Bringing Adam Home (40 page)

A
s far as his report, Matthews felt that he had done everything he could under the circumstances, and in his opinion, it was far more than enough. His opinion was not the one that mattered any longer, though. He could only wait and see what the response of Chad Wagner might be. If his report was deemed sufficiently convincing, then Wagner might carry it to the Broward state attorney and recommend that Ottis Toole be charged with the crime. But Wagner might not do that, no matter what he thought of the quality of the report.

The new chief seemed a decent man, but he was also the preeminent representative of an entire police force, and—by extension and association—of the governing structure of an entire community. If he swept aside Matthews’s report, he would only be doing what many before him had seemingly chosen to do. In weighing the good to be done by naming a killer against the harm it would do to the very institution one was hired to champion, they had all apparently decided in kind: such a blow to the established order could not be justified by the closure it might provide to a family or the vague sense of justice it might provide to the world at large.

In any case, Matthews thought, it was not his call. He could only sit and wait. If Wagner didn’t want to proceed on the basis of what he’d presented, maybe there was a way he could get it straight to the state attorney’s office himself.

On Friday, November 14, 2008, Adam Walsh’s thirty-fourth birthday passed, and, then, six days later, on November 20, Matthews realized that he would not have to worry about moving things forward himself: Chief Wagner had called a meeting at the Broward County State Attorney’s Office.

Present on that day with Wagner were second-in-command state attorney Chuck Morton, assistant chief of Hollywood PD Louis Granteed, Captain Mark Smith, and Hollywood Police legal adviser Joel Cantor. Also present were John and Revé Walsh, their attorney, former Broward prosecutor Kelly Hancock, and Detective Sergeant Joe Matthews.

Wagner had called the meeting to discuss the report compiled by Sergeant Matthews, he explained. Would anyone in the room, Wagner wanted to know, object to the conclusions in the report that Matthews had placed before them? Bits and pieces were familiar to many in the room, and were branded indelibly in the minds of others, but here laid out in Matthews report was the full story:

• Toole’s knowledge of crime scene details only the killer could have known

• Dismissal of the theory that a “book contract” tainted Toole’s confessions

• Multiple eyewitness identifications of Toole taking Adam from Sears

• Arlene and Heidi Maier’s ID of Toole at Kmart the night before Adam was taken

• The damning extortion letter Toole wrote John Walsh offering to lead him to his son’s body

• Twenty-five independent confessions to the crime made by Ottis Toole, including that to family member Linda Fralick before Adam’s remains were found

• The never-before-seen luminol images of the bloody machete handle and footprints on the carpet of Toole’s Cadillac

• And the most damning image of them all . . . which had both haunted and sustained Matthews since the moment it had wavered into focus on his office desk months before, as powerful to him as the Shroud of Turin:

Traced in the blue glow of luminol was the outline of a familiar young boy’s face, a negative pressed into floorboard carpeting, eye sockets blackened blank cavities, mouth twisted in an oval of pain.

O
ttis Toole had told detectives time and again. He’d hacked off Adam’s head and decided to keep it for a while. Perhaps he’d had sex with it, perhaps he hadn’t. He’d tossed it into the back of his car and driven up the turnpike, before it dawned on him that this might be a bad idea.

Why hadn’t the men in charge of the investigation taken Toole at his word? Matthews wondered as he stood among those gathered in the state’s attorney’s office and stared at the image once again. Why?

Still, as the ancients understood, truth has its implacable force. One of the most haunting of the tales told by the Brothers Grimm is that of the “Singing Flute,” in which a craven man kills his younger brother to steal his bounty and buries his body beneath a bridge. Years later, a shepherd discovers a snow-white little bone on the sand beneath the bridge and carves a flute out of it. But when the shepherd begins to play, what issues is not music. Instead it is the voice of the long-dead boy, thanking the shepherd and telling the truth at last. “Ah, friend, thou blowest upon my bone! Long have I lain beside the water; my brother slew me for the boar.”

What Joe Matthews had produced—the terrible image which he’d had to show to John and Revé and which everyone in the room around him now viewed as well—was no less powerful in its effect. The glowing blue image pressed into the carpet—the outline of Adam’s face, etched in his own blood—was as stark as any fragment of bone; and the cry that issued from his battered lips was as damning an indictment as anyone might ever hear. Poor Adam, friend Joe, the truth singing to the world at last.

F
ollowing the summary of Matthews’s findings, everyone in the room had the opportunity to respond. As to the image of Adam’s face branded into the floorboards of Toole’s Cadillac, it was an emotional haymaker, of course, but as he described in his report, Matthews had gone to some lengths to bolster its significance. Shortly after he’d made the discovery, Matthews met with Miami Dade crime lab analyst Detective Thomas Charles to discuss techniques of blood transfer that he might use to duplicate that final image he’d found in the FDLE photographs. As a result of that discussion, Matthews conducted a series of experiments using paint of various consistencies, plastic facial masks, and auto carpeting of the type that was in Toole’s Cadillac.

