American homicide victim, kidnapped and murdered by a pedophile. On 7/27/1982, the six-year-old Adam accompanied his mother, Reve, to a mall in Hollywood, Florida. While she did her shopping, Adam was left alone in the toy department for a brief time. When Reve returned, he was gone. Although the police were called immediately, they could find no trace of the little boy, and for the next 16 days, the investigation continued without any luck. On 8/12/1982, Adam’s severed head was found in a drainage ditch in Vero Beach, but the rest of his remains were never located.
The police department focused their attention on two major suspects. The first was a family friend who had had an affair with Adam’s mother, but he was ruled out because even Adam’s own father maintained the man’s innocence. The second suspect, a drifter, was imprisoned during the mid-80s, and from his prison cell, he stated that he had kidnapped and killed Adam. While the information he gave was plausible, little was done, and the case was never fully resolved.
The problems that the Walsh family encountered during the search for Adam prompted them to help create the first missing persons’ clearinghouse in the United States, Find The Children. It grew and expanded abroad before merging with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 1990. John Walsh became the host of “America’s Most Wanted” in the late 1980s, and a system called “Code Adam,” designed to help find children separated from their parents, has been instituted in a number of stores nationwide.
Adam had no brothers or sisters during his brief time on earth, although his parents have since had three more children.
The identity of his killer was revealed by police in Hollywood, Fl on December 16, 2008:serial killer Ottis Toole. Toole had confessed to the slaying but recanted before his death in 1996.
Link to Wikipedia biography