JUST RELEASED!
INCLUDES PHOTOS AND DOCUMENTS FROM PUBLIC RECORDS
THE BODY IDENTIFIED AS ADAM WALSH IS NOT HIM. IS ADAM STILL ALIVE?
A TRUE STORY
ALSO READ BOOK ONE, FINDING THE KILLER:
WAS THE MAN IN THE MALL THE MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERER IN HISTORY?
THERE IS ALSO A SPECIAL SINGLE EDITION, A CONDENSATION OF BOOKS ONE AND TWO, FOR BRIEFER READING:
FIRST THE POLICE FOUND THE BODY. THEN THE KILLER. NEITHER WAS RIGHT.
BOOK ONE shows that in 1981, in Florida, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer kidnapped 6-year-old Adam Walsh and that police named the wrong suspect in Adam’s presumed murder.
BOOK TWO begins with a Facebook friend request after I’d published Book One:
I thought you might be interested to know that J. Dahmer did kidnap me… I have to give you credence outright for laying most of the blame on the man behind my own abduction.
Sincerely,
Adam J. Walsh
Wasn’t Adam Walsh dead, wasn’t that what this story was all about? Two weeks after Adam had been last seen at the Hollywood Mall, a severed head had been found in a canal 125 miles north, and a medical examiner there said it was Adam. Nothing else of him was ever found. He’d had a funeral service, the community and his parents cried their eyes out, and the Walshes dedicated themselves to helping find other missing children. And at a 2008 press conference, they’d endorsed the Hollywood Police chief’s decision to finally close the case by declaring that Ottis Toole, not Dahmer, killed Adam.
For a week, I listened to the man who said he was Adam Walsh. So much of everything else in the story had turned out contrary to what the police and the Walshes had insisted on. How could I just dismiss this?
The man said Dahmer had kept him for possibly a month. He let him hear the news about the discovery of Adam, dead. After that, Dahmer tortured him horribly and left him near-dead himself. Unconscious, he’d been rescued but knew no details. Another family took him in and raised him, with their surname.
The man was clearly sincere, but was he self-deluded? Could I possibly verify anything he had said? It seemed impossible. Dismissing him would have been the easiest thing.
Rather than prove that he was Adam Walsh, I first tried to prove that he wasn’t.
The upstate M.E.’s report was in public record. He’d made an ID by comparing the teeth in the head to Adam’s dental records. Also, a Walsh family friend had made an ID. But John Walsh wrote that the friend didn’t immediately recognize him, he said it was Adam only after seeing that he was missing a top front tooth.
When police closed the case, all the Walsh case files became public record. The child’s autopsy was done in Ft. Lauderdale and I got to see the file. It was stunning: it had no report of the autopsy, no forensic dental report, and no copy of Adam’s dental records. Nor were they in any other official file. The M.E. who did the autopsy responded to me only in writing that he never wrote a report.
There were some photos of the child’s teeth, though. They showed, as the upstate M.E. wrote, that of the child’s top two front teeth, the left was in most of the way, and the right had just erupted.
But Adam’s famous “Missing” photo clearly showed that he had neither of his top front teeth. That picture, I found, had been taken about a month before he disappeared.
In the police file was the best last seen alive description of Adam. Of his top front teeth, it said that his left had just emerged, and his right was missing. In the found head, the top front tooth that’s mostly in is the left, and it’s the right that just erupted.
Could Adam’s teeth have grown in that much in the 14 days after he disappeared? Unlikely. Plus, the M.E. who did the autopsy estimated that the child (Adam, he said) had been dead possibly all of that time.
Now I had to keep going, could I determine if this man indeed was Adam Walsh
INCLUDES PHOTOS AND DOCUMENTS FROM PUBLIC RECORDS
THE BODY IDENTIFIED AS ADAM WALSH IS NOT HIM. IS ADAM STILL ALIVE?
A TRUE STORY
ALSO READ BOOK ONE, FINDING THE KILLER:
WAS THE MAN IN THE MALL THE MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERER IN HISTORY?
THERE IS ALSO A SPECIAL SINGLE EDITION, A CONDENSATION OF BOOKS ONE AND TWO, FOR BRIEFER READING:
FIRST THE POLICE FOUND THE BODY. THEN THE KILLER. NEITHER WAS RIGHT.
BOOK ONE shows that in 1981, in Florida, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer kidnapped 6-year-old Adam Walsh and that police named the wrong suspect in Adam’s presumed murder.
BOOK TWO begins with a Facebook friend request after I’d published Book One:
I thought you might be interested to know that J. Dahmer did kidnap me… I have to give you credence outright for laying most of the blame on the man behind my own abduction.
Sincerely,
Adam J. Walsh
Wasn’t Adam Walsh dead, wasn’t that what this story was all about? Two weeks after Adam had been last seen at the Hollywood Mall, a severed head had been found in a canal 125 miles north, and a medical examiner there said it was Adam. Nothing else of him was ever found. He’d had a funeral service, the community and his parents cried their eyes out, and the Walshes dedicated themselves to helping find other missing children. And at a 2008 press conference, they’d endorsed the Hollywood Police chief’s decision to finally close the case by declaring that Ottis Toole, not Dahmer, killed Adam.
For a week, I listened to the man who said he was Adam Walsh. So much of everything else in the story had turned out contrary to what the police and the Walshes had insisted on. How could I just dismiss this?
The man said Dahmer had kept him for possibly a month. He let him hear the news about the discovery of Adam, dead. After that, Dahmer tortured him horribly and left him near-dead himself. Unconscious, he’d been rescued but knew no details. Another family took him in and raised him, with their surname.
The man was clearly sincere, but was he self-deluded? Could I possibly verify anything he had said? It seemed impossible. Dismissing him would have been the easiest thing.
Rather than prove that he was Adam Walsh, I first tried to prove that he wasn’t.
The upstate M.E.’s report was in public record. He’d made an ID by comparing the teeth in the head to Adam’s dental records. Also, a Walsh family friend had made an ID. But John Walsh wrote that the friend didn’t immediately recognize him, he said it was Adam only after seeing that he was missing a top front tooth.
When police closed the case, all the Walsh case files became public record. The child’s autopsy was done in Ft. Lauderdale and I got to see the file. It was stunning: it had no report of the autopsy, no forensic dental report, and no copy of Adam’s dental records. Nor were they in any other official file. The M.E. who did the autopsy responded to me only in writing that he never wrote a report.
There were some photos of the child’s teeth, though. They showed, as the upstate M.E. wrote, that of the child’s top two front teeth, the left was in most of the way, and the right had just erupted.
But Adam’s famous “Missing” photo clearly showed that he had neither of his top front teeth. That picture, I found, had been taken about a month before he disappeared.
In the police file was the best last seen alive description of Adam. Of his top front teeth, it said that his left had just emerged, and his right was missing. In the found head, the top front tooth that’s mostly in is the left, and it’s the right that just erupted.
Could Adam’s teeth have grown in that much in the 14 days after he disappeared? Unlikely. Plus, the M.E. who did the autopsy estimated that the child (Adam, he said) had been dead possibly all of that time.
Now I had to keep going, could I determine if this man indeed was Adam Walsh
