Today marks a very grim anniversary for the City of Hollywood, its residents and its beleaguered Police Dept. for today is the 40th anniversary of six-year old Adam Walsh's abduction at the then-Sear's Dept. Store's Toy Dept., at the Sear's located across the street from the Hollywood Police Dept., in what is now the Target store.
It was, simply put, a crime that shocked and horrified the entire nation.
Newspaper stories regarding that tragedy that may fill in the blanks for those of you who either never knew the germane facts, or, who may've lost sight along the way of what did and did not happen investigation-wise in Hollywood 40 years ago.
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New York Times
TV: 'ADAM,' MOVIE ON MISSING BOY
By John J. O'Connor
October 10, 1983, Section C, Page 18
TWO years ago, on July 27, Reve Walsh went to a department store in Hollywood, Fla., with her 6-year-old son. Warning young Adam not to wander, she left him in the toy department as she went to inquire about buying a lamp in another area, some 150 feet away. She returned in less than eight minutes and found the boy gone. He had been kidnapped in front of a good many customers and employees of the store.
Tonight's television movie on NBC at 9, ''Adam,'' uses this particular case to dramatize the nationwide problem of missing children. According to a nonprofit organization called Find the Children, a Federal Government agency estimates that 1.8 million children will be reported missing this year. About 50,000 will never be seen by their families again. Linda Otto, producer of this film, became interested in the subject while doing a segment for the ABC News magazine ''20/20.'' Her concern is evident. Miss Otto is now the president of Find the Children. And the executive producers, Alan Landsburg and Carol L. Fleisher, are among the organization's directors.
''Adam'' has a preface explaining that it is a true story and, for a change in the docudrama form, names have not been changed. Allan Leicht's script and Michael Tuchner's direction are generally straightforward. There is no need for extraneous padding. The subject itself has enormous emotional clout. However, the producers did take out added insurance in the casting of the two key and dominant roles, those of the parents John and Reve Walsh. They are played powerfully and with scrupulous honesty by Daniel J. Travanti, whose career has deservedly blossomed with the TV series ''Hill Street Blues,'' and JoBeth Williams, whose outstanding credits range from ''A Couple of White Chicks Sittin' Around Talkin' '' on the stage, and ''Poltergeist'' and ''The Big Chill'' on film.
The first half of ''Adam'' focuses on the panic and growing despair of the parents as they discover their helplessness in dealing with authorities outside their own police precinct. State and national agencies do not want the added burden of looking for missing kids. They want the problem kept at narrow local levels. Much of the film's fury is directed at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. The latter, at one point, agrees to go hunting for a missing car but will not get involved in Adam's case until a ransom note or some other concrete proof of a kidnapping is produced. John Walsh is understandably bitter and angry.
At the same time, the tragedy is putting severe strains on the Walshes' marriage. While they seem to see and hear their missing son everywhere, the strongest feeling they have left in their relationship is grief and that isn't enough. It is only when they find their garage filled with stacks of sympathetic mail from throughout the country that things begin changing for the couple. They are urged by others - ordinary citizens and government officials - to use the story of Adam to publicize the shocking dimensions of the problem. He begins appearing on TV talk shows. One appearance on the Phil Donahue generates 40,000 letters and calls to various authorities.
Mrs. Walsh establishes the Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children in Broward County, Fla. (It is now called the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center.) Mr. Walsh testifies several times in Washington and is instrumental in getting the Missing Children Act passed in October of 1982. (He witnessed President Reagan's signing of the bill.) His efforts also produce a change in F.B.I. rules that allows the agency to get involved in child-abduction cases under less rigid circumstances.
These are advances of some substance, but there is no happy ending attached to ''Adam.'' The production closes with pictures of children who are still missing. As the Adam Walsh Center observes, the fight continues, ''a fight to change laws and policies, and to teach children and parents of the need to protect themselves.'' Helped immeasurably by the fine performances of Miss Williams and Mr. Travanti, ''Adam'' scores its points quite forcefully.
TV: 'ADAM,' MOVIE ON MISSING BOY
By John J. O'Connor
October 10, 1983, Section C, Page 18
TWO years ago, on July 27, Reve Walsh went to a department store in Hollywood, Fla., with her 6-year-old son. Warning young Adam not to wander, she left him in the toy department as she went to inquire about buying a lamp in another area, some 150 feet away. She returned in less than eight minutes and found the boy gone. He had been kidnapped in front of a good many customers and employees of the store.
Tonight's television movie on NBC at 9, ''Adam,'' uses this particular case to dramatize the nationwide problem of missing children. According to a nonprofit organization called Find the Children, a Federal Government agency estimates that 1.8 million children will be reported missing this year. About 50,000 will never be seen by their families again. Linda Otto, producer of this film, became interested in the subject while doing a segment for the ABC News magazine ''20/20.'' Her concern is evident. Miss Otto is now the president of Find the Children. And the executive producers, Alan Landsburg and Carol L. Fleisher, are among the organization's directors.
''Adam'' has a preface explaining that it is a true story and, for a change in the docudrama form, names have not been changed. Allan Leicht's script and Michael Tuchner's direction are generally straightforward. There is no need for extraneous padding. The subject itself has enormous emotional clout. However, the producers did take out added insurance in the casting of the two key and dominant roles, those of the parents John and Reve Walsh. They are played powerfully and with scrupulous honesty by Daniel J. Travanti, whose career has deservedly blossomed with the TV series ''Hill Street Blues,'' and JoBeth Williams, whose outstanding credits range from ''A Couple of White Chicks Sittin' Around Talkin' '' on the stage, and ''Poltergeist'' and ''The Big Chill'' on film.
The first half of ''Adam'' focuses on the panic and growing despair of the parents as they discover their helplessness in dealing with authorities outside their own police precinct. State and national agencies do not want the added burden of looking for missing kids. They want the problem kept at narrow local levels. Much of the film's fury is directed at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. The latter, at one point, agrees to go hunting for a missing car but will not get involved in Adam's case until a ransom note or some other concrete proof of a kidnapping is produced. John Walsh is understandably bitter and angry.
At the same time, the tragedy is putting severe strains on the Walshes' marriage. While they seem to see and hear their missing son everywhere, the strongest feeling they have left in their relationship is grief and that isn't enough. It is only when they find their garage filled with stacks of sympathetic mail from throughout the country that things begin changing for the couple. They are urged by others - ordinary citizens and government officials - to use the story of Adam to publicize the shocking dimensions of the problem. He begins appearing on TV talk shows. One appearance on the Phil Donahue generates 40,000 letters and calls to various authorities.
Mrs. Walsh establishes the Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children in Broward County, Fla. (It is now called the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center.) Mr. Walsh testifies several times in Washington and is instrumental in getting the Missing Children Act passed in October of 1982. (He witnessed President Reagan's signing of the bill.) His efforts also produce a change in F.B.I. rules that allows the agency to get involved in child-abduction cases under less rigid circumstances.
These are advances of some substance, but there is no happy ending attached to ''Adam.'' The production closes with pictures of children who are still missing. As the Adam Walsh Center observes, the fight continues, ''a fight to change laws and policies, and to teach children and parents of the need to protect themselves.'' Helped immeasurably by the fine performances of Miss Williams and Mr. Travanti, ''Adam'' scores its points quite forcefully.
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FYI: The 1986 film that served as a follow-up to 1983's "Adam," "Adam: His Song Continues" is available now on Netflix with Daniel J. Travanti and JoBeth Williams reprising their roles as John and Reve Walsh fighting to raise national awareness of the problem of missing children. Co-stars Richard Masur. https://www.netflix.com/title/
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Miami Herald
HOLLYWOOD EX-CHIEF MARTIN DIES
AJOWA IFATEYO Herald Staff Writer
February 7, 1997
Sam Martin, Hollywood police chief during some of the department's most tumultuous years, died Tuesday of a heart attack. He was 71.
Although his 11-year tenure as chief was marked by rapid modernization and a raising of educational standards on the force, it was marred by a still-unsolved crime that shocked and horrified the nation: the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh.
