CRIME

Could there have been two serial killers?

Tom McLaughlin | 315-4435 | @TomMnwfdn | tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com

The dark shadow cast by Frank Walls, and the blame thrust upon him for any number of unsolved murders, may have helped obscure the possibility that he wasn’t the only serial killer roaming Northwest Florida in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent Dennis Haley believes Mark Riebe may have been involved in the deaths of as many as six people, including Lindsey O. Sams, a woman Haley said he was initially convinced Walls had killed.

Sams, a 35-year-old Mississippi resident, was staying at the Seaward Condominium complex in Miramar Beach when, on July 23, 1986, her badly beaten body was discovered by her daughter on the floor of the family’s unit.

She was life-flighted to a local hospital and later moved to a Memphis, Tennessee, facility. Sams died in June 1987 from head injuries sustained during what investigators termed a vicious attack.

Walton County investigators believed Walls was behind the attack, and told the Northwest Florida Daily News as much in November 1994, after the serial killer had admitted to killing two local women, then abruptly stopped speaking to authorities.

Haley believed Walls was behind the Sams murder, until he sat down with him.

“It went along with the other murders. He had worked at (local restaurant) Captain Dave’s and was roaming the streets of the area,” Haley said. “Frank and I went round and round. He nearly came over the table. He said, 'I’ve confessed to five (expletive) murders, I did not do that. If I did, I would tell you.'

“He made a believer out of me.”

Riebe, meanwhile, had been convicted in 1997 of participating in the murder of Donna Callahan, a pregnant clerk who was kidnapped from a Gulf Breeze convenience store on Aug. 6, 1989. Riebe’s half-brother, William Alex Wells, led authorities in 1996 to Callahan’s body, buried on farmland in DeFuniak Springs, after pleading no contest to his role in her murder.

Both men are serving life sentences.

Haley said Riebe’s mother called about a year after he was sent to state prison and asked that he speak to her son. Haley said Riebe told him during the meeting that he'd killed 13 people.

Haley said he didn't buy all of Riebe's admissions of guilt, which have since been recanted, but he's convinced the Sams confession was valid. 

“Riebe gave me a pretty detailed confession on Lindsey Sams,” Haley said.

The confession included a description of a Jaguar that Sams drove, including details about a license plate bearing a Vanderbilt University logo.

Riebe told Haley that he had entered Sams’ bedroom and was crawling around on the floor when she got out of bed and stepped on him. Investigators had learned Sams, who was hypoglycemic, had a habit of leaving the bed at night to drink a soft drink for sugar.

Riebe also said he’d beaten Sams as she ran down a flight of stairs. The bed where Sams had been sleeping was undisturbed and the stairway bore evidence of an injured person fleeing for her life. Sams was found on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.

“Everything he said was consistent with the crime scene,” Haley said.

On the day Haley met Riebe, he also obtained confessions to other local murders, including that of Rhonda Taylor, who was stabbed to death on July 7, 1990.

Taylor, 23, was found at about noon by a man who was walking down Tupelo Avenue in Fort Walton Beach. Reports say the man, Ronald Browning, passed by a silver Buick and glanced in the window.

“I thought it was a blow-up, a balloon doll,” Browning recalled. “For some reason, I went back to check. I couldn’t believe it."

Taylor’s nude body was found “crumpled” in the backseat of her car, according to investigators’ statements at the time. Her head was against the rear seat, just below window level. Her throat had been cut and she had stab wounds on her hands and arms. There were also scratches on her legs. The body had apparently been moved from the location where the murder took place.

Riebe — currently being held at the Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Milton — also confessed to killing Pamela Ray, who disappeared in 1992 from in front of a Panama City Beach motel room. Ray’s car was locked and her purse and two young children were left inside the vehicle. The case continues to baffle the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, as Ray’s body has never been recovered.

Haley also believes Riebe could be responsible for the death of Bonnie Gayle Ryther, a 27-year-old whose body was found April 11, 1978, near Ferry Park in Fort Walton Beach. She had been missing for a week when her body was recovered. Riebe made a point of telling Haley he drank a particular brand of beer, and cans of that beer were found near Ryther's body.

Investigators also look at Riebe as a suspect in the death of Jaqueline Brant, 18, who was last seen April 15, 1986, in Panama City Beach during a Spring Break trip from Illinois. A hunter discovered her body that November in a wooded area off Back Beach Road.

In 2007, Panama City Police said Riebe, 46 at the time, had confessed to killing Brant, and, although he has since recanted, they were convinced of his culpability.

“He knows several things that only the killer would know," Capt. Jimmy Stanford said at the time.