they expressed interest in buying that particular car, or they reached out to him because they advertised the stolen car. The police theorized that Smith and Hickok drove to the walkers' house so they could show them the car, and they could decide if they wanted to buy it or not.

But when they got to the house, they saw Christine Walker was alone. And after that, that's when the murders took place. According to the police report, on the same day of the Walker's murders, the two men were seen at a department store only a few miles away from the Walker's. According to a witness who worked at the department store, one had a large scratch on their face.

The men also had a pocket knife similar to the one described as missing from Cliff Walker. In December 2012, police in Sarasota, Florida exhumed Smith and Hickok's bodies. The hope was that mitochondrial DNA from their bones could be matched to the semen found on Christine Walker's body.

DNA wasn't available in 1959, the time of the murders, so by 2012, they hoped they could get a match. Smith and Hickok's DNA was sent to the lab for testing, but it took months to get the results back. The department had hundreds of other cases that had priority over the Walker's case. The results of the DNA testing didn't come back until August of 2013, and when they did, it was a huge disappointment.

The DNA tests were inconclusive. Only a partial DNA sample was retrieved from the mitochondrial DNA testing, so any conclusions about the samples were inconclusive. So, the men couldn't be included and they couldn't be excluded. The more the Sarasota detectives looked for comparisons between the two cases, the more differences they saw.

Inside the Walker's house, the police found strands of blonde hair. But neither Smith nor Hickok was blonde. In the Clutter family murders, the men were after money. But in the Walker family murders, no money was taken. The only items taken from the house were personal items belonging to Christine, like her high school uniform.

And without any credible forensic evidence linking the two men to the walkers, they could only be considered possible suspects. Later that same year in 2013, Cliff and Christine's marriage license, originally reported stolen, turned out to not have been missing.

In 2013, Cliff's niece turned the marriage license over to the police and said a relative had given it to her years earlier. She just didn't know she ever had it. Both the relative and Cliff's niece have been proven innocent of the murders through DNA testing. It was simply a mistake that the marriage license was reported missing after the murders.

The DNA testing on Perry Smith and Richard Hickok in 2013 is the closest the police have ever been to solving the murders. Although many people suspect the two men had something to do with it, there is no definitive evidence linking them in the Walkers case. And since both men were executed, they can no longer be questioned by the police.

The Walker family murders is one of Florida's most brutal, unsolved murders in history. And to this day, the murders of Christine Cliff and their two young children remain unsolved. Although it's a mystery what exactly happened six days before Christmas in 1959, there are no short of possible theories.

The most popular theory is the same men responsible for murdering the Clutter family are the ones who did it, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok. Although DNA can't include or exclude them in the murders, many people think there is enough circumstantial evidence to believe they were responsible. People who believe this theory point to all the similarities between the murders, but not everyone is convinced of that.

Some people think the walkers knew their killers. They might have even been close to the family. They point to the fact Christine likely let the killers inside that day. This is supported by evidence that suggests Christine parked her car in a different spot in front of the house. When she returned from the grocery store, it was possible that she saw someone parked in the spot. It must have been someone she knew because she parked her car and went inside anyway.

There was even evidence that she put away the groceries before being attacked, further suggesting that she knew her killers and trusted them enough to let them inside. Some people think the killers may have been someone Christine was having an affair with. Although there are conflicting reports on whether she was actually cheating on Cliff or not, there were rumors of alleged affairs. If Christine was dating someone outside her marriage, maybe her killer was a scorned lover.

It's also possible that the killers were someone Cliff knew. Although he wasn't known to have any enemies, it's possible Christine let the killers inside because she knew the men were her husband's friends. She might have told them her husband was right behind her on the way home and let them inside until he arrived. The Walker family murders could also be a random attack.

Some people wonder if this could just have been an unexpected act of violence committed by a random stranger. Maybe a group of men wanted to rob the walkers. They could have been hiding inside when Christine got home and then attacked her while putting the groceries away. The men could have threatened Christine to let them inside or they would kill her. There was also the possibility this was a sexual assault gone wrong.

A few men could have broken inside the house to assault Christine, but during the assault, Cliff and the kids walked in. The men couldn't leave behind any witnesses, so they shot and killed the entire family. But the one theory everyone always seems to return to is that the Walkers knew their killers.

Catherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University of Pennsylvania, had studied the case for years. And based on her research, she believes that whoever committed the murders knew the family because of the personal items taken from the house. There was Christine's high school uniform, as well as Cliff's pocket knife. Although their marriage certificate was originally ported stolen, that turned out to be false.

But at the end of the day, the only items taken from the house full of furniture and valuables were personal items that either belonged to Cliff or Christine. Over 60 years later, the Walker family murders remain unsolved, and there are currently no other suspects. But that doesn't mean these murders will never be solved.

When Perry Smith and Richard Hickok's DNA was tested in 2013, the results were inconclusive. That's because the DNA from the crime scene and their bones were degraded or contaminated. But there is still a chance their DNA can be retested in the future. Many private forensic labs can test DNA from the smallest and most degraded samples.

If advanced DNA testing can be done on what is left from Perry or Hickok, the results can officially include or exclude one or both of them. Now, it's unclear what amount of DNA is actually remaining from either men.

But if there is any remaining DNA from either one of them, it's possible that it can be retested by one of these private labs specializing in degraded or contaminated DNA samples. Private forensic labs might also be able to test the semen sample from the DNA.

If the lab can still pull a DNA profile from the sample, a lab can do genetic genealogy to find a match. They might find a relative or they might find the killer themselves. Unfortunately, until new DNA testing can be performed or new evidence is discovered, the mystery behind the 1959 Walker family murders remains a mystery.

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