``He professionalized the Hollywood Police Department,'' said Vice Mayor Cathy Anderson. ``When Sam came in, Hollywood was sort of like an old-fashioned Southern city with an old-fashioned police department. He and [Assistant Chief] LeRoy Hessler changed that.''
But it was Martin's handling of the Walsh case that many will remember. Martin was chief when 6-year-old Adam was kidnapped from the Sears store across the street from the Hollywood police station on July 27, 1981. The disappearance triggered one of the most frantic, extensive -- and highly publicized -- searches in the history of Florida.
The boy's decapitated body was found a month later in a canal hundreds of miles to the north.
Despite a massive mobilization of police officers adding up to thousands of investigative hours, the crime was not solved.
As head of the department responsible for the investigation, Martin took much of the heat.
Years later, Martin and Hessler would call a late-night press conference to announce that they had their man: Ottis Toole, a lifelong criminal who liked to brag about his crimes.
Toole confessed, then recanted, seemingly taunting police. They could never pin the crime on him.
Former colleagues at Hollywood City Hall remember Martin as a man with thinning silver hair and ruddy cheeks who brought the police department into the modern era.
Hessler, his former assistant, said Martin applied for and received federal funds that enabled him to institute a joint dispatch system for Hollywood, Hallandale, and Dania. Before that each city handled its own calls, and the new system allowed for faster response. He also required ranking officers to have bachelor degrees to receive promotions.
``That was unheard of in the '70s, absolutely unheard of,'' said Hessler, now retired. ``It was a model for many of the other municipalities in Broward County and the surrounding area.''
When Martin became chief, the department was located in a small building next to City Hall.
``He was instrumental in getting the police station as they know it now at Hollywood Boulevard,'' Hessler said. ``He oversaw the design and saw to that it got built.''
Besides the Walsh case, the department gained notoriety during Martin's tenure when it was revealed that officers were moonlighting as security officers for a Saudi ``sheik'' living at the Diplomat Hotel. The ``sheik'' became an instant celebrity by donating thousands of dollars to a variety of charities and cities. But he was forced to leave town in a hurry after his checks began to bounce.
Martin was born in Harrisburg, Ill., in 1925. He moved to Hollywood in 1951 after a stint in the Navy. He and his wife, Phyllis, bought a small hotel on Hollywood beach, Twin Towers Ocean Drive.
Martin's first job with the department was as a part-time beach patrol officer in 1955, said his daughter Linda Boyd, co-owner of Boyd Funeral Home. When he became a full-time officer the Martins sold the hotel. He made captain in charge of detectives in 1972 and chief in 1974.
Martin retired to Sebring in 1986, spending his time fishing and golfing.
Phyllis Martin died last year in Sebring.
The former chief, who often traveled from his Sebring home to Hollywood for medical attention, died at Memorial Regional Hospital.
He is survived by daughter Linda Boyd, of Pembroke Pines, brother Tom Martin, of Murphysboro, Ill.; one grandson and two great-grandchildren.
Visitation is 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, with a 7 p.m. Masonic service and a 7:30 p.m. funeral service, at Boyd's Funeral Home, Hollywood Boulevard Chapel, 6400 Hollywood Blvd.
HOLLYWOOD EX-CHIEF MARTIN DIES
AJOWA IFATEYO Herald Staff Writer
February 7, 1997
Sam Martin, Hollywood police chief during some of the department's most tumultuous years, died Tuesday of a heart attack. He was 71.
Although his 11-year tenure as chief was marked by rapid modernization and a raising of educational standards on the force, it was marred by a still-unsolved crime that shocked and horrified the nation: the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh.
``He professionalized the Hollywood Police Department,'' said Vice Mayor Cathy Anderson. ``When Sam came in, Hollywood was sort of like an old-fashioned Southern city with an old-fashioned police department. He and [Assistant Chief] LeRoy Hessler changed that.''
But it was Martin's handling of the Walsh case that many will remember. Martin was chief when 6-year-old Adam was kidnapped from the Sears store across the street from the Hollywood police station on July 27, 1981. The disappearance triggered one of the most frantic, extensive -- and highly publicized -- searches in the history of Florida.
The boy's decapitated body was found a month later in a canal hundreds of miles to the north.
Despite a massive mobilization of police officers adding up to thousands of investigative hours, the crime was not solved.
As head of the department responsible for the investigation, Martin took much of the heat.
Years later, Martin and Hessler would call a late-night press conference to announce that they had their man: Ottis Toole, a lifelong criminal who liked to brag about his crimes.
Toole confessed, then recanted, seemingly taunting police. They could never pin the crime on him.
Former colleagues at Hollywood City Hall remember Martin as a man with thinning silver hair and ruddy cheeks who brought the police department into the modern era.
Hessler, his former assistant, said Martin applied for and received federal funds that enabled him to institute a joint dispatch system for Hollywood, Hallandale, and Dania. Before that each city handled its own calls, and the new system allowed for faster response. He also required ranking officers to have bachelor degrees to receive promotions.
``That was unheard of in the '70s, absolutely unheard of,'' said Hessler, now retired. ``It was a model for many of the other municipalities in Broward County and the surrounding area.''
When Martin became chief, the department was located in a small building next to City Hall.
``He was instrumental in getting the police station as they know it now at Hollywood Boulevard,'' Hessler said. ``He oversaw the design and saw to that it got built.''
Besides the Walsh case, the department gained notoriety during Martin's tenure when it was revealed that officers were moonlighting as security officers for a Saudi ``sheik'' living at the Diplomat Hotel. The ``sheik'' became an instant celebrity by donating thousands of dollars to a variety of charities and cities. But he was forced to leave town in a hurry after his checks began to bounce.
Martin was born in Harrisburg, Ill., in 1925. He moved to Hollywood in 1951 after a stint in the Navy. He and his wife, Phyllis, bought a small hotel on Hollywood beach, Twin Towers Ocean Drive.
Martin's first job with the department was as a part-time beach patrol officer in 1955, said his daughter Linda Boyd, co-owner of Boyd Funeral Home. When he became a full-time officer the Martins sold the hotel. He made captain in charge of detectives in 1972 and chief in 1974.
Martin retired to Sebring in 1986, spending his time fishing and golfing.
Phyllis Martin died last year in Sebring.
The former chief, who often traveled from his Sebring home to Hollywood for medical attention, died at Memorial Regional Hospital.
He is survived by daughter Linda Boyd, of Pembroke Pines, brother Tom Martin, of Murphysboro, Ill.; one grandson and two great-grandchildren.
Visitation is 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, with a 7 p.m. Masonic service and a 7:30 p.m. funeral service, at Boyd's Funeral Home, Hollywood Boulevard Chapel, 6400 Hollywood Blvd.
Miami Herald
JOHN WALSH SAYS POLICE BOTCHED ADAM'S CASE, BOOK CRITICIZES HOLLYWOOD PROBE
DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer
September 18, 1997
John Walsh -- the Hollywood businessman who turned the case of his kidnapped and murdered son Adam into a national crime-fighting crusade -- is now taking on the police department he had steadfastly defended for 14 years.
Mingled not-so-delicately in a vivid backdrop of detail and personal anecdotes of his family's struggle, Walsh's new book, Tears of Rage , accuses Hollywood investigators of misplaced pride and a series of errors that ruined any chance for a conviction.
Walsh's statements contradict his steadfast defense of the police since 1981, when Adam, 6, was abducted from the Sears at Hollywood Mall.
``I didn't have a choice at the time, I wanted justice,'' Walsh said in an interview Wednesday. ``But it's strange that I've caught more criminals that anyone in the history of this country, and I didn't know anything about all the screw-ups in my son's case.''
Even though Walsh tenaciously fought the 1995 release of the 10,000-page police file, he used that same information to make his case in the book.
``We believed [disclosure] would forever destroy whatever evidence could still be used to prove who killed our son,'' Walsh wrote. ``Instead, it showed what a disaster the investigation was right from the start. How filled with laziness, stupidity, and arrogance.
``It showed that there had never been a chance of convicting Adam's killer. Not from day one.''
Hollywood Police spokeswoman Stephanie Norris said neither she nor anyone at the department had read the book, officially released this week.
