Speaker 1 (00:15.626)
stream.

Speaker 1 (00:33.993)
I wonder if you still remember Once upon a time in your wild palace dreams I know the music plays

Speaker 1 (01:02.242)
I'm in you. The universe was ours, love was all we knew And all I knew was you, I wonder if you

If you think about it, once upon a time, in your wildest dreams.

Speaker 1 (02:11.502)
Music Plays

Speaker 1 (02:36.942)
once upon a time once when you were mine I remember skies mirrored in your eyes I wonder where you are I wonder if you think about me once upon a time in your wildest dreams

Speaker 1 (03:06.678)
In your wildest dreams

your wild, wildest dreams.

Speaker 1 (03:55.758)
you

Speaker 1 (04:24.046)
you

Speaker 1 (04:41.166)
you

Speaker 1 (04:55.918)
you

It's a bittersweet symphony that's live

Speaker 1 (05:13.196)
China me ends me, you're a slave to money then you die

Speaker 1 (05:24.81)
Take you down the only road I've ever been down

Speaker 1 (05:37.966)
I can't change, I can't change, I can't can't change, but I'm here in my mold. I am here in my mold, but I'm a million different people from one day to the next. I can't change my mold.

you

Well, I feel good, great, but tonight I'm on my knees,

Speaker 1 (06:32.512)
to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:44.046)
Melody shine, let it cleanse my mind I feel free now

Speaker 1 (06:54.698)
The airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now

Speaker 1 (07:06.414)
I can change, I can change, change, I can change But I'm here in my mode I am here in my mode And I'm a million different people From one day to the next I can change my mode, no, no

Speaker 1 (07:38.414)
Because it's a bittersweet symphony that's live

Speaker 1 (07:50.198)
Tryna make it to me Tryna find someone to bend me down

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been found You know the one that takes you to the places where all the things meet, yeah

You know I can change, I can change, I can change, I can change, but I'm here in my own. I am here in my own, and I'm a million different people from one, then to the next I can change my own.

Speaker 1 (08:52.238)
No

Speaker 1 (09:54.51)
you

Speaker 1 (10:15.636)
my name the harvest of my love the greenest turns to grey and i'm walking on thin ice to find who i really am

Speaker 1 (10:45.742)
It shouts, I'm alive I'm here, so close With you, I'm alive

I hope it's not too late The sun begins to start The buildings grew too tall The beauty of their shape

And I'm walking, I'm seeing eyes To find who I really am The love, it moves, it shines I'm alive I'm here, so close With you, I'm alive

Speaker 1 (12:05.518)
I'm coming back home I hope it's not too late But as it moves It shouts I'm alive

alive I'm here So close with you I'm alive The world, it moves, it shouts I'm alive I'm here

So close with you

Speaker 1 (13:06.958)
I'm walking on thin ice To find who I really am

And I'm staring at my feet I left my heart in this land

Speaker 2 (13:35.308)
Alrighty Hello, everyone. Thank you for making time today. It's got me on the weird bar. There we go. Hi much better Whoo three weeks. It's been y'all Three weeks. I've missed you Thank you for making time the Thursday deep dive My goodness got a lot to tell you about regarding my trip which involved Nebraska actually 17 days in the mountain time zone I spent

Well, then I went to the Central. Anyway, I'll go over tomorrow on the Friday live stream. So join us for that when Brad and Rebecca are back here and we will discuss that at length. But thank you for making time today for the deep dive where we need to discuss something else at length. And I'll get to that in just a moment. Before I go any further, please do get over to at themikeshow.com where you can find the links to Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Rumble, you name it, Hero West.

has put everything up over there. I'm so grateful for all of his efforts. He did a great job as always with the thumbnail that featured Adam Walsh for this week's show. So thank you, Wes, for all that you do over there. And thank you, Gabby, who runs the Instagram channel. Is it a channel? Is it a page? I don't even know. I'm looking over at the dogs like they're going to answer me. It's at the Mike Show over on Instagram. Thank you for all the hard work that you do over there as well, Gabby. So Wes and Gabby, two great people.

who work behind the scenes to get this out there to you. So thank you to both. Now, as you know, or maybe you don't, I am a very big fan of real journalists. There are so few left. It is a dying breed. But my guest today, Arthur J. Harris, is absolutely that. I...

I don't even remember y'all. I don't even remember why I started Googling months ago. I've been so eager to have this conversation with him for months. But you know what it might have been? I don't even know. I'm not even going to speculate. But I stumbled upon his book. In fact, I'm going to get this up here right now. Let me show this. I'm clearly not the most prepared host. There you go. you go. Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret, The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh.

Speaker 2 (15:55.566)
There's so much to get into and don't try to get ahead here. Don't try to get ahead. There is so much. This man, Arthur J. Harris, he has been a writer for big name publications. He's obviously a book author and his latest venture. Let me get this up here. You got to go subscribe right now. Stop what you're doing. I'll wait. I will wait. Go to substack.com slash at Arthur J. Harris. This is the only thing that I have ever

subscribe to, to follow along at Substack. I've heard of Substacks for years. This is the first time that I ever went to one. was like, I can't wait for the next thing to drop. can't wait. I can't wait. is so art. got to get you in here, man. how you doing? Thanks so much for making time. Hey, you know, you just told me that I'm a dying breed. It reminds me of a Mark Twain tonight when he introduced himself and he says, you know, you know, all the

great writers are dead, know, Shakespeare and Hawthorne, and I'm not feeling very well myself. no, no, no, you got to at least see us to the end of the story, man. No, I'm telling you, Art, you have spent what, three decades now? Yeah. Chasing this story. Right, crazy. most people think that 1981,

Adam Walsh, let me just, let me throw out what most people know about this case. And then I'm gonna let you take it from there. Because if you were a child in 1981, or you were a parent in 1981, you absolutely knew this story and all of the ramifications that came from this, the code Adam at Walmart, for example, all sorts of things I'm gonna let you get into. Our society was greatly affected.

by the Adam Walsh kidnapping and murder story. But I guess the surface level people know he was at a mall, left unattended by his mom, kidnapped, turns up murdered weeks later in another part of the state of Florida. He was in Hollywood, Florida at the mall. And John Walsh, his dad, ends up hosting America's Most Wanted.

Speaker 2 (18:21.042)
and now lives his life to go and find these terrible people among us that would try to hurt others, especially kids, because his son was a victim. And I think that because we got a confession, we got a confession and we can put the story to bed and move on with our lives. But if it were that simple, then I wouldn't have sought you out, Art, and been so excited for this conversation that we've had scheduled for months.

I wanted it to be the first show after my long hiatus. And here we are. There's so much to this. I want you to start at the beginning of your journey looking for facts that nobody else has uncovered. I think ultimately, I think your goal is to have the case get reopened. Is that accurate?

You know, it's the case is over. The case is officially solved and the likeliest perpetrators are dead. So there's no case to be reopened. It's a story. I'm reopening the story. That's the difference. Legally, I mean, there's all sorts of problems legally in this, I have written, I'm a true crime author. Don't ask me how that.

Well, you can ask me how it happened, but let me go first. Two of the book stories I've written, I have actually made no contributions that made a difference in the legal outcomes. One, I spotted something at a trial because I knew the case, it was a month long case, I knew it as well as the prosecutor, became friends with the prosecutor, he gave me tremendous access to it.

And it paid off for him because he had introduced a piece of evidence midway in the trial. And I was able to photograph it at the end of a trial day. And I looked at the back of it. And I got my pictures. And I ran out of the courtroom. And ran through the courthouse. And Brian, Brian, did you know the back of this piece of evidence?

Speaker 2 (20:44.204)
was the only piece, the only indication of real physical evidence that put the defendant at the crime scene. And he and the lead detective didn't have it. They had the evidence, they didn't realize what it was. So Brian gives me that jaw dropping of, my God. And then the next morning at trial, they slammed it. No, it was no, like they knew it the whole time.

Absolutely. Like, where did this come from? This is like, you know, deadly. And then I got to speak to the jurors, you know, month long trial, you know, after they were dismissed, after this after sentencing, and they all asked, first of all, who are you? And we saw you at the trial every day. And I couldn't talk to them except for, you know, haven't nothing of substance. And then I said, I'm writing this story, they told me that

that until that day when that piece of evidence was interpreted for them, they were like not sure whether to convict and then they convicted afterwards. They were certain when they saw that. There is a man on death row in the state of Florida who in small measure is there due to me. Wow. So he's been there since 1993. So he and he and

Ron DeSantis is going through the list. It's a long list. Most people in death row don't, they die before they get executed. the second story was an appellate story and I found the piece of evidence. I got the key to the public records. I was told that the star witness had died and

And I had suspected that the federal prosecutors had not turned over everything that they should have. When I learned that he was dead and then somehow, he was in the witness protection program. He was in Montana. So I had to figure out how do I get his death certificate? Because that was the only thing that was going to work. And I got it within days. And then with it, the Department of Justice had to give me

Speaker 2 (23:10.05)
know all of the records on that they had for the star witness and it showed stuff that they hadn't given to the defense that would have made a significant difference. And then that began a an appeal for him. And then he he didn't it's not that he won the appeal. He got re-sentenced. He got re-sentenced and he was released within you know he was in the halfway house within months after that and then and then he's and it shaved 10 years off of his sentence. So

I have affected cases in that matter. This case is this there's nothing to affect except for the story. So somehow I become a true crime writer. I'm a journalist, like you say, the dying breed. No, I went to school in Washington, no, right at the very, very tail end of Watergate. No, was taking the journalism classes, didn't major in it, but I

But I was writing for the Washington Post, one of the summers during college. And I had bylines in the Washington Post, which was like for college students, that was good. Yeah, absolutely, man. That was cool. That helped me get my first job, which happened to be in, you got it, Hollywood, Florida, which is close to where I wanted to be. I mean, Hollywood is between

Fort Lauderdale in Miami. So it was good enough. was a daily. I'm on staff at a daily paper. And I was not here for the 1981 Adam Walsh story. I was in LA. I'd been there before. I went to LA to make my fame and fortune in the movie business. And then I came back because I didn't make my fame and fortune in the movie business. And then I, so I really did not know of the story.

until the mid 90s. The case is totally cold. And a reporter from Mobile, Alabama, who had a tip from another reporter who was in Denver, they were reporters, the Denver Post together. And that reporter who'd won a Pulitzer Prize for, as you said before, all the fear and all the missing children stuff.

Speaker 2 (25:34.99)
John Walsh and others, John Walsh was the leading spokesman for this. had said that there were 50,000 children in America who were kidnapped by strangers and some very large percentage of them. At various times it was half, it was 25,000, 20,000, 5,000 were murdered. And somehow this was under our radar. We didn't realize, we were so inured.

to that children were being kidnapped and murdered, that the newspapers didn't have these stories and that we have this incredible problem. And then once John Walsh told us, because he was the victim, his child was kidnapped and murdered, then he's telling the country and he's believed and the media believes him. And he is all over TV and newspaper stories and all that's documented in...

great length in the subsection series. And this reporter in Denver questioned that and found that the numbers were not 50,000 children a year who were being kidnapped in America, but it had been relatively stable around 50. So it was a problem. It was not 50,000. Children were being scared.

and parents would not let their children play unattended. They wouldn't let them walk to school anymore. Absolutely. And the psychological damage from that was great. I remember scenes from the movie, the TV movie, that still to this day, and I was, I guess when it came out, maybe I was six by then, and I don't have a lot of memories from being that young, but watching that movie was one of them. Wow. Wow.

You talked to lots of people who grew up, know, recalling that. And I've got quotes from papers and newspapers in like 1982 of like, yeah, all the kids knew who Adam Walsh was. They knew that picture, the famous picture of him with the baseball bat. Heartbreaking every time you see it. Beautiful, beautiful grin. He's just like, and the funny part about that picture, which made it so endearing was he was missing both his top front teeth.

