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John Walsh turned his grief into something positive - I give him lots of credit.
Absolutely, both in helping find missing kids and combating crime in general (via America's Most Wanted).
I've been doing a (pointless) deep dive in to Jeffrey Dahmer's potential involvement in Adam Walsh's kidnapping and murder. And stumbled on to an interesting read: Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Little Secret (Arthur Jay Davis). There really isn't conclusive evidence that Dahmer killed Walsh, but he was living in South Florida at the time.. and Davis does some good investigative work in to the possibility that Walsh's identification was flawed/superficial. So he posits two theories.. one that Dahmer, not Toole, kidnapped (but never murdered) Walsh. And secondly, that Walsh may have not been murdered in 1981 (very unlikely theory, my opinion). But the author does reveal the strange circumstance that Adam Walsh's autopsy report has vanished. So it is difficult to substantiate the forensic details of the original autopsy.
There was no physical evidence tying Toole to Walsh's killing.. so I think it has been fair to consider other suspects.. including Dahmer. But Davis is the first person I've heard state that Adam Walsh's remains were never convincingly identified and he could have lived?
...stumbled on to an interesting read: Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Little Secret (Arthur Jay Davis)....the author does reveal the strange circumstance that Adam Walsh's autopsy report has vanished. So it is difficult to substantiate the forensic details of the original autopsy.
That seems odd. I just looked up information about this, and found a supplemental police report about Adam's death as described by Otis Toole.
This article has more updated information about the crime.
Yeah.. I think there are two serious issues with assuming Toole was the killer. First (like your link mentions), Toole confessed & recanted multiple times. And Toole got critical details incorrect (like claiming Walsh's corpse was left intact).. but even more troubling (my opinion). Not a single piece of physical evidence ties Toole to the crime.
This is also a problem with the Dahmer theory, 43 years have passed & it would be difficult to track down physical evidence now.. even the Hollywood police chief conceded there is no 'magic wand' for this case.
The 2008 closing of the case really appears to be more an act of emotional closure, than conclusive evidentiary discoveries.
Davis did some really good investigative work documenting Dahmer's time in 1981 South Florida.. and I think presents a plausible case Dahmer could've kidnapped Walsh. But I don't believe Davis' additional theory that Walsh lived.. But Davis does shed light on how poor the autopsy record keeping was.. which does create lingering skepticism about Adam's identification. And I think the skepticism is well-intentioned, even tho it is a sensitive subject.. digging up such a brutal, wicked crime that was officially cleared.
Yeah.. I think there are two serious issues with assuming Toole was the killer. First (like your link mentions), Toole confessed & recanted multiple times. And Toole got critical details incorrect (like claiming Walsh's corpse was left intact).. but even more troubling (my opinion). Not a single piece of physical evidence ties Toole to the crime.
This is also a problem with the Dahmer theory, 43 years have passed & it would be difficult to track down physical evidence now.. even the Hollywood police chief conceded there is no 'magic wand' for this case.
The 2008 closing of the case really appears to be more an act of emotional closure, than conclusive evidentiary discoveries.
Davis did some really good investigative work documenting Dahmer's time in 1981 South Florida.. and I think presents a plausible case Dahmer could've kidnapped Walsh. But I don't believe Davis' additional theory that Walsh lived.. But Davis does shed light on how poor the autopsy record keeping was.. which does create lingering skepticism about Adam's identification. And I think the skepticism is well-intentioned, even tho it is a sensitive subject.. digging up such a brutal, wicked crime that was officially cleared.
Toole is likely the best guess. But here's another thing about Dahmer... It just doesn't fit his MO at all. For it to be him, it'd have to be a complete outlier from several angles, which.. I mean, anything is possible, but..
Dahmer generally went after teens and young men. None of his known victims was under the age of 13. Adam was.. 6 or so at the time as I recall?
Dahmer collected his victims as trophies. Or at least parts of them. While you could argue, hey Adam was decapitated.. Dahmer generally kept flesh or skulls. No indication of this happening with Adam.