`His conjecture'
``Obviously, this is just his opinion of what that file shows -- his conjecture,'' she said.
Former Hollywood Chief Richard Witt, now police chief in Golden Beach, did not return telephone calls.
Even Walsh, now host of the nationally syndicated TV series America's Most Wanted and renowned as a friend of law enforcement, acknowledges the most perfect police work would not have saved his son, who was dead within hours of his July 27, 1981, kidnapping.
But Walsh outlines a pattern of disorganized police work: leads jotted on matchbook covers, bloody carpet samples lost by police, a confiscated Cadillac from a key suspect that was sold for scrap. He said Hollywood investigators wouldn't let go of their focus on family friends even after evidence pointed to an imprisoned psychopath named Ottis Toole, whom police interrogated after he confessed to Adam's murder. He later recanted.
He chided ``well-intentioned'' investigators for never asking for help from the FBI.
``This small-town police department didn't seem to want to ask for the help it so obviously needed,'' he wrote.
One anecdote centered on his wife Reve and the day she watched reams of paper spilling out of the National Crime Information Center computer onto the floor of the Hollywood Police Department. It was all left unread.
``That was the first time that I remember feeling that we didn't have a chance,'' Walsh wrote. ``I remember saying to myself, `Maybe they should just go ahead and bomb this building and turn all the criminals loose. Because we're definitely out in the woods on this one. We're so far out behind the eight ball here that it's nothing but a big sick joke.' ''
Parents' struggle
Beyond his feelings about the police, the book is the Walshes' story of their struggle to find Adam, cope with almost suicidal grief and then build their crusade on behalf of missing children.
With the help of People magazine writer Susan Shindehette, John and Reve Walsh describe their son, his love of Star Wars and baseball and the few mementos they've saved of his life.
``Little things he made in school,'' Reve wrote. ``I have a box he covered with construction paper, and there's a little flower handle on the top of it that he made . . . It's just a little jewelry box. Not anything that will last a lifetime.''
Walsh also explains the terror during the first days after Adam was missing, the huge search run out of their Hollywood home, the intrusive media and how they learned quickly to manipulate the media.
``We cursed the royal family for scheduling their wedding that week,'' he wrote. ``My only child, my little boy was missing. And the location of Charles and Di's honeymoon was bigger news.''
`Our baby's dead'
Walsh describes how they appeared on Good Morning America two weeks into the search, the phone call that came to their hotel room afterward, and the news he relayed as his wife and sister Jane walked in the door. ``I said: `Our baby's dead.' ''
``And Reve said: `I know.' ''
``I don't know how she knew,'' Walsh wrote. ``At first she turned from me and started putting her clothes into a suitcase. Like a robot.
``Then Jane left, and the door was closed. And as I watched, the spirit that made her who she was slowly collapsed into her . . . She was still my wife. But she went from being a girl to an old woman before my eyes.''
Within days after they returned home, one of Adam's friends came to the door asking if he could come out and play.
``So Reve explained to him as best she could that Adam had died, and that he wouldn't be here to play with anymore,'' Walsh wrote.
`` `Jeremy,' she said. `Would you like to have Adam's bicycle?'
``So Reve went back out to the garage and found Adam's bike. The police had dusted everything for prints, apparently with a fire hose . . . So she got some rags and cleaned the bike off and wheeled it out to the driveway. People always wonder about what Reve did with Adam's things. Well, now at least they'll know what she did with his bicycle.''
Affair acknowledged
The book addresses Reve's two-year affair with family friend Jimmy Campbell, who police for years suspected of killing Adam in an effort to break up the marriage. ``It would have made a great crime story, a great ending to a movie. But it wasn't true,'' Walsh wrote.
He lambastes the heartlessness of Washington, the initial indifference of the FBI, and the cruel intrusiveness of a cadre of psychics. ``Damn them.''
Walsh also criticized the media, suggesting reporters were more interested in digging up dirt on his family than information that would help find his son or his killer.
Walsh also writes about his flirtation with suicide and ``ridiculous'' accusations he was tied to the mob.
Most striking, however, are the emotions for Adam -- the terror they felt the day a young Sears security guard, not much more than a child herself, shuffled Adam unattended out the door and how it took Reve more than an hour to get anyone at Hollywood Mall to pay attention.
``She never went into another Sears store again,'' Walsh wrote.
Now, Reve is in demand to speak to thousands of people.
``When she's standing there talking to those people, sometimes she can hardly believe it,'' he wrote. ``Because what she's remembering is that day when no one would listen to her.''
JOHN WALSH SAYS POLICE BOTCHED ADAM'S CASE, BOOK CRITICIZES HOLLYWOOD PROBE
DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer
September 18, 1997
John Walsh -- the Hollywood businessman who turned the case of his kidnapped and murdered son Adam into a national crime-fighting crusade -- is now taking on the police department he had steadfastly defended for 14 years.
Mingled not-so-delicately in a vivid backdrop of detail and personal anecdotes of his family's struggle, Walsh's new book, Tears of Rage , accuses Hollywood investigators of misplaced pride and a series of errors that ruined any chance for a conviction.
Walsh's statements contradict his steadfast defense of the police since 1981, when Adam, 6, was abducted from the Sears at Hollywood Mall.
``I didn't have a choice at the time, I wanted justice,'' Walsh said in an interview Wednesday. ``But it's strange that I've caught more criminals that anyone in the history of this country, and I didn't know anything about all the screw-ups in my son's case.''
Even though Walsh tenaciously fought the 1995 release of the 10,000-page police file, he used that same information to make his case in the book.
``We believed [disclosure] would forever destroy whatever evidence could still be used to prove who killed our son,'' Walsh wrote. ``Instead, it showed what a disaster the investigation was right from the start. How filled with laziness, stupidity, and arrogance.
``It showed that there had never been a chance of convicting Adam's killer. Not from day one.''
Hollywood Police spokeswoman Stephanie Norris said neither she nor anyone at the department had read the book, officially released this week.
`His conjecture'
``Obviously, this is just his opinion of what that file shows -- his conjecture,'' she said.
Former Hollywood Chief Richard Witt, now police chief in Golden Beach, did not return telephone calls.
Even Walsh, now host of the nationally syndicated TV series America's Most Wanted and renowned as a friend of law enforcement, acknowledges the most perfect police work would not have saved his son, who was dead within hours of his July 27, 1981, kidnapping.
But Walsh outlines a pattern of disorganized police work: leads jotted on matchbook covers, bloody carpet samples lost by police, a confiscated Cadillac from a key suspect that was sold for scrap. He said Hollywood investigators wouldn't let go of their focus on family friends even after evidence pointed to an imprisoned psychopath named Ottis Toole, whom police interrogated after he confessed to Adam's murder. He later recanted.
He chided ``well-intentioned'' investigators for never asking for help from the FBI.
``This small-town police department didn't seem to want to ask for the help it so obviously needed,'' he wrote.
One anecdote centered on his wife Reve and the day she watched reams of paper spilling out of the National Crime Information Center computer onto the floor of the Hollywood Police Department. It was all left unread.
``That was the first time that I remember feeling that we didn't have a chance,'' Walsh wrote. ``I remember saying to myself, `Maybe they should just go ahead and bomb this building and turn all the criminals loose. Because we're definitely out in the woods on this one. We're so far out behind the eight ball here that it's nothing but a big sick joke.' ''
Parents' struggle
Beyond his feelings about the police, the book is the Walshes' story of their struggle to find Adam, cope with almost suicidal grief and then build their crusade on behalf of missing children.
With the help of People magazine writer Susan Shindehette, John and Reve Walsh describe their son, his love of Star Wars and baseball and the few mementos they've saved of his life.
``Little things he made in school,'' Reve wrote. ``I have a box he covered with construction paper, and there's a little flower handle on the top of it that he made . . . It's just a little jewelry box. Not anything that will last a lifetime.''
Walsh also explains the terror during the first days after Adam was missing, the huge search run out of their Hollywood home, the intrusive media and how they learned quickly to manipulate the media.
