Bringing Adam Home (35 page)

He was there for important reasons, Matthews told Scarberry, and then got quickly to the point. Almost twenty-five years had passed since Adam Walsh went missing, and were he still alive, he would have been looking forward to celebrating his thirty-second birthday. Nearly ten years had passed since the record of the failed investigation in his abduction and murder had been made public—effectively putting an end to its investigation—and nearly ten years had passed since the only viable suspect ever identified had died while imprisoned for other killings. There’d been any number of lurid stories concerning the disappearances and deaths of children splashed across the pages of the newspapers of the nation and the region—those of Jimmy Ryce and Shannon Melendi, a young South Florida woman kidnapped and slain by a softball umpire, among them.

There might even be a few people who’d forgotten all about Adam Walsh, just one more unfortunate kid in what had become a long line of them. But Adam Walsh was really the first kid in that line, Matthews pointed out. Before Adam, there really wasn’t much attention paid to the problem of missing and endangered children. And now, due in large part to the efforts of Adam’s parents, John and Revé Walsh, the issue had become one of the most important priorities of law enforcement and society as a whole.

Yet for all that John and Revé had accomplished,
they
had certainly not forgotten about Adam. Furthermore, as every new day dawned, they thought about the son whom they had so tragically lost, and they were reminded that his killer had yet to be brought to justice. Matthews recounted the recent incident in Washington, where John Walsh was confronted by a reporter who wanted to know if it ever “bothered” him that he had been unable to find the killer of his own son.

If that reporter had any idea what John Walsh had gone through, Matthews reminded Chief Scarberry, he would have been running for the doorway before he finished his question. It was true that Walsh had heard such things before, and though he had placed his trust in the Hollywood PD for many years, he felt a certain amount of guilt that he hadn’t done more to move the investigation forward earlier. He’d even felt bad that the baseless innuendo regarding his lifestyle and his ties to organized crime might have somehow affected the conduct of the case. And certainly there was a point to the reporter’s question, offensive as it was. John Walsh had helped to apprehend a lot of bad guys in his time, but the worst one of all had gone scot-free.

“That’s why I’m here today,” Matthews told Scarberry. He’d been asked by John and Revé Walsh to reopen the case and to conduct a complete, independent investigation to prove once and for all who had kidnapped and murdered their son. And Matthews—who was doing this as a favor to people he cared about, and for the sake of justice—was asking for Scarberry’s help. The files had been opened to every reporter under the sun ten years ago, Matthews pointed out, though the motivations of those who wanted them opened were somewhat dubious and their abilities to evaluate what they were looking at just as questionable.

Matthews was an experienced investigator with a single aim in mind: to reexamine files and statements, reevaluate evidence, and reinterview witnesses, and, where new leads presented themselves, to follow them wherever they might go. As Scarberry well knew, Matthews had solved any number of cases thought to be unsolvable before. Surely, said Matthews—who had not come to take no for an answer—it was time to give him his final shot. John and Revé and Adam Walsh deserved that much, at least.

Scarberry heard Matthews out, then sat back in his chair, considering things. He glanced away for a moment, then turned back to Matthews and gave his okay. If Matthews thought he could manage to prove anything after all these years, who was Scarberry or his department to stand in the way?

He would have access to everything in the department’s files, Scarberry told him. And he further assured Matthews that now-captain Mark Smith, the detective who had opened the cold case investigation with Matthews back in 1995, would provide whatever help he could. Godspeed and good luck.

T
he promise of “help” from Mark Smith was a favor that Matthews could have just as well done without, he thought, but at least this time there was no selective withholding of files.

The transfer of all case file documentation, including myriad reports, statements, memos, photos, and interviews—including those filmed and on CD—began the following day, February 22, 2006. Day after day, Matthews (convinced by their disarray that he was the first to do so) combed through the voluminous files, refreshing himself on details, cataloging crucial information and evidence, building for the first time a comprehensive chronology of events and identifying key witnesses who had never been interviewed, or who were never asked the necessary questions in the first place.

