The Adam Walsh story… 44 years later

Here is a link.

My mother used to tell us that story. She'd point out that old man on America's Most Wanted and say "That poor man has to do that show now because his own little boy was kidnapped, raped, and beheaded by some Florida pervert. So behave in public, and don't run off, or they're gonna find YOUR HEAD in a drainage ditch someday. Is that what you want?"

She told us all about molesters, rape, and snuff films before we were six years old. By her logic, every man out there was a rapist in waiting. It was full on Satanic Panic. She was...dysregulated.

John Walsh got a career out of it, so it worked out very well for him and his big dick energy.

His Replacement Daughter turned out to be ten kinds of Florida Fuck-up.

She has some sort of nose cancer, and her four children were taken away by social workers for reasons that she refuses to discuss. But she keeps going out of her way to publicly trash her father for fucking up her life.

It has to be hard to be the daughter to parents who lost their son in such a horrifying way. Especially when you are born afterward.

I do reminder tabloid photos of John Walsh partying with women who were not his wife during his AMW days

R5 I remember those pics because my bf at the time thought it was hilarious that John Walsh was exposed for not actually being a sanctimonious eternal victim. He couldn’t stand him for some reason. I didn’t agree at all.

John Walsh is an opportunistic asshole who climbed his dead son’s decapitated corpse to find his milieu as a fourth-tier wannabe crusader for justice.

Wasn't Walsh said to have been involved in unsavory business dealings in his previous career?

Are you telekinetic, r2?

The Enquirer revealed that the Walsh’s were sex club swinging regulars. It sounds to me like a trafficking deal gone bad.

Walsh benefited as much from that tv movie when Travanti played him as much as he did from the real story.

The TV movie was too intense for the residents of my psychiatric unit. I couldn’t believe people were unfamiliar with the case, but the moment they found the head many of the patients lost their minds.

She sounds hilarious, r2

Now John and Reve sell natural pain supplements. Their son Cal works with John tv.

its an absolutely horrific and infuriating event, mom left her son at the arcade inside a mall for 15 minutes!

I grew up in Broward County not far from where he was taken and as a 12 year old kid, it was kind of scary. Of course we also had to worry about razor blades in our caramel apples, satanic sacrifices, and disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle (which also touched South Florida), so I think we just added it to the list.

All that said, it still seems easier than dealing with the insanity foisted upon kids nowadays with social media and the Internet.

I always feel incredibly sad when I think about Adam, a 6 year old kid at the arcade, two kids get into a fight so the security guard kicks them all out. Adam alone outside at the mall at the entrance they did not come in, probably afraid. And then this guy comes along. ..

It’s just horrifying.

Meghan Walsh sounds as though she has severe problems. Maybe even schizophrenia. Accusing her dad of having something to do with Adam’s murder is kinda nuts.

I was disappointed that Reve was not as pretty as Jobeth Williams.

People seemingly gloss over the fact that the mom left a 6 year old kid alone in a mall store to go do...whatever it was she so desperately needed to do without her kid watching.

Since they're still seemingly together, I guess he doesn't blame her.

I'm vindictive. On her deathbed, the last words she'd ever hear in this life from me would be, "if you had been a good mother, Adam would still be alive."

Go shopping and leave your kid playing games.

Good to know.

It was a different world then. Leaving him in the "toy department" was only the beginning of a series of unfortunate events.

The security guards, they didn't lock the mall down, etc etc.

My folks used to always leave me at a toy store and went to do shopping.

R20 She went to price a lamp that was on sale, and she didn't even notice Adam was missing for an hour or more. After scouring the store and surrounding area, she finally went home at police insistence, having not purchased anything. A few days later, Adam's head was found in a drainage ditch a hundred miles away. That one shopping trip cost her her child, and transformed her from a housewife into a national figure whose husband was rarely home.

Plus, no lamp. It was a disappointing shopping trip on many levels.