Speaker 2 (27:59.874)
Yeah. Both of them, not just one, both. It's like, know, you're six, you're six and a half years old, your picture's coming up, okay? And if you can show a little further down, they've got the closeup of the, I guess you got it, okay, of his mouth. I got that photo.

I got that photo because I knew where to look for it. And it's all over the internet. But I got a copy, a scan of the original photo. It was in the Hollywood Sun-Tatler archives. That's the newspaper I worked for. It went to the Hollywood Historical Society. And I knew it was there. They let me scan it. And I had a beautiful pixel quality of this. So you can't do this with a low pixel quality that's on the internet. But I could show you.

What is in, no, is both his top front teeth. Is that clear to you that both his top front teeth are missing? Yeah, are you talking about, you want it like that? Yeah, yeah. Is that clear? There we go, yeah. It's just a copy. It's just a close-up of it. Okay, there just isn't any question that he's missing both his top front teeth. So, let me, I'm gonna read you something that John Walsh had written in his book.

I'm gonna bring this up.

Okay, John Walsh writes in 1997 in his book, Tears of Rage. So we chose the picture of him in his red baseball cap because it had been taken only the week before and in it he was smiling. If you saw it, you couldn't help but notice that right on top, he had a little missing tooth.

Speaker 2 (29:49.87)
one missing tooth. So in 1981, he had testified to Congress, and I have the transcript from the congressional printing office. And he says that he mentions that Adam was a six and a half year old blonde boy with two front teeth missing. But in 1997, he only has one tooth missing.

He's looking at the same picture I'm looking at. He's got the originals. Why does he say that it's only one top front tooth that's missing? Is this a problem to you? Well, I mean, could he have misspoken at one point? Well, it's writing. It's in writing. I as I write after that, couldn't Walsh's co-author or his editors have caught that? So I get

I get the picture and he puts it on the America's Most Wanted site as well. says, you know, no, taken about a week before his murder, it shows his new missing tooth. Okay. And then the, it's got a screenshot from the TV movie where the kid playing Adam, he has neither top front tooth missing. Okay. So here's the deal. I was able to get from public records,

from the Hollywood police. There were pictures of the found child. Okay, I need to fill in that you already said, no, Adam was found two weeks after to the day his severed head was found floating in a canal just a toss away from the turnpike.

two guys who were early evening and they were just about to start fishing and they apparently had, no, they put their motorboat in the water and the motor brought this to the surface and they saw what looked like a doll's head. And they go a little closer and it's a child's head. then they go back to their truck and they were working for Orange Groves. They radioed their

Speaker 2 (32:13.804)
their boss, he says, you need to call the highway patrol. They arrived and then the sheriffs up in St. Lucie County, which is 125 miles north of Hollywood. And then when the cops show up, then they think that maybe this is Childshead. They were looking for Adam Walsh at the time for two weeks. There was a huge search throughout the area, throughout all of South Florida, but especially in Hollywood.

first around the mall and then all around the area. Everybody on the Hollywood police force was involved in this search. Some of them were doing 80 and 90 hour weeks for two weeks. There was a Citizens Crime Watch. This was in the news, no daily, beginning on, it disappeared on a Monday and by Tuesday morning, it's the lead in this on Tatler. It had already been on radio.

leave it radio news, you know, and no, like if you see a child, you know, please call the police. It was on TV. No, and the Walshes kept the story in the news for two weeks. So and then there were posters and reward and all this stuff. So they so the cops up in St. Lucie County call Hollywood and say, we think, you know, it kind of looks like Adam Walsh. We think it's Adam Walsh.

So in the middle of the night, Hollywood sends three detectives up there and they agree, looks like Adam Walsh. Takes the remains to the medical examiner's office, the morgue in Vero Beach, which used to be famous for where the Dodgers trained in the spring. the medical examiner, they call one of the cops from there,

find John Walsh. John and Ravé Walsh, his wife, were out of town that day. They had been invited to appear the next morning on ABC's Good Morning America show. So they'd flown on the, this is Monday, and then Monday night is when the remains are found. So they've already flown to New York. They're in Manhattan at a hotel. And just before dawn, John gets a phone call.

Speaker 2 (34:37.762)
that they found something. We think it's Adam. So the show producer had given the hotel phone number to the police. And the show producer calls right afterwards and says, look, we'll get you on the first plane back to Florida. Sure. Yeah. You found my son's body. Yeah. then we'll do it. There's probably a six o'clock plane.

We'll get you on that. can go to the morgue. And what does John Walsh say? Yeah, let's go. We got to go and identify my son. mean, this is what we've been trying to do here, right? Isn't that what he said? He said, we want to stay and do the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK? And he did not tell his wife immediately, I don't buy that, OK? That's what he wrote, but I don't buy it.

And it's just a matter of, no, it doesn't sound right. So he wanted to stay there in New York, do the ABC show. But surely, surely he'll get on the first flight back so that he can identify the body himself, right? He sent a family friend whose name is John Monahan. Very interesting character. He was John Walsh's mentor in business in the

in the tourism business in the Bahamas and elsewhere. Both Johns had worked in the Bahamas and hotel business and things. I get into John Monahan later in the SubSac series at some depth. John Monahan's very interesting character and had all sorts of drug connections. It's not surprising given that

They're in the Bahamas were a major drug trans-transmitting spot for drugs to come to South Florida. And so he's the guy who is tasked with identifying the body He's the guy. OK, so he goes and they have to wait for Adam's dental office to open 9 o'clock, whatever.

Speaker 2 (37:01.472)
So the lieutenant who's in charge of the case at Hollywood goes and gets a copy of Adam's dental records, which the Walshes have told them who the dentist is in Hollywood. So the lieutenant and John Monahan drive up the turnpike up to Vero Beach, 100 plus miles. They were probably doing 100 miles an hour.

and not in a police car, in John Monahan's Mercedes convertible driven by his driver, his chauffeur, who was likely also his bodyguard. So they get up there and Monahan, this is work. This is like, who wants to be, who wants to do this? mean, this is awful. So Walsh writes in the same book.

tears of rage that at first glance, John Monahan does not recognize the child as Adam.

Then he asks the Emmy up there, can you open the child's mouth? And then he sees, no, no, he sees a tooth. just seen Adam, know, a day or days before he disappeared. And he says, that's Adam. Now, visual ID is one thing, okay? Remember, the child may have been dead up to two weeks.

But the child doesn't look, the remains don't look that awful. They're not skeletal. There's a lot of soft tissue in the face. Again, sorry to do that, but that's all you've got. They never found anything else, any other part of the body, nothing else. So there's no fingerprints and it's 1981, so there's no DNA. So you rely on the dental ID, okay?

Speaker 2 (39:03.874)
people are clicking on my sub stack. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Go subscribe. I'm telling you, every couple of days you get- know, gee, that's a good bargain. Okay, so Adam's Dental Records are driven up to the Morgan Vera Beach. And the Emmy up there looks at them and-

and sees that Adam had a filling in a lower left molar. And this child also has a filling in the lower left molar. Okay. Okay. And then, he, and that's good enough. He announces pretty quickly after seeing this and he did a brief report on it. And then the story's out, you know, he gives it to a

a sheriff's detective in St. Lucie County. And we found Adam Walsh. Adam Walsh has been found dead. this is like the last headline that you wanted to see. Everybody was optimistic. You couldn't imagine why a nice little kid, six and a half years old, from a nice family would get taken from a Sears department store.

in the toy department. He was left alone by his mom for five minutes, not much more than five minutes. She went to the lamp department and guess there was a lamp on sale and the kid that's in the video games, kid video games were new in 1981 and Sears had a display. The kids could play them, especially at summertime. The kids would would be there and and they and there was like a baseball game and you know, all the stuff and and then and then she comes back in five or

not many more minutes, and she can't find him. And she's looking around the store and you saw the TV movie, she's panicking and she calls her husband and now John comes and stuff.

Speaker 2 (41:16.846)
I'm going in about six different directions here. No, you're fine. I can stop. I can go in any of any. Well, OK, then allow me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but John was not the first person that she contacted after. And that's one of the directions. in the TV movie, his mom, Rave's mother-in-law.

happened to be in Sears at the same time and they saw each other. Do you have Adam? you must have Adam. No, I don't have Adam. Well, I can't find him. All right, well, let's go look. Okay. So she in the movie makes the phone call, you know, where they're at the security desk and they call John at his office and Daniel J. Travanti is from Hill Street Blues, is playing the role of John Walsh and Daniel J. Travanti is a

Terrific actor, totally believable. So it was Jo Beth Williams playing Revée. So you have these very credible people. The reality was that Revée did not call her husband, did not call them there at the security desk, didn't call him, no, in the next hour, no, the police had come and they were looking, didn't call him at all. She never called him.

And this part of this is from John's own writing in his book and the police reports that are transcribed and the interviews that he did and that I have. She didn't call him. She called a friend who was nearby, the Nosiers, and then she apparently, according to his testimony, called her boyfriend.

No, who was living in the Walsh home for probably four years, who had just two weeks before Adam disappeared, been asked to leave. He wasn't asked to leave, know, he had some slack time to leave, he didn't want to leave. So what comes out is that the, and it took 10 days for the police to get this. They interview.

Speaker 2 (43:39.362)
Kid's name is Jimmy Campbell, is a little younger than than Ravée. in fact, here's a interesting aside that you talk about is that uniform, that hat and that uniform in that iconic photo of Adam Walsh is the company owned by this friend of the family. C is for Campbell. C is for Campbell. So and then and then the the shirt.

It's a little hard to read, but it says Campbell and Campbell rentals. rented boats for the day off on the shore on Miami beach rentals. can read rentals in there. So John Walsh at some point says that he was the coach of the team. John Walsh didn't coach the team. John Walsh came according to, no, I found one of Adam's teammates on this tee ball team.

That was really valuable. That was really lucky. I can't wait till we get into him as well. Can I pause here for just a second? Because like you said, you could go any number of directions here. But as long as we're talking about Ravée, can we talk about her morning leading up to the trip to the mall and the time issues there? Yes.

Okay, so they said that when she when she was asked by the police, the detectives, like, you know, but just tell me, give me your whole timeline, everything when you got up and then you know, everything in between when you went to Sears, and you left him and you and then you came back and look for him. He wasn't there. Just tell us everything just regular good police detective work. So she says,

Well, took Adam, no, we left around 11 in the morning and I had to drop off his tuition for his, for fall tuition for his school. No, it was private school, a church school. And it was 10 blocks away. No, right by the way, no, I'm just thinking about this. Why didn't they let him go to the public school? It was,

Speaker 2 (46:03.766)
It was 10 steps away. It was right across the street. It's a perfectly nice school. they went the it wasn't that it was an expensive tuition. It wasn't like it's thirty five thousand dollars for elementary school like it is now. This was like next to nothing. And so so she goes to the to the school, drops off the tuition in the front in the front area with the secretary who's there. And that's no. So it's five minute drive. I drove this myself from from

from their home to the church and it should have taken five minutes. And then it'd be another five minutes to get to Sears from there. She said she got to Sears, she left the house at 11 and she got to, know, gets to the church and then gets to Sears at 12.30. Like there's an hour and a half. Now why, what took an hour and a half? What took 11 to 12.30 when it should have taken 10 minutes?

No, and she's only dropping off a check. No, she's not doing anything at the school. So they ask her this a number of times, four or five times, and then her story starts changing. it's that I got there at 12.

to the school and then it's 1215, I'm at Sears and each one is distinctively a little different and the cops are going, what's going on? This wasn't a big issue until they find the remains and it's Adam.

