Bringing Adam Home (8 page)

By this time, another parking space had opened up, and Mistler pulled his truck in. As the Cadillac drove past, Mistler noticed that someone had left quite a dent in the right side of the car’s rear bumper. And, to his everlasting dismay, that is the last that he thought of it all for a very long time. He simply did what anyone might have done: he went into the Sears store, did the shopping for his trip, and forgot all about what he had seen.

“I
told the little cocksucker I had some candy and toys,” Toole confided later. The moment the boy was in the car, he locked all the doors and windows. The boy wondered about that, but Toole explained that it would make them safe. They would just have to drive a ways to where the candy was.

He made a quick right out of the parking lot, and inside ten minutes they were headed north on Florida’s Turnpike. He had to stop at a tollbooth to pick up a ticket, and by now the boy was raising all kinds of hell, trying to get the attention of the clerk. Toole gave the clerk a weary smile—“Kids.”

As they rolled on out of the toll chute, Toole gave the boy a healthy backhand across the face, which only seemed to set him off further. The kid was really getting on his nerves now, so Toole landed a few more punches to the boy’s stomach and face. “I’m pretty sure I knocked that kid out,” he remembers. In any case, the car was now quiet.

Toole drove in silence for a while, the Caddy’s big V8 chewing up the miles. He’d intended to take the kid slumped on the seat beside him back up to Jacksonville where they could live together and be friends, but obviously, that wasn’t going to work. The problem was, what to do next?

Toole was no dummy, after all. This kid was very young, but he also seemed pretty smart. Smart enough to identify Toole if he just let him go.

All in all, there didn’t seem to be much choice. He’d driven quite a ways up the turnpike by the time he made his decision, and the busy sprawl of South Florida was far behind him. The brightly lit malls had disappeared, the glittery beachside hotels that loomed like giant, overdecorated Cadillacs were gone, the whole miragelike tropical landscape that seemed to offer up anything a person might want was vanished like a fever dream.

He was alone with an unconscious little boy on the broad seat beside him, and now they were driving through flatlands that seemed to stretch forever, plains dotted here and there by hardwood hammocks or clusters of palmetto scrub, vistas that might have evoked the Serengeti Plains had there been anyone around to know what Africa was.

Prehistoric. Elemental. A man could distinguish crazy dreams from cold, hard reality in a place like this.

Finally, from the corner of his eye, Toole spotted an unmarked service road leading off the turnpike. He’d overshot the unpaved exit, and had to pull to the side of the turnpike and back up to get to it, but that made it perfect for his purposes. It was a rough road, winding through a thick tangle of Australian pines and Brazilian holly, but the jolting did not wake the boy.

Just as well, Toole thought. He didn’t want to have to hurt anyone. When he reached a fork in the road and was sure that they were out of sight of the turnpike, he stopped and switched off the Caddy’s engine. He got out and went around to the passenger’s door, opened it, and lifted up the unconscious little boy. It was so quiet here that the distant traffic was like a gentle surf, the pinging of the cooling Caddy’s hood keeping time. He carried the boy to an open space he had spotted in the forsaken tangle of trees and brush and laid him facedown in the sandy dirt.

Toole walked back to his car and stood surveying his tools, ignoring the cloud of bloodsucking mosquitoes that had already homed in on him. There was a machete in the backseat that he supposed he could use, and a bayonet that he kept hidden under the front seat. That ought to be enough to manage it. He reached for what he needed, and then he went to do his work.

Vero Beach, Florida—August 10, 1981

A
t 8:45 p.m. on a Monday evening two weeks after Adam Walsh went missing, Indian River County medical examiner Franklin H. Cox received a phone call from the sheriff’s office informing him of a gruesome find in a canal near the turnpike about twenty miles west of his office in the town of Vero Beach. Cox was no stranger to the aftermath of violence, for even a sleepy beachside hamlet like Vero Beach has its share of bloody family disputes and garden-variety shootouts at convenience stores, but it is safe to say that the call he received that evening, informing him that fishermen had found the decapitated head of a young boy floating in the water, was the first of its kind.