I’m still stuck on R12’s story that a bunch of psychiatric inpatients in a locked unit were watching the Adam Walsh TV movie. That can’t have been a good choice.

Sadly way back then child abduction and far worse did happen more often per capita compares to now. It just feels more frequent now because sick stories that would’ve been local 50 years ago are national today.

[quote]I’m still stuck on [R12]’s story that a bunch of psychiatric inpatients in a locked unit were watching the Adam Walsh TV movie. That can’t have been a good choice.

Right, R25? People who lost their heads getting upset watching a movie about a child who loses his head. Whodathunit?

My mom was crazy overprotective of me, her youngest, but even she would leave me in toy departments, the magazine aisle at the grocery store, and other places where kids would hang while the adults did their adult things. Everyone did. It’s probably strange if you didn’t experience it, but it was not even sort of strange back then.

Does Reve Walsh still claim she only left him for six minutes?

R24 why would she buy that lamp? Every time she looked at it she’d be reminded that it cost her her son’s life.

Actually, she should’ve bought it and smashed it to hell. Should’ve bought all the lamps Sears had on display that day.

R29 I mean, she was already there, and it WAS a really good sale.

[QUOTE]My folks used to always leave me at a toy store and went to do shopping.

[QUOTE]It was a different world then. Leaving him in the "toy department" was only the beginning of a series of unfortunate events.

Shockingly, people still do stuff like this. I used to volunteer/work at an exotic bird store. We started to notice a lot of unsupervised kids all of a sudden. Turns out some parents would leave their kids and go get their prescriptions and shop at Rite Aid across the street. Word had gotten out. We also suspected they'd go get drinks at a couple of nearby bars.

I noticed a sign in the window at a large antique mall in my neighborhood that said something to the effect of "Unsupervised children will become will become part of our merchandise." I asked because there just can't be that many troublesome gaylings out antiquing. The mall shares a parking lot with a restaurant. Parents began depositing their kids there before they enjoyed a quiet, child-free dinner.

I remember reading about this story as a kid in one of my mom’s magazines in the ‘90s. I grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries and was always fascinated by morbid crime stories. The thing I remember standing out/disturbing me the most was that all they ever found was the poor kid’s severed head. Just gruesome.

Some Enchanted Evening

You Will Meet A Stranger

similar to r16, my grandparents lived near the Hollywood Mall. I'm the same age as Adam, and any time we were visiting, my grandparents warned my parents about watching us when we went out anywhere.

Like r2 my mother loved to show this movie to me - also The Burning Bed! Haha, oh what a happy childhood I had. Anyway she didn't want me straying from her side at the store so she got what she wanted. A terrified kid turned terrified adult.

Otis Toole claimed he killed and ate Adam. Otis was a notorious liar though.

That mall was near my home, I had been there on some Jr. Achievement activity.

Adam’s murder was a crime of opportunity, the result of an event cascade that produced deadly consequences. It was not the mother’s fault. Countless parents left their kids near toy departments, video arcades and the Tool & Bike dept at Sears.

How can such an evil person be walking around Hollywood Mall? It’s frightening to think I was there in my training bra, hawking key chains with magazine pics decoupaged on them. Just a few weeks before.

It breaks my heart. Such a sweet looking boy.

I killed Melinda Duckett!

John is creepy and probably had the boy killed. He forged himself a lucrative career out of the tragedy.

The police also lost Toole's car so there was zero DNA evidence connecting him to the crime, r36. I don't think he did it. He claimed to have killed hundreds of people.

Wow o had no idea the crime was so grizzly

According to Wikipedia Otis Toole was a hooker? In what reality is this possible?

John is manipulative and creepy but do you all really think he killed or sold his son?

Claiming that Walsh sacrificed his son for America's Most Wanted is pretty egregious. This was a tragedy that drove him to do what he does. He may have enjoyed the spotlight at times, but to suggest his own son's brutalization, ostensible rape, and dismemberment was somehow orchestrated by him in exchange for fame is insane.

