Adam Walsh

Toole said that he had lured Adam into his white 1971 Cadillac Sedan de Ville (which had a damaged right bumper) with promises of toys and candy, then proceeded to drive north on Interstate 95 toward his home in Jacksonville.

According to Toole, Adam, at first docile and compliant, began to panic as they drove on.

Toole punched him in the face, but as this just made the situation worse, he then "walloped him unconscious."

While Adam was unconscious, Toole drove north on the Florida Turnpike to a deserted service road just north of the Radebaugh Road overpass in northwest St. Lucie County.

When Toole realized that Adam was still breathing, he strangled him to death with a seat belt, dragged him out of the car and decapitated him with a machete.

Toole also claimed to have incinerated the body in an old refrigerator when he returned to Jacksonville.

He claimed that he wanted to make Adam his adopted son, but that was not deemed feasible.

The source of the blood found in Toole's car could not be identified.

The police ultimately lost the bloodstained carpet from the car, the machete said to have been used to decapitate Adam and, eventually, the car itself.

Toole, a confidant of convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, repeatedly confessed and then retracted accounts of his involvement.

Toole was never charged in Adam's case, although he provided seemingly accurate descriptions as to how he committed the crime.

Adam John Walsh (November 14, 1974 c. July 27, 1981) was an American child who was abducted from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981.

His severed head was found two weeks later in a drainage canal alongside Highway 60/ Yeehaw Junction in rural Indian River County, Florida.

On the afternoon of July 27, 1981, Adam accompanied his mother Revé Drew on a shopping trip to the Hollywood Mall (today Hollywood Hills Plaza) in Hollywood, Florida.

They went to Sears, entering through the north entrance.

Revé intended to inquire about a lamp that was on sale and left Adam at a kiosk with Atari 2600 video games on display, where several other boys were taking turns playing them.

Revé completed her business in the lamp department around 12:15 p.m. She said that she returned to find that Adam and the other boys had disappeared.

A store manager informed her that a scuffle had broken out over whose turn it was at the kiosk, and a security guard demanded that the boys leave the store.

The security guard asked the older boys if their parents were in the store, and they said that they were not.

Adam's parents later conjectured that their son had been too shy to speak to the security guard, who presumed that he was in the company of the other boys and made him leave by the same door by which the boys had entered (the Sears west entrance).

His parents believe that after the other boys dispersed, he was left alone outside the store at an exit unfamiliar to him.

Meanwhile, unable to find Adam in the toy department, Revé had him paged over the public-address system and continued to look for him throughout the store.

By coincidence, she ran into her mother-in-law Jean, who helped her search for him.

After more than 90 minutes of searching and paging failed to locate Adam, Revé called the Hollywood Police at 1:55 p.m.

On August 10, a severed head was found in a drainage canal alongside the Florida Turnpike near Vero Beach, almost 130 mi from Hollywood, by detective Ralph E. Latimer Jr. and an unidentified deputy of the Indian River County sheriff's office.

Indian River County and St. Lucie County divers searched the canal.

On the morning of August 11, John and Revé appeared on national television saying that they still hoped that Adam was alive.

A US$100000 1981 reward was posted for Adam's safe return.

Soon after, the recovered remains were identified as Adam's.

The coroner ruled that the cause of Adam's death was asphyxiation.

The state of the remains suggested that Adam had died several days before the discovery of his head.

The rest of his body was never recovered.

His death garnered national interest and was made into the 1983 television film Adam, seen by 38 million people in its original airing.

Adam's father, John Walsh, became an advocate for victims of violent crimes and was the host of the television program America's Most Wanted and, later, In Pursuit with John Walsh.

Convicted serial killer Ottis Toole confessed to Adam's murder, but was never convicted of the crime because evidence was reportedly lost and Toole later recanted his confession.

Toole died in prison of liver failure on September 15, 1996.

No new evidence has come to light since then, and police announced on December 16, 2008, that the Walsh case was closed and that they were satisfied that Toole was the killer.

The head itself would be kept in the morgue until the case's closure in 2008.

John and Revé believed that the Hollywood police department had botched the treatment of Adam's disappearance, first with the missing-person investigation, and then with the murder investigation.

After some investigation, police eventually concluded that Adam was abducted by a drifter named Ottis Toole near the front exterior of Sears after being instructed to leave by a security guard.