``We cursed the royal family for scheduling their wedding that week,'' he wrote. ``My only child, my little boy was missing. And the location of Charles and Di's honeymoon was bigger news.''
`Our baby's dead'
Walsh describes how they appeared on Good Morning America two weeks into the search, the phone call that came to their hotel room afterward, and the news he relayed as his wife and sister Jane walked in the door. ``I said: `Our baby's dead.' ''
``And Reve said: `I know.' ''
``I don't know how she knew,'' Walsh wrote. ``At first she turned from me and started putting her clothes into a suitcase. Like a robot.
``Then Jane left, and the door was closed. And as I watched, the spirit that made her who she was slowly collapsed into her . . . She was still my wife. But she went from being a girl to an old woman before my eyes.''
Within days after they returned home, one of Adam's friends came to the door asking if he could come out and play.
``So Reve explained to him as best she could that Adam had died, and that he wouldn't be here to play with anymore,'' Walsh wrote.
`` `Jeremy,' she said. `Would you like to have Adam's bicycle?'
``So Reve went back out to the garage and found Adam's bike. The police had dusted everything for prints, apparently with a fire hose . . . So she got some rags and cleaned the bike off and wheeled it out to the driveway. People always wonder about what Reve did with Adam's things. Well, now at least they'll know what she did with his bicycle.''
Affair acknowledged
The book addresses Reve's two-year affair with family friend Jimmy Campbell, who police for years suspected of killing Adam in an effort to break up the marriage. ``It would have made a great crime story, a great ending to a movie. But it wasn't true,'' Walsh wrote.
He lambastes the heartlessness of Washington, the initial indifference of the FBI, and the cruel intrusiveness of a cadre of psychics. ``Damn them.''
Walsh also criticized the media, suggesting reporters were more interested in digging up dirt on his family than information that would help find his son or his killer.
Walsh also writes about his flirtation with suicide and ``ridiculous'' accusations he was tied to the mob.
Most striking, however, are the emotions for Adam -- the terror they felt the day a young Sears security guard, not much more than a child herself, shuffled Adam unattended out the door and how it took Reve more than an hour to get anyone at Hollywood Mall to pay attention.
``She never went into another Sears store again,'' Walsh wrote.
Now, Reve is in demand to speak to thousands of people.
``When she's standing there talking to those people, sometimes she can hardly believe it,'' he wrote. ``Because what she's remembering is that day when no one would listen to her.''
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Miami Herald
POLICE CHIEF DEFENDS WALSH INVESTIGATION
DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer
September 19, 1997
Responding to accusations of ``laziness, stupidity and arrogance'' against his department by one of the nation's best-known crime fighters, Hollywood's police chief said Thursday ``I'd like to go back and start from scratch, but none of us can do that.''
Chief Rick Stone -- who inherited the controversy when he joined the department last year -- stopped short of acknowledging mistakes in the 16-year-old kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh, but said with today's technology and the ``professional team I have today, it's possible things could have turned out much differently.''
Adam, 6, was snatched from outside a Sears store across the street from the police department in 1981. His severed head was found two weeks later. Adam's parents, John and Reve, used their grief and their anger to begin a nationwide crusade for missing children.
John Walsh -- host of the TV crime-fighting series America's Most Wanted -- just released a book, Tears of Rage, which skewers Hollywood investigators for allegedly botching the case.
Both Walsh and Stone agree no amount of police work would have saved Adam, who apparently died within hours of his abduction.
``We understand Mr. Walsh's anger; many of us at the department are parents ourselves,'' Stone said. ``He's angry at the FBI, he's angry at the media, and he's angry at us. But the FBI didn't kill Mr. Walsh's son. The media didn't kill Mr. Walsh's son. And the Hollywood Police Department didn't kill Mr. Walsh's son.''
Stone would not address specific mistakes Walsh alleges police made, such as allowing key evidence -- a primary suspect's car -- to be discarded, the loss of the car's bloody carpet samples, failure to secure the crime scene where Adam's head was found, and wasting time chasing family friends as suspects when evidence pointed to a psychopath later imprisoned for other murders.
``I've spoken with the few people who are still here who worked the case, and they feel they bent over backward to help the Walshes and investigate this case,'' Stone said. ``Officers volunteered their time off to help, and they even turned over a city building to Mr. Walsh to help.''
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Miami Herald
Adam Walsh murder revisited: The case against Jeffrey Dahmer
By DAVID SMILEY, ARTHUR JAY HARRIS
Posted March 28, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated April 7, 2012 at 7:18 PM
Investigating one of the nation’s most prominent unsolved murders, a Hollywood detective pitched softball questions and homemade muffins to a serial killer.
He asked: Did you kidnap freckled 6-year-old Adam Walsh from a Sears in 1981?
``Nothing to do with it,″ Jeffrey Dahmer answered, taking another muffin.
The word of Dahmer, a sociopath who stashed severed heads in his refrigerator, was instrumental in Hollywood police deciding he was not Adam’s killer despite contradictory statements from two witnesses.
In December 2008, Chief Chadwick Wagner called a press conference to say deceased drifter Ottis Toole -- long suspected but never prosecuted -- killed Adam. Adam’s parents believed it and Broward prosecutors said Toole was the only valid suspect. Case closed.
But had authorities fully explored Dahmer’s time in South Florida, they would have found more evidence implicating him than Toole, The Miami Herald found.
The evidence includes two additional witnesses who said they saw him at the mall with Adam that day, another who placed Dahmer at the scene of an eerily similar abduction attempt two weeks earlier, and people who said he had access to a van fitting an early description of the getaway vehicle.
The 29-year-old murder remains among the most vexing unsolved crimes in America, and no one can say with certainty that Dahmer -- or any of the other myriad suspects to drift through the case -- snatched the child.
Yet by focusing so heavily on Toole despite layers of contradictions in his long twisted tale, Hollywood police may well have missed leads pointing to Dahmer, according to fresh interviews and a review of thousands of documents.
A DISHEVELED STRANGER
``Once I saw that picture of Dahmer, I said, `That’s him,′ ″ Janice Santamassino remembered. ``That’s who I saw.″
July 27, 1981 was the first day of Santamassino’s vacation, and she drove her daughter and son to the Hollywood Mall on Hollywood Boulevard across from police headquarters. After nearly slamming into the back of a blue van parked illegally outside the west entrance of Sears, she parked, and went inside.
Santamassino wanted sandals for her daughter Lori, 4, but first the girl asked to play an arcade game. Lori approached a game next to a boy wearing an oversized hat, shorts and a striped shirt and played for 10 minutes, the mother said.
On their way out of the toy department, Santamassino looked down an aisle and saw a disheveled man. She said their eyes met. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and walked away. ``He just gave me a bad, uncomfortable feeling. It was spooky,″ she said.
She later heard an intercom call for Adam Walsh. A distraught woman and man were at the customer service desk, but the boy at the video games was gone. So was the creepy guy in the toy aisle.
A massive search ensued. Hundreds of volunteers scoured Hollywood’s streets, and helicopters and boats filled the skies and waterways. Posters of Adam, clad in a little league uniform and flashing a gap-toothed grin, were plastered everywhere.
Watching the news that afternoon, Santamassino realized she had seen Adam. She called police and then again the next day but said she never received a return call. Not in 1981 nor in 1996, when she called America’s Most Wanted after the show, hosted by Adam’s father John Walsh, ran a piece on Adam. The show forwarded the tip to Hollywood police.
Contacted by a writer in 2009 and shown a picture of Dahmer, she said he was the man she saw.
UNRETURNED CALLS
Others say they contacted police in the days after Adam’s abduction without reply.
They include Jennie Warren, interviewed by state attorney’s investigator Phil Mundy in 1996 after a media lawsuit prompted the release of the case file. She was dismissed after she said she didn’t see Toole, she said.
Warren told The Miami Herald she saw Adam with his mother Reve that day. She also noticed a man at the video games wearing beige khakis ``like army fatigues.″ He stood next to Adam and stared at the screen.
Warren says she could have picked out the man in fatigues had the investigator placed his picture in the lineup with Toole. ``I wish my mind could take a picture, because it would be him: Dahmer.″
Interviewed recently, Mundy had little recollection of the Warren interview. He did recall broader discussions among authorities about the problems Dahmer witnesses would have posed should Toole be prosecuted.
