Murder of Adam Walsh

Adam John Walsh (November 14, 1974 – July 27, 1981) was an American boy who was abducted from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981. His severed head was found two weeks later in a drainage canal alongside Highway 60 / Yeehaw Junction in rural Indian River County, Florida. His death garnered national interest and was made into the 1983 television film Adam, seen by 38 million people in its original airing.[3] His father, John Walsh, became an advocate for victims of violent crimes and was the host of the television program America's Most Wanted and currently, In Pursuit with John Walsh.[4] Convicted serial killer Ottis Toole confessed to Adam's murder but was never convicted for this specific crime due to loss of evidence and a recanted confession. Toole died in prison of liver failure on September 15, 1996.[5] No new evidence has come to light since then, and police announced on December 16, 2008, that the Walsh case was closed, as they were satisfied that Toole was the killer.

Adam Walsh
Walsh c. 1981
Born(1974-11-14)November 14, 1974[1]
Hollywood, Florida
DiedJuly 27, 1981(1981-07-27) (aged 6)
Rural Indian River County, Florida
Cause of deathAsphyxiation
Parent(s)John Walsh and Revé Walsh (née Drew)[2]

Case history

Kidnapping and murder

On the afternoon of July 27, 1981, Adam's mother, Revé, took him shopping with her to the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida (26°00′46″N 80°10′30″W). They went together to Sears and entered through the north entrance.[6][7] Revé intended to inquire about a lamp which was on sale,[8] and left Adam at a kiosk with Atari 2600 video games on display, where several other boys were taking turns playing them.[9] Revé completed her business in the lamp department around 12:15 pm.[6][10] She said that she returned to find that Adam and the other boys had disappeared. A store manager informed her that a scuffle had broken out over whose turn it was at the kiosk, and a security guard demanded that they leave the store.[11] The security guard asked the older boys if their parents were there, and they said that they were not.[12] Adam's parents later conjectured that he was too shy to speak to the security guard, who presumed that he was in the company of the other boys, and as such, the security guard made him leave by the same door by which the boys entered (which was the Sears west entrance). His parents believe that after the other boys dispersed, he was left alone outside the store, at an exit unfamiliar to him.[13][12][14] Meanwhile, unable to find Adam in the toy department, Revé had him paged over the public-address system and continued to look for him throughout the store.[15] By coincidence she ran into his paternal grandmother, Jean, who helped her search for him.[16] After more than 90 minutes of searching and public-address pages which failed to locate him, she called the Hollywood Police at 1:55 pm.[6]

On August 10, a severed head was found in a drainage canal alongside the Florida Turnpike near Vero Beach, almost 130 miles from Hollywood, by Detective Ralph E. Latimer Jr. and an unidentified Deputy of Indian River County Sheriff Office.[17][18] Indian River County and St. Lucie County divers searched the canal.[17] On the morning of August 11, John and Revé appeared on national television saying they still hoped that Adam was alive; a US$100,000 (equivalent to $281,223 in 2019) reward had been posted for his safe return.[19] Soon after, the recovered remains were identified as Adam's.[20]

The coroner ruled that the cause of Adam's death was asphyxiation. The state of the remains suggested Adam had died several days before the discovery of his head. The rest of his body was never recovered.[5]

Investigation

John and Revé personally believed that the Hollywood police department botched the treatment of Adam's disappearance, first the missing-persons investigation, then the investigation into his murder.[21]

After some investigation, police eventually concluded that Adam was abducted by a drifter named Ottis Toole near the front exterior of Sears that afternoon, after being instructed to leave by a security guard. According to Toole, he lured him into his white 1971 Cadillac with a damaged right bumper with promises of toys and candy, then proceeded to drive north on Interstate 95 toward his home in Jacksonville. Adam, at first docile and compliant, began to panic as they drove on. Toole punched him in the face, but as this just made the situation worse, he then "walloped him unconscious." While he was unconscious, Toole drove north on the Florida Turnpike to a deserted service road just north of the Radebaugh Road overpass in northwest St. Lucie County (27°32′07″N 80°36′35″W).[22] When Toole realized Adam was still breathing, he strangled him to death with a seat belt, dragged him out of the car, and decapitated him with a machete. Toole also claimed to have disposed of his body by incinerating it in an old refrigerator when he returned to Jacksonville. He claimed that he wanted to make him his adopted son, but given the close relationship he had with loving parents, this was not very feasible. Determining the source of the blood found in the car was not possible.[5] The police ultimately lost the bloodstained carpet from the car, the machete said to be used to decapitate Adam, and eventually, the car itself. Toole, a confidant of convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, repeatedly confessed and then retracted accounts of his involvement.