Speaker 2 (47:47.534)
The cops go to the church school and they interview the secretary who took the check. yeah, I remember that. What time was she here? Somewhere between 10 and 1030.

10 to 1030 and then Sears at 1230. They go to Sears and they find the lamp department employee. Says, yeah, now that day I just relieved the regular lamp department employee. This woman was 18 that was there. And maybe five minutes after I started at noon, no, Mrs. Walsh comes and is asking about this lamp.

Okay. And then I remember she came back. She was looking for a kid that was 1205 to 1210, not 1230. So we have, so like there's, they talked to the vicar, the vicar, the note says, well, you can ask the vicar. The, know, we talked to the vicar. saw, you we saw the vicar and the vicar didn't remember them. Didn't remember them all. says, Oh, I would, I would have seen, would have said hello if, if, if, if that was, and then

She says, no, one of the later ones says, you know, I don't know why the vicar doesn't remember us. We were talking to him, you know, you know, I'm really, that makes me really suspicious of the vicar. Like, okay. And this was, this was the mom saying this. It sounds like an English, no, murder mystery comedy. They never did resolve that. Yeah, cause it was at our church secretary, right? The church secretary, did, I know I found,

I didn't find the church secretary because I'm coming at this so many years later, but I did find the vicar who was in Michigan by then. And he says, whatever the secretary, he knew the secretary well enough. If she's, now remember talking to her like the next day and her saying it was 10 or so, 10 to 1030. And says, she's totally believable. If she says that's what it was, then it's hard to argue with her. So these were pretty good witnesses.

Speaker 2 (49:57.282)
The timeline is off. What's going on? She said that the boyfriend had said that he was having a sexual affair with her for three or so years. It sounded more like it was longer. And she admitted it at one interview and then denied it all the other interviews. He had said that he was over at

the Walsh house after John left for work. was somewhere between 9 30. He was stayed for an hour. Maybe he was gone at 10 30, whatever it was. And and he's no, they had breakfast together and Adams awake and no, she asked him, Can you take Adam to the to work is I'm kind of busy today. She wanted to go to the gym, which is another issue. I'll get to that. Not on this. I'll get to

So she was a bodybuilder, by the way, and worked out at a bodybuilding gym in Hollywood, which the two owners were later convicted of a triple murder that was very drug-related. That's where she trained. she denied, when the Walshes had sued Sears two years later,

days before the statute of limitations was going to end. So they sued Sears and the Mall for negligence. And Sears defended themselves. they went and they found the witnesses who told them this stuff. And then they deposed the Walshes and they deposed Jimmy Campbell, the boyfriend, Jimmy Campbell.

gave a consistent story that she had told to the police and said that he had been over there and he had this affair. And then nobody knew about this in general until it was reported because it was in depositions that were public in the institute. And the negligence is that a security guard was accused of what?

Speaker 2 (52:20.942)
forcing him out of the store. Throwing poor Adam out of the store because he was part of the scene where there was some fighting in the store. That was interesting too because that happened, she told the police that it happened around 1230 to 1245. But Reve is at the lamp counter at 1205 to 1210 and then there's

There's witnesses who told the police that we did a, that she was looking for the child and she called the public address system and they did a, no, the person handling that now made a call. Will Adam Walsh please come to the toy department or wherever it was, 1225. This, the security guard,

said that the incident apparently that really happened was 1230 to 1245, somewhere in there. And she initially says, tells the police, now looking at pictures of Adam, that's not one of the four children I threw out of the place, two black children, two white children. So they based their suit on that.

And then the 1230 is like, well, Mrs. Walsh seems to say, no, she says that she was pretty consistent on being at Sears, arriving at Sears at 1230. Because if you were there, that fits with the security guard throwing the children out. But other witnesses have her, not only do they have her at

1205 and then 1225. But another witness said she saw her just after the store opened at 10.

Speaker 2 (54:26.656)
And then, and I'm like, okay, that didn't come from her. This is not, there's something unreliable about this. And then, and the suit failed because they knew they were, they know for all the, had so much sympathy for helping to find missing children and doing all this. now, but they couldn't.

put that in front of a jury anymore, not after the depositions and after the press coverage of the depositions. And they dropped the suit. But all this is on the record. Of course, most of the documents from the suit disappeared, but a lot was reported in the newspapers. So there's full quotes from there. And I have screenshots of the newspaper coverage, which showing relative quotes.

And so it's all there. Like, I'm not making any of this up. This is all, I have this documented from public records and previously published stuff, and then witnesses I've spoken to, and then all the additional public records that I asked for that weren't released initially that Hollywood and elsewhere had to give me because I asked for it. I demanded it. And then I have a tremendous collection. Do you get the,

You see why it took so long on this story? Yes, and one of the things that you do point out though is Florida is good at providing those documents. They're very good. They're very good. Under the current administration, they're trying not to be so good about it. But that we have what we've called government in the sunshine. We've pioneered in the 70s, 60s and 70s,

No public records being no no. So the public can see public records. No, you can see what the government is doing. So it's great for police cases, state cases. OK, so I've got I've got lots of questions here. Have you covered all of the I don't know. I'm asking, have you covered all of the changes in the stories over the years between the parents? Have we?

Speaker 2 (56:50.542)
covered all of those or is there more that we need to get to? Because the next thing after we get done covering those bases, I have to ask you about your incredible legwork with dentists. I went to dental school basically. Yeah, right. Yeah. I have a close friend who just died a year ago. I went to his unveiling last week. My age, same age. He was my friend, my dentist.

And he spotted something. Look, I asked for help everywhere I can get it. So he spotted something. There was, in the public records dump, there were two of them in 96 and 2008. So I have everything from there. And there were pictures of the found child's upper jaw, lower jaw too.

And Adam, as you already showed, didn't have either top front tooth. Very endearing stuff. OK, so the found child, and I had this on the sub sack, but I didn't specifically give you this. There is a police photo of the found child that I managed to get from Hollywood police. And it shows that.

This the found child has a top left front tooth, left front tooth that is mostly him. OK. How did that happen? How did the child had, you know, that the photograph was taken? I know John Walsh wrote it know. And I just read it to you. It the photo had been taken a week before. Reality was it was taken maybe three weeks before. then.

But then he had had gotten he maybe had gotten the photos from the studio photo. It's no all the kids in the T-ball league got their photos taken. And there was a team shot to which I I would have. But I never did get so. So so he gets it. And then and then I found as I said, no, I you have to be lucky as a reporter to be you have to be good, but you have to be lucky to. So this friend who was on his on his

Speaker 2 (59:14.734)
T-Ball team and I, we've been very close on the story. And he remembers that the last time he saw Adam, it looked the same. It looked just as you're looking at it right now. He saw him a week or two, he says, before he disappears. And he had thought to himself, boy, if I were you, I wouldn't smile like that. And they had a teasing relationship with each other.

Frank, Frankie was actually three years older. He was a ringer on the six-year-old's D-ball team. It was a terrible team anyway. So yeah, they were close friends. They practiced ball together. so a week or so before he disappears, he looks like that. And then there's a teletype.

that Hollywood police had sent to another police department in Florida that said, and his left top front tooth has, you know, it broke the skin. so yeah, OK. So how far? given two weeks later, now they found they find the remains. And I ask around to everyone, can do teeth keep growing after you're dead?

Like fingernails, if your fingernails grow after you're dead, the answer is no to both. So it may look like they've grown, but they, but they haven't. So the, so the teeth should be, there should be a little knob of a top left front tooth. You can see it in the picture looking close up there on the, on the right side, as you're looking, this is that's his left side. You can see the pink spot. That's where the tooth is about to erupt.

And that a pediatric dentist had pointed that out. Because I went to pediatric dentists, and I went to forensic dentists and general dentists. So what my friend Henry points out in seeing the picture of the, no, it's a skull picture. It's with all the soft tissue is gone. He says, this child, the found child, is missing his lateral incisors, both of them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39.726)
What are lateral incisors? Okay, you see the first tooth on the right, that's the top lateral incisor. Then the first tooth on the left, that's the right lateral, top right lateral incisor. This found child doesn't have either, has lost both top lateral incisors and has a top front tooth, a left front tooth that's in most of the way. Incredible. Okay.

And like, I'm asking forensic, no, forensic and pediatric dentists says, no, does that happen in say a week? No, no, tops two weeks. Does that happen? And they, and as one pediatric dentist who's a lecturer at a dental school here said, that is an older child. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And is that the same doctor that quoted quote, that is not the same child.

That's the, went to a few. Yeah. Yeah. You got a lot of ground. Yeah. For sure. And then, and, and then, and the bottom teeth don't, don't really don't, don't match either. No. So here's another issue. You would expect that since the, since the police collected Adam's dental records and took them up to the medical examiner in Vero Beach and he used them to make his determination that that was a positive ID.

You would expect that the Vera Beach ME would keep a copy of Adam's dental records in the file. He sent a copy to the Broward County, that's Fort Lauderdale, medical examiner, because he was going to do the autopsy. The Vera Beach guy was a pathologist, but not a forensic pathologist. He wasn't qualified to do an actual autopsy. And Broward, no, he certainly was. So they sent...

They sent the remains in, them on ice, put them in a news helicopter, flew them down. was a cop who was the detective went with it to make sure. And he did the autopsy. And he says he agrees that this is Adam Walsh. OK, so you would expect that the Broward medical examiner as well would have a copy of the

Speaker 2 (01:04:04.654)
of the dental records because the Vero Beach Emmy sent it to him. And then you'd expect the Hollywood police to have a copy because they brought the copy from Adam's dentist to Vero Beach. You would expect all these things. So what happens? You can answer this.

You tell me because I want you to keep rolling, man. It's in none of those three places or anywhere else. All for three. have three copies of Adam's dental records. Right. And all three have vanished in this amount of time. Right. you want like, OK, you know, somebody took it from one of the places. just got shuffled and lost. But three places, all three places. Right. And yeah, go ahead, because I want to finish this. When I reached his

who had retired from being a dentist but still was in the dental field and said, you do you know, like, do you have a copy? Can you talk about this? No, you'll have to ask John Walsh. I can't talk. I can't talk. Can I at least ask you the questions? I did this with the Miami Herald reporter I was working with at the time. Can you at least, no, let us ask you the question. You don't have to answer it. Just let us ask you and no, no, I'm hanging up now. Click. What is that about?

Okay. we put in the Miami Herald in a large Sunday front page story. This was an inside, no second story in there, sidebar. like, no, there's a problem with the ID that the, not only are the dental records missing, but you would expect,

Would you expect that the Emmy who did the autopsy, and I know there was an autopsy, I have the cover sheet on it, you would expect that he would write an autopsy report. Would you not? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not there. It's not there. It's not there. it's not in the Hollywood police files and it's not in the Varro Beach files. And then when I finally know,

Speaker 2 (01:06:14.734)
that Emmy had had since retired and and I get the then current Emmy who I'm going up and down with and he and like you know this is a public record and and I am entitled to see it and and if it's not in your file you are required by state statute to try and find it for me and he went whoa whoa whoa whoa I said no says no I'll have to ask the county attorney whether I can do that this is says no well

I could have told him that, no, you got to do it. And he did. we get, he, by email, he asks that original ME, did you write a report on the case of Adam Walsh? Says, no, I didn't write it. It wasn't my case.

Well, originally it wasn't his case, but the state statutes say, and the medical examiner's guidelines, both the state and the national guidelines are, if you do an autopsy, if you do any cutting, okay, an autopsy is a cutting, it's a dissection, then you have to write a report. And in fact, the national guidelines say, regardless, even if you didn't do that, you have to write a report. You handle the remains, you have to write a report.