In 1991, Dahmer emerged as one of the nation’s most infamous killers after his arrest on charges involving decapitation, necrophilia and cannibalism. He had 11 severed heads in his Milwaukee apartment.
For some of those present in Sears the day of Adam’s disappearance, the photo of Dahmer reignited a 10-year-old memory. They recognized him as the man they saw in the store that day Adam vanished.
Among them was then-Miami Herald pressman Willis Morgan. He had told police he was in the Radio Shack in the Hollywood Mall that day and felt threatened when a stranger aggressively approached him. He followed the man into the Sears toy department before turning away.
That man was Dahmer, Morgan now told police.
Bill Bowen, an Alabama TV producer, reached the same conclusion independently. He had reported seeing a man lift a struggling, protesting child and sling him into the back of a blue van -- illegally parked outside Sears.
Now, after seeing the news coverage out of Wisconsin, he too was convinced Dahmer was the man he saw.
On a suggestion from FBI agent Neil Purtell, who interviewed Dahmer after his Wisconsin convictions and thought he had tacitly admitted killing Adam through his overly fervent denials, father John Walsh urged detectives to visit Dahmer.
Dahmer told Detective Jack Hoffman he came to Miami in March of 1981 after his early discharge from the Army due to alcoholism while in Germany. He said he had no vehicle, never went to Hollywood, and worked long hours at a Collins Avenue sub shop. He said he never killed children but didn’t want to rot in prison and would admit to Adam’s murder if it meant a death sentence.
``If Jeffrey Dahmer had committed the Adam Walsh homicide, he would have confessed to this crime,″ Hoffman wrote.
Dahmer was killed in prison in 1994.
THE BLUE VAN
Had Hoffman followed up on Dahmer’s statements, he would have found that Dahmer lied about his hours and was often sent home due to drinking, according to his boss, Ken Haupert Sr. As an employee of Sunshine Subs, Dahmer had access to a blue delivery van, according to eight people.
For months after Adam’s abduction, police stopped blue vans across the state based on the sketchy statements of 10-year-old Timothy Pottenburgh, who said he’d seen Adam pulled into a blue van outside Sears. Hoffman eventually threw out the blue van theory, citing time discrepancies in Pottenburgh’s story.
But Santamassino said she saw a blue van parked illegally outside Sears’ west entrance, as did Bowen. Another dismissed witness, Phillip Lohr, said he saw a blue van parked illegally outside the toy department around the time of Adam’s abduction. Lohr remembered seeing a man carrying a struggling, freckled child out Sears’ toy department exit, though he didn’t call police until 1997. He said he was unsure of what he’d seen that day and later felt guilty about doing nothing.
Adam’s body was never recovered. A severed head identified as Adam’s was found Aug. 10, 1981 in a canal on the northbound side of the Florida Turnpike near mile marker 130.
Two Publix truck drivers called the next day, Aug. 11, to report seeing a blue van parked off the Turnpike near mile marker 131 just after midnight on Aug. 7.
Denis Bubb saw a man with a flashlight down near a canal and radioed Clifford Ramey, following behind. Ramey looked to see if the driver had mechanical problems and saw the man leaning through an open sliding side door and fumbling around with a bucket, he said. He didn’t notice a flat tire and the hood wasn’t up. Both say they talked to Hollywood police and were told the incident had nothing to do with the Adam Walsh murder.
Ramey’s glance was brief, but he thought the van had no front passenger seat, he told The Herald. The shop’s blue van, former store co-owner Darlene Hill told the Broward State Attorney’s Office in 2007, had ``a milk crate for a passenger seat.″
Another Dahmer connection may be found in the report of a near-abduction in a North Palm Beach Sears exactly two weeks before Adam’s disappearance. At the time, investigators believed it was strikingly similar to the Adam Walsh abduction and had two witnesses create a composite sketch.
Investigators dismissed the link after speaking with a Sears security guard who said he’d chased a shoplifting boy around that time and believed the sketch looked like himself.
Hoffman wrote that Jane and Matthew Houvouras, the witnesses, agreed that the security guard was the man they’d seen, as did Terry Keaton, the child who was nearly kidnapped, and his mother.
Reached in 2010, Jane Houvouras said she told Hoffman that neither she nor her son believed it was a security guard. He wasn’t in uniform.
Keaton, 10 in 1981, and his mother, Ginger Pantel, also told The Herald the man in Sears was not a security guard. It was Dahmer, Keaton said. ``In my heart, I truly believe that was the guy who tried to get me that day.″
Hoffman did not respond to an interview request.
Charles Morton Jr., chief assistant state attorney in Broward County, noted in a letter to The Herald that the new witness accounts ``add intrigue and mystery to Adam Walsh’s tragic death″ -- but are problematic.
``The delayed Dahmer identifications would raise serious legal and moral questions in a potential prosecution of Dahmer,″ he wrote.
SLIPSHOD RECORDS
But all four Dahmer witnesses say they contacted police in 1981, though police -- who admitted to shoddy record keeping in the initial weeks of the investigation -- have no record of their tips. Also, Warren wasn’t shown Dahmer’s picture in a lineup in 1996 and Santamassino was never contacted by authorities.
And though police and the Walsh family say authorities thoroughly investigated Dahmer even after that interview over muffins, documents suggest otherwise.
A report obtained by The Herald shows police did investigate Dahmer’s time in South Florida -- for two weeks. The investigation began after a writer contacted them in 2002 with the names of people who remembered Dahmer and said he had access to a blue van.
Detective John Kerns spoke to Sunshine Subs’ 1981 night manager Ken Haupert Jr. and Michel Pelletier, the owner of parent shop Mr. Pizza. Pelletier said he didn’t remember Dahmer and only had trucks. Haupert Jr. remembered Dahmer but no blue van, he said.
After a few dead-end records checks, Kerns concluded that ``this investigation has not established any link.″
He didn’t contact other potential witnesses. Darlene Hill says Pelletier did own a blue van, which she used herself to move furniture.
She said it belonged to Mr. Pizza. ``You could walk in at any time and pick up the keys,″ Hill said. ``It was absolutely chaos and people would take the van. Sometimes, maybe they’d bring it back that day and maybe they wouldn’t.″
Sunshine Subs manager Haupert Sr., who gave Dahmer a job, also remembered a blue delivery van used for Mr. Pizza. And, he recalled the day Dahmer showed him the body of a dead man behind the store. Dahmer’s name is on a police report of the incident 20 days before Adam disappeared. The medical examiner’s office ruled the death was by natural causes.
``If the police called I would talk to them,″ Haupert said.
Kerns, now retired, had ``no comment.″
The state attorney’s office also conducted a brief investigation in 2007, interviewing Hill and Pelletier. Prosecutor Morton interviewed Morgan, but nothing came of it.
Then in 2008, Morton and the state attorney’s office learned that Hollywood police wanted to close the case.
Their man: Ottis Toole.
TOOLE’S SHIFTING STORIES
Toole, a pyromaniac, story-telling drifter, surfaced as a suspect Oct. 10, 1983, the same day a TV movie aired about Adam. Sitting in a Duval County jail cell he told a Brevard County detective he had gotten into mischief in Fort Lauderdale. The detective mentioned it to Jacksonville Detective J.W. Buddy Terry.
That was a day before investigators around the country flocked to Louisiana to learn if Toole and one-eyed lover Henry Lee Lucas had killed in their jurisdiction. Together the duo had admitted to hundreds of murders, though today nearly all the confessions are considered inconclusive or outright lies.
Less than two weeks later, Hollywood police called a Friday night press conference to announce Toole as Adam’s killer. The Toole and Lucas murders ``make Charles Manson look like Huckleberry Finn,″ said Assistant Chief Leroy Hessler.
Police said Toole knew details only the killer could and led them to the site where Adam’s head was found. They planned to charge Toole on Monday, Hessler said.
But when police met with Broward State Attorney Michael Satz, no charges followed. Toole’s statements show why prosecutors would be uncomfortable. He said he did it and then said he didn’t. Then he did. Then he didn’t. Then he did.