Toole was never charged in Adam's case, although he provided seemingly accurate descriptions as to how he committed the crime. Several witnesses also placed him in the Hollywood area in the days leading up to Adam's disappearance.[5] In September 1996, he died in prison, aged 49, of cirrhosis while serving a life sentence for other crimes.[12] Afterwards, his niece told John that he made a deathbed confession to Adam's murder.[12][23] His confession was viewed as unreliable, since Lucas and he confessed to or implicated themselves in more than 200 different homicides.[24] Most of Lucas' confessions were later revealed to have been false, having been coerced by the Texas Rangers.[25]

In 1997, Hollywood Police Chief Rick Stone conducted an exhaustive review of Adam's case after the release of John's book. At the time, Stone was a 22-year veteran of the Dallas, Texas, and Wichita, Kansas, police departments and had been appointed Hollywood's chief of police in the previous year. Although the crime happened 16 years before the time of his review, he provided an analysis of the evidence, including reviewing taped interrogations of Toole by Hollywood Police Detective Mark Smith. Stone says his review found evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Toole murdered Adam. Both Toole and Lucas were notorious, Stone noted, for confessing to crimes they committed, and then recanting.[26]

In 2007, allegations earned widespread publicity that Jeffrey Dahmer, arrested in Wisconsin in 1991 after killing more than a dozen men and boys, was also named as a suspect in Adam's murder. Lionel Dahmer, the father of Jeffrey Dahmer, called the AMW hotline not too long after his son's arrest. He said that while his son was never convicted for it, he believed his son was a pedophile.[27] He was living in Miami Beach at the time, and two eyewitnesses placed him at the mall on the day Adam was abducted. One claimed to have seen a strange man walking into the toy department. The other said that he saw a young, blond man with a protruding chin throw a struggling child into a blue van and speed off. Both witnesses recognized the man they had seen as Dahmer when pictures of him were released in the newspapers after his arrest. Reports showed that the delivery shop where he worked had a blue van at the time. He preyed on young men and boys (the youngest being eight years older than Adam), and his modus operandi included severing his victims' heads. When interviewed about Adam in 1992,[28] he repeatedly denied involvement in the crime,[29] even stating, "I've told you everything—how I killed them, how I cooked them, who I ate. Why wouldn't I tell you if I did someone else?"[30] After this rumor surfaced, John stated that he had "seen no evidence" linking Adam's abduction and murder to Dahmer.[31]

On December 16, 2008, Hollywood, Florida Police Chief Chad Wagner, a friend of John's, announced, with him present, that the case was now closed. An external review of the case had been conducted and police announced that they were satisfied that Toole was the murderer.[5][24][32]

Legacy

Children found

The television film Adam premiered on October 10, 1983.[33] The film was based on Walsh's kidnapping and murder, and attracted 38 million viewers on its first airing.[3] Each of its three broadcasts in 1983, 1984 and 1985 were followed by pictures and descriptions of missing children. A hotline was also created to take calls regarding them. The pictures and hotline were ultimately credited with finding a number of missing children.[34][35][36] 13 of the 55 children shown in the 1983 broadcast were located.[37] American rapper Bizzy Bone, who was abducted by his stepfather as a child, was reunited with his mother after a neighbor recognized a photo of him shown at the end of the 1983 broadcast.[38]

Laws and organizations for missing children

In 1984, the U.S. Congress passed the Missing Children's Assistance Act, owing in part to the advocacy of the Walshes and other parents of missing children. It allowed the formation of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).[39]

The Code Adam program for helping lost children in department stores is named in Adam's memory. The U.S. Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act on July 25, 2006, and President Bush signed it into law on July 27. The signing ceremony took place on the South Lawn of the White House, attended by John and Revé. The bill institutes a national database of convicted child molesters, and increases penalties for sexual and violent offenses against children.[40] It also creates a RICO cause of action for child predators and those who conspire with them.[41]

The Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2016,[42] which provides budgetary allotments to continue programs passed in the 2006 Act, was incorporated into H.R. 5578: Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act of 2016 and was enacted and signed by President Obama on October 7, 2016.

Societal and psychological effects

The publicity of Adam's case and the widely watched television movie Adam also created what was described as a mid-1980s panic over stranger abductions, one out of proportion to their numbers and one which has persisted for decades. Richard Moran, criminologist at Mount Holyoke College: "[The case] created a nation of petrified kids and paranoid parents. Kids used to be able to go out and organize a stickball game, and now all playdates and the social lives of children are arranged and controlled by the parents...the fear still lingers today."[43] Early estimates by the NCMEC would state that as many as 20,000 children a year were abducted by strangers, and public service spots relayed the perceived danger. A 1985 Pulitzer Prize exposé discussed a "numbers gap" between the claimed number and other statistics, such as that the FBI investigated a total of 67 abductions by total strangers in 1984. By 1988, even as the NCMEC lowered annual estimates of stranger abductions by 80%, "early estimates had a life of their own". A 1990 study of child abductions found that 99% of them were family related.[44] In the 15 years between 2000 and 2015, the number of missing children ultimately killed decreased in its own right, attributed partly to the emergence of technologies such as mobile phones that allow calls for help.[43]