The Vera Beach ME who did not do a cutting wrote a report and I have that. It's in Hollywood's file and it's the Broward file. the actual, what would be seen, what would I get from having the actual autopsy report? I would get an examination, an external as well as an internal,

examination that would be there, I would get his signature on it and dated and it just isn't there. So when we put in the Herald that there's no autopsy report, so what would you expect the reaction to be from the police, from the medical examiner who did the autopsy, from the medical examiner's office in Broward and from the Walshes? Now asking you, what would you expect the reaction to be?

Speaker 2 (01:08:33.593)
that should be flabbergasted, right? They should go and find this thing because if I'm not mistaken, I think one of the things I learned from your substack was this is the only missing autopsy report in over 15 years. Is that right? This is I and I have the email. I have the copy of the email where that that Emmy wrote to the Emmys office and said, I didn't I didn't write one. OK, I have a copy of that. That's in the substack.

All right? You would know, the people I talked to had never heard of anything like that. Okay? You have to have that. So the reaction from the police in Hollywood and the Emmy's office and the Emmy who didn't write the autopsy report apparently and the Walshes was zero. Nothing. Radio silence. Nothing. Didn't care.

And that's when I really lost it. I That's when it's like, OK, what's going on? What's going on? Because as I took it further from there, then the teeth don't match. OK? And the Walsh did not go to the morgue to do their own identification. Right. That's another thing that is still bugging me.

But it needs to be made crystal clear here. The identification, this case, the identification of Adam Walsh, the head belonging to that child, it was the dental records. Yet as important as the singular way of identifying him, no forensic dentist was consulted on this case? I checked with every forensic dentist who was working from Vero Beach.

to the South Miami. And there was a guy on contract with the Vero Beach ME. says, I don't know why they didn't call me. And then some really famous forensic dentists were close to the guy who did the autopsy. I don't know, why wouldn't he call a board certified forensic dentist? And so they were mystified by that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57.806)
And the answer would seem to be because somebody, I don't think the Vero Beach ME, was not a talented medical examiner, he- Is this Cox? Cox. Cox makes what he says was just a preliminary report. And it was meant to, if it needed to be overridden. But once the story came out-

that Adam Walsh has been identified, Adam Walsh is dead, then you have a problem of the Broward ME sewing. Actually, maybe that's not him.

So that didn't happen.

And the other thing that if that wasn't Adam, it was certainly a child beheaded. Then you have, and school is just about to start. And now you have, you would have a very scared local population. my goodness. this is tourist area, especially then. We're not, we're, we're not coming there. We'll go somewhere else. Okay.

Yeah, continue. I'm sorry. was just I was just gonna say, yeah, this is it's a strange case that gets stranger and stranger and stranger. And we've only just begun. okay. Do we need to revisit Jimmy Campbell in the relationship that he had with Revay? Or is there anything else there that you want to before we get too far away from from them? You know,

Speaker 2 (01:12:44.238)
There's a quote in the Miami Herald in their magazine section. I've written for them a few times, but not this story. And it was six months after the disappearance and everything. And the reporters got access to the lead detectives and the lead lieutenant and the Walshes. they had a lot of stuff in there. So the lead lieutenant says,

This was the all-American family. And then here comes the oddball, meaning Jimmy Campbell. He did not give to the Herald that there was an affair going on. He was just an oddball. That's all. So this lieutenant had been to the morgue with John Monahan and knew, no, before even that, that there was an affair going on. And he says, this was the all-American family.

And if you watch the TV movie, now, Daniel J. Trevante and Joe Beth Williams, and this, they played like they're the all-American family.

Yeah. and, and was Jimmy, he was suspected for a time, right? Yes. And, and for a long time, a long time, because we haven't gotten the oddest tool yet. Yeah. no, we're getting the oddest tool. good. Oddest I've got, trust me, I got all sorts of stuff here on that front. But before we get too far away though, I'm going to end up saying that about, I think, everything.

Kind of a, I guess, a gruesome question here. But the head, the severed head, where does that end up? mean, does it get, I guess, does it end up in an urn? I honestly have no idea. Because we don't have DNA back then.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47.022)
You think you're jumping around Art, it's me who's jumping around. I don't blame you. don't blame you. Because I'll do the same thing. I can go in any sort of stream of consciousness. yeah, and if you don't want to get to that yet, because I honestly do not know the answer to that at all. brought it up. Okay. All right. Let's talk the head. The head for 20 plus years.

was at the medical examiner's office in Broward. They did not give the remains back. There wasn't a burial, but there was a service for the community that they held for Adam. And there was an empty coffin. The head was kept as evidence for all that time.

Now, at some at some point in the first two years, they they they put it in a in an acid bath, which, by the way, is kind of how Jeffrey Dahmer did his stuff and and removed all the soft tissue and just left all the bony material. So they kept that there. And then the Walsh's in 2003 now started asking for it back.

They wanted to bury it. So it took them a while. then a Broward sheriff's officer who was in the DNA is the DNA guy there. That's what I'm looking up. When do they start looking at DNA? It's right around then. Let's see. Because they were still looking for the rest of the body. If we ever find the rest of the body, and they did a real search, including in that canal, they found nothing.

let's have the DNA from the remains. So they sent it out to a lab. They sent teeth out. You can crush the teeth and you can get DNA from there. Wow. 1986, by the way, was the first. 1986 was the first time DNA was used in a case. It exonerated a man in England. I'm just saying. this DNA was not happening in 81.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13.228)
they kind of knew it was cut. That's what I'm saying though, if you've got the head, right. Until what 2000 and whatever, it's been on ice for 30 anyway, continue. It didn't need to be on ice because the soft tissue was. That's right. That's right. But what I'm is you could, you could, you could take a sample from that, right? You could, they were supposed to no slices, no in, in glass of the, of the soft tissue. And when I asked for it,

When I asked for it twice at the the Broward at me, they didn't have it. OK, so that wasn't saved either. OK, I just I'm not a DNA expert, so I wasn't sure if if if a bone fragment. You know from the skull and use a tooth, they use a tooth, OK, crush it. They put it in a wearing blender and then and then they and and and then they then they extract DNA from there. So in theory, for about 30 years after the murder. There would have been something

in theory, to test. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay. And in 03, like 22 years after this happened, now they're interested in why don't we do a DNA match? So it's like one thing that they just merely that the DNA guy at the sheriff's office is that we're just doing this. So if we have to look for if we ever find anything else in the body, but then

they do a comparison with Mrs. Walsh, who they get the police take a saliva sample. is this, are we gonna prove here that the found child's head and Mrs. Walsh are related here? Let's know, is that what it is? Because that's not what the DNA guide. no. So we get a, so there's a report and then, and the Miami Herald co-reporter is no,

calls me and says, I got that picked up the report and this is this is you're not going to like this. There's a match between Mrs. Walsh and the found child. OK, well, I want to see what this looks like. And then and and and and then I'm talking to some DNA experts who were friends and connected to friends. And they said, when the when the DNA when the evidence and the DNA don't match.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37.44)
It's the DNA that's wrong. Go get the full lab file. See if you can get it. No, it wasn't in the Hollywood police file. So I made a public record to request this is a public record. Can I have it? Says, well, no, had to go to the lab and the lab said, we'll give it to you if we get permission from Hollywood police. And they did.

And then as I later learned, I was really fortunate because there was a lab report. was 300 whatever pages long. And I had never looked at a DNA lab report before. So it took me a long time. It took me a couple of months to really understand it. And I'm reading and I think I see like there's problems in it. And then I'm asking for more help. go to my friend who was the elected public defender in Broward. And he gets me to the Innocence Project of Florida, who gets me to

a great DNA lab in Ohio who gets me to a guy who has his own mitochondrial lab at a university in Ontario. Because this was not a, this, it wasn't a, this was a mitochondrial match. Mitochondrial is different. No, it's like one out, it's like, no, you and I may have the same mitochondrial DNA. It would not, it would not, no.

It would not surprise necessarily that we were somehow related 600 years ago. Same maternal ancestor. So the report said that Mrs. Walsh and the found child identified as Adam had the same mitochondrial profile. That's what it said. So.

I have to understand what mitochondrial DNA is. And then what was really striking in the DNA report that would not have been available if I didn't get it was that the lab analyst who worked for that, Bodie Labs, also had the same mitochondrial DNA profile as Mrs. Walsh and the remains, which meant that

Speaker 2 (01:21:58.07)
Mrs. That the lab analyst had an equal chance of being the mother of the remains as Mrs. Walsh did. So one of the questions I asked to the Ontario mitochondrial lab guys is, how weird is that? And he said, that's very weird. Like, okay, let's know. And then I said, I'm seeing problems in the processing of the.

in the DNA processing, in the lab processing. And I'm asking, he's wonderful guy. says it's his mission to educate people about DNA. And I'm asking him question after question. says, well, would you send me the lab report? Thank you. Thank you. We're waiting for you to ask me that. So he looks at it and he shows, he says, there's contamination all over this. Contamination could have come from

really anywhere, but it also could have come from the lab analyst. All you have to do is breathe on it. You don't even have to touch it. No sneeze on a sample. No, you've contaminated it. They, the, the, have to have such clean rooms in order to do this DNA analysis, especially these days, because it's, because it's so good that it can pick up all sorts of stuff, all sorts of crap. It's not really, it's, it's, it's,

It's not that good. It's not, it's, it's, you know, you can't, there's, there's also all that. And I went into this and it's got a DNA section in here that, that there's, there's evidence of, of lab contamination used to convict people. There was a guy in Houston who was no six feet, six feet tall. And the, and the, this

It was like this guy didn't match the identification of the rapist by like, you know, the guy was five, six and he was six or six, two and something, but the DNA matched. So how did the DNA happen? Well, there were problems in the Houston police crime lab, lots of problems and like, that, so it's like, he said the lab guy in Ontario said, basically throw out these results. They have no value.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21.772)
Wow. Wow. You mean nothing. I had to learn a lot about DNA just to understand that, but I had to do it because otherwise everything else is wrong. OK, wow. Everything else doesn't match. OK, so let's pause it right there because I'm starting to drag you into areas that I'm hearing for the first time. OK, so I want the audience to know. You don't know this.

I don't know. don't know. So let's just back up where I took you off the trail. Tell us who Henry Lee Lucas is and Otis O'Toole. Otis O'Toole. Otis O'Toole. Otis and Henry. Henry is the more famous of the two. Henry and Otis in about 1983 were serial confessors to murders. They know Henry may have done some and may not have done some.

But Henry's in jail outside of Austin, Texas. We're not far from you. And Otis is in Jacksonville in a jail. And Henry starts, and there's his own background for that, starts saying that I kill people in every one of the lower 48 states. And then they took him to crime scenes, and especially in Texas.

and the Texas Rangers, and and yeah, that's mine. I showed you where that body was found, and that's where it was. So, cold case detectives from all around the country are lining up, making appointments to see Henry Lee Lucas and bringing their cases. Henry, did you do this one? Yep, did that one. No? And then there are literally hundreds.

Hundreds of murders. This guy is the worst serial murder of all time. And driving a piece of crap car. And then he says, El and my partner, Otis Tool, from Florida, he was with me on a lot of these. So then attention shifts. And the cold case guys are now going to Jacksonville and Otis Tool.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49.6)
is admitting to wild amounts of these murders. he said, so Tool says to one of the detectives, no, implies that he killed Adam Walsh. The TV movie was going to air that night on NBC. So he's in jail and no TV movies, no network movies.

network shows, they're promo'd for like a week before. And he's yet closer to, was a Monday night movie, that there's more more promos, you can't miss it on the network. So he doesn't have real good details, but the cops tells his handler, the detective, the sheriff's office in Jacksonville, I think he might be talking about Adam Walsh. So they're talking some and eventually

two weeks later, the Hollywood police comes in and Hollywood police, no, no, Otis Toole is a willing confessor to killing Adam Walsh, just as Henry Lee was confessing to a lot of murders there. The problem was that Otis didn't know anything. Right. He know, and I can say that because,

The transcripts of his interviews from Hollywood police are published and in the case file and I have them and you will see them in the sub stack. The relevant portions you'll see how he I'm gonna I'm gonna read you. Let me get my other. This up I've got to go OK so you got everything wrong. I mean I wrote down.

