Murder of Adam Walsh
In the summer of 1981, Walsh was a partner in a hotel management company in Hollywood, Florida. He and his wife, Revé, had a six-year-old son, Adam. On July 27, 1981, Adam was abducted from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall, across from the Hollywood Police station. Revé had dropped Adam off in the Sears toy department while she looked for a lamp. When she returned about 7 minutes later, Adam was missing. Police records in Adam's case released in 1996 show that a 17-year-old security guard asked four boys to leave the department store. Adam is believed to have been one of them. Sixteen days after the abduction, his severed head was found in a drainage canal more than 120 miles away from home. His other remains were never recovered.
Many names had been mentioned in connection to the case in the nearly three decades since the murder, but that of serial killer Ottis Toole most persistently nagged detectives. John Walsh had long said he believed that Toole, a drifter, was responsible for the crime, saying investigators found a pair of green shorts and a sandal similar to what Adam was wearing at Toole's home in Jacksonville, Florida. In January 2007, deceased serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer fell under suspicion for the murder of Adam. This speculation was discounted by Walsh in an America's Most Wanted statement on February 6, 2007.
The prime suspect in Adam's abduction and murder, Toole, who died in prison in 1996 while serving a life sentence for other crimes, was officially identified as the killer on December 16, 2008 by the Hollywood Police Department, and the case was considered closed. Over the years, Toole had twice confessed to the killing, but both times he later recanted his admissions. In addition to the Walsh murder, Toole had claimed responsibility for hundreds of other murders, but police determined that most of these confessions were lies. John Walsh was told by Toole's niece that her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he killed Adam.
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“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobbler’s trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That a lover forsaken
A new love may get;
But a neck, when once broken,
Can never be set:
And, that he could die
Whenever he would;
But, that he could live
But as long as he could;”
—William Walsh (1663–1708)