Bob, since you're restarting aolserver, you might try setting these nsopenssl module params to true, to see if more details about the errors are available.
In your config.tcl file, below this line:
ns_section "ns/server/${servername}/module/nsopenssl"
set these params to true:
ns_param ServerTrace true ;# was false
ns_param SockServerTrace true ;# was false
ns_param SockClientTrace true ;# was false
Then watch for errors. The details helped me identify the cause of problem connects in an unrelated situation.
cheers,
Torben
