Author: Arthur Jay Harris

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781301857449

The 1981 murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh, is one of the most shocking crime stories of the era. But why has there never been a "Trial of the Century" for it? Not for lack of suspects ... In fact, it's never been clearly established that the child who was found and officially identified as Adam -- was really him. After twenty years of following the case, including a deep investigation into the now-public record files of the police in Hollywood, Florida, and the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, investigative author Arthur Jay Harris now has the definitive proof:All of the essential evidence and documentation, regularly collected and kept in every other case involving a found and initially unidentified body, which would forensically prove an identification -- is stunningly missing from the files of the Adam Walsh case. A report of an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirms it: It's not there. What is missing includes:There is no signed autopsy report, although an autopsy was performed; there are no photos of the autopsy; there is no forensic dental report, although the identification was made only by teeth; and there are no X-rays of the teeth of the found child, nor of Adam, from his dentist. As a prominent Miami forensic dentist told Harris, and other forensic dentists said as well, without a dental X-ray comparison he wouldn't be able to testify in court affirming the ID. That is how you make dental IDs, he said. And without a clear identification of the victim as Adam Walsh, a murder case against any defendant would fail. Why is all this evidence missing? Why is this case different from all other similar cases? Does this explain why the murder case of Adam Walsh has never come to trial -- and never will?Someone got away with the most heinous of murders -- and you might think, did more, afterwards. But was the child in fact Adam Walsh?Adam was missing two weeks when a child's brutally severed head was found in a remote roadside canal 125 miles away from the Hollywood shopping mall where Adam's mother said she'd left him alone in the toy department for just five minutes. None of the rest of the body was ever found. That child was quickly identified as Adam. The Walsh parents were not present at the morgue. But as Harris shows with photo comparisons, including public record police photos, it is very unlikely that the found child is actually Adam. The child is much more likely some other child, never properly identified, its parents never told. In a close-up of his famous "Missing" photo, Adam clearly and endearingly has neither top front tooth. John Walsh, in his book Tears of Rage, wrote that the photo was taken about a week before he disappeared. Adam's best friend said he last saw him a week or two before he disappeared and he still had neither top front tooth. Adam was gone two weeks when the child was found; the medical examiner who did the autopsy told the newspapers he thought the child may have been dead for all of that time. But a police photo of the found child clearly shows a buck tooth -- a top left adult central incisor. It was in "almost all the way," said a forensic anthropologist who for police took his own photos of the found child's skull. Could a child have grown in a top front tooth in anywhere close to only that little amount of time? Pediatric dentists say no. There is much, much more to the likely misidentification -- and the police's closing of the case on a likely wrong suspect. Harris has already presented much of the earlier part of the story on ABC Primetime, in The Miami Herald, and elsewhere. Now, read the full story that's been kept from public view until ...