OTTIS TOOLE COLORADO COURTROOM INTERVIEW

Transcribed BY SKYE ANDREWS - Art by Chuck Hodi

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“I killed nobody, none, okay I ain’t kill several in Colorado, you’ve been reading too many books letting them go to your head all the time”

(Richard Tagmeyer) But you said you killed some people

“Not in Colorado, I’ve never killed nobody in Colorado”

Toole and the court watched a video tape from 1984 when he told authorities he did commit the crime but today he said his confession was just a mind game and he got details of the crime from an investigator.

“I was told about all the pictures all the information about it”

Toole has confessed to a number of other murders he is not believed to have committed

“Why should I tell the truth, if I tell the truth they say you are lying and if you don’t tell the truth they still say you’re lying”

But Eastep defender believes that the Ottis Toole story raises enough questions about the murder to justify a new trial

“I don’t give a %$#@@ what you say no more just take it and jam it in your %$#@@ which way you can get it”

Using words not fit for prime time TV Ottis Toole told off defence attorney Richard Tagmeyer today in court. Toole says he is sick of all the questions about a murder in the Springs 17 years ago and says he is sick of all the mind games. But Toole appears to be the only one in the court room playing mind games by repeatedly changing his story. In a taped interview in 1986 Toole described the massage parlour murder in grisly detail, he tied two women up he says, raped them stabbed one, shot the other then burned down their business. But in court today Toole says he made it all up just by doing some research in the prisons law library.

“You got everybody’s cases on every trial, you have newspaper clippings in the law library, common sense ort to know that you can do that any kind of case you want in the law library”

Toole said that he took wild guesses at police questions until he got the answers right but in the very next breath Toole changed his story again he hinted he might of told the truth on the tape but was afraid of being prosecuted for it or even worse put to death that’s bad news for Park Estep who is counting on Tooles confession to clear his name of murder.

“I tells me something, that’s the only way I can stand up for myself, because if I had these off I could slap your teeth out couldn’t I, Slut”

After sitting calmly all day, Ottis Toole lost his temper late this afternoon with the defence attorney Richard Tagmeyer

“You’re trying to get rich off me aint ya, your bloodthirsty, bloodthirsty”

(Richard Tagmeyer) You’re the one that said you killed them

“Nah, I aint no killer”

Toole claims he did not murder a massage parlour operator in the Springs in 1974 even though he once admitted doing it.
The defence attorney believes Toole was telling the truth then and is lying now.

“If it was me and you called me a liar like this, I would sue the %$^^ out of you”

(Richard Tagmeyer) you would hah

“I would”

Toole said he wanted notoriety so he told police and reporter’s he’s killed hundreds of people across the county but today DA John Suthers today tried to prove Toole is not the blood drinking cannibal he claims he is. The DA said Toole was not even in Colorado during the murder. Park Estep was convicted of killing the massage parlour operator but still says he is innocent and he wants to clear his name, but the DA doesn’t think Estep will be able to pin this crime on Toole.

“That’s what it said on the news that I was playing mind games, what kind of mind games would you like to play”

And that is how Ottis Toole now explains his omission in this 1986 video tape to killing the Spring massage parlour worker, mind games, but the convicted killer serving six consecutive life terms in Florida punctuated his last testimony with one emphatic remark

“Toole did you kill these people, you are trying to get me to say yes, I didn’t kill, cause I haven’t. If I had killed them then I would say yes I did, I say take me to trial, let’s go to trial”

Still Estep’s lawyer maintained in his closing that in initial interviews the convicted serial killer knew too much about this case.

(Richard Tagmeyer) About the two oriental women and the steam bath, I shot one, I stabbed the other there were no photographs in newspapers no nothing

The two sides again butted heads over the accuracy of a police document that supposedly put Toole in Florida on the date of the murder. District Attorney John Suthers argued that in interviews Toole just fed back information he was given

(John Suthers) if we grant new trials simply because a person like Ottis Toole messes with the system the jury verdicts will never have any integrity at all let alone the integrity that they deserve under our system of justice

Suthers says if Estep eventually is cleared he has no plans to try anyone else for the killing. Estep says he is not in this to get a couple years of back military pay he would be owed if acquitted, but he is not in it to clear his name, he said this is an effort to justify the support others had shown him through all his years in prison.