Okay, here I'm I'm gonna gonna read you some stuff that's from transcripts tool said that he and Lucas saw a child run out of Sears and Hollywood mall and into the parking lot banging on cars including theirs and Then and then he and then here's the transcript the question was he outside the Sears store? Yeah, he was outside the store. He was in the parking lot area He was outside the store. Did it appear he was lost? He came out the door and running all through the parking lot

Speaker 2 (01:29:14.52)
What was he doing when he ran out? Well, he was running all over the parking lot and was he saying anything? He had kind of a little smart mouth, certainly. Can you describe him for me? What he looked like, the color of his hair? He had blonde hair and kind of curly. I'd say it could have been curly or wavy or in between. I'd say it wasn't no straight bodied hair. And he had on a pair of dungarees and a blue shirt. And I know he had, he even had a pair of smitten on.

That's what the transcript says, smitten. Going like a pair of smitten on. Okay, so I'll get to that in a second, but this is what Reve had told the police what Adam was wearing that day. And I'm reading this from Miami Herald from two days after. The boy's description, no, three and a half feet tall, sandy blonde hair, thin build, missing front teeth, as in plural, wearing a red and white

striped shirt, not a blue shirt, yellow sandals, and a green shorts, not blue dungarees, and a cream colored captain's hat. And that was, okay, so like, what did Tool mean by, he even had a pair of smitten on, like even had a pair of sneakers on, he was wearing flip flops. Okay, so.

As I go on, this is.

Sounds like mittens, right? Okay. this is, this is South Florida in July. You've ever been here. It's warm here, especially in the last week of July. So I write, take my word for it. In July, kids here do not wear mittens. So, so tool has asked, what was the weather like that day, the weather? And he says, I'd say that was somewhere around close to the first of the year or somewhere's right in there.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17.166)
So like, okay, aside from that it was July, it says in December and January here, every year or two, we get a day really cold, a bitter day. No, like you don't want to go out. It doesn't hit 60. It's like, forget it, no. So upstate in Jacksonville, daytime temperatures in the winter around that time can be in the 30s. So I actually have a clip from a newspaper in this past January.

where Jacksonville, the high is 40, and it's snow. It's got to snow that day. Key West, right underneath there, was going to be 70, a very chilly 70 degrees. So like, know, maybe Jacksonville, he saw kids, no, in December, January, wearing mittens. I've been here long enough time, I've never seen it. If you're going to falsely admit to a kidnapping and a murder,

from Florida and you're just going to start throwing out facts, maybe play the odds and go with a tire that is believable. and that's not where all of the and I think it needs to be emphasized that this detective Hoffman was absolutely guiding Otis tool and trying to get him to go down this road. But the discrepancies don't end there. Talk to us about the location of the head in the direction that Otis says he was driving.

There, Otis, it depends on when and how much he was guided. And then he'd first said that from Hollywood, when he got the child and left them all, then he went on, you know, what road did you go, did you leave them all on? First he says A1A. A1A is the beach road. It's really nice. But it's like, you'll get to Jacksonville, which is where he was from. It'll take you, you know, it'll take you till January from this

from July to get to Jacksonville on a one day. So he said, so, then he said, and they said, oh, and then we took some turnpike. Okay. There is a turnpike, no, in, in entrance in Hollywood. And then he says, well, we went south. I mean like south toward Key West. Yeah. We went south from there, south toward Miami. The head was found north on, no, was by the turnpike, but north. So

Speaker 2 (01:33:45.998)
like toward Jacksonville. that was, that's the confusion. And then they had, they had to guide him, know, a couple of times to where he's going north now. And then the turnpike back then, 90, you take 95 now, okay. But in, but in the early eighties and I drove here, you know, in the seventies. So I knew what, I knew that 95 wasn't complete. You had to get off 95. You had to get, you took a

an access road onto the Turnpike, then you went south on the Turnpike until you got to Palm Beach County. And then you, the Turnpike's a toll road, and who wants to pay for the toll road? And then you, and you, and then, then you got back on 95. So, but you had to, the Turnpike go, the Veers, it's north, then it goes to the west, starts going northwest after the Fort Pierce exit. So as their driving tool, because they had to bring them down here,

so he could show them just where everything was. And he misses the Fort Pierce exit. So they're going, they're veering now west toward the middle of the state and not due north toward Jacksonville. And they've already shown him pictures because Tull is so difficult to try and wrench some details out of. They had to give him all sorts of details and then photographs. So they showed him pictures of

the where the head was found, it was in water and there was a little wooden bridge, walkway bridge. And then the mile marker, mile marker 130. So as they're driving north on the turnpike and you can see that the mile markers are increasing. So it's like he kind of, and he already knows that it's 130. is, here's the question, how stupid was Tool? Tool, heard me.

no, read some of his dialogue. How stupid was he? Or how not stupid was he? As I also write, somebody was being hustled. Was it the dummy or the detectives? So Tool seemed to know just what he was doing. And the detectives were playing, were allowing him to learn the whole case, which was happening with Lucas. Lucas was getting,

Speaker 2 (01:36:12.494)
getting all these prompts. So he knew what the crime scenes looked like, and he knew certain details. And he said that. No, he actually admitted to that. Hi, Otis. Handsome guy. Handsome monolooker. Yeah, yeah. And so Lucas said it out loud, and so did Tool much later. says, basically, you told me everything.

That's how I didn't. He never came up with anything original that he hadn't been told. And was one thing, if they had told him 99 things and he had come up with the one thing that was true and wasn't told to him and could only have been known to the killer, say, OK, you were justified in doing that. But it never happened. after they brought him to Hollywood and then took him up

upstate know where the head was found. And then they brought him back to Hollywood the end of the day. was a Friday night. And the detectives, here's a line. He says, when I interviewed the second lead detective and asked him about Tool, he gives me a one word answer. Bogus. But that night, they're still interviewing Tool.

and the chief and assistant chief call a press conference. We've solved the Adam Walsh case. It's 1030 at night on a Friday night. Like this is an emergency press conference. So I later learn that the publisher, the Sun Tatler, who I knew, didn't go drinking with the guy, he was an alcoholic anyway, but he didn't.

He didn't, he's dead, I didn't live with him. he's, he's, he's, good. Pass me that, I'm getting dry. So he's, he told me, he found me, he found me for, because another book that I'd written was, he wanted a copy of. So he, so says, you know why they held that press conference at,

Speaker 2 (01:38:39.822)
Friday night, because the Sun Tatler had a Saturday edition, but not a Sunday edition. This is insane. So if they held the press conference on Saturday when they should have, the Sun Tatler wouldn't have had it till Monday and the Herald and the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel would have had it on Saturday and they would have beaten them. So the publisher calls the police chief who'd been there, no, the force since 1955.

and says, Sam, can you do me a favor? Says, do the press conference tonight. OK, I'm going to do you a favor, I'm going to do the press conference tonight. So they announced that they solved it. And I've got the headlines, the front pages from the Herald and Set Moon, the Stuntattler, and so on. And then Monday morning, they go meet with the state attorney because

They didn't actually arrest him. The tool was in custody anyway, in jail. So they didn't have to arrest him for the murder. So they have to go and get an indictment. The state attorney looks at this and says, no, send it back. Sorry, don't have enough. Go get us more and we'll see what you get. We're not going to indict this guy on his confession only. And that started.

whirlwind of attempts by Hollywood police, really, really good work to try and see could they prove anything of what Tool had said. They proved nothing. They couldn't prove that he was in Southern Florida that day or around that days. They also couldn't prove that he was in Jacksonville those days. They had surrounding days in Jacksonville.

And they really worked their tails off and they did tons of interviews and they found all sorts of things and they could not prove. And then they're going back, no, and Tool is giving them, no, depending on when they asked them, yeah, I was here, no, I was there. And he's completely unreliable. And they've already had this press conference. But the press, by...

Speaker 2 (01:41:03.394)
by the day after, by the Sunday, they're already sniffing a rat. They're already going like, because the cops didn't show them any evidence. And it's basically, it's trust us. We can't give you a whole lot of evidence here, but it was, are you sure? And Tool and Lucas were admitting to literally hundreds of murders. And then finally,

Finally, this terrific reporter in your town, Hugh Ainsworth, who was working for the Dallas Times Herald, does a huge story, front page story for them that says that Lucas admitted to murders where he's a thousand miles apart, but they were like, the next day he was by car, he traveled and happened to be in Louisiana, then Colorado.

and did these murders and like this is a whole pattern here. And that broke the fever of Tull and Lucas. Even though the Texas Rangers, there's a great quote that's in one of the Texas papers, says, who are going to believe? Henry Lucas or us? Yeah. Here we go. So let me do a quick recap over the last 90 minutes because

There's been so much. We've only done 90 minutes? We've done 90 minutes, and yet we still have quite a bit of information to get to. So we started off with the tragic murder of Adam Walsh, kidnapped from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, at the Sears store. Famous case, iconic photo we shared. But we had the parents' discrepancies in their stories and times that didn't match up, and so it got a little weird there.

We end up finding a severed head, but the teeth don't match. According to me, the evidence that I have. Not according to anybody else. Right, right. But we've got the identification not by the parents, but by a family friend. The severed head is discovered, medical records are missing.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28.462)
It's just a lot of weird stuff involved with that. Then we get this confession that is clearly been ridiculous. Ridiculous confession by Otis tool and doesn't know any of the details of what Adam was wearing that day. What the weather was that day, the direction of the found severed head. So and and and you just stated that he yeah, he wasn't in Hollywood that day. Um, I couldn't prove it is in Hollywood. Couldn't prove it was in Hollywood that day.

But there is somebody who was in Hollywood that day. We showed the book that you wrote earlier. You all need to check this out. Go ahead. Yeah, there it is. Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret, The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh. And buckle up, y'all, because we're not even in the homestretch yet when we bring up Jeffrey Dahmer. And it's that Jeffrey Dahmer from Wisconsin.

famous for murdering young men and severing heads. mean, that's his MO, right? So what led you to the Jeffrey Dahmer in Hollywood, Florida trail in this pursuit of Adam Walsh's killer?

Okay, I. You know, people may think that that I've been researching every dollar. Okay, I I'm researching the Adam Walsh case, but Jeffrey Dahmer intersects with it. So I knew when when they opened the case file in 96 and I had not looked at this story before before that. As a true crime writer.

I love having all the public records in front of me. When cases are closed, then the public records are available for federal and as well as state cases, at least state Florida cases. So that was my bread and butter. I'd done three true crime books up to then, one of which was turned into a movie with John Travolta. Did I say that?

Speaker 2 (01:45:39.156)
So here was a case, it was in the news, the WALCIS were resisting that the case file be opened, but the state law has it that if a case is not being actively investigated as defined by a reasonable chance of arrest or prosecution in the foreseeable future, then on request, it is a public record.

