On this date, July 27, 1981,
6-year-old Adam Walsh was was abducted from a Sears department store at
the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981, and later found
murdered and decapitated.
We, the
comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, will make him one of The
82 murdered children of Unit 1012, where we will not forget him. Let us
remember how he lived and not how he died. We will always support his family
members, especially his father, who is a crime victim advocate.
We will
post information about him from Wikipedia.
Photo of Adam John Walsh, late son of America's
Most Wanted host John Walsh.
|
Born
|
November
14, 1974
Hollywood, Florida, United States |
Died
|
July
27, 1981 (aged 6)
Hollywood, Florida, United States |
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, and later found
murdered and decapitated. Walsh's death earned national publicity. His story
was made into the 1983 television film Adam,
seen by 38 million people in its original airing. Walsh's father, John Walsh, became an advocate for
victims of violent crimes and the host of the television program America's Most Wanted.
Convicted serial killer Ottis Toole
confessed to the boy's murder but was never convicted for this specific crime
due to loss of evidence and a recanted confession. Toole died of liver failure
on September 15, 1996. Although no new evidence has come forth, on December 16,
2008, police announced that the Walsh case was now closed as they were
satisfied that Toole was the murderer.
Case history
Kidnapping and murder
Revé, Adam Walsh's mother, took Adam
shopping with her in a Hollywood, Florida Sears department store on July 27,
1981. She said that she stopped to check out lamps a few aisles away and left
Adam at a kiosk with Atari 2600 video games on display. Shortly afterwards, 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 the boys leave the store. The
security guard asked the older boys if their parents were in the store, and the
boys said that they were not. It was later conjectured by Adam's parents that
he was too shy to speak to the security officer, who presumed that he was in
the company of the other boys, and put him out the same door. Based upon Revé's
claim that Adam was in the store with her, it was conjectured that Adam was
then left alone near an exit of Sears that was unfamiliar to him.
Adam's severed head was found by two
fishermen in a Vero Beach, Florida, canal on August 10, 1981. The rest of his
body was not recovered. The coroner ruled that the cause of Adam's death was
asphyxiation and that the decapitation had occurred later, perhaps to render
his remains unidentifiable or the cause of his death indeterminable.
Investigation
John Walsh himself was considered by
authorities as a prime suspect as the police investigation started to become
exhausted. After about a week, he was later absolved of any foul play following
a highly emotional press statement that was televised nationally.
Police eventually concluded that Adam
was abducted by a drifter named Ottis Toole near the front exterior of the
Sears store that afternoon, after being asked to leave by a store clerk. Toole
lured Adam into his 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 Walsh in the face, but as this just made the situation worse,
he then "walloped him unconscious" and proceeded to choke him to
death. He drove to a deserted service road and decapitated Walsh with a
machete. Toole later claimed to have disposed of Adam's body by incinerating it
in an old refrigerator when he returned to Jacksonville. He drove around with
the severed head of Walsh in his car for a few days until remembering it was in
there, and then threw it into a canal. He claimed that he wanted to make Walsh
his adopted son, but given the close relationship the boy had with loving
parents, this was not very feasible. The police investigation of Walsh's
abduction was alleged to be unsatisfactory, and they lost the bloodstained
carpet from Toole's Cadillac, the machete used to decapitate Walsh, and
eventually, the car itself. In any case, DNA testing was in a rudimentary state
in the early 1980s and it was not possible then to determine the source of the
blood found in the Cadillac.
Toole repeatedly confessed and then
retracted accounts of his involvement. Toole, allegedly a confidante of
convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, was never charged in the Walsh
case, even though he provided seemingly accurate descriptions as to how he
committed the crime. Several witnesses also place Toole in the Hollywood area
in the days leading up to Walsh's disappearance. Police investigated Toole for
the Walsh murder but lost important evidence in the case, including the
bloodstained carpet from Toole's Cadillac. In September 1996, Toole died in
prison, aged 49, of cirrhosis of the liver while serving a life sentence for
other crimes. Afterwards, Toole's niece told John Walsh that her uncle made a
deathbed confession to the murder of Adam. Toole's confession was viewed as
reliable, since he and Henry Lucas confessed to or implicated themselves in
more than 200 different homicides, most of which they accurately described with
details only the culprit would know.
In 1997, Hollywood Police Chief Rick
Stone conducted an exhaustive review of the Adam Walsh case after the release
of John Walsh'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 was
decades old at the time of Chief Stone's review, he provided an analysis of the
evidence, including reviewing taped interrogations of Ottis Toole by Hollywood
Police Detective Mark Smith. Stone says his review found evidence to prove
"beyond a reasonable doubt" that Toole murdered Adam Walsh. Both
Toole and his close friend, convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, were
notorious, Stone noted, for confessing to crimes they committed and recanting.
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 the
Walsh murder. Dahmer was living in Miami Beach at the time Adam was murdered,
and two eyewitnesses placed Dahmer at the shopping mall on the day Adam was
abducted. One of the witnesses claimed to have seen a strange man walking into
the Sears toy department where Adam was abducted. 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 Dahmer worked had a blue van at the time.
Dahmer 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 Walsh in the early 1990s, Dahmer repeatedly denied
involvement in the crime, 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?" After this rumor surfaced, John Walsh stated that he had
"seen no evidence" linking his son's kidnapping and murder to Dahmer.
On December 16, 2008, the Hollywood,
Florida, Police Chief Chad Wagner, a friend of John Walsh, announced, with John
Walsh present, that the case was now closed. An external review of the case had
been conducted and police announced that they were satisfied that Ottis Toole
was the murderer.
Legacy
Adam's kidnapping and murder prompted
John Walsh to become an advocate for victims' rights. Adam Walsh's murder was
among those that helped to spur the formation of the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). As a result of his advocacy, he was
approached to host the television program America's Most Wanted.
The Code Adam
program for helping lost children in department stores is named in Walsh'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, 2006. The signing ceremony took place on the South Lawn of the White
House, attended by John and Revé Walsh. The bill institutes a national database
of convicted child molesters, and increases penalties for sexual and violent
offenses against children. It also creates a RICO cause of
action for child predators and those who conspire with them.
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