Wilbur Tooker Reason Suspected: Few suspects seemed to fit better than Wilbur Tooker, a 65-year-old retired railroad worker who got a $101 pension check each month and paid $75 of it in alimony. He lived about a mile southwest of the Walker home and, as the family's closest neighbor, had often visited until he made himself unwelcome because he couldn't keep his hands off Christine. Her mother told investigators that Christine "dreaded" Tooker and was afraid of him. Christine had told her sister that the only way to stop Tooker "was with a bullet."
A half-dozen of the Walkers' friends and family members recounted to investigators how Tooker had, more than once, manhandled Christine, tried to kiss her and get her into bed. When she finally had enough, Christine told her husband. Cliff wanted to kill Tooker, but a friend talked him out of it. Never one to seek out trouble, Cliff warned Tooker not to come around the house anymore because he couldn't behave like a gentleman. Tooker's friend, William Hosmer, told investigators that Tooker was infatuated with Christine and constantly talked about her. After the murders, Hosmer said, Tooker went to the Walker house twice a week because he needed to "gather counter-evidence to protect himself."
Result: Detectives retraced Tooker's steps from the afternoon of the murder. He had eaten dinner in Sarasota with a friend, a retired dentist who said they ate sometime between 5 and 7 p.m. That left Tooker with no alibi between 4 and 5 p.m., when the Walkers were killed. After dinner, Tooker arrived at a Bradenton high school no later than 7:45 and played the violin with the West Coast Symphony Orchestra. Investigators asked people in the orchestra if Tooker seemed troubled, or acted oddly. He "is such a poor player that it would never be possible to determine whether Tooker played more poorly on one night than another," said David Cohen, the orchestra's concert master. Tooker died in March 1963 at Veterans Memorial Hospital in Bradenton and was buried in Edgewood, Ill.
