Adam Walsh Research Paper

July27, 1981 six-year old Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears department store in Hollywood, Florida. Revé Walsh, his mother, allowed young Adam to busy himself with a video game display while she shopped. A few minutes later, she returned to the display to find her son missing. What she did not know was that, there had been an argument between Adam and a group of kids at the display that resulted in them all being put out of the store where little Adam was abducted. About a month later, two fishermen discovered Adam’s severed head in a canal near Vero Beach. The rest of his body was never found. Enter Ottis Toole, a drifter with a slight mental disability. The husband of a neighbor sexually molested Toole when he was just six years old. This traumatic event turned Toole on to men and eventually into a serial killer. (It is common knowledge that most serial killers have things like this happen to them in their childhood that will become the deep-seated reason behind …show more content…
Jacksonville PD turned him over to the Hollywood police. Toole confessed to the murder and recanted his confessions multiple times. He gave detailed accounts that could only be told by the killer, including details that had never been released by investigators. However, the lead Hollywood detective, Jack Hoffman, arrogant and inexperienced, remained skeptical. He had every piece of evidence, no matter how circumstantial, to convict Toole of this murder yet he never did. 25 years later, Sgt. Joe Matthews, a retiree from Miami PD, put a name and face to the killer of young Adam Walsh when he conducted an independent investigation. In 2008, the then chief of police of Hollywood PD would go on to make a statement that Ottis Toole could have been charged with the murder of Adam Walsh before his death in 2006 years ago due to the amount of circumstantial evidence