He couldn’t initially identify Adam, said he took the boy around Jan. 1 and said Lucas chopped off Adam’s head. But Lucas was jailed in Maryland when Adam was kidnapped.
Also, detectives showed him pictures of Adam’s severed head and the canal scene where it was found, including the Florida Turnpike mile marker -- before asking him to lead them to the crime scene.
After Toole’s first recantation that night, Detective Terry spent 12 minutes alone with him and Toole again confessed. Toole later signed an informal story rights deal with Terry. Terry insisted it was a joke, but was demoted when his superiors found out.
Investigators never found Adam’s body in the myriad places Toole said he disposed of the remains, and had trouble vouching for his whereabouts in late July 1981.
``My opinion, as is most everyone else from the city of Hollywood, is that he did not do this killing,″ then-Lt. J.B. Smith concluded in 1984. ``We can’t confirm one thing he has said.″
Today, Ron Hickman, one of two original lead case detectives, agrees. ``Bogus,″ he said.
`BOGUS’ NO LONGER
But when Wagner closed the case in 2008, he told the media ``investigators past and present″ believed Toole was guilty and said police had a ``vast″ amount of circumstantial evidence to prosecute Toole before his death in 1996. He declined an interview.
Walsh, who did not respond to interview requests, has said in the past he’s long believed in Toole’s guilt.
Evidence against Toole includes the testimony of William Mistler, who told investigators beginning in 1991 that he was at the mall the day of Adam’s abduction and saw Toole with Adam. He also saw Toole’s black over white Cadillac and accurately described a dent on the car’s back bumper.
However, state attorney cold case investigator Mundy told The Miami Herald that Mistler’s story changed and he wasn’t a valid witness.
Mundy, who believes Toole killed Adam, put more weight in the statements of a former cellmate, Bobby Lee Jones. Jones said Toole told him in 1982 at a construction site that he’d taken a child from Hollywood, and said Toole remembered landmarks from Hollywood.
A 12-year-old girl reported that Toole tried to push her in a shopping cart at a local K-Mart a few days before the abduction, but police believed Toole was on a Greyhound bus to Jacksonville that day.
After America’s Most Wanted ran an episode on Adam’s abduction in 1996 focusing on Toole, Mary Hagan reported seeing Toole inside Sears with Adam. Her 1996 description of Toole’s mannerisms, including his cockheaded smile, and of Adam’s beach sandals, led Mundy to believe there could be a prosecutable case.
Toole died in prison shortly after Mundy’s interview with Hagan. On his deathbed, Toole confessed again but wouldn’t say where he’d put Adam’s body, Toole’s niece told Mundy. But Toole denied killing Adam when Hollywood cold case Detective Mark Smith visited him shortly before his death, and Smith wrote that psychological counselors found Toole incoherent.
``We’re not there yet, we’re not at the point to say, `He’s the one who did it,′ ″ Smith told The Herald after Toole’s death.
However, during the 2008 press conference, Smith said he agreed the evidence was sufficient to have arrested Toole. Now retired, Smith did not return messages left at his home and workplace.
After Toole’s death, no new evidence surfaced, Wagner said in 2008.
`INVESTIGATIVE ERRORS’
But when Wagner contacted prosecutor Morton earlier that year to discuss clearing the case, Morton -- despite noting problems due to ``investigative errors″ -- agreed in writing that there was probable cause to arrest him. But prosecution would be difficult, he wrote.
``Keep in mind that having legally sufficient `probable cause’ to believe that someone has committed a crime does not mean that an arrest should or must be made,″ Morton wrote to The Herald last week.
Morton, who declined reporters’ request to review the new evidence in person, added that ``exceptionally clearing″ a case without charges is a police decision. He was merely stating that the state attorney’s office understood the decision, he wrote.
Morton also said new Dahmer witnesses do not change his opinion that Toole was the only suspect for which ``probable cause″ existed for an arrest.
But the case file released in 2008 shows that Smith and Mundy pursued Toole almost exclusively.
If a witness hadn’t seen Toole, he or she was dismissed, like Vernon Jones, who told Mundy in 1996 that he had played Intellivision Baseball with Adam that July day in Sears.
Jones, then 9, remembered that Adam was batting with the bases loaded when a man behind them beckoned. Jones said he glanced back, taking his eyes off the game. Adam smacked a grand slam.
Miffed, Jones moved to another game. When he looked up, he said, he briefly saw Adam and the man leaving, possibly hand in hand.
In 1996, Mundy showed him a picture of Toole, but that wasn’t the man. Mundy wrote that Jones couldn’t say for sure what day he was there or if the boy really was Adam.
Jones, a karate master from Cutler Bay and former youth crime prevention speaker, told The Herald it was Adam. ``I’ve never doubted it was him.″
Shown a picture of Dahmer, Jones said it could be the man he saw. He wasn’t positive.
Jones said the experience in Sears changed his life. He used the anecdote in numerous crime prevention speeches.
``At least 100 to 200 chiefs of police around the country have heard my story, but Hollywood never called me. What does that tell you?″
Adam Walsh murder revisited: The case against Jeffrey Dahmer
By DAVID SMILEY, ARTHUR JAY HARRIS
Posted March 28, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated April 7, 2012 at 7:18 PM
Investigating one of the nation’s most prominent unsolved murders, a Hollywood detective pitched softball questions and homemade muffins to a serial killer.
He asked: Did you kidnap freckled 6-year-old Adam Walsh from a Sears in 1981?
``Nothing to do with it,″ Jeffrey Dahmer answered, taking another muffin.
The word of Dahmer, a sociopath who stashed severed heads in his refrigerator, was instrumental in Hollywood police deciding he was not Adam’s killer despite contradictory statements from two witnesses.
In December 2008, Chief Chadwick Wagner called a press conference to say deceased drifter Ottis Toole -- long suspected but never prosecuted -- killed Adam. Adam’s parents believed it and Broward prosecutors said Toole was the only valid suspect. Case closed.
But had authorities fully explored Dahmer’s time in South Florida, they would have found more evidence implicating him than Toole, The Miami Herald found.
The evidence includes two additional witnesses who said they saw him at the mall with Adam that day, another who placed Dahmer at the scene of an eerily similar abduction attempt two weeks earlier, and people who said he had access to a van fitting an early description of the getaway vehicle.
The 29-year-old murder remains among the most vexing unsolved crimes in America, and no one can say with certainty that Dahmer -- or any of the other myriad suspects to drift through the case -- snatched the child.
Yet by focusing so heavily on Toole despite layers of contradictions in his long twisted tale, Hollywood police may well have missed leads pointing to Dahmer, according to fresh interviews and a review of thousands of documents.
A DISHEVELED STRANGER
``Once I saw that picture of Dahmer, I said, `That’s him,′ ″ Janice Santamassino remembered. ``That’s who I saw.″
July 27, 1981 was the first day of Santamassino’s vacation, and she drove her daughter and son to the Hollywood Mall on Hollywood Boulevard across from police headquarters. After nearly slamming into the back of a blue van parked illegally outside the west entrance of Sears, she parked, and went inside.
Santamassino wanted sandals for her daughter Lori, 4, but first the girl asked to play an arcade game. Lori approached a game next to a boy wearing an oversized hat, shorts and a striped shirt and played for 10 minutes, the mother said.
On their way out of the toy department, Santamassino looked down an aisle and saw a disheveled man. She said their eyes met. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and walked away. ``He just gave me a bad, uncomfortable feeling. It was spooky,″ she said.
She later heard an intercom call for Adam Walsh. A distraught woman and man were at the customer service desk, but the boy at the video games was gone. So was the creepy guy in the toy aisle.
A massive search ensued. Hundreds of volunteers scoured Hollywood’s streets, and helicopters and boats filled the skies and waterways. Posters of Adam, clad in a little league uniform and flashing a gap-toothed grin, were plastered everywhere.