The severed head was transported to the autopsy room at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, and at 2:00 a.m., Cox met police there to perform a preliminary examination of the remains. Don Coleman and Sid Dubose, homicide detectives from Indian River County, were present, along with three detectives dispatched from Jack Hoffman’s team at Hollywood PD, 136 miles to the south.

Cox described his findings in the dispassionate language of his profession, noting “extensive cutting and chopping wounds . . . posteriorly from ear to ear” as well as cuts to the ears and occipital bones. One of the cervical vertebra was exposed at the base of the skull, “transversely sectioned,” Cox recorded. There were no ragged tissues anywhere—just the clean, sharp edges that might be expected when a head is cleaved from its body with a heavy weapon.

Cox observed that the eyes in the head were bulging, but that was likely a postmortem phenomenon, a result of the gas that had formed in the decomposing tissues of the brain and sent the organ rising to the surface of the canal. As Cox also took the time to mention, “Extensive putrefaction with a foul-smelling odor [was] present.”

Cox completed his work with an examination of the teeth. He found the upper right incisor missing, where a new tooth had been erupting through the gum to take its place. All the other teeth were whole, though there looked to be an amalgam filling in the last left molar, an observation that Cox confirmed with X-rays. With that, Cox concluded his examination. All he could do then was wait.

At about 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Lieutenant Dick Hynds, the supervisor of detectives who had introduced Joe Matthews around Hollywood PD less than a week before, arrived in Vero Beach, accompanied by John Monahan, the man whose own son John Walsh had saved that long-ago day at the Diplomat Hotel. Hynds brought with him Adam Walsh’s records and X-rays from Hollywood dentist Marshall Berger, which showed an amalgam filling “on the buccal side of the last lower left deciduous molar.” The filling was identical to that which Cox had discovered.

If there remained any doubt as to the identity of the remains, Monahan quickly took care of it. He took one look at the face—he
could
be wrong, he told himself—then asked the medical examiner to part the lips. When he saw the missing incisor and the tooth that had been coming in to replace it, his hopes vanished. He closed his eyes briefly, then turned to Hynds and Cox. “That’s him,” Monahan said. “That’s Adam Walsh.”

E
arlier that morning, John Walsh awakened in his bed at the St. Moritz Hotel in New York City, groping over a still-sleeping Revé for the ringing phone. As he lifted the receiver, he glanced at the bedside clock: 6:00 a.m.

Walsh was so groggy he couldn’t even be sure who the caller was, but when he finally made his purpose clear, Walsh snapped awake.

Some remains had been found, the voice on the other end was telling him—it was a cop, wasn’t it?—but Walsh was not to be concerned, since the discovery had been made such a distance from Hollywood. They suspected it was a missing ten-year-old boy from the Tampa area. They just needed the name of the Walsh family dentist—they’d get the records and rule out any chance that it was Adam. Meantime, Walsh should not be worried.

Not be worried? Walsh thought, as he gave the caller the information. He hung up the phone, trying to process what he had just heard, trying to decide whether or not to wake Revé and share the news.

As he pondered, the phone rang again, and Walsh snatched it up. This time it was a producer from
Good Morning America
. Word had already reached the network that a severed head had been found in a canal in Florida. The producer wanted to offer the Walshes a chance to cancel their appearance on the show in case the remains turned out to be Adam’s.

But Walsh wasn’t canceling anything. Despite the dread that he was feeling, he couldn’t be certain what this discovery in Florida might mean, and the opportunity to appear on national television to publicize Adam’s disappearance was one in a million. He had brought along photographs of other desperate parents’ missing children as well; no way could he cancel the appearance.

“What else can I do?” he told the producer, willing away his dread. Even if it was Adam who’d been found, he said, “I still have to give it a shot for all the other kids.”