See also

References
  1. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 61
  2. "Original Adam Walsh police reports (Adam Walsh death Certificate), p 753) (1981)" (PDF). Hollywood Florida Police Department.
  3. Divoky, Diane (February 18, 1986), "Missing Tot Estimates Exaggerated", Lodi News-Sentinel, p. 2
  4. "Americas Most Wanted – About John Walsh". Americas Most Wanted. Archived from the original on December 16, 2008. Retrieved December 17, 2008.
  5. Almanzar, Yolanne (December 16, 2008). "Police Expected to Close Adam Walsh Case". New York Times. Retrieved December 16, 2008. In October 1983, he told the police that he had abducted Adam from the mall and drove for about an hour to an isolated dirt road where he decapitated him. Investigators lifted bloodstained carpet from his car. But DNA testing then was not as advanced as it now, and investigators could not tell if the blood was Adam's. When a detective assigned to the case in 1994 went to order DNA testing on the bloodstained carpet from the car, the carpeting, and the car itself were found to be missing.
  6. "Original Adam Walsh police reports (1981)" (PDF). Hollywood Florida Police Department.
  7. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, pp. 91–92
  8. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 91
  9. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 93
  10. "Police Files On Adam's Disappearance Give Suspects, Leads, But No Conclusion". Retrieved August 18, 2016.
  11. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 174
  12. "Ottis Toole on America's Most Wanted". America's Most Wanted. Archived from the original on July 18, 2012. Retrieved December 16, 2008. He didn't tell the security guard his mother was in the lamp department; he followed the older boys out the west exit into the parking lot. His parents believe he didn't tell the security guard about his mother, because he was a timid child and mindful of authority. Knowing him, they believe he may have been too scared to say anything.
  13. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 175
  14. "Police: Drifestigators believed that he was grouped in with the older boys who left him alone outside the store. That was the last time he was seen". CNN. December 16, 2008. Retrieved December 16, 2008.
  15. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, pp. 101–102
  16. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, pp. 98–99
  17. "Florida Today from Cocoa, Florida · Page 4B". Newspapers.com. Retrieved August 17, 2016.
  18. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 217
  19. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 161
  20. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 229
  21. "John and Reve Walsh Relive Son's Murder". ABC News. March 3, 2011. Retrieved August 18, 2016.
  22. "Mile Marker 126 investigation photo".
  23. "John Walsh's Tears of Rage tells the story of the Adam Walsh case". The Washington Examiner.
  24. Soltis, Andy (December 17, 2008). "1981 Adam Slay Solved". New York Post. Archived from the original on December 18, 2008. Retrieved December 17, 2008. But he also claimed he committed hundreds of murders, and cops determined he was lying about them.
  25. "The Twilight of the Texas Rangers". Texas Monthly. June 16, 2016. Retrieved December 21, 2017.
  26. Drummond, Tammerlin (October 27, 1997). "Books: An American Tragedy". Time.
  27. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 423
  28. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 426
  29. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 427
  30. "Did Dahmer Have One More Victim?". The Milwaukee Channel. February 1, 2007. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2007.
  31. "Did Dahmer Have One More Victim? Witnesses Say They Saw Dahmer In Mall Where Adam Walsh Disappeared". ABC News The Milwaukee Channel.com. February 1, 2007. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved December 17, 2008.
  32. John Holland (December 17, 2008). "Adam Walsh case is closed after 27 years". Los Angeles Times. Police simply took another look at 27 years of tips, psychic revelations, often-botched police work and a serial killer's chilling admissions and decided it was time. Time to ease the suffering of the Walshes and time to point the finger at the man Hollywood Police Chief Chad Wagner said had been the prime suspect all along: Toole. The problem was that being a prime suspect and being proved in a court of law that one is guilty of murder are two different things.
  33. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 309
  34. "'Adam' Again Draws Callers", Milwaukee Journal, pp. Life/Style 2, April 30, 1985
  35. "3 Children Found After Showing of 'Adam'", Pittsburgh Press, pp. A11, May 1, 1985, retrieved June 6, 2010
  36. "Girl Found In North Texas After Tip To National Center", The Victoria Advocate, p. 7F, May 2, 1985, retrieved April 30, 2014
  37. Walsh & Schindehette 1998, p. 310
  38. "Bizzy Bone; Music Videos, News, Photos, Tour Dates, Ringtones, and Lyrics". MTV. Retrieved August 9, 2016.
  39. "Mission and History" Archived October 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Retrieved November 4, 2012.
  40. "President Signs H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006". White House. 2006. Retrieved July 10, 2007. Fourth, the bill I sign today will help prevent child abuse by creating a National Child Abuse Registry, and requiring investigators to do background checks on adoptive and foster parents before they approve to take custody of a child. By giving child protective service professionals in all 50 states access to this critical information, we will improve their ability to investigate child abuse cases and help ensure that the vulnerable children are not put into situations of abuse or neglect.
  41. "Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act" (Rich Text Format). Retrieved December 17, 2008.
  42. "Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2016 (2016 – S. 2613)". GovTrack.us. Retrieved December 21, 2017.
  43. Waxman, Olivia B. "The U.S. Is Still Dealing With the Murder of Adam Walsh". TIME.com. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  44. Howell, James C. (July 29, 1997). Juvenile Justice and Youth Violence. SAGE Publications. ISBN 9781452249544.

Further reading
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