July 27, 1981, quickly went from a normal day for the Walsh family to a day of tragedy.
Rev Walsh and her 6-year-old son Adam went to Sears in Hollywood, Florida, that day. While at the store, the boy wandered into the video game aisle while his mother browsed several aisles, History.com reported.
When the mother went down the hall to pick up her son, he was gone. Investigators found that Adam left the store with a group of older boys who were asked to leave because they were causing trouble, according to the source.
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Adam’s parents launched a massive manhunt to find him, and even offered a $100,000 reward to draw attention to the case.
“When Adam was kidnapped … the FBI didn’t help us,” Walsh previously told Fox News Digital. “… The FBI refused to put Adam on NCIC, or the National Crime Information Computer, which, as of 1981, held millions of records of convicted criminals, stolen ships, stolen cars, stolen planes. … No one. unknown dead person. file, no missing child file, nothing.”
Less than two weeks after Adam disappeared from the department store, his severed head was found by two fishermen in a drainage canal in Vero Beach, about 100 miles from where he was abducted, according to History.com. His body was never found.
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“I was dying of heartbreak,” Walsh told Fox News Digital at the time of the tragic discovery.
It took 27 years for Adam’s case to finally be closed.
Ottis Elwood Toole would eventually confess to Adam’s murder, but this story was told and recanted many times over the years after Adam’s murder was discovered.
In October 1983, Toole, who was an inmate in a Florida prison, initially confessed to kidnapping and killing Adam, according to History.com. He said that serial killer Henry Lee Lucas was also involved in the crime, although it was later discovered that Lucas was in jail at the time of the abduction.
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Investigatorsββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ have been unable to find AdamΒ΄s body in the location where Toole claimed he was buried, providing no physical evidence for the case.
A few months after his admission, Toole recanted.
In the years that followed, Toole continued the cycle of confessing and retrieving his story. Another suspect in Adam’s murder is serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was living in Florida at the time, according to History.com.
Toole, who was convicted of six murders, died in prison in 1996. It was not until December 16, 2008, when the police department announced that the case was closed with enough evidence to declare Toole responsible for Adam’s death, according to History. .com.
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Since then, Adam’s family, including Callahan’s sister, who was not even born when Adam disappeared, have devoted themselves to a life of advocacy.
John is the creator and host of the show “America’s Most Wanted,” which has been hunting criminals for over 40 years. He launched the series in 1988 after killing his son.
“I grew up in a nice, gated community (and) never thought crime would touch us,” Walsh told Fox News Digital. “… I’ve learned in all these years that bad people will come directly to your area. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are. They can do something for you and get you.”
The event helped arrest more than 1,190 criminals.
“What drives me is that no one is helping us find Adam,” Walsh previously told Fox News Digital. “We put a man on the moon, and we can’t put the missing child into the big FBI computer. But we persevered. We love the little boy so much, and we don’t have a clue who killed someone. It takes 27 This is a very good retired detective and the DA who looked at the file, discovered Adam’s murder and solved Adam’s case.
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Walsh is also one of the founders of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a nonprofit organization of which Callahan is executive director of the Florida branch.
On July 27, 2006, 25 years after Adam’s disappearance, President George W. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act into law, “which creates a national database of convicted child sex offenders, strengthens federal penalties for crimes against children -children and provide funding and training for law enforcement to combat crimes involving child sexual exploitation over the internet,” per History.com.