Well, a reporter from Alabama, wonderful reporter, had stirred the pot and police said, no, no, it's an active case. he, his publisher sued Hollywood police. was joined by Miami Herald, Sunsetmo, and went through the courts and the judge gave the police, look, we'll give you another.

four months, six months, no, closed, no, if you can bring an arrest or get a grand jury indictment in that time, then we won't rule against you. Of course, if you do that, then it'll become a public record on that. So the police did some more reinvestigation with a cold case detective and did not produce an arrest or grand jury indictment. And the judge says, okay,

I know this hasn't happened before, but this is the law and I am ordering this case file open. And I'd never heard of an open murder case that had been an unsolved case that had become a public record. I'm writing about cases that were closed. So this was cool. So it was in the news for legitimately two weeks after that. And I remember

watching TV in the middle of day and Channel 7 breaking in and they were live from the Broward County Library. Live from the library, okay, because they were in, they had just discovered something and in the microfilm machines, because that's, you had to read it on microfilm. So I bum an expensive copy of the microfilm after all was said and done and never gave it back. It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04.824)
the Inasperate Pack, and I'm now pumping my own dimes into the machine and discovering things. OK, so I knew that there was, that Jeffrey Dahmer had been, was in the case file. They had a section on him. There was an interview of him that the lead detective, the original lead detective had done with Dahmer in prison in Wisconsin. It was transcribed.

So, and I looked at it. I'm in a, this five years after I did my initial story on the case, it was published in the local News Weekly cover story. I figured, oh, that's it. know, that's, no, this is what else is gonna happen. So I'm in a used bookstore with my mom. Says, oh, we just passed this used store. I didn't even know it was here. Let's stop, let's go in.

So she is looking at the mysteries and I'm going to the, looking at the true crime section. And I see there's an interview. There's a Robert Ressler who was a, was a, an FBI, retired FBI guy who was actually working for Dahmer's defense in, at his trial in 92. He had in his book an interview with Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, that's really cool. You know, Dahmer was, you know, he was in the Adam Alschvile. Let me, let me look at it.

So in there, says, no, wrestler is asking, well, what about the last victim that you had? was the, the SomSac Synthesum phone, was the younger brother of a man, of the kid who Dahmer had been convicted of sexually assaulting. And it serves in time in.

in prison in Wisconsin. So like, boy, that that was a coincidence, wasn't it? So it says, you know, I'm in the mall, I'm walking in the mall, you know, and, you know, and the younger brother he referred to, I didn't know from Adam that he would that he was the was the the brother of this other child. I'm going like, Okay, okay. You fuck wrestler.

Speaker 2 (01:50:32.398)
You, fuck. didn't. Dahmer had just been interviewed about killing Adam Walsh. And he denied it. And he mentions, no, didn't know him from Adam. A little slip of the tongue here. That's what saying. Is it just a turn of phrase there? It's a slip of the tongue to me. I said, right there in the store, or I'm buying this book, and crappy book.

And he, don't rely on a review from me, on five stars from me, no. And it says, I'm going to reread the entire Jeffrey Dahmer section of the Adam Walsh file. So I go back to the microfilm and I copy everything. And then I'm going to learn everything I possibly can about Jeffrey Dahmer's time in Miami, which has not been well reported and still hasn't been except for the work that I've done.

So that began looking like how could I, know, among, now here's something you can show. This wasn't right away. This took a number of steps, a number of steps before I got there. The Hollywood police, when they initially were referred to by Milwaukee police,

that Dahmer said that he was in South Florida the summer of 81 when Adam Walsh was taken. It was a terrific FBI agent, special agent from Madison, Wisconsin, who kind of like is, when he heard that, he like looked at another agent said Adam Walsh. And then they contacted John Walsh, say like, you know, maybe this is a connection because there's a severed head.

There's severed heads in Milwaukee. There's a severed head in Florida. And then Adam's missing from a mall. And Dahmer was looking for victims at a mall. And Dahmer, people say that Dahmer's MO was older people, older young adults. Yeah, well, he's got record. He was masturbating in front of.

Speaker 2 (01:52:52.846)
12 and 13 year olds and was caught and there's a police report on that. we're already down to 12 year olds. There were two witnesses who had come to the Hollywood police immediately after, right after they saw news that Dahmer had been arrested in Milwaukee. One worked for the Miami Herald in the press room.

So he saw it before anybody was even on the press. they went to the police and they made statements, statements that the police weren't really that interested or happy to take, but they were there. So I found them and talked to them both at tremendous length. like these two guys are separate incidences, separate spots at Sears where they saw him.

So these guys credible. One of them said that he saw man he thought was Dahmer throw a child who we thought was Adam into a blue van. That was the first lead that they had at the time. Somebody had said they saw Adam disappear into a blue van that scooted away, screeched away. It's like, okay, well now I have. Now a blue van witness and Dahmer.

But Hollywood couldn't confirm that Dahmer had ever been here. Even though he'd said that he'd been here, they couldn't confirm it. They looked at their own police records. They checked Miami, city of Miami, Miami Beach, the county police, which was then called Metro Day. Now it's Miami Day PD. And nobody had anything. well, know, Dahmer said he didn't do it.

And he looked us in the eye and we believe him. I mean, I'm a serial killer and I'm looking you in the eye and you should believe everything I say. But that lead detective was so burned out, I think, by the honest tool stuff that he didn't want to deal. He just did not want to deal with that. John Walsh actually wrote a letter to the state attorney and said, I've been told by this FBI agent that

Speaker 2 (01:55:18.05)
The Hollywood detective really needs to go to Wisconsin to interview Dahmer. So he does. And they bring him muffins and they make friends with Dahmer because, know, and see if he'll confess like Ades Toll did. Dahmer is not into confessing, no, the murder of a six-year-old child in a death penalty state. Just wasn't into it. So they, so.

Now Dahmer said repeatedly he didn't do it. And in this hour interview transcribed in 40 pages, now that's in the file and now I'm combing over it. I'm looking for clues. He said he worked for a sub shop on Collins Avenue, gave the name of it, gave the name of his boss. So I look up the name of his boss and like he spelled it and like, I can't find anything like no in.

in 1981 records or current records or anything, no date or Broward, nothing. I got nothing. The sub shop is long since gone. like, OK, there's only one way to do this. Let's go to public records, the county records in Dade County and see if there's any information about Sunshine Subs on Collins Avenue where Dahmer said. And there was. There were a couple of cases and there was a name.

and they'll associate it with one. It's just really small, nothing in cases. And there was also a telephone book reference from 1981 in the microfiche to Sunshine Subs gave the address and it said Sunshine Subs pizza. OK, now it took me a moment, more than a moment to figure this out. says pizza, pizza on the beach. They might deliver, know, they might.

through deliveries of pizza. like, you know, and then they would have to have vehicles. So I find, you know, I traced the name of the woman who was one of the parties to was sued by whatever the trash collection place, you know, and I'm looking her up and I'm getting a little bit and then I get a marriage record for her and she was married to a guy named Tex.

Speaker 2 (01:57:41.434)
And that was for you. And then I'd go into the death index from Social Security, and he's been dead since 1983. And I get a death notice that was published in the Miami Herald. And like, OK, now I've got just Darlene. That's it. But from the marriage certificate, I have her DOB, and I have her maiden name. And she had an unusual Italian maiden name.

Okay, how many Darlings could there have been born on that day in the United States? So I asked my friend who's a private investigator and there were either six or eight of them. And one of them was Darlene C. Now that matched the Marrow Certificate. So, and I've got the family name. can't find, look in the death index and all the people with that Italian family name, they're all in Massachusetts.

So, okay, I'm looking, so I go to the online phone books and I had a bunch of people who are still alive and they, and with that last name and start, and like there was one in Florida, well, it was, called, were, didn't answer, they were probably snowbirds. And I called the same guy in Boston and said,

I'm a reporter in Florida and I do this as gently as possible because I don't want to freak them out. like, I'm looking for a someone who was maybe a relative of yours and she's got the same last name, maiden name as yours and she didn't do anything wrong. No, and I'm not, this is not, know, I'm just, I'm just, no, says what, no, the reason I'm calling is that

She owned a sub shop in Miami Beach and she had it for a while, this is back in the early 80s, and she might have hired Jeffrey Dahmer.

Speaker 2 (01:59:52.366)
And the guy who's listening goes, dama. I said, maybe you've heard of this. No, no, we've never heard of this before. Says, in fact, the family was full of Boston Police Department cops. They'd never heard. They knew from Albert DeSalvo, because Albert DeSalvo's niece had grown up in their neighborhood in Boston. And so says, Darlene, she was just here.

three weeks ago, here's a phone number, she's in Indiana. I didn't even ask for it. my God. And like, okay, thank you, thank you. And I immediately call her because I figured, what did we just do? We just gave this guy Darlene's phone number on this crazy cock and bull story. And then I call her and I don't reach her because it's, nope, she didn't pick up. No, just out, whatever.

And then I left for the day and at end of day called her and of course her relatives had called and said, we just gave you a phone number to this guy who said Jeffrey Dahmer and something. so I called. And she's lovely, absolutely lovely and willing to talk about that and everything else. And became the one bottleneck.

that I got through the only way to have researched Jeffrey Dahmer in Miami was through Darlene. There was no other way. If that hadn't happened, then I wouldn't have had any of this stuff. she saw this as well, Ken know that there is no, this was Dahmer's boss. And yes, she had the sub shop, but she had sold it back to her partner.

No, before it became the sub shop, it was just a salad place in the same location. So she didn't know from Jeffrey Dahmer. She had no idea at all about this. Wow. But she knew everybody from back then. And her daughters had worked at the store. And she said, my daughters would have known every boy within 20 blocks of there. And they didn't know Dahmer, but they knew other stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:02:12.128)
And then one of them figured out, that was Ken Halpert. That's not Ken Hulub. That's what Dahmer had said and spelled out the name, Ken Halpert. okay, Ken Halpert I could find. And I did find him. He was in Oklahoma. He was in little town in Oklahoma near the Kansas border. And he was running his own sump shop. And then, yeah, yeah, I hired him.

Yeah, and he told me, he was a bum. He worked well for a while, then he came, then all sorts of problems. And I go through all that interview in the episodes to come. And now I have confirmation that he's there. And I have four other people who remembered him through friends of the store and such. And there was a blue van that was there. It was one of the delivery vehicles.

Eight people remembered that and it was easily taken. You didn't have to sign it out. It would disappear for hours or even overnight or even longer. the owner didn't care. The manager was one thing, but the owner at a pizza place, no, another 10 blocks up Collins. And Darlene knew all these things and knew the original owner. And that was its own story. And I'm getting all this stuff.

And then after a few conversations, the manager says, did I tell you about the time that Jeffrey Dahmer found a dead body behind the store? No, Ken, actually you hadn't mentioned that. Says, yeah, he was like by, he was taken out the trash. And he comes back and he says, there's a body right by the dumpster. And he says, it's been there for a couple of days. He you didn't tell me?

And he rushes out and he sees a body, no, by the dumpster. And then the manager, who's totally decent guy, calls the police and they show up and they are able to identify this person who's a homeless guy. Dahmer on this report that you've got on screen says that the victim was discovered by Mr. Dahmer.

Speaker 2 (02:04:34.818)
face down directly south of the meter room on the gravel. The victim was known as Bobby, possibly Janoski. Well, he got a full name for him. And then from there, I was able to get an autopsy, no, an autopsy file because in Dade County, they do autopsies. They write autopsy reports after they do autopsies. And from there, and then I didn't know just when

this had happened, but I knew it had happened. It happened like somewhere in July that comes later when I get the date. I know that looking up in the police files was impossible, but it's a body. It went to the medical examiner's office. It was an unidentified body. So they don't have that many cases. They have a lot, but not that many.

And then I asked a clerk, can you find this for me? Here's the precise address. Here's the June or July of 1981. And she calls back a couple of days later, I found it. Wow. OK. Can I get copies of the file? Sure. Look at that. So I get that. then there's the police report.

And the police report has found dead 7 7 81 6 PM Jeffrey Dahmer. at Jeffrey Dahmer according to Mr. Jeffrey Dahmer and like, oh my God, Jeff. What bad, you had a party that night. Right? 20 days, exactly 20 days before Adam disappeared. Jeffrey Dahmer in Hollywood, Florida. And that, this is, this is, this is Miami Beach. is in Dane County. It's like 15 to 20 minutes away by vehicle. Okay.