On Thursday, February 23, Matthews—backed by a film crew
AMW
’s Lance Heflin had been happy to provide for the purposes of documentation—interviewed retired Hollywood detective Larry Hoisington regarding the things Ottis Toole had told him on October 21, 1981, when Hoisington had been the driver for the team taking Toole around to the various scenes connected to the crime. Hoisington told Matthews that on that day, while Hoffman and others were busy with other things, Toole had given him a complete and independent confession to the crime, the gruesome details of which he recounted for Matthews. Hoisington also recounted Hoffman’s treatment of Toole and repeated what he’d told Leroy Hessler year before: “I’m surprised Toole cooperated at all.”

Hoisington reiterated his conversation with Deputy Chief Hessler at the time and recounted Hessler’s response that Hoisington simply tell Hoffman about it. Matthews pointed to the files, shaking his head. Despite Hoffman’s assurances that he would include what Hoisington told him in his report, no such mention of Toole’s confession to Hoisington existed there.

On Saturday, February 25, Matthews interviewed Arlene Mayer, who had identified Ottis Toole as the man who accosted her and her daughter Heidi at a Hollywood Kmart store two days prior to Adam’s abduction. They both recalled the incident vividly and confirmed that they had identified Toole from a lineup of photographs shown them by Hollywood police. For all the good it did, Matthews thought. Had Hoffman bothered to confirm Toole’s encounter with the Mayers when he had the chance, all this could have very likely been concluded back in 1983.

The likely reason why Hollywood police had placed so little credence in what the Mayers had told them had to do with the timing, Matthews understood. Arlene had been sure that their trip to Kmart to place on a Friday or a Saturday night because those were the only nights they ever went shopping. But the fact that her husband wouldn’t go into the store with them because he had just gotten off work suggested to detectives that it had very likely been a Friday night when the Mayers had their frightening encounter. That, of course, would have ruled Toole out of the scenario, since he would have been on a bus somewhere between Newport News and Jacksonville at the time.

However, Matthews had since spoken with Susan Schindehette, coauthor of John Walsh’s
Tears of Rage
. She’d wondered about that seeming inconsistency, too, she told Matthews, until she asked Wayne Mayer a simple question, one that the detectives never had. Did he ever work at his construction job on Saturdays? “Oh, sure,” Wayne told her. “All the time.”

The simple questions, Matthews thought to himself, as he finished up his notes on the Mayers. When you forget to ask them during an investigation, that’s when things go south.

On the following Tuesday, February 28, Matthews got in touch with prison hospital administrator Barry Gemelli, who confirmed that he had overheard the unsolicited confession to the crime by Ottis Toole as he was lying on his deathbed. The two made arrangements to meet the following week.

In the meantime, Matthews conducted an interview with Kathy Shaffer, the Sears security guard who had ordered Adam Walsh out of the store that day. “His mom showed me two pictures of Adam that day,” Shaffer told Matthews, “and I really wasn’t sure about the first one. But then she made me look at another one, and I knew right then. I was chilled. One hundred and ten percent, I knew it was him.”

But she had lied to Revé that day and said she didn’t recognize Adam because she was just seventeen, and she was scared. She thought Revé would get mad at her for throwing Adam out of the store, Shaffer said, and besides, at first she thought he was just some kid wandering around and he was going to turn up just fine without any help from her.

By the time detectives arrived and were beginning to question her, she realized the enormity of what had happened. This child had really, truly disappeared. She couldn’t own up to what she had done by then, she said to Matthews. She had started to feel truly responsible for Adam’s disappearance. Eventually she came to feel responsible for his death.

“I still do,” she told Matthews, tearfully. “Not a day has gone by in twenty-five years that I haven’t thought about it. If I had just said, ‘Where’s your mama?’ he might still be here today.” She had to pause to gather herself before she could get her last words out, and even then Matthews had to ask her to repeat them. “I pray every night that his mom and dad will forgive me.”