Watching the news that afternoon, Santamassino realized she had seen Adam. She called police and then again the next day but said she never received a return call. Not in 1981 nor in 1996, when she called America’s Most Wanted after the show, hosted by Adam’s father John Walsh, ran a piece on Adam. The show forwarded the tip to Hollywood police.
Contacted by a writer in 2009 and shown a picture of Dahmer, she said he was the man she saw.
UNRETURNED CALLS
Others say they contacted police in the days after Adam’s abduction without reply.
They include Jennie Warren, interviewed by state attorney’s investigator Phil Mundy in 1996 after a media lawsuit prompted the release of the case file. She was dismissed after she said she didn’t see Toole, she said.
Warren told The Miami Herald she saw Adam with his mother Reve that day. She also noticed a man at the video games wearing beige khakis ``like army fatigues.″ He stood next to Adam and stared at the screen.
Warren says she could have picked out the man in fatigues had the investigator placed his picture in the lineup with Toole. ``I wish my mind could take a picture, because it would be him: Dahmer.″
Interviewed recently, Mundy had little recollection of the Warren interview. He did recall broader discussions among authorities about the problems Dahmer witnesses would have posed should Toole be prosecuted.
In 1991, Dahmer emerged as one of the nation’s most infamous killers after his arrest on charges involving decapitation, necrophilia and cannibalism. He had 11 severed heads in his Milwaukee apartment.
For some of those present in Sears the day of Adam’s disappearance, the photo of Dahmer reignited a 10-year-old memory. They recognized him as the man they saw in the store that day Adam vanished.
Among them was then-Miami Herald pressman Willis Morgan. He had told police he was in the Radio Shack in the Hollywood Mall that day and felt threatened when a stranger aggressively approached him. He followed the man into the Sears toy department before turning away.
That man was Dahmer, Morgan now told police.
Bill Bowen, an Alabama TV producer, reached the same conclusion independently. He had reported seeing a man lift a struggling, protesting child and sling him into the back of a blue van -- illegally parked outside Sears.
Now, after seeing the news coverage out of Wisconsin, he too was convinced Dahmer was the man he saw.
On a suggestion from FBI agent Neil Purtell, who interviewed Dahmer after his Wisconsin convictions and thought he had tacitly admitted killing Adam through his overly fervent denials, father John Walsh urged detectives to visit Dahmer.
Dahmer told Detective Jack Hoffman he came to Miami in March of 1981 after his early discharge from the Army due to alcoholism while in Germany. He said he had no vehicle, never went to Hollywood, and worked long hours at a Collins Avenue sub shop. He said he never killed children but didn’t want to rot in prison and would admit to Adam’s murder if it meant a death sentence.
``If Jeffrey Dahmer had committed the Adam Walsh homicide, he would have confessed to this crime,″ Hoffman wrote.
Dahmer was killed in prison in 1994.
THE BLUE VAN
Had Hoffman followed up on Dahmer’s statements, he would have found that Dahmer lied about his hours and was often sent home due to drinking, according to his boss, Ken Haupert Sr. As an employee of Sunshine Subs, Dahmer had access to a blue delivery van, according to eight people.
For months after Adam’s abduction, police stopped blue vans across the state based on the sketchy statements of 10-year-old Timothy Pottenburgh, who said he’d seen Adam pulled into a blue van outside Sears. Hoffman eventually threw out the blue van theory, citing time discrepancies in Pottenburgh’s story.
But Santamassino said she saw a blue van parked illegally outside Sears’ west entrance, as did Bowen. Another dismissed witness, Phillip Lohr, said he saw a blue van parked illegally outside the toy department around the time of Adam’s abduction. Lohr remembered seeing a man carrying a struggling, freckled child out Sears’ toy department exit, though he didn’t call police until 1997. He said he was unsure of what he’d seen that day and later felt guilty about doing nothing.
Adam’s body was never recovered. A severed head identified as Adam’s was found Aug. 10, 1981 in a canal on the northbound side of the Florida Turnpike near mile marker 130.
Two Publix truck drivers called the next day, Aug. 11, to report seeing a blue van parked off the Turnpike near mile marker 131 just after midnight on Aug. 7.
Denis Bubb saw a man with a flashlight down near a canal and radioed Clifford Ramey, following behind. Ramey looked to see if the driver had mechanical problems and saw the man leaning through an open sliding side door and fumbling around with a bucket, he said. He didn’t notice a flat tire and the hood wasn’t up. Both say they talked to Hollywood police and were told the incident had nothing to do with the Adam Walsh murder.
Ramey’s glance was brief, but he thought the van had no front passenger seat, he told The Herald. The shop’s blue van, former store co-owner Darlene Hill told the Broward State Attorney’s Office in 2007, had ``a milk crate for a passenger seat.″
Another Dahmer connection may be found in the report of a near-abduction in a North Palm Beach Sears exactly two weeks before Adam’s disappearance. At the time, investigators believed it was strikingly similar to the Adam Walsh abduction and had two witnesses create a composite sketch.
Investigators dismissed the link after speaking with a Sears security guard who said he’d chased a shoplifting boy around that time and believed the sketch looked like himself.
Hoffman wrote that Jane and Matthew Houvouras, the witnesses, agreed that the security guard was the man they’d seen, as did Terry Keaton, the child who was nearly kidnapped, and his mother.
Reached in 2010, Jane Houvouras said she told Hoffman that neither she nor her son believed it was a security guard. He wasn’t in uniform.
Keaton, 10 in 1981, and his mother, Ginger Pantel, also told The Herald the man in Sears was not a security guard. It was Dahmer, Keaton said. ``In my heart, I truly believe that was the guy who tried to get me that day.″
Hoffman did not respond to an interview request.
Charles Morton Jr., chief assistant state attorney in Broward County, noted in a letter to The Herald that the new witness accounts ``add intrigue and mystery to Adam Walsh’s tragic death″ -- but are problematic.
``The delayed Dahmer identifications would raise serious legal and moral questions in a potential prosecution of Dahmer,″ he wrote.
SLIPSHOD RECORDS
But all four Dahmer witnesses say they contacted police in 1981, though police -- who admitted to shoddy record keeping in the initial weeks of the investigation -- have no record of their tips. Also, Warren wasn’t shown Dahmer’s picture in a lineup in 1996 and Santamassino was never contacted by authorities.
And though police and the Walsh family say authorities thoroughly investigated Dahmer even after that interview over muffins, documents suggest otherwise.
A report obtained by The Herald shows police did investigate Dahmer’s time in South Florida -- for two weeks. The investigation began after a writer contacted them in 2002 with the names of people who remembered Dahmer and said he had access to a blue van.
Detective John Kerns spoke to Sunshine Subs’ 1981 night manager Ken Haupert Jr. and Michel Pelletier, the owner of parent shop Mr. Pizza. Pelletier said he didn’t remember Dahmer and only had trucks. Haupert Jr. remembered Dahmer but no blue van, he said.
After a few dead-end records checks, Kerns concluded that ``this investigation has not established any link.″
He didn’t contact other potential witnesses. Darlene Hill says Pelletier did own a blue van, which she used herself to move furniture.
She said it belonged to Mr. Pizza. ``You could walk in at any time and pick up the keys,″ Hill said. ``It was absolutely chaos and people would take the van. Sometimes, maybe they’d bring it back that day and maybe they wouldn’t.″
Sunshine Subs manager Haupert Sr., who gave Dahmer a job, also remembered a blue delivery van used for Mr. Pizza. And, he recalled the day Dahmer showed him the body of a dead man behind the store. Dahmer’s name is on a police report of the incident 20 days before Adam disappeared. The medical examiner’s office ruled the death was by natural causes.
``If the police called I would talk to them,″ Haupert said.
Kerns, now retired, had ``no comment.″
The state attorney’s office also conducted a brief investigation in 2007, interviewing Hill and Pelletier. Prosecutor Morton interviewed Morgan, but nothing came of it.
Then in 2008, Morton and the state attorney’s office learned that Hollywood police wanted to close the case.
Their man: Ottis Toole.
TOOLE’S SHIFTING STORIES
Toole, a pyromaniac, story-telling drifter, surfaced as a suspect Oct. 10, 1983, the same day a TV movie aired about Adam. Sitting in a Duval County jail cell he told a Brevard County detective he had gotten into mischief in Fort Lauderdale. The detective mentioned it to Jacksonville Detective J.W. Buddy Terry.
