As parishioners filed into the Boise, Idaho, Sacred Heart Church for the 6:00 mass on the evening of December 4, 1982, the church’s head usher, Leo Leeburn, approached Virginia Almquist, a registered nurse, in a state of panic. His mother, Grace, had alerted him to a man lying motionless on the floor between two church pews.
Virginia detected no pulse on the man. Many of the church’s congregation were elderly, and she feared one of them had suffered a fatal medical malady. She was, instead, surprised to find that the deceased was a younger man whom she did not recognize. No one in the church or community knew him either.
An autopsy determined the man had taken his life by swallowing a cyanide tablet; a suicide note in a brown envelope lay beside him. It was singed “Wm. L Toomey.” A nationwide check in the United States and Canada found no one with that name listed as a missing or wanted person.
Forty-one years later, the Boise community is still trying to identify the man who came to their Sacred Heart Church to end his life.
“Wm. L Toomey”
The marks on a wallet found in the deceased man’s pocket suggested it was once full of cards and other pertinent identification. When he was found, however, it contained no information confirming his identity, only currency totaling $53.
Nineteen $100 bills were in the envelope beside the man, along with the typewritten suicide note reading, “In the event of my death, the enclosed currency should give more than adequate compensation for my funeral or disposal (preferred to be cremated) expenditures. What is left over, please take this as a contribution to this church. God will see to your honesty in this.” Police believe the pencil-signed name Wm. L Toomey was not made in the man’s natural signature as the writing did not appear to have natural letter strokes.
The Suicide Note
The man’s fingerprints did not match any in Idaho or national databases.
A man said he had served in the Navy with a William Toomey in 1969, but Navy files showed no record for an enlisted man of that name.
A business located in Boston, Massachusetts, called “William L. Toomey” seemed a promising connection. The company manufactured ceremonial garments worn by priests and nuns, but no connection could be established between the business and the deceased man.
The Deceased Man
The man wore blue jeans, a green-long sleeved casual shirt, and a Seiko wristwatch.
His physical appearance was striking. Though in the northwest during the frigid winter, he was sporting a glowing suntan and was clad in southwestern attire, including a turquoise and nickel-silver bolo tie and a large brown leather belt with a Mexican 100 peso-coin in the center of its buckle. The bolo was inscribed with the words “P. White” stamped on the rear, presumed to be the artist’s name. The buckle was traced to having been sold at a western shop in Phoenix, Arizona.
Bolo and Belt
The autopsy determined Wm L. Toomey had been dead for approximately two hours before his body was discovered shortly after 5:30 p.m. During that time period, Sacred Heart Pastor Thomas Faucher was hearing confessions and said he was occupied with sinners until the time of mass.
It is theorized that the man came to the church for confession and decided to take his life after he could not be heard.
Interior of the Sacred Heart Church in Boise, Idaho
Some believe the sins committed by the unidentified man must have been serious for him to have taken his life. They theorize he chose to end his life in a Catholic church because he himself had taken the lives of several priests.
Toomey is mentioned as possibly having murdered Father Patrick “Paddy” Ryan, in the Sage Motel in Odessa, Texas, in December 1981, one year earlier. A man named James Reyos was convicted of the murder, but in October 2023, following evidence presented by the Texas chapter of the Innocence Project, Reyos’ conviction was overturned and he was exonerated.
The Innocence Project is continuing to investigate possible links between Father Ryan’s murder and several other persons of interest, including Wm. L Toomey.
Father Patrick Ryan James Reyos
It has also been speculated that the Idaho John Doe may have had involvement in the murder of Father Reynaldo Rivera in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on August 5, 1982, only four months before he committed suicide in Boise, but nothing has been found linking him to the crime.
The link to my write-up on the murder of Father Rivera is below. Father Patrick Ryan’s murder is briefly mentioned.
On November 10, 1982, three months after Father Rivera’s murder and just over three weeks before the unidentified man was found in Boise, fifty-four-year-old Father Ben Carrier was found naked, bound, and asphyxiated in an El Rancho Motel room in Yuma, Arizona.
As with the murders of Father Patrick Ryan and Father Reynaldo Rivera, however, no evidence has been found to connect the unidentified man to the murder of Father Ben Carrier.
Father Ben Carrier
A series of poisonings of Tylenol bottles left seven people dead in Chicago in September and October of 1982. All of the fatal bottles were laced with cyanide, the same poison used by the unknown man to commit suicide in Idaho in December. His involvement in the Tylenol murders is also only speculation.
Cyanide in the Murders and Suicide
Father Thomas Faucher was Pastor of the Sacred Heart Church at the time the unknown man was found. He conducted the church’s service for the man calling himself Wm. L Toomey.
Father Faucher later took a position with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise. In July 2019, the retired clergyman was arrested and charged with ten counts of sexual exploitation of a child after thousands of images of child pornography were found on his computer at his diocese-owned home in Boise. Some of the images showed infants and toddlers being raped and tortured.
Faucher pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. In October 2020, less than two years into his sentence, he died at age seventy-five.
Authorities have found nothing indicating that Father Faucher may have known the real identity of Wm L. Toomey.
Bad Father Faucher
In 2021, the Idaho Press received an anonymous letter noting a resemblance between the man known as Wm. L Toomey and James Cole, who had disappeared from Boise in March 1978, four years before Toomey’s suicide. Cole had been convicted of stealing money from his company and had also vanished for two days in 1976, claiming he had been kidnapped.
Cole’s current whereabouts are unknown, but the Idaho Press says he is not listed in any missing person’s databases.
James Cole
The man calling himself Wm. L Toomey is believed to have been between thirty-five-to-forty-five-years-old in 1982. He was six feet tall and weighed approximately one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. He had blonde sun-bleached hair, was deeply tanned, and he appeared to be in excellent physical shape with an athletic build; he was possibly a swimmer. His eyes were grayish-brown and he was well-groomed.
Because he was dressed in western-style clothes, he may have lived in the southwestern United States, possibly in the Phoenix area. He may also have been Catholic. It has been speculated that he could have been a priest who often moved throughout the country.
Because he is still unidentified, his request to be cremated has not been granted.
If you believe you have any information to the identity of “Wm. L Toomey” please contact the Boise, Idaho, Police Department at (208) 570-6000.
Other than that it made garments for priests, I was unable to find anything more about the William L. Toomey business in Boston. If any of you in the area can provide anything more about the business, please tell me.
Who Is “Wm. L Toomey”?
The unidentified man known as Wm. L Toomey is buried at Boise’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church Prayer Garden. Parishioners added a plaque reading “Unknown Wanderer” to the prayer garden.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/151248848/sacred_heart_church-john_doe
SOURCES:
- Doe Network
- Idaho Press
- The Idaho Statesman
- Unsolved Mysteries
- UPI
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