Adam Walsh case

[freshwater]

Does anyone know if Unsolved Mysteries ever did a segment on the Adam Walsh murder? I don't remember one. Perhaps they felt that covering it would have been "stepping on toes"?

[Thinman]

No, they never did. It would have been a good one to have, though.

[Kane]

Originally Posted by freshwater

Does anyone know if Unsolved Mysteries ever did a segment on the Adam Walsh murder? I don't remember one. Perhaps they felt that covering it would have been "stepping on toes"?

No. I speculate that it had something to do with the fact that Adam's father, John Walsh, is the host of the "rival" series America's Most Wanted. For this reason, the idea of UM profiling the Walsh case may have been deemed too controversial to be brought into fruition. But again, that's just speculation.

[The Third Man]

I kind of wish it was. That is a case that could have really benefited from an Unsolved Mysteries-style re-enactment.

I've recently done some research on the case. It is all but impossible to uncover some details of the case--for example, the layout of the Hollywood Mall, what the entrance Adam Walsh was abducted from looked like, what the 10-year-old boy who was with Adam when he was sent out of the store looked like--that might help jog old memories.

The beauty of Unsolved Mysteries is that it's a show that is shot as realistically as possible, which works for those people who remember events visually. AMW works in a different way--it puts a lot of text on the screen, so it works better for people who remember things textually. (I've always wondered whether that's why Unsolved Mysteries appealed to women more.) If AMW's text-based approach didn't work, maybe the UM approach might.

[freshwater]

There has been recent speculation in my hometown (Milwaukee) as to whether Jeffrey Dahmer could have been the perpetrator. They laid out the possible case against him, and it was interesting, but then again - I believe it was "sweeps week" that week.

Apparently, a detective interviewed him about it, and he denied it, but said he wouldn't admit it even if he did do it, since "Florida has the death penalty".

It seems to me that the cops investigating the Walsh case really screwed it up royally, losing key pieces of evidence. I bet that case would have been solved by now through DNA if they hadn't lost this evidence. I always wonder how the police can lose/not locate so much of the evidence they put into storage. Sometimes, their sloppiness amazes me.

I'm proud to say that I'm a man, and I love Unsolved Mysteries!

[Kane]

Originally Posted by freshwater

It seems to me that the cops investigating the Walsh case really screwed it up royally, losing key pieces of evidence. I bet that case would have been solved by now through DNA if they hadn't lost this evidence. I always wonder how the police can lose/not locate so much of the evidence they put into storage. Sometimes, their sloppiness amazes me.

It's no secret that the Adam Walsh case was mishandled, and I mean very badly. In his 1997 book Tears of Rage, John Walsh discusses the topic in great detail.

[The Third Man]

Originally Posted by Kane

It's no secret that the Adam Walsh case was mishandled, and I mean very badly. In his 1997 book Tears of Rage, John Walsh discusses the topic in great detail.

I don't want to go into detail here, but I've read Tears of Rage myself and I'm not 100% sure just what John Walsh wanted the Hollywood cops to have done that they didn't do. Walsh himself says that he was all but running the investigation during the early days, so if he'd wanted something done he certainly could have ordered it.

More to the point, the Hollywood police had several good suspects in sight before John Walsh for some reason decided that Ottis Toole, who confessed to everything except the Lindburgh kidnapping, had to be telling the truth when he confessed to the murder. Points of reference: Toole confessed to prison authorities the day after the 1983 TV movie about the case was aired. He intially claimed to have done it with his sidekick Henry Lee Lucas, who was in Maryland at the time of the murder and in fact was arrested there the very next day....later Toole "remembered" that he had committed the murder alone. Toole couldn't remember what Adam was wearing, what color his hair was, or any other details of the crime--yet somehow observers came away from Toole believing that he knew things about the crime "only cops knew." Soon enough, though, it was revealed that a Florida state policeman happened to be writing a book about Toole, with his assistance, and appeared to be feeding him info about the case. Toole's story also changed dramatically over time. When it was revealed publicly that Adam was decapitated with a machete, Toole "remembered" that he had used a machete.