That was a day before investigators around the country flocked to Louisiana to learn if Toole and one-eyed lover Henry Lee Lucas had killed in their jurisdiction. Together the duo had admitted to hundreds of murders, though today nearly all the confessions are considered inconclusive or outright lies.
Less than two weeks later, Hollywood police called a Friday night press conference to announce Toole as Adam’s killer. The Toole and Lucas murders ``make Charles Manson look like Huckleberry Finn,″ said Assistant Chief Leroy Hessler.
Police said Toole knew details only the killer could and led them to the site where Adam’s head was found. They planned to charge Toole on Monday, Hessler said.
But when police met with Broward State Attorney Michael Satz, no charges followed. Toole’s statements show why prosecutors would be uncomfortable. He said he did it and then said he didn’t. Then he did. Then he didn’t. Then he did.
He couldn’t initially identify Adam, said he took the boy around Jan. 1 and said Lucas chopped off Adam’s head. But Lucas was jailed in Maryland when Adam was kidnapped.
Also, detectives showed him pictures of Adam’s severed head and the canal scene where it was found, including the Florida Turnpike mile marker -- before asking him to lead them to the crime scene.
After Toole’s first recantation that night, Detective Terry spent 12 minutes alone with him and Toole again confessed. Toole later signed an informal story rights deal with Terry. Terry insisted it was a joke, but was demoted when his superiors found out.
Investigators never found Adam’s body in the myriad places Toole said he disposed of the remains, and had trouble vouching for his whereabouts in late July 1981.
``My opinion, as is most everyone else from the city of Hollywood, is that he did not do this killing,″ then-Lt. J.B. Smith concluded in 1984. ``We can’t confirm one thing he has said.″
Today, Ron Hickman, one of two original lead case detectives, agrees. ``Bogus,″ he said.
`BOGUS’ NO LONGER
But when Wagner closed the case in 2008, he told the media ``investigators past and present″ believed Toole was guilty and said police had a ``vast″ amount of circumstantial evidence to prosecute Toole before his death in 1996. He declined an interview.
Walsh, who did not respond to interview requests, has said in the past he’s long believed in Toole’s guilt.
Evidence against Toole includes the testimony of William Mistler, who told investigators beginning in 1991 that he was at the mall the day of Adam’s abduction and saw Toole with Adam. He also saw Toole’s black over white Cadillac and accurately described a dent on the car’s back bumper.
However, state attorney cold case investigator Mundy told The Miami Herald that Mistler’s story changed and he wasn’t a valid witness.
Mundy, who believes Toole killed Adam, put more weight in the statements of a former cellmate, Bobby Lee Jones. Jones said Toole told him in 1982 at a construction site that he’d taken a child from Hollywood, and said Toole remembered landmarks from Hollywood.
A 12-year-old girl reported that Toole tried to push her in a shopping cart at a local K-Mart a few days before the abduction, but police believed Toole was on a Greyhound bus to Jacksonville that day.
After America’s Most Wanted ran an episode on Adam’s abduction in 1996 focusing on Toole, Mary Hagan reported seeing Toole inside Sears with Adam. Her 1996 description of Toole’s mannerisms, including his cockheaded smile, and of Adam’s beach sandals, led Mundy to believe there could be a prosecutable case.
Toole died in prison shortly after Mundy’s interview with Hagan. On his deathbed, Toole confessed again but wouldn’t say where he’d put Adam’s body, Toole’s niece told Mundy. But Toole denied killing Adam when Hollywood cold case Detective Mark Smith visited him shortly before his death, and Smith wrote that psychological counselors found Toole incoherent.
``We’re not there yet, we’re not at the point to say, `He’s the one who did it,′ ″ Smith told The Herald after Toole’s death.
However, during the 2008 press conference, Smith said he agreed the evidence was sufficient to have arrested Toole. Now retired, Smith did not return messages left at his home and workplace.
After Toole’s death, no new evidence surfaced, Wagner said in 2008.
`INVESTIGATIVE ERRORS’
But when Wagner contacted prosecutor Morton earlier that year to discuss clearing the case, Morton -- despite noting problems due to ``investigative errors″ -- agreed in writing that there was probable cause to arrest him. But prosecution would be difficult, he wrote.
``Keep in mind that having legally sufficient `probable cause’ to believe that someone has committed a crime does not mean that an arrest should or must be made,″ Morton wrote to The Herald last week.
Morton, who declined reporters’ request to review the new evidence in person, added that ``exceptionally clearing″ a case without charges is a police decision. He was merely stating that the state attorney’s office understood the decision, he wrote.
Morton also said new Dahmer witnesses do not change his opinion that Toole was the only suspect for which ``probable cause″ existed for an arrest.
But the case file released in 2008 shows that Smith and Mundy pursued Toole almost exclusively.
If a witness hadn’t seen Toole, he or she was dismissed, like Vernon Jones, who told Mundy in 1996 that he had played Intellivision Baseball with Adam that July day in Sears.
Jones, then 9, remembered that Adam was batting with the bases loaded when a man behind them beckoned. Jones said he glanced back, taking his eyes off the game. Adam smacked a grand slam.
Miffed, Jones moved to another game. When he looked up, he said, he briefly saw Adam and the man leaving, possibly hand in hand.
In 1996, Mundy showed him a picture of Toole, but that wasn’t the man. Mundy wrote that Jones couldn’t say for sure what day he was there or if the boy really was Adam.
Jones, a karate master from Cutler Bay and former youth crime prevention speaker, told The Herald it was Adam. ``I’ve never doubted it was him.″
Shown a picture of Dahmer, Jones said it could be the man he saw. He wasn’t positive.
Jones said the experience in Sears changed his life. He used the anecdote in numerous crime prevention speeches.
``At least 100 to 200 chiefs of police around the country have heard my story, but Hollywood never called me. What does that tell you?″
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These are CASE FILES relevant to the abduction & murder of ADAM WALSH, complied by Willis Morgan. http://justiceforadam.com/
As I've previously stated both here on the blog, as well as on my popular Twitter feed, @hbbtruth, you should expect MORE fact-filled blog posts critical of HPD's continuing unsatisfactory performance in the future, based on both my own multiple negative interactions with them the past few years -even being a victim of crime less than three blocks from HPD HQ- as well as those of friends and other Hollywood civic activists.
Frankly, most of us are tired of the charade where everyone has to walk around pretending that HPD is doing even a pretty good job, when, in fact, they are consistently performing at an unsatisfactory level on many levels and yet are quite hostile to any constructive suggestions or criticism.
Which is why they own the poor performance they've given, because it's not like people don't point out the problems to them, just like I have done on several public occasions, including after I was assaulted and sucker-punched exactly one week after speaking to Chief O'Brien at a Civic Association meeting Downtown in early 2020.
I, at least, asked him real questions about his Dept's perceived shrug shoulders approach to so many things around town, and whether all the technology in the world -the HPD's use of technology was the focus of his and other HPD personnel's appearance that night- as opposed to the mostly softball questions most residents lobbed his way that night.
Lots of people in this community simply do NOT give the HPD the benefit of the doubt and for good reason. Increasingly, as the evidence becomes even more self-evident, I'm one of those people. And quite sure in my reasoning.
All of this is true despite the fact that, as many of you reading this know from past blog posts or conversations with me, my late father was a Miami-Dade County police officer for well over twenty years. And was not just a member of the county's PBA, but a high-ranking person on the county PBA's Board of Directors for many, many years. In that latter capacity, he not only got to weigh in as to whether a member was deserving of official legal representation by the PBA's attorney in discipline matters, but also came across every major Miami area politico and behind-the-scenes person you can think of, since he was also one of the small number of people who decided who the PBA would officially endorse in elections.
If you are smart enough to be reading this blog, you don't need me to explain how much politicians and wanna-be politicians prized that PBA endorsement.
For 18 years and counting, my father's police badge number has remained my Dade County Credit Union ATM pin number...
Dave
Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.
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