Adam Walsh Homicide Case Closed, Many More Remain Open
Earlier this month, an Associated Press probe of FBI figures revealed that, despite technological advances in criminalistics, it’s just easier to get away with murder nowadays. The clearance rate of homicides, or cases solved in a year, stood at 61 percent nationwide in 2007, a steady slip over the decades from the first year of modern record-keeping, 1963, when the clearance rate was 91 percent.
In addition to DNA and other scientific advances that should be helping catch more criminals, not fewer, law enforcement also now has the benefit of reaping tips and captures with the help of modern media. America’s Most Wanted, the longest-running show on the Fox network, boasts 1,049 criminals caught with the program’s help as of this writing — yet for 27 years, host John Walsh has been at the center of one of America’s most infamous unsolved mysteries.
Until Tuesday, that is, when police and Walsh agreed that it was time to finger the killer and abductor of his son, six-year-old Adam Walsh, and close the books on the 1981 case.
“Our agency has devoted an inordinate amount of time seeking leads to other potential perpetrators rather than emphasizing Ottis Toole as our primary suspect,” said Hollywood (Fla.) Police Chief Chadwick Wagner at a news conference with the Walshes. “Ottis Toole has continued to be our only real suspect.” So whether by process of elimination or weighing the current evidence, the guy who claimed at one time or another an unlikely, debunkable total of more than 100 murders — and confessed and recanted to killing Adam Walsh at least twice — will go down in history as the killer who depraved actions sparked a community fight-back response to crime that has lasted as long as the mystery of the boy’s death.
One thing you need to remember is that 1963 was pre-Miranda.
One has to wonder how many of the statistics, dropping to the current rate of 61%, are due not to the police investigations but because of technicalities that prevent the cases from ever going to court or allowing the guilty party to be aquitted? Even if the police are positive they have the right man (or woman), if that person is aquitted in court, particularly on a technicality, that case is still considered ‘unsolved,’ is it not? Look at the Brown and Goldman families. They will never be told their case is solved, yet 90% of the country knows who did it.
#2 Peter, as a law-enforcement officer I can tell you that the biggest problem with prosecution and conviction is the ridiculously inflated expectations that juries have regarding evidence. They see on TV that evidence can be collected from any concievable surface and processed in the time it takes to run a couple of ads. They are also given the impression that Detectives have no other cases and unlimited resources to expend. Shows like CSI also train the criminal in what evidence looks like and ways to avoid leaving it behind.
Twenty years ago when I became an officer having the gun in hand, the appropriate slug in the victim and a confession would gaurantee a conviction. Now that is almost enough to get a warrant, before trial we would need a complete ballistics workup, DNA on everybody, gun-shot residue test results and an army of forensic technicians. All that so the courts can use the “Bass Masters” program (catch and release)and put this thug back on the street.
Every trial is a classroom, teaching the police, lawyers and criminals new aspects of their chosen careers. The problem with early release and parole systems is that each time the criminal is convicted he learns things that make him harder to catch and even harder to convict. A couple of generations of this and we have built up a large body of “institutional knowledge” in our criminal classes, often to the point where the criminal has a better grasp of his issues at trial than the Prosecutor or Defense Counsel.
In the old days you went to prison and stayed there, now you jusr check in and get free health care for a little while.
My name is Willis Morgan. I am one of the original witnesses to the Adam Walsh case. On December 16,2008 The Hollywood Police Department Closed the Adam Walsh Case and apologized to the Walsh Family for their past mistakes Instead of clearing up past blemishes, the Hollywood Police have created their worst blemish to date! I was at that meeting. The Hollywood Police have deliberately mislead the Walsh family in order to close this case. As far as I am concerned the Walsh family have suffered two tragedies. One by Jeffrey Dahmer and one By the Hollywood Police Department! WHAT THEY DID YESTERDAY IS ABOMINABLE!
Willis Morgan
The clearance rate might have been 91% in ’63, but how many were actually the right person? It was easier to just get someone convicted then, with no DNA or fingerprints or other “expected” evidence in play.
My DH watches “The First 48″ petty often. It’s unreal 1) how little evidence is gathered at these homicides (most don’t bother with fingerprints, and forget “trace”) and 2) how stupid the suspects are. Most will confess. That may be a slant of the show and not reflect reality, I don’t know. But apparently no one ever told these people the only things out of your mouth should ever be “lawyer”. Not that I WANT them getting smarter, understand.
I can’t imagine losing a child and don’t want to be able to imagine it. I hurt for the Walshes and all other parents of murdered children. The police work here did seem exceptionally shitty-losing an entire car!
I ask only that you read my postings with an open mind and realize that everything I post is at least accurate. All the original witnesses in the Adam Walsh kidnapping say Adam was tossed into a blue van. That is why the state of Florida spent a month stopping every blue van in the State in 1981. When Toole confessed to the Adam kidnapping he did not have a blue van! He had a white Cadillac, so what did this PD do? They turned the blue into a white Cadillac. That alone should have been enough to dismiss Toole as a suspect! The two witnesses that claim they saw Toole never came forward until the early and mid 90′s. The HPD completely dismissed the original witnesses at that point. They do not want Dahmer to be their suspect for many reasons. one of them may be the fact that one very credible witness even gave them the tag # for the blue van in 1981. He then called the Pd to ask if they wanted him to come in for an interview. Every time he got an answering machine until the 5th or 6th time he finally got a live person. He was told he needed to call back in two weeks because the person he needed to talk to was on vacation. He left his new address and Phone # in Alabama and moved. In fact that is why he was at Sears, to change his billing address. He never heard from the PD again until 1991 when he saw JD’s photo in the paper and flew back to Hollywood. The HPD did not even know he came forward in 1981. When he told them he gave them the tag # of the van there jaw’s dropped! This is just one of many facts they want no one to know!
Willis Morgan
Editor:
I was in the parking lot of the Hollywood Mall, about to enter Sears, on the morning in July 1981 when Adam Walsh was taken and later killed. I saw a man throw a child the age of Adam into a blue van, which then hastily drove away. Days later, when I realized that the Hollywood Police department was searching for a young boy, I told that to two Hollywood police officers.
Ten years later, living in Birmingham, Alabama, and reading the Sunday newspaper, I saw a 1981 photo of Jeffrey Dahmer. He was a match for the man I saw driving the blue van. I called the Hollywood police that day, and two days later came to Hollywood to give a statement.
I much later learned that another witness had encountered Dahmer inside the mall that same morning. He too had told that to Hollywood police both in 1981, days after the abduction, and in 1991, quickly after he also saw Dahmer’s photo in the newspaper. Further, in recent years, it was discovered that Dahmer that summer of 1981 had access to a blue van at his place of work, about 15 minutes from Hollywood Mall
Hollywood police has claimed to review its cold case at various times but has never spoken to me again. For them to close the Adam Walsh case and declare Ottis Toole his killer, with no new evidence offered after he’d long been dismissed, is wrong.
Bill Bowen
Birmingham, Alabama