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Washington Post, Adam Walsh Case Finally Closed
In 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh went missing from a Hollywood, Fla., shopping mall, sending all of South Florida into a tailspin. Today, more than two decades later, Adam's killer has finally been named: Ottis Toole, a suspect who had twice confessed and recanted, admitted to the crime on his deathbed, Toole's niece told Adam's father, John Walsh.
I was an 11-year-old girl living in South Florida the day Adam Walsh disappeared. What I remember most was the constant reminder of him at that time: A photo of Adam holding a baseball bat, with a grin that showed missing front teeth. It symbolized a new fear -- a change in our feelings of safety. Before Adam's disappearance, we could ride our bikes anywhere. Afterward, there were lots of questions. "Where are you going?" "When will you be home?" "Who will you be with?"
Adam's disappearance and death compelled his father, John Walsh, to become a national advocate for missing children. He helped put missing children's faces on milk bottles and mailbox fliers in the days before Amber Alerts could spread in minutes via e-mail.
A year after Adam's death, Congress passed the Missing Children Act. A national center, database and toll-free line devoted to missing children were created. John Walsh went on to host the television show "America's Most Wanted."
"He ended up really producing a generation of cautious and afraid kids who view all adults and strangers as a threat to them and it made parents extremely paranoid about the safety of their children," Mount Holyoke College sociologist and criminologist Richard Moran told the Associated Press.
Whatever your thoughts about Walsh's efforts on behalf of missing children over the years, at least he and his wife, Reve, finally know who killed their little boy. "Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" John Walsh said at a Tuesday news conference in which Reve placed a small photo of Adam on the lectern. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."
