Adam Walsh Essay Example

and asked him if he had seen a boy with the same hat as him on.

The child told her he had and pointed to the west exit door. Reve was positive that Adam would not go out the west door. She then asked the toy department clerk said she had not seen Adam. Reve asked everyone she came across but they all said no. She then went back to the clerks to see if she could get her to call the police. The clerk said “Oh, well, he probably just wandered off. I'll bet he went looking for you. Well you know how kids are; maybe he went off with the rest of the kids.”(Walsh pg 58 paragraph1) No matter what anyone else said she kept insisting that her son did not wander off, and that something was wrong. All around, clerks kept waiting on people as if nothing had happened. She asked a clerk to page her son. After going to her car twice to see if Adam had gone there and looking for him on her own for two hours, someone finally called the police department.

“The police later interviewed a security guard from the store who said that on the day of Adam's disappearance, there had been four boys playing with the video game in the toy department.” (pg 60 paragraph 6)They started causing a ruckus. She separated them and sent two boys out the north entrance and two out the west entrance. If Adam had been put out the west entrance, he would have been disoriented because he only knew the north entrance. As that was found out everyone began the massive

search for Adam. By the end of the first week, 150,000 fliers had been printed and 50,000 of them distributed locally.

Adam's photograph was on the poster. The photograph chosen had just been taken the week before and showed a missing tooth. Sixteen days after Adam Walsh disappeared from that local department store; his body was positively identified through dental records and by a friend of the family. To date, no one has been indicted for the abduction and death of Adam Walsh.(taken from the Book Section, Tears of Rage, which appeared in the Reader's Digest, November 1997 edition) We will never know whether or not Adam would have survived on that July morning in 1981. This is also when the program Code Adam had just been put in place after his abduction. His father John Walsh is cofounder of the National Center for Missing Children. Two weeks passed before the Adams fate was learned. A fisherman discovered his severed head in a canal about 120 miles away near Vero Beach; his body never was found.

The police had a suspect in mind but the made multiple crucial mistakes. The lost the blood stained carpeting that came from Toole’s car which in act was their number one suspect. Due to that they could not do a DNA test to see if the blood was a match to Adam. They also lost the car; it took the FBI a week to get involved in the case. "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."(Tears of Rage). Ottis Toole was already in prison serving a sentence for an unrelated murder. He had confessed to killing Adam twice and taken it back also.

However this is what he said when he talked about the case “He said he coaxed the boy to his car after 15 minutes of conversation in the Sears parking lot. Toole said he had promised Adam candy and toys. When he got Adam in his Cadillac, Toole locked the windows and doors, then drove 10 minutes on Hollywood Blvd to the turnpike entrance and got on heading north toward Jacksonville. Toole said Adam was initially quiet but became restless and wanted to return to the store after they stopped at the toll booth. Toole continued driving, but Adam started yelling and Toole said he had to slap him several times because "the kid was getting on my nerves." Toole said he pulled off the turnpike at a service plaza and choked the boy to knock him out.

Toole said he drove an hour looking for a place to kill the child. Toole was fearful because he felt the boy was smart and would have recognized Toole if he let him go. Toole said he found an area where he could pull his car off the turnpike and be protected by the cover of woods. He laid Adam on the ground and using a machete, he kept under the driver's seat of the Cadillac, and he chopped the boy's head off. Toole said it took four to five blows to sever the head and he had to use two hands. Toole said he buried the body

and placed Adam's head first on the front floorboard and then on the rear floorboard of the Cadillac.

Toole said he threw the head in a canal a short distance from where he left Adam's body, and then returned to Jacksonville. "Had the boy regained consciousness after Toole choked him?" investigators asked. "No," Toole said. Detectives thought it was quite reasonable to assume that Adam was probably already dead in the car, long before he and Toole even reached the woods. Toole told detectives he took the boy because he wanted to raise him as his own son. He said he had lied about Henry Lucas' involvement to "get even with his ass." Lucas had recently admitted to murdering Toole's favorite niece, 15-year-old Becky Powell. Like Adam, Becky had been decapitated.” (web site amw.com, fugitives 2008)Detectives noted Toole's demeanor while talking about Adam. He was crying and remorseful. A much different Toole, than what other detectives had seen. In confessing other homicides Toole openly bragged about what he had done, relishing the grizzly details of mutilation, including in some cases, acts of cannibalism.

Detectives noted that Toole's description of the murder weapon and the number of times he used it to sever Adam's head was consistent with the Medical Examiner's findings. There was no mistaking that Toole knew details of Adam's murder that only the killer would know.(Web site amw.com, fugitives 2008)It took police 27 years to come to the conclusion that Ottis Toole committed the crime. But by then he had died due to sick from cirrhosis of the liver and AIDS and had been ailing for many years. At Adam's funeral, the family established the

Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children. It has since become a national clearing house for families and law enforcement officers dealing with reports of missing children.

The Walshes also lobbied for stronger laws before Congress and at the White House. John Walsh's television show, "America's Most Wanted," is credited with helping to solve hundreds of crimes."We can now move forward knowing positively who killed our little boy," John Walsh said. "I believe wherever Toole is, he's paying and being held accountable for his actions."The lack of new evidence and the inability of Toole to defend himself won't quiet critics who said police got it wrong, Wagner said."If you're looking for that magic wand, that one piece of evidence, it's not there," Wagner said. (Website LAtimes.com). Now everyone is relieved and happy know what they know. So it is put to rest thanks to the Hollywood police men