Among noted twentieth-century criminals, few had as ghastly a profile as Ottis Toole. In one tall, snaggle-toothed frame, the Florida drifter seemed to combine many perversions. Convicted of arson and murder in 1983, he had taken glee in watching populated apartment buildings burn. In jail, he professed to be a rapist, child-murderer, and cannibal. His many victims allegedly included 6-year old Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh, host of the popular Fox TV true-crime show, "America's Most Wanted." Echoing Toole's claims was his sidekick, the self-professed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Never conclusively proven, their stories led to intensive nationwide investigations.

Born in poverty in 1947 in Jacksonville, Florida, Toole had a childhood of unrelenting misery. Sexually abused by male relatives, made to handle corpses by his voodoo-practicing grandmother, fed barbiturates by his mother, shot at by brothers, and forced to wear dresses by his sisters, he was a cauldron...