As early as 1984 Toole was completely dismissed in the case. Yet despite zero evidence in his favor (the only "eyewitnesses" who identified Toole came forward more than fifteen years after the murder), plenty of evidence against him (early witnesses identified a blue van and an abductor with curly blond hair and a mustache; Toole drove an old Cadillac and had brown hair and no mustache), and Toole's ever-changing stories, John Walsh has consistently identified him as the murderer. I don't want to assign Walsh blame here, but it seems to me that it's wrong for him to assign blame to the Hollywood cops when Walsh himself wanted to lead the investigation down a very dead end.

It seems to me that Walsh's main beef against the Hollywood PD was that they didn't find a suspect. It's sad, but it happens, that sometimes people through accident or design just get away with crimes. I've never seen evidence that this case was particularly bungled.

[tygre]

Originally Posted by freshwater

There has been recent speculation in my hometown (Milwaukee) as to whether Jeffrey Dahmer could have been the perpetrator. They laid out the possible case against him, and it was interesting, but then again - I believe it was "sweeps week" that week.

It'd sure go completely against type for Dahmer to have killed Adam Walsh. Dahmer prefered adolescent to young adult males. His youngest victim was 14. It is very unusual to switch preferences like this.


I still can't go for Ottis Toole as the murderer. Here we have a scuzzy looking, bad-smelling, evil looking guy....and Adam just walks off with him? No. Lucas and Toole probably only killed a handful of people, at most, and I doubt Adam was among them.

I have read some interesting speculation about the Walsh case, including details about why the Walsh lawsuit against Sears was dropped (one site says that there was video evidence that Adam was alone in the store for an hour) that make me think, more and more, it was someone who knew him and possibly had a vendetta against his family. Odd, but stranger things have happened.

[Thinman]

I came away from Tears of Rage believing that Ottis Toole probably killed Adam Walsh.

[crystaldawn]

Well I read Tears of Rage a few years ago. I remember it being a good book but don't remember a lot of the details of Adam's actual abduction other than I believe he and his mother were at a Sears store when it happened. Someone brought up a good point that as scary as Otis Toole looked I can't envision him being able to persuade Adam to leave voluntarily with him. Does anyone remember if there were any witnesses to the actual abduction? Did Adam go willingly with the murderer or was he possibly forcibly taken like Michaela Garecht?

[Kane]

Originally Posted by crystaldawn

Does anyone remember if there were any witnesses to the actual abduction?

Did Adam go willingly with the murderer or was he possibly forcibly taken like Michaela Garecht?[/QUOTE]

If anything, there have been eyewitness accounts of Adam (or a boy matching Adam's description) entering a car at the Sears parking lot. It's possible that the killer took Adam by force without making it appear that way, but it seems doubtful that we'll ever know the true nature of the abduction.

There was a woman who recalled seeing a man in Sears, and that the man in question was in the same area of the store where Adam and other kids were. Her description of the man was consistent with the general description of Ottis Toole, including a gap in the front teeth. She is mentioned in Tears of Rage. John Walsh said the woman's name was Mary, but he chose not to disclose her full name, and understandably so.

[brando316]

This was the first missing child's case I ever heard of. It happened on my tenth birthday. This case was on America's Most Wanted in 1996 in what was supposed to be the last episode of AMW before it was renewed.

I believe it probably was Otis Toole who did it however I do believe it is very possible he couldn't remember a lot of the details, and as someone else has said, he could have been fed some details on the case from cops hoping to get him on it. The reason I believe it most likely was him was because I also read John Walsh's book and I could buy into his theory as to why it could have been Otis Toole. But again who knows? Anything is possible.

[Arnold_OldSchool]

Doesn't Walsh state in Tears of Rage that he believes his wife's "trashy" attire the day Adam was taken led to police not taking her too seriously?