R43 Ottis very well may have engaged in prostitution in his youth. Male prostitutes have always existed, primarily for male-on-male sex. Toole was also a twisted deviant with an extraordinarily fucked up background. He is one of the sickest killers who has ever walked the planet IMO. I don't believe he killed Walsh's son either, but he was without a doubt capable of it.

I think there’s zero chance that Ottis Toole committed this crime.

R20 Dude, that was damn near 50 years ago. Parents did that ALL the time. It was an arcade full of other unwatched children in a fucking mall. Nobody could've imagined how that would turn out.

People who constantly blame victims are dried-up pieces of dogshit.

Yep, R27, it's how my 8-year old self learned about Xaviera Hollander and Shere Hite. When we visited the local department stores I'd make a beeline for the books and magazines section while my parents and older sibs shopped elsewhere.

That Hollander book--not the one she was famous for (the title of which escapes me)--but the one called [italic]The Best Part of a Man,[/italic] taught me how to suck cock like a pro. I filed that chapter away in my brain until I got the chance to try it on a real guy 13 or 14 years later (late bloomer, I was).

R48, The Happy Hooker.

Thats terrible r37.

YOU could have been decapitated.

This was around 1971 - My mother would drop me and my brother off at a park and go shopping in a department store about a mile away .

Thanks, R49, that's the one.

It was a different time, yes, but I was born in 1971 and in the 70s, there were already a lot of “don’t talk to strangers” PSAs and all the variations - though they quadrupled in the 80s. My parents told us, my teachers told us…. The issue can be knowing not to take candy from strangers, talk to them, but it can be very different when a child is put in a situation like that and the stranger seems so nice/legitimate. Adam may have been scared being told to leave the mall which contributed to his vulnerability.

It wasn’t a lawless time. It’s just that kids will be kids.

1972 school film.

If Ottis Toole was telling the truth - and I hope he wasn’t- he punched Adam in the face a few times and then eventually killed the crying boy.

That makes it so sick and I can’t get the image of a crying, scared child out of my mind.

His father's hucksterism is part of what makes me suspicious of a lot of "victim's rights" efforts. Justice is complicated and making fame whore parents rich is not part of the deal.

This story was before my time. In the early 2000’s while waiting to be seen in an ER, there was an old Good Housekeeping with this story. I was truly shocked when they found his head and nothing else. Horrifying. His dad had nothing to do with it. That much I am sure of.

To those who doubt Otis Toole murdered Adam, what’s your reasoning? JW believes it was Otis. Iirc, Henry Lee Lucas was ruled out. He was originally thought to be traveling with Otis.

What are the theories that could explain the whereabouts of the body? Alligators? Different location?

I remember briefly there was some conjecture that Jeffrey Dahmer was the one who had done it as he was living in Hollywood, FL at the same time of Adam’s murder.

I remember going to Astroworld in Houston when I was a kid, and they were filming a movie. We asked someone what it was, and they said, "Adam Walsh Part 2." Talk about an unnecessary sequel.

[quote]I remember going to Astroworld in Houston when I was a kid, and they were filming a movie. We asked someone what it was, and they said, "Adam Walsh Part 2." Talk about an unnecessary sequel.

Who played The Head?

Mom was returning a lamp, a 15 minute errand? 20 minutes? Left her son at the arcade located INSIDE A MALL WITH SECURITY. Mom had probably ran similar errands before without issue.

[quote]I remember going to Astroworld in Houston when I was a kid, and they were filming a movie. We asked someone what it was, and they said, "Adam Walsh Part 2."

Adam Walsh Part 2 - ADAM LIVES!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the arcade!

Toole was a compulsive liar with an IQ of 75, r58. He had zero credibility. JW probably wants to believe Toole did it because that's less upsetting than thinking the murderer got away with it. I don't really care what Walsh personally believes.

