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Re: Killer of Jon Walsh's son ID'd.
Case Closed: Adam Walsh Killer to Be ID'd
Officials in Florida are Expected to Name the Killer of John Walsh's Son
By PIERRE THOMAS and SCOTT MICHELS
Dec. 16, 2008—
Florida police are expected to announce today that they are ready to close the 1981 abduction and murder investigation of Adam Walsh, one of the country's most famous cold cases, law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
The 6-year-old son of "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh went missing from a Hollywood, Fla., mall more than 27 years ago. His head was discovered two weeks later, though his body was never found.
Hollywood police said they would hold a news conference on the case this afternoon. Police sources did not immediately identify the suspected killer, but Walsh has long said that be believes Ottis Toole, a drifter who died in prison in 1996, killed his son.
The murder tranformed Walsh's life, turning him from a middle-class hotel marketing executive into one of country's best known advocates for missing children.
"We were absolutely devastated, heartbroken," he told Larry King on the 25th anniversary of the incident. "We had nothing in common but the anger and the grief. And [Walsh's wife, Reve] said, 'You know, we're destroying ourselves. This is not something that Adam would want. We've forgotten who the real victim is.'"
Walsh, who will turn 63 later this month, started the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center and co-founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. His television show, "America's Most Wanted," debuted in 1988.
Since 1984, the center has assisted law enforcement with more than 148,160 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 132,300 children.
"America's Most Wanted" went on to become one of the country's longest-running television shows. It began profiling missing persons, especially children, in 1991. It was briefly canceled in 1996, but reappeared after a public outcry. The show says its reports have led to the capture of more than 1,000 fugitives.
In 2006, President Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which, among other things, created more stringent requirements for sex offender registration.
On July 27, 1981, Reve Walsh went with her son to the Sears department store in the Hollywood mall. She left him in the toy department playing video games. When she returned a few minutes later, he was gone. They never saw each other again.
Police have said Adam Walsh may have been among a group of boys who were kicked out of the store by a security guard. His head was discovered in a canal near Vero Beach about two weeks later.
The police, without the benefit of the missing children search tools that Walsh would later champion and modern tracking systems, were overwhelmed. "Leads are coming in and nobody's looking at them. And people are throwing them around. And I, I saw one on a napkin, I saw one here, I said, you know, there's no organization," Joe Matthews, a Miami Beach homicide detective, told ABC's Primetime in 2007.
The case has never been solved, but since then, the names of numerous possible suspects have been advanced, including Jeffrey Dahmer.
Toole, a serial killer who was in prison for an unrelated murder, twice admitted to killing Adam, but recanted both times. Toole, the partner of notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, reportedly confessed to committing dozens of murders, though many of those claims later proved to be false.
Police were unable to find Walsh's body in the area where Toole said it was located. During his first confession, in 1983, Toole reportedly said he used a machete to cut off Adam's head.
Police recovered a bloody piece of carpeting from Toole's car, but with no sophistated DNA testing available at the time, police could never determine if it contained Adam Walsh's blood. The carpeting later disappeared.
ABC News' Jason Ryan and Geoff Martz contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6471791&page=1
Re: Killer of Jon Walsh's son ID'd.
Police: '81 killing of Adam Walsh solved
Boy's father later gained fame as the host of 'America's Most Wanted'
The Associated Press
updated 4:49 p.m. ET, Tues., Dec. 16, 2008
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - A serial killer who died more than a decade ago is the person who decapitated the 6-year-old son of "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh in 1981, Florida police said Tuesday.
The announcement brought to a close a case that has haunted the Walsh family for more than two decades, launched the television show about the nation's most notorious criminals and inspired changes in how authorities search for missing children.
"Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" John Walsh said at Tuesday's news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."
Walsh's wife, Reve, at one point placed a small photo of their son on the podium.
Suspect made deathbed confession
The suspect, Ottis Toole, had twice confessed to killing the child, but later recanted. He claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders, but police determined most of the confessions were lies. Toole's niece told the boy's father, John Walsh, her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he killed Adam.
Police said Toole was long the prime suspect in the case and that they had conclusively linked him the killing. They declined to be specific about their evidence and noted they had no DNA proof of the crime, but said an extensive review of the case file pointed only to Toole, as John Wash long contended.
"Our agency has devoted an inordinate amount of time seeking leads to other potential perpetrators rather than emphasizing Ottis Toole as our primary suspect," said Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner. "Ottis Toole has continued to be our only real suspect."
Wagner acknowledged numerous missteps in the investigation and apologized to the Walshes.
"I have no doubt," John Walsh said. "I've never had any doubt."
Investigation long criticized by Walshes
Many names have been mentioned in connection to the case in the years since the killing, including serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but Toole's has persistently nagged detectives. John Walsh has long said he believed the drifter was responsible, saying investigators found at Toole's home in Jacksonville a pair of green shorts and a sandal similar to what Adam was wearing.
The Walshes long ago derided the investigation as botched. Still, he praised the Hollywood police department for closing the case.
"This is not to look back and point fingers, but it is to let it rest," he said.
Adam Walsh went missing from a Hollywood mall on July 27, 1981. Fishermen discovered his severed head in a canal 120 miles away two weeks later. The rest of his body was never found.
Authorities made a series of crucial errors, losing the bloodstained carpeting in Toole's car — preventing DNA testing — and the car itself. It was a week after the boy's disappearance before the FBI got involved.
"So many mistakes were made," John Walsh said in 1997, upon the release of his book "Tears of Rage," which harshly criticized the Hollywood Police Department's work on the case. "It was shocking, inexcusable and heartbreaking."
Major advances in searching for missing children
For all that went wrong in the probe, the case contributed to massive advances in police searches for missing youngsters and a notable shift in the view parents and children hold of the world.
Adam's death, and his father's subsequent activism on his behalf, helped put faces on milk cartons, shopping bags and mailbox fliers, started fingerprinting programs and increased security at schools and stores. It spurred the creation of missing persons units at every large police department.
It also prompted national legislation to create a national center, database and toll-free line devoted to missing children, and led to the start of "America's Most Wanted," which brought those cases into millions of homes.
What it also did, said Mount Holyoke College sociologist and criminologist Richard Moran, is make children and adults alike exponentially more afraid.
"He ended up really producing a generation of cautious and afraid kids who view all adults and strangers as a threat to them and it made parents extremely paranoid about the safety of their children," Moran said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Re: Killer of Jon Walsh's son ID'd.
I was stunned to learn this case is finally closed.
Probably, and sadly, the most legendary child murder, at least in the U.S.
It's all very sad, on one end the parents are happy to have closure, and on the other end Adam would've been in his 30's right now. It's still just very sad.
Re: Killer of Jon Walsh's son ID'd.
If I'm reading this correctly, there is still NO real evidence linking Toole to this crime. Its still being based on the confessions of a compulsive liar. There was actually a better case for Dahmer being the killer than Toole, yet they latched on to Toole because of the confessions.
I think what they are doing is closing the case simply for the sake of closure for the Walsh family and not on any sort of real evidence in this crime.
As long as this helps the Walsh family come to terms with the tragedy, there's nothing wrong with it. In my opinion, they will never know who really killed him.
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