The producer understood. This was the Walshes’ call. The car would be at the hotel to pick them up, as scheduled.

By the time Revé woke, Walsh had made the decision to keep the phone calls to himself. No point in worrying her, he told himself. And besides, to talk about the calls only made the possibility that Adam had been harmed seem all the more real.

The interview, with
Good Morning America
coanchor David Hartman, went on for seven full minutes, without a hitch. The Walshes described their plight in touching detail, and Adam’s photograph and description were broadcast to millions of viewers around the country. John got the opportunity to work in photos of the other missing children as well. It was the first time that national network news had ever broadcast such a story on the helpless situations parents of missing children often found themselves in, and for all that the Walshes were cheered.

At the end of the piece, however, Hartman asked about the chilling report that remains of a young boy had been discovered in a canal near Vero Beach. Walsh stole a quick look at Revé. She was quiet and composed, but he knew his wife well enough—she’d been blindsided by the news.

Walsh quickly told Hartman that he’d been reassured the discovery had nothing to do with Adam. And in any case, the news only underscored the importance of their appearance on the show. There were terrible things that were going on all the time, and no one was hearing about them. It was vitally important to get the word out quickly, everywhere, when a child went missing.

By the time the segment was over, Revé seemed to have put aside the disturbing news Hartman had divulged, and John was relieved that his sister Jane and a few others were there to help. “I have to run up to the room to make a couple of calls,” he told them, as the car delivered them back to the St. Moritz. He promised to meet them just down the street at the Plaza for something to eat in just a few minutes.

Back in his room, John checked for messages and was relieved to find there were none. Still, he could not shake the ominous feeling that the 6:00 a.m. call had instilled in him. A child’s head found severed and floating in a canal. Unthinkable. Surely such a thing could not have happened to his Adam. Besides, the voice on the other end of the telephone line had told him not to worry. But how long could he live with such uncertainty? One moment he was composed, the next he found himself fighting to draw a breath.

He glanced at his watch—11:35 a.m.—and that was when the phone rang again. “Give it to me straight,” he told the caller. And that is what he got.
Hollywood Sun-Tattler
reporter Charlie Brennan, who’d accompanied John and Revé on their trip to New York, was in the room and later described Walsh as he hung up the phone: “A man with a large part of his heart now stolen.”

R
evé Walsh was sitting with her sister-in-law at the bar of the Plaza Hotel when a young man with a carefully masked expression came to whisper something in Jane’s ear. Jane’s expression did not waver, but in Revé’s mind, all the pieces fell immediately into place.

All Jane would say was that John was waiting for her back at the hotel. But Revé knew. No one had to tell her. She was Adam’s mother.

On the way back to the St. Moritz, it was Revé who squeezed Jane’s hand and told her it would be all right. And when John opened the door to their room and said simply, “Our baby’s dead,” Revé could only reach out for his waiting arms and hold on and tell him that yes, she knew.

S
hortly after noon on Tuesday, and at the urging of Hollywood authorities, medical examiner Cox phoned Dr. Ron Wright, his counterpart in Ft. Lauderdale, to pass along the results of his preliminary examination. As chief medical examiner in the county where the investigation of Adam’s disappearance was centered, Wright was the natural choice to complete the autopsy. Accordingly, Cox had the remains packed in ice and handed them over to Ronald Young, one of the Hollywood detectives present at Cox’s exam, who quickly boarded a helicopter for Broward County.

By 4:00 p.m., Dr. Wright had begun his own examination, quickly determining that the brain matter inside the skull had liquefied, which suggested that death had occurred at least ten days or more prior to discovery. Among other findings, Wright reported that the victim had received repeated blows to the face and had suffered a fractured nose. Given the presence of burst blood vessels in the eyes, Wright theorized that the victim had been strangled and, at the time of the decapitation, was likely dead. He noted the likely cause of death as “asphyxiation,” which put a slightly finer point on medical examiner Cox’s preliminary notation of “homicide.”