Police: Adam Walsh Murder Case Closed

A serial killer who died more than a decade ago is the person who decapitated the 6-year-old sonof "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh in 1981, Florida police said Tuesday.
     
The announcement brought to a close a case that has vexed the Walsh family for more than twodecades, launched the television show about the nation's most notorious criminals and inspiredchanges in how authorities search for missing children.
     
"Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" John Walsh said atTuesday's news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The notknowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."
     
The suspect, Ottis Toole, had twice confessed to the killing, but later recanted. He claimedresponsibility for hundreds of murders, but police determined most of the confessions were lies.Toole's niece told the boy's father, John Walsh, her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison thathe killed Adam.
     
The Walshes long ago derided the investigation as botched, and John Walsh has said hebelieved Toole killed his son. Still, he praised the Hollywood police department for closing thecase, and said it was not a day to place blame.
     
"This is not to look back and point fingers, but it is to let it rest," he said.
     
Adam Walsh went missing from a Hollywood mall on July 27, 1981. Fishermen discovered hissevered head in a canal 120 miles away two weeks later. The rest of his body was never found.
     
Authorities made a series of crucial errors, losing the bloodstained carpeting in Toole's car- preventing DNA testing - and the car itself. It was a week after the boy's disappearance beforethe FBI got involved.
     
"So many mistakes were made," John Walsh said in 1997, upon the release of his book "Tears ofRage," which harshly criticized the Hollywood Police Department's work on the case. "It wasshocking, inexcusable and heartbreaking."
     
For all that went wrong in the probe, the case contributed to massive advances in policesearches for missing youngsters and a notable shift in the view parents and children hold of theworld.
     
Adam's death, and his father's subsequent activism on his behalf, helped put faces on milkcartons, shopping bags and mailbox flyers, started fingerprinting programs and increased securityat schools and stores. It spurred the creation of missing persons units at every large policedepartment.
     
It also prompted national legislation to create a national center, database and toll-freeline devoted to missing children, and led to the start of "America's Most Wanted," which broughtthose cases into millions of homes.