To me, trying to tie Dahmer to Adam's death is like the people who try to tie the Unabomber to the Tylenol cyanide poisonings.. Yeah, they were in the same area at the time.. But.. The crimes and/or motivations are totally different. It's seeing a pattern where none exists because people WANT to see a pattern. Like the people who sit there and do all those completely random math things that add up to 9/11.
I think John Walsh and his wife have accepted that Otis Toole was the killer.. And.. Honestly, at this point. That's probably the most important thing. They have peace and closure.
Well, I don't blame the store security guard. After all, parents need to monitor their kids, not just turn them loose in the toy department and go shopping...I don't blame the Mother...it could have been an issue of her just letting him go over there for a minute or two...things happen that fast. Very sad...the world has evil people in it...scary.
Well, I do put most of the blame on the store security guard. Adam was only six years old and from the photos posted of him, he looks like he's that young. The security guard was wrong, in my opinion. This may sound mean for me to say, but I hope the "security" guard felt guilty about Adam for the rest of his life. He should have paged over the store's PA system for the mother to come get her son.
Quote:
The security guard asked the older boys if their parents were in the store, and they said that they were not. Adam's parents later conjectured that their son had been too shy to speak to the security guard, who presumed that he was in the company of the other boys and made him leave by the same door by which the boys had entered (the Sears west entrance).
I remember one time my little sister wandered off for maybe three minutes, but then an announcement came over the PA system regarding my lost sister. (She was four and it was in the late 1960s.) Anyway, a responsible employee should know how to handle these things.
Also, as a mother I wouldn't have let my six year old child out of my sight in a store (and I didn't). I don't trust strangers. I never have.
Well, I do put most of the blame on the store security guard. Adam was only six years old and from the photos posted of him, he looks like he's that young. The security guard was wrong, in my opinion.
The security guard was a teenager, which explains a lot.
Toole is likely the best guess. But here's another thing about Dahmer... It just doesn't fit his MO at all. For it to be him, it'd have to be a complete outlier from several angles, which.. I mean, anything is possible, but..
Dahmer generally went after teens and young men. None of his known victims was under the age of 13. Adam was.. 6 or so at the time as I recall?
Dahmer collected his victims as trophies. Or at least parts of them. While you could argue, hey Adam was decapitated.. Dahmer generally kept flesh or skulls. No indication of this happening with Adam.
To me, trying to tie Dahmer to Adam's death is like the people who try to tie the Unabomber to the Tylenol cyanide poisonings.. Yeah, they were in the same area at the time.. But.. The crimes and/or motivations are totally different. It's seeing a pattern where none exists because people WANT to see a pattern. Like the people who sit there and do all those completely random math things that add up to 9/11.
I think John Walsh and his wife have accepted that Otis Toole was the killer.. And.. Honestly, at this point. That's probably the most important thing. They have peace and closure.
I agree Walsh believes Toole is the killer...the Dahmer angle in my opinion is fantasy land stuff!
The security guard was a teenager, which explains a lot.
The times explain a lot as well. There weren't monsters around every corner back in the 70's and 80's. We rode bicycles all day long, jumping off ramps that were death traps and didn't think anything about it.
If someone was wearing a helmet on a bicycle in the early 80's.. They'd have never heard the end of it.
My dad was in town this past weekend, we went out to the cemetery to visit my grandparents and kinda wandered around the cemetery, because.. He knew many of the people in there. I found a grave for someone who was born the same year he was and showed it to him.. Told him I presumed the guy died in Vietnam, because he had a military marker and died in 1969..
Nope. He went to vietnam and made it back home. a month later, died in a car wreck. there were about 4 more people in there that he knew who died in car wrecks.. Was rather shocking to me. But.. Automotive safety in the 60's was basically making a bigger car. Seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, etc, etc didn't come along for another 20+ years.
The times explain a lot as well. There weren't monsters around every corner back in the 70's and 80's. We rode bicycles all day long, jumping off ramps that were death traps and didn't think anything about it.
True. For a lot of us, Adam Walsh's abduction was the first time we realized that a world in which children could play unsupervised--the way many of us had grown up--no longer existed.
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