So he's, Hollywood police didn't have this. And then the autopsy report is he died of natural causes. He was an old alky. So he died of liver disease. Just fell over right in front of the dumpster and died of liver disease. And Jeffrey Dahmer supposedly knew about this guy being back there dead for two days, didn't bother to tell anyone. That should make him.

Speaker 2 (02:07:01.838)
prime suspect number one in that murder or that death. But it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't found to be a murder. It was a natural death. Okay. So Jeffrey Dahmer is not a suspect in a natural death as the medical examiner's autopsy had had found. But my point is that that that for two days he waits to tell anyone. I don't I don't believe him on the two days. think that that body is there very possibly because he put it there.

Okay, all right. then, I mean, other people would have seen it. No, wasn't. It's right around the dumpster in the alley. Okay, the alley is well trafficked enough that, I mean, if Dahmer saw it, no, it's, no, well, he's taking out, the trash in. Other people are putting trash in the dumpster also. So he's, so he's not suspect in this. And because it was a natural death,

It wasn't in the unsolved murders category at Metro Day Police, which was then called Public Safety Division. So when Hollywood in 91, when Dahmer's arrested and they're looking for evidence of Jeffrey Dahmer, it wasn't there. wasn't in the, no, wasn't in the uncertain of like how this person died. OK, so we have Jeffrey Dahmer in the neighborhood of Adam Walsh's murder.

Yeah, close by, kidnapped, murder in 1981. We have a description of the vehicle. It sounds like he would have had access to. There's a lot cooking here as it relates to Jeffrey Dahmer and Adam Walsh. what did you see? Witnesses who identified Dahmer at the mall and one of them set a blue van. And then later, after the 2008 document dump,

then there's four more witnesses in the police file who identified, know that it was Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay. So, and others for Blue Van. Right. Right. witnesses. So I'm asking Art, the guy who has been on this case, uncovering everything, incredible work, man. When you get to this, you're thinking, I'm assuming, right?

Speaker 2 (02:09:25.23)
Well, let me just ask you, what are you thinking? Are you thinking, this case is closed, I solved it.

I don't think that really came in. It was sort of like, I've got this. I have now really strong evidence that got only got stronger of Dahmer. And then, and then I got this. I managed to get this into a newspaper. was a daily business review because my friend was the editor of it.

And he gave me a front page on that. And then from there, then the story was broken. Then it made TV. It made local TV. And then it made CNN. And then I'm on Anderson Cooper. And then I'm on local cable TV. And then within that week, John Walsh's show, America's Most Wanted, puts out a statement that says that this case

No, no, don't believe this guy. No, this guy, this is not credible. And, and, you know, and he's not responsible. And, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer was ruled out by Hollywood police who did an extensive investigation. No, and then anybody who has no real leads, no, please come forward to the Hollywood police. And then the media stopped calling. My phone, which had been ringing like mad.

No, I'm like, do you hear that? Hear what? The phone. It's not ringing. However, one, I got one significant call after that, and that was from a producer from ABC primetime. So I worked with him for the rest of the, for, no, for months. And then we got the show on ABC primetime and the Walshes were not, John Walsh was not pleased about that. He would not give, Walsh would not give an interview to me

Speaker 2 (02:11:30.414)
to the Daily Business Review. He wouldn't give an interview to anybody when it was on cable TV. No, he would not give an interview to ABC primetime. John Walsh does a lot of interviews, but he wouldn't do one for anything that was associated with my work.

And then when, now a couple of years later, then the Miami Herald stories with, is it Tool or is it Dahmer? That was the top of the front page of the Herald. And then the interior story of there's a missing autopsy report. So we tried, I was like, hey, know, fellow reporter, David, you try and reach him. He doesn't answer to me. So he didn't answer to David, didn't know. It's like when calling from the Miami Herald and left messages.

that didn't work. And then after it ran, you'd expect it to be like, of course there's an autopsy report. We saw the autopsy report. You're full of shit. says, how can you write that? Instead, the answer was nothing. There was no answer. There was no like, how could...

No, no, if there was no autopsy report, you know, then then this case couldn't ever go to trial because you couldn't prove you all the evidence is missing to prove that the found child was Adam Walsh. And that's like, no, anybody can be tried. No, tried for a murder. But you've got but but if John Jones is is accused of killing, you know, Sam Smith, you got to prove that Sam Smith is dead. You couldn't do that.

Right. Okay. Never went to trial. Okay. So the way I look at this now, we have four distinct possibilities. We have oddest tool murdered Adam Walsh. Jeffrey Dahmer murdered Adam Walsh. Somebody else murdered Adam Walsh. But I think there's a fourth option here and I want you to tell us about some conversations, some interactions you have had with,

Speaker 2 (02:13:48.002)
with a certain someone. Okay. So that's a tease. I'm trying to set you off here. I got it. How was he talking about? Heart is so great. You're awesome. So I got it. I got it. got it. Okay, so I had I tried to put this story down any number of times. Because it's enough. Okay, it's enough. I wrote a book.

Now you showed the cover of it. And like, you know, I need a life outside of the Adam Walsh case. And besides, I'd written other books and things. The story kept calling me back. All available on Amazon, I want to point out. thank you. And notice it says books one and two, book one and then book two, Finding the Killer.

was the man in the mall, the most notorious murderer in history. And then book two, finding the victim, the body identified as Adam Walsh is not him, is Adam still alive? my goodness. Just when you think this story can't get crazier. That's what I thought it couldn't get crazier. Okay, so I get a Facebook message one afternoon.

from someone congratulating me on having reported, found and reported that Jeffrey Dahmer had taken Adam Walsh and in a blue van. Says, no. He okay, well, you're, no, thank you for that. No. Says, and then as I read this message, it's because he signs it Adam Walsh. Now I am,

I write about this when, you know, in the appropriate place in later episode.

Speaker 2 (02:15:45.902)
I don't like this. This is scary to me. Okay, this is someone is trying to hoax me very, very possibly. I don't like this at all. They found me, no, they found me personally and they and like, yeah, okay. Adam Walsh is finding me and he seems to be alive and like this is like, so I was caretaking at that time, my mom was getting old and but still with it.

very much with it. And I showed her on my screen. It says, mom, what do I do with this? And she says, call him. OK. So he's got his phone numbers there. It's more or less local to me. And I call him. And I'm very, very cautious, very arm's length here. It says, OK.

You got, or I said, send me your phone number. I'll call you. Don't, don't call me. I'll call you. Um, so he does quickly and says, all right, you got me. This is, um, um, just no. So he, so, uh, as opposed to hearing this, this craze voice of like, yeah, I got you. ha. He is, um, quite calm, quite reasoned, quite intelligent, very intelligent.

And he's like, OK. He's OK to talk to. All right. So let me try and prove that you're not Adamol. Because how am I going to prove he is? I have a chance of proving that he isn't. So I talked to him for the whole week. It took him like five days. trying to try anything at all, he's telling me things. It's a horrible story. It's like,

It's really wrenching story. I mean, it's a licturning story. Now, torture by Jeffrey Dahmer. And what happened after he supposedly left the mall. And finally, the Friday, I get an idea. I'm going to prove that you're not Adam Walsh. I'm going to go to the medical examiner's office. I haven't been there. Now, says, as of the last year, the medical examiner's files are now public records.

Speaker 2 (02:18:11.853)
says, I meant to go there the day after they opened the police file. But there was so much stuff in the police file that I didn't know. There were the four additional witnesses who had seen Jeffrey Dahmer. And I'm going through all those motions, and I'm writing it up, and things.

Speaker 2 (02:18:40.012)
lost you. Alright, hopefully art will reconnect here. I mean, what, what a place, what a place for that to happen, huh? my goodness. All right. we'll just stand by. Let me send, let me send art a note. gosh. I'm sorry. I don't know. Hang on a second.

there he is. There he is right there. All right, cool. Okay. knows if that was that was me or me the the Donald the Donald one once. No, no, no, the common denominator is their show. Don't worry. It's not just you. Okay, so you left us there with the okay, so I'm going I'm going to I go to the to the medical examiner. I call the medical examiner's office. I'd like to see the Adam Walsh file. You know, it's public record now because since they closed the case, so it's all the law enforcement files are public record.

So the clerk, the records clerk says to me, it's missing. The file's missing. The most famous case in the county's history. Art, why weren't you there at start a business on day one, sir? So that you could have been there before, before somebody else got to him. Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead. So, I said, you know, it's,

So it's no, it's she says, the chief investigator, she knows when she died, no, she had the file. We don't have it. And like, you know, we've been looking for for the last year and something. OK. Well, if you find it, will you give me a phone call? Here's my phone number. And within the next week, we found the file. cool. Cool. OK, can I come see it? Yeah, anytime.

How about tomorrow morning? Sure. So I go and they open the file, the chief medical examiner. No, no. At the time, he introduces me and I'm looking at the file. He puts me in a room with the file and Dr. Purper, yeah. There's no autopsy report in this file.

Speaker 2 (02:21:05.934)
Well, that happened before I got here, so it's not my fault. as it turns out, it was his fault because as the chief medical examiner, he was the he's the records custodian and he is responsible for all the records, not just the ones since he'd been there. So they so and then I realized that other thing, there's no photographs of the autopsy. That's something else that you're supposed to do. And there's and then there's

No, it's like, no, they give me a full copy to take home and so I can figure out more. And then I go through the song and dance with him about trying to, know, quoting the statutes from the state and like, here's what you need to do in order to attempt to find this because this should not happen.

And then, and that's how I got the email, the copy of the email that the original medical examiner had said that I didn't write an autopsy report, wasn't my case. Okay, well, that was really valuable. Because when I had tried to call that ME, he'd hung up on me twice. Once when I called him, and then I said to the Herald co-reporter, says, you try. Now, hi, I'm David Smiley from the Miami Herald.

says, I'm interested in the Adam Walsh case. And you got a quote. Hmm.

That was the full quote. That's Then he hung up. Then he hung up. OK. OK. And then I know that when I hit a stone wall, when I hit a locked door, there's something behind the locked door. Because otherwise, people will open their doors for you. They will tell you. But when you hit that wall, then you have to figure out how do I get through that wall.

Speaker 2 (02:23:12.846)
Now, is there a back door? there, how do you ghost it and get through a brick wall? So that's how I did it with getting him on the record in print, in an email to the ME's office that he did not, he handled the case, which I knew he did because there's a cover page that has his, that has his, now Adam's name and he's the ME and he did the autopsy on this date and at this time. And there's a description, but the rest of

The rest of the autopsy report isn't there. And I know what the autopsy's report looks like from Broward County in that time. And it just isn't there. OK, and nobody, the Hollywood police and the Broward State Attorney's Office and John Wall, so nobody's come to grips on that you cannot, you cannot prove with evidence that

that that's Adam Walsh and that there's overwhelming evidence that it very well is not, like, you know, not sure how it could be Adam. And then this guy has called me and says he's Adam Walsh and he's giving me this awful story, this terrible story. And I'm trying to get rid of him, I'm not, but I don't want to just dismiss him like any other journalist would probably do. And then, you know, I want to make sure that

He, I proved you're not Adam Walsh. Okay, now I can, now I can forget about you. Okay, now I even have to write about you. So when, when I realize that there's no, that the documents aren't there, so I said to him, said to him, I'm going to prove in the documents that you're not Adam Walsh. He said, you're going to find a misidentification. Okay, let's see what happens. And guess what? Now I realize I need to take this guy seriously.

I need to see, I need to go a hell of a lot deeper down the rabbit hole. And this is deepest one of all. so.