I was very close in age to Adam Walsh and I remember this vividly. It was a HUGE story, nationwide. Overnight it put the fear of God in parents and a lot changed. Parents became very paranoid and kids were not allowed to be out in public places unsupervised anymore.

John Walsh helped launch a ridiculous panic about child abduction, even though it always has been a rare event.

Adam was abducted from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall (today Hollywood Hills Plaza), across from the Hollywood Police station.

Revé had left Adam in the toy department at a model video game console at the Sears while she looked for a lamp. When she returned several minutes later, Adam was missing.

Police records in Adam's case, released in 1996, show that a 17-year-old security guard instructed four boys to leave the department store.

Adam is thought to have been one of them.

Sixteen days after the abduction, his severed head was found in a drainage canal 120 miles (190 km) away from his home. The rest of his body was never found.

There were several child abductions in the 80s that scared the hell out of parents everywhere. Poor Jacob Wetterling was another one.

Even though it wasn't the security guard's fault for sending the older boys out of the store, with Adam following one of them, I imagine he felt some guilt or remorse for how things played out. One of those "if only" moments you wish you could turn back time for.

I still can't imagine leaving a six-year-old without the supervision of a known and trusted older child or adult. Mom paid the highest price possible for that lack of judgment.

R68, another one that haunted us in Boston was Jeffrey Curley of East Cambridge. 1997. A pair of neighborhood pedos gradually gained his trust and he got in their car. He was 9 or 10.

One of the men who killed Jeffrey was involved with NAMBLA and the father, Bob Curley, took the semi-underground org to court.

Also, who gives a shit where John Walsh stuck his dick. AMW got how many human garbage cans off of the streets?

Mall abduction last week in the DC suburbs -

now we know what world we live in. no unsupervised kids.

My mom used to bring us to the mall and tell us to meet her at the Steiger’s (local department store) candy counter at a certain time. I would spend all my time in Waldenbooks and some of that time was spent trying to see if I could grab a copy of Playgirl from the top shelf and peruse it quickly. Or the Chippendales calendar if it was the end of the year.

My point was that I loved being unsupervised so that I could look at hot guys.

All this South Florida psycho killer talk is giving me flashbacks to when Andrew Cunanan was hiding out here. While the manhunt was still on, we always had at least one potential siting while cruising Last Olas or Miami Beach.

R74 I actually got caught by one of my close friends doing just that in 1985. He never spoke to me about it but apparently was telling other people as I learned when another friend cryptically alluded to it one evening.

Fortunately these weren't my closest friends so I was able to employ my incredibly powerful skills of avoidance and denial and delayed coming out till 1990 as I was about to graduate college.

Memories 😂😂😂

[quote]Also, who gives a shit where John Walsh stuck his dick. AMW got how many human garbage cans off of the streets?

My "most wanted" would be watching the young John Walsh throw a mean fuck.

[quote] Adam Walsh Part 2 - ADAM LIVES!

[quote]Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the arcade!

By the time they got to Adam 12, the series had really lost steam.

You came for my dead son, now stay for Omega XL!

There were multiple witnesses that said that they recognized Jeffrey Dahmer as the person that kidnapped Adam Walsh. The witnesses came forward when they saw Dahmer on television after he was arrested after the murders he committed in Wisconsin.

Dahmer was living in close to Hollywood, FL at the time of Adam’s disappearance after getting kicked out of the military. Police questioned Dahmer about Adam’s murder and he denied it, but he also told a cop that anyone that killed Adam would get destroyed in prison.

I hate to link to Faux News but I couldn’t find the other report I remember seeing on ABC.

R81 Dahmer rolled his eyes at their supposition. He threw it back at them, essentially saying "I've told you pigs everything I did, in excruciating detail, and gave you enough info to fill five textbooks and make sure you don't eat dark meat for a decade. First, you know my type (mostly muscular Black men, but also a few wispy Asian teens), and you know I never had any interest in toddlers. Second, why would I tell you so much about victims you didn't even know I killed, but suddenly clam up about this one that was so far outside my norm?"