Matthews tried to console Shaffer, but he felt like the little Dutch boy his mother used to tell him about, only this wasn’t some storybook problem where you could just plug your finger in the leak and wait for help to arrive. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Once upon a time, what was so terrible about letting your kid play a video game while you walked fifty feet away to buy a frigging lamp? And yet Revé Walsh had been tying herself in knots ever since, thinking
she
was somehow responsible for what had happened. Or how about her husband John, who put the whole idea of going to Sears in her head in the first place—“Hey, honey, we can save a couple of bucks if we just act now”?

Or how about Joe Matthews, for that matter? Maybe if he had simply cold-cocked Jack Hoffman the first time the know-it-all SOB had insulted him, the guy would have ended up in the hospital and somebody else would have taken over the case. Which of course wouldn’t have changed anything, really, because Adam Walsh would still have been dead.

The fact is that one person, and one person only, was responsible for what had happened to Adam. One person had taken that little boy and done unspeakable things to him, and Matthews was going to prove who that person was, because, quite frankly, that is the only way he knew how to give meaning to his life.

O
n Tuesday, March 14, Matthews met with Barry Gemelli, the former health service administrator at the Union Correctional Institution. Gemelli, himself suffering from advanced leukemia, recounted the details of the confession he heard from Toole just before he died, and confirmed that he had followed up with the criminal investigation unit at the facility both verbally and with a follow-up written report. Gemelli told Matthews that Toole seemed well aware that he was dying. He was sad and scared, and there seemed to Gemelli no reason on earth for the man to be lying. He had done something particularly terrible, and he wanted to get it off his chest. As far as Matthews was concerned, Gemelli was only underscoring what Toole had told officers when he originally confessed in 1983: “It was the youngest person I ever killed and I feel bad about it.” Even ghouls sometimes feel a pang of conscience, he thought.

And then, on the following day, Wednesday, March 15, Matthews conducted an interview that would cast new light on a matter that had seemed to color Ottis Toole’s confessions so profoundly. Despite the fact that Toole had divulged details of the crime that only Hoffman and his fellow detectives could have known at the time, including the place where he had disposed of Adam’s head, Hoffman had stuck to his accusations that Detective Buddy Terry had struck a book deal with Toole and was feeding him privileged information.

However, in the course of going back through Toole’s movements in Jacksonville, prior to and just after the time of the crime, Matthews had occasion to speak with John Reaves Jr., son of the owner of Reaves Roofing at the time. Yes, he’d verified all those dates pertaining to Ottis Toole’s work history at the company, Reaves told Matthews. And he also confirmed that his aunt Faye McNett had sold Toole the Cadillac, later repossessing it when Toole couldn’t keep up the payments. For a time, though, Toole had used it as his work vehicle, and usually kept it full of rakes and shovels and other gardening-type tools. Toole didn’t like heights, Reaves explained, so he was always doing cleanup and other such work around the job sites.

Maybe he didn’t like to climb because of his eyes, Reaves theorized. Toole would be looking at you and suddenly one eye would go floating in another direction, Reaves said, accounting for the odd-looking expression that other witnesses had noted.

All that was interesting enough, but it wasn’t until Matthews asked the obvious question that Reaves dropped his own bombshell. Did he have any knowledge of Toole’s involvement in the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh? Matthews wanted to know.

Actually, he did, Reaves responded. In fact, Toole had admitted the whole thing to him in great detail, during a visit they’d had in the Duval County Jail. Ottis had told him he’d taken the kid from a store, though he didn’t mention Sears. It was down around Miami, somewhere, Reaves remembered Ottis saying, and that while he was driving them back to Jacksonville, the kid wouldn’t stop crying. Ottis hit him hard in the stomach, and when the kid starting gasping for air, Ottis said he put his hands around his neck and choked him until he was dead. Then Ottis said he cut his head off and threw it, or the body, into a canal. There was a lot of blood in the Cadillac as a result, Ottis told him.