Who killed Adam Walsh (and is he really dead?)
The search for the truth behind the crime that launched “America’s Most Wanted”
A review in five parts of a new two-book series, The Unsolved “Murder” of Adam Walsh by Arthur Jay Harris
In Part One, police in Hollywood, Florida, “exceptionally closed” the Adam Walsh case 27 years after the 6-year-old disappeared from a Sears store and two weeks later was identified as dead. That is to say, the police ended their investigation by saying that the suspect they believed killed Adam was himself dead. When true crime author Arthur Jay Harris went to look at the Adam Walsh case file at the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office, he found (and reported in The Miami Herald) that it was missing its autopsy report narrative. The office’s now-former Chief Medical Examiner, who performed the autopsy, wouldn’t speak to Harris, but when forced by his public records request to respond, said in writing that no one had ever written a report of that autopsy. The severed head remains of a child had been identified as Adam strictly by its teeth, but there was also no forensic dental report. Rather remarkably, Harris had gone to examine the file because a man had contacted him to say that the found child was misidentified as Adam—and that he, in fact, was Adam Walsh. To Harris, that claim started to sound a little less outlandish once he had verified that the autopsy report was, in fact, missing.
PART TWO: Were the remains of the child who was found and officially identified as Adam Walsh actually misidentified?
Adam’s case was made famous by his parents, John and Reve Walsh, who for the first years after Adam’s disappearance crusaded for the cause of missing children, alerting parents to the possibility that it could happen to them, and asking legislatures to change laws to make it easier for law enforcement to investigate such cases. In 1988, John began hosting of one of Fox Television’s first shows, America’s Most Wanted, which asked the public for tips to catch fugitives.
Adam Walsh 1981
Two weeks after Adam disappeared from a store near where he lived in Hollywood, Florida, when the head of a young child was found in a drainage canal 125 miles to the north, and officials identified it as Adam, no one in the public or news media questioned their finding.
At the morgue in Vero Beach, Florida, neither of the Walshes had actually identified the severed head. Instead, they’d sent a family friend, John Monahan, who was accompanied by a Hollywood Police lieutenant. Monahan later told The Miami Herald that he’d last seen Adam just days before he disappeared, and had noticed that one of his top front teeth had just erupted. The famous “Missing” photo of Adam showed neither of those top teeth (close up, below). In his book Tears of Rage, John Walsh wrote that the photo had been taken about a week before Adam disappeared. Harris found the studio photographer who took it, as well as three other sources, and wrote that when Adam disappeared, the photo was about a month old.
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6-year-old Adam Walsh’s last photo, a close up of his teeth. A pediatric dentist told Harris that the pink of his gums on the upper left side meant that an adult tooth in that spot was nearly ready to erupt. The photo was taken about a month before he disappeared, and after it was taken, as the teletype below demonstrates, his left front tooth did erupt.
In the Hollywood Police case file, released in 2008, a teletype to another police agency serves as a last-seen-alive bulletin for Adam and confirms what Monahan said.
From the Hollywood Police case file in public record, the last-seen-alive description of Adam as teletyped from their agency to Orlando Police: “Missing right front tooth and left front tooth partially grown in.”
Despite extensive searching at the location where the severed head was found, police never found any other part of the child’s body. As John Walsh wrote in his book, when the Indian RiverCounty medical examiner let Monahan see the remains, he did not immediately recognize them as Adam. However, when the M.E. opened its mouth, revealing the just-erupted tooth, Monahan then quickly gave his positive ID.
The problem with all of that, as Harris discovered, was best documented in the M.E.’s brief account entitled “Preliminary Autopsy Report.” Here is the entirety of what he wrote and drew of the child’s top teeth. Look at it closely:
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The Indian River County M.E. reported and drew that the erupting (palpable) top front tooth he saw was on its right side. But probably unknown to the M.E. at the time was that Adam’s recently-erupted top front tooth was on his left side, as the Hollywood Police teletype shows, above.
From public records, Harris was able to assemble several photos of the dead child’s teeth. From slides at the Broward Medical Examiner’s office in Fort Lauderdale, where the actual autopsy was performed, he sketched this of the child’s top jaw, as a skull, which he published:
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Harris’s sketch of the top teeth of the found child, which agrees with the Indian River County M.E.’s report: the right top front tooth (the central incisor) was just coming in, and the left top front tooth was much further in.
In 1997, at the request of Hollywood Police, a University of Florida forensic anthropologist examined the remains and took his own photos. Reviewing them at Harris’s request, he said that the top left front tooth was “mostly in,” and the top right front tooth was “getting there,” which matched Harris’s drawing. The Indian River M.E. did not write anything specific about the top left front tooth; he lumped it as one of five teeth that were present on the upper left side.
A close up of a Hollywood Police crime scene photo of the dead child further illustrates the point:
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Hollywood Police Department
It’s the left top front tooth that protrudes, which matches the description that the found child had a “mostly-in” top left front tooth and a just-erupted top right front tooth, whereas Adam’s top left front tooth had just erupted sometime in the month between when the “Missing” photo was taken and when he disappeared.
Now one more bit of proof:
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Close up of the top jaw of the found child, as a skull. C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at University of Florida, Gainesville. Photo released by Hollywood Police Department
These are the top teeth of the found child, as shown in one of the photos taken by the forensic anthropologist in 1997, and released into public record by Hollywood Police. From this angle and because the gum line had since eroded, the two front teeth look fully grown in, which is misleading. Rather, the photo is most important because it shows spaces on both sides where its missing lateral incisors, the teeth next to the central incisors (or “front teeth”), would eventually grow in.