Speaker 2 (02:25:20.622)
and find everything I possibly can find. And then I was really lucky. Like I just said, I found Adam's teammate. It was Darlene's stepchild. Was Adam's T-ball teammate. And she had said this to me sometime before. I said, well, know, I was in a party and I met him, I'd love to talk to him. And now it's like Darlene.

I need to know, how do I reach Frankie? Frankie was the kid. And I found him. He had never posted about being anywhere. No media about being Adam Walsh's friend, about knowing him at all. And I found him. I'm chatting with him. You grew up in Hollywood, Florida, and whatever. And you remember the Adam Walsh case.

yeah, yeah, was friends with them because Darlene had seen a wallet size picture from her then ex-husband who had remarried and had a child and that was Frankie. And Frankie was wearing the same shirt that Adam was wearing. And Darlene had seen that and I never did get a picture of it. But Frankie, no, Frank, had kept his trophy.

his tro- can you imagine keeping your trophy when you were six years old and you got this little dumb, dumpy little trophy and it said, you know, and he kept it and it said, 1981 Hollywood optimists, no T-ball, no all-stars because every, every kid's an all-star, right? So he had that and Adam had to have the same trophy.

So he showed me the trophy and sent me pictures. He brought the trophy when he came down from Tampa that he showed me. So I put him in the same room. First of all, I put him on the phone with this possible Adam Walsh. I said, we're gonna do a three way.

Speaker 2 (02:27:35.01)
This is not how much you remember Adam Walsh, Frank. This is does he remember you? Does he remember things about you? And then, I mean, have a regular conversation, just, and Frank, okay, okay. Because when I told him that, you know, I said, no, all right, Frank, you know, we're having a really nice conversation. You don't know me, but the real reason I called is because somebody found me and said he was Adam Walsh.

I'm going to freak you out. OK? Says, are you still with me? Yeah, I'm still with you. OK, good, good. I like it. says, there's reason to think that he's not out of his mind. And he's a nice guy. And he's really smart. So I put them on the phone the first time. And my Adam, when I tell him Frank's name, he says, Frankie.

That was his childhood name. He's long since not gone by the name Frankie. And he's he broke in my baseball glove.

Okay, so a little later, Frank comes back to me and says, you know, I didn't remember that, but my wife told me that 10 years ago when his own child named Frankie, that's why he's Frank and now child's Frankie, was in Little League that says, told me, the wife said, you told me that you had broken in Adam Walsh's baseball glove.

And his wife reminded him of that. says, oh, oh, that's what my Adam remembered. There were a number of things. They remembered being on the team and the positions that they played and how bad they were. And little Adam looked up to big brother type Frankie.

Speaker 2 (02:29:43.086)
who is the star of the team because he was eight and a half or nine, shouldn't have been there. And Frankie was, kind of adopted him as a little brother because that's Frank's nature and Frank knew that and Darlene had already told me that as well. And I'm getting all this detail. It's like, and then I put them in the same room together twice and like, I don't see how he's not Adam.

There was that was and that and there and there was one other one other way of like, you know, the the Dahmer story, know, of that, that also it also checked out. But like, OK. All right. So he he went to Hollywood police at my suggestion and they listened to him for an hour and they were very nice. And I said, did they did they take that they take a saliva sample for DNA? No. They they know.

Do any of that? Did they? No. No. Did take your fingerprints? No, I took his fingerprints. I tried to match them against, against latents that were in Hollywood's file. They were taken from Adam's bedroom. And I took them to two fingerprint experts who were, no, my friends. And they both separately said, there's no match because the latents from the, from the bedroom are really crummy. The best ones are like a third of a print.

And then the fingerprints I took that came from a police department, they paid the police department to fingerprint them and I said, that sounds good, right? They were bad too. So I gave up on that. I tried to do a DNA test, but I'm testing it. then I couldn't, against the one that Mrs. Walsh and the found child had done, the found child is obviously not Adam Walsh, not my Adam Walsh.

And then there's contamination through the entire lab report. It's like throw it out. And then the Walshes, who are certainly not cooperating with me, they're not volunteering to do a DNA test against this guy who had tried to reach them before he reached me and is calling the show whatever number of times. And the show, they hung up on him. And then he calls back. You think you're the first one who ever said that he's Adam Walsh?

Speaker 2 (02:32:13.144)
So like, okay, okay, this guy is under the circumstances. No, and what he knew that Frank knew and Frank, were close friends up to the week or so before he disappeared. he's, and so Frank knew him really well. What year was this that you had this meeting between Frankie, Adam and yourself? What year was that?

Speaker 2 (02:32:45.944)
Ballpark on.

I'm drawing a blank here. It's 2011, something like that. So he's roughly 35, 36 years He's roughly the right age. At that time, right? He's roughly the right So who raised him? Where did he go for those That's a question. He asked me not to use his name. And I get it.

I said, look, let me argue against you, but you're going to win this. And in the end, I want it. Can I talk to your foster parents, as he called them? No, because they don't want this out. It's not that they don't believe him. It's that they don't want it out. OK, so I got to work around that, too. So these are problems. These are maybe red flags. what?

Ultimately, what convinced me was Frank. Frank, what he knew. When I was there, I know that Frank wasn't giving stuff away. Wasn't like Otto's tool. No, he was, no, it was, no, he knew stuff about Frank. That Frank had never put on the internet or anywhere else. And Frank had even forgotten some of this stuff and his wife reminded him.

Okay, in the 15 years since since you made this discovery, have you still been in touch with Adam? I lost him. I lost him about five years ago. Okay. And he and he had wanted to be part of the Walsh family. And that was that was his goal, he had told me. And I think, given all this, I think he decided, No, I'm not sure I really want to be part of the Walsh family.

Speaker 2 (02:34:45.806)
Now, he, you know, so I honored his decision. He'd already told me, know, a tremendous amount. The great detail is in my book too. there's stuff in the Substack as well. The highlights are there. And then.

You know, the story doesn't hinge on whether he's Adam Walsh or not, but he's strong, a very strong possibility, more than 50%. No, more than 75%. Yeah, you know, without a, of course, I don't even trust DNA anymore. It's like, but you'd want to have, you know, the Walsh's and him, no, test, you know, but the cops have to do it, not me. You know, it's...

It's not trusted when it doesn't come from law enforcement. they're not, they no indication of doing that. So you just, you do it so you can tell Art Harris that he's full of shit. Okay. One last question for you. And this has been just what a ride, Art. I can't imagine, I mean, you've compressed 30 years of journalism and hard work into this two and a half hour. And only six and a half hours.

Yeah, right, right. Right, right. The Substack. Yeah, y'all subscribe. Substack.com slash at Arthur J. Harris. So here's my remaining question. You started today's conversation by telling us what John Walsh, I think, did he tell it to Congress that 50,000 kids go missing a year, right? And the number was actually more like was it?

6550. So on average, one kid a year at that time per US state, right? So there shouldn't have been that many kids, relatively speaking, missing in the state of Florida or around Southeast anyway, in 1981. So my question is then, who's that child? You got it. Who's the severed head? Who's that child? Can't you know?

Speaker 2 (02:37:08.258)
You can't get to the bottom of any story that you do. And I looked in the missing persons in the NamUs file and like all every state and around 1980 to 81. And it just isn't very good. They don't have everything. Everything wasn't filed then. So that isn't there. So I don't know. However, if you did

If you did some DNA there, you might be able to get a match in the larger files and match with relatives. But even that is, no, you want both parents. Even sibling matches, no, each parent is 50%. Siblings are 25%. Cousins are no, shorter than that. So it's.

to these forensic genealogists guys are like they're, it takes a while because there's a lot going on. And sometimes you actually do when you find a third cousin that will get you to a second cousin who knows about the parents and stuff. then you solve these things. that it's a very difficult, that was beyond what I could.

what I could do and what I think maybe anybody could do. So I've already done things that I didn't think I could do. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. Please check out Arthur J. Harris, Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret, The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh. We got two books there available at Amazon, as are all of arts books that you need to check out. And of course,

make sure to subscribe to a Substack, substack.com at Arthur J. Harris. It's been a fascinating conversation, Art. I'm grateful for your time. Is there any other place people should be looking for you, maybe on social media or something? You know, I have friends who have spent a lot of time on social media, know, promoting their stuff. And I've spent my time writing my stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:39:29.358)
I love it. So I have small presence in various places, but basically the substack. I spent two years putting together all the episodes. Did I say there were 58 episodes? I'm up to tomorrow will be the 20th. So it's going to keep running. It's all written. I haven't posted everything yet.

But it's coming at this point of doing one every second day. And because it has less than the books, but it's got more than the books because there's illustrations in there. There's actualities from public records and previously published stuff that just don't fit in the book. it's its own medium. So I write through.

all those little clips in there. And that made it fun too. And then I'm narrating it, as you can already tell that I might be able to do. in some ways, this story, it's certainly a true crime and it's very serious true crime. It's also very serious comedy. This story has made me laugh any number of times.

and just the absurdity of what I was finding and what was going on and the, shall we say, cover-up? No, the, that there's- Why would there be a cover-up?

Speaker 2 (02:41:07.842)
Why is there any cover up? Because there's because the story isn't right. The story as told isn't right. So you have you have you have all the parties involved. And then the story, it's it's a perfectly good story until you know I come along and I interrupt it and say that nothing is correct about it. Beyond that, Adam disappeared on that day in.

in 1981 in Florida. And then everything else is fact of what happened, but the truth is something else. Nothing else. can't know all the explanations, all the conclusions. The cops closed the case in 2008. They blamed Otis Toole. And I went to that press conference, and I kept my mouth closed.

And because it was there, it was the Walsh's day, they were crying, they finally got justice. And like, how can you close the case on Ottis Toole, given all those problems with what he said, all the lies, all the things he did not know and had been knew only because they told and showed him. And then the state attorney's office backed him up on that.

And I know people in the state attorney's office. for them to get away with this stuff. By the way, in all of my stories, the cops don't get them right. You look deeply enough and the cops don't need to get them totally wrong where they don't get it entirely right. And I'm not.

picking stories because I'm trying to make a point of that. I'm picking stories there. are 1980s South Florida, big murder stories there and with public records available. So I start with the public records and then I do my own investigation. Now, and question this stuff. Now I have different talents than the police do. you know, I mean, they're more talented in some things.

Speaker 2 (02:43:30.286)
I know how to do other stuff. I get the story. I'm not trying to solve the case. I'm trying to get the story. And the story, if it turns out that the solving of the case is not right, which happens to occur, then it's the story. The cops are not in it for the story. They're not literary types.

No, they're not using their voice. I'm using, you can hear my voice. It's the same voices in the Sub-Sax Series. And it's tremendous work. It's fun to interact with all these people and go in all the different directions. And then because I'm not working for anybody, specifically like a newspaper on this, I get whatever amount of time that I want to spend on it at my expense. And that's, you know.

This is the journalism that I'd always wanted to do. And then it became a crime journalist. As a friend from college says, what are you wasting your talents on crime stories for? No, man. No, this is fascinating stuff. Please go and subscribe. Substack.com slash at Arthur J. Harris. You won't be disappointed. I'm grateful for your time, Art. It's fascinating. If anything develops on this, please be sure to reach out.

And thank you for all just for being a real journalist, honestly. Absolutely. And tomorrow, y'all will watch some animal videos at 3pm Eastern right here on X. Brad and Rebecca will join me for the Friday live stream. And a week from today, it's the anniversary of 9 11. We need to talk about America after after that terrible day. Talk about law enforcement, the surveillance state.

military presence overseas. So much to cover and what has happened in the 24 years since then. So please be sure to join us. Art, thank you so much, sir. Do keep in touch. This is a fascinating story and you are the tip of the spear for where we're to get to the truth on this, man. Thanks, man. Absolutely. Thank you so much.