Like Harris did with the aid of a dental chart and after consulting with dentists, count the teeth on each side: five. From the bottom, there are three molars (the first adult molar, the second deciduous ((or baby)) molar, then the first baby molar). Then we see the canine and then the central incisor. Missing between the central incisor and the canine, on each side, are the baby lateral incisors, which generally fall out of a six-to-seven-year-old child’s mouth sometime after the adult central incisors erupt. It’s obvious from his writing (and from his own admission to Harris) that the Indian RiverCountyM.E., who first announced the positive ID, was not a dental expert; he didn’t note the absence of the lateral incisors. As shown in his report, above, on each side of the upper jaw he merely counted a total of five teeth, to include a recently-erupted right central incisor which he imprecisely called “the upper right incisor.”
The found child was missing both its baby lateral incisors. How about Adam?
Let’s take a second look at the police’s last-seen-alive description, which presumably came from Adam’s parents. All it says is that one front tooth is missing and another is partially in. If Adam, when he disappeared, didn’t have his lateral incisors he would have had a gap in a row of four top teeth, not just two. You can see what Harris is talking about in the close up of the “Missing” picture.
Here’s an inventory of the four top incisors of Adam Walsh compared to those of the found child:
Adam: an empty space for his right central, a just-erupted adult left central, and both baby laterals.
The found child: a just-erupted right central, a left central that was mostly in, and neither lateral.
Adam Walsh, with no right central incisor and his left central incisor ready to erupt, as it did soon after. He has both baby lateral incisors.
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Harris’s drawing of the top teeth of the found child, emphasizing the progress of its two central incisors.
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Photo of the top teeth of the found child, emphasizing its missing lateral incisors.
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Adam had been missing for two weeks when the child identified as him was found. If the ID is correct, all of those changes in the teeth had to have happened within that time.
Harris asked, is that possible?
He consulted pediatric dentists, parents of young children, and not least, his nephew, who showed him a progressive series of iPad photos he’d recently taken of his daughter when she’d lost her top front teeth. As her new teeth filled in, he dated those photos.
The consensus was, that amount of change would take 6-12 months.
Furthermore, to top it off, the Broward medical examiner, who did the autopsy, said at the time that the found child (he said it was Adam) had likely been dead for most or all of those two weeks.
Hollywood Sun-Tattler, August 12, 1981
Harris doesn’t blame the misidentification on Monahan, the family friend. Under the most emotionally difficult of circumstances, and probably based on not much more than a glance, he simply made a mistake. He saw a just-erupted top front tooth and didn’t realize it was on the wrong side.
But was the error ever recognized by other authorities, as the case progressed? Harris has reason to believe that it was.
NEXT: The Jeffrey Dahmer connection: when Adam disappeared, he was working 20 minutes from the Sears where it happened. Seven witnesses from Hollywood Police’s own file have identified Dahmer as the man they saw at Sears, or in the mall, when Adam went missing. When police closed the case and blamed someone other than Dahmer, did they blame the wrong suspect?
SERIES OVERVIEW:
Part 1: In 1981, remains of a child were identified as Adam Walsh, but, incredibly, essential identification documents are missing from all the official files, and some of them apparently were never even created. Without them, prosecutors never could have charged anyone with the murder of Adam Walsh—and although police in 2008 closed the case, they never did.
Part 2: The child found two weeks after Adam disappeared, and identified as him, had a just-erupted top right front tooth, newly-released public record pictures and descriptions show. Adam, in his last-seen-alive description, also had a just-erupted top front tooth, but it was on his left side. Was the found child hastily misidentified as Adam?
Part 3: With the assent and praise of John Walsh, in 2008 Hollywood Police “exceptionally closed” the then-27-year-old Adam Walsh case, blaming his murder on Ottis Toole, who had since died. But by 1984 police had concluded they had no evidence of Toole’s involvement, and in 2008, the police chief admitted there was no new evidence.
Part 4: Police documents recently released into public record show that at the mall where Adam was last seen, seven separate witnesses saw a man with or close by Adam; all of them identify the man as Jeffrey Dahmer. A Miami police report, dated the same month that Adam disappeared, shows that Dahmer had a job about 20 minutes away from that mall.
Part 5: Is Adam Walsh alive? A man contacted Harris to say that he is Adam Walsh. In discussions with Adam’s last, best friend, the man recalled lengthy specifics of their close friendship, information not available on the Internet or elsewhere. To prove he is Adam, he wants a DNA comparison with Mr. and Mrs. Walsh, but they and the police have not responded.
Please click here to view Part One of Mr. Harris’s compelling Adam Walsh series:
The Unsolved “Murder” of Adam Walsh: Part One
Like a private detective (which he isn’t), in his stories, South Florida true crime author Arthur Jay Harris pursues not the question “Why?” but rather, “Are you sure?” Crime detection and crime stories are all about constructing narratives, but there are almost always loose ends that just don’t fit. Once the flaws in a narrative are discovered, the challenge for the narrative-constructor and the critic is whether to ignore them because they may mean nothing or follow them to what might just be a conclusion that is a totally unexpected reversal. Given his nature, Harris is a pursuer into rabbit holes. His stories are about both the crimes themselves and his ability to stay the course atop the roller coaster ride of surprises in an unflinching Sherlockian effort to reach the elusive truth. There are times he’s upended in mid-flight, which is always a shock, but when he picks up the right trail, it soon becomes obvious and the results can be astounding.
Harris’s other books, Speed Kills, Flowers for Mrs. Luskin, and Until Proven Innocent, also follow investigative paths not yet taken. In addition to appearing in print, Harris has made guest television appearances on ABC Primetime; Anderson Cooper 360; Nancy Grace; Ashleigh Banfield; The Lineup; Inside Edition; Catherine Crier; Snapped; City Confidential; Cold Blood; and Prison Diaries.
Arthur Jay Harris
True Crime Author
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