As he detailed, Matthews employed eight different means of transferring paint from saturated plastic face masks onto carpet. And each resulted in the transfer of images to the carpet that were remarkably similar to the one that Matthews had found on the rear floorboards of Toole’s car. So far as his research could determine, no crime scene investigator had confirmed such blood evidence previously.

After everyone in the room had delivered their estimations of all that Matthews had presented, Wagner had his mandate, and it was unanimous. All agreed that the investigation of the homicide of Adam Walsh would—pending the final approval of Broward County state attorney Michael Satz—be “exceptionally cleared.” Translated, the phrase meant that were Ottis Toole still alive, he would be charged, arrested, prosecuted, and, in all likelihood, convicted of the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh.

Matthews watched on, scarcely able to believe what he was witnessing. For many years, he’d hoped to find a partner, one individual at Hollywood PD who seemed as determined to solve this case as he. In Chad Wagner, it seemed he finally had.

On Wednesday, December 10, Chad Wagner called Joe Matthews with the news. He had just received a letter from the state attorney’s office. Michael Satz—the man who had been Broward state attorney in 1981 when Adam disappeared, and who had held the post ever since—had made his call.

Would Matthews like to be the one to let John and Revé Walsh know? And did he mind asking if the Walshes could be present at Hollywood police headquarters on the afternoon of December 16, 2008? Wagner wanted to hold a press conference to announce the decision to the world.

Hollywood, Florida—December 16, 2008

A
s promised, the press conference Wagner arranged took place at department headquarters the following Tuesday afternoon, with reporters from every major news organization in the United States jostling for space in the crowded training room. More than twenty-seven years had passed since Adam Walsh went missing and was found brutally murdered, and in spite of all the time that had gone by—or perhaps because of it—the case still had the power to mesmerize a nation. This was, after all, an event that had changed how every parent in America viewed the world.

Among the myriad, unkillable pieces of spam that circulate through the Ethernet is one that invites readers of a certain age to “remember when.” Popular songs once had melodies, we are reminded, and stores were once closed on Sundays, and “underwear” meant exactly that.

But there are more poignant notes on the list, including an invocation of those innocent summer days when kids blew past a banging screen door with a shouted promise to be “home by dark,” and who ever worried about that? Today, of course, such carelessness upon the part of parents is unthinkable, if not vaguely criminal in itself. Perhaps, once upon a time, parents only worried about their kids when they took them to the beach or to the pool, or hiking along some steep path. Now vigilance begins at birth, if not before, and for most the worry never ends.

In his book
Tears of Rage
, John Walsh gave his own account of how the apparently unsolvable case had impacted his life and that of Revé. He said then that though it was terribly painful to revisit such loss, he wanted to do so in hopes that it might help others who had lost children to senseless tragedy. Mostly, he said, he wanted to talk about “how to come to terms with life when you think you’re dying of a broken heart.”

At that same time, Revé spoke of the helplessness they felt in the aftermath of Adam’s disappearance and the subsequent string of failures by law enforcement. “I remember thinking, ‘Our son’s been murdered, and now
we’ve
got to be the ones to do something about it?’ ” she said.

“It was a sad thing for this country that the fight had to be led by two broken-down parents of a murdered child,” she added. “But we had to, because no one else was going to do it.”

Imagine then, the anticipation of John and Revé Walsh as the chief entered the room and called for order. He was there to announce that the 1981 murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh had been solved, “a day that’s long overdue,” Wagner said, before adding, “This case could have been closed years ago.”

Furthermore, he was not there to brandish news of some “smoking gun” unearthed miraculously after years of fruitless gumshoe work, he said. Rather, his announcement was the result of the assembly and examination of evidence that had been there all along. “What was there was everything that was in front of our face for years.”

His department had been too defensive about its mistakes in the past and could well have arrested the chief suspect for the crime before he died, Wagner said, apologizing to the Walshes for those lapses. But make no mistake about it, were Ottis Toole alive today, he would be arrested and charged with the crime. And—Wagner was certain—he would have paid for it with his life.

As might be expected, the announcement prompted a barrage of questions from the assembled media. A choked-up John Walsh told reporters that the announcement was a reaffirmation of the fact that Adam didn’t die in vain. “For all the other victims who haven’t gotten justice,” he added, “I say one thing: ‘Don’t give up hope.’ ”

When reporters turned to Revé Walsh, she spoke simply and poignantly. “This is a wonderful day, in spite of why we’re here. Nothing will bring back our beautiful little boy,” she said, “but at least the knowing will close this chapter of our lives.”

In that same vein, John Walsh added that while the family would never recover from Adam’s death, they could finally move on. Still, he noted, “It’s not about closure; it’s about justice.”

M
aybe it was a little of both—closure
and
justice—Joe Matthews thought, as he watched from the wings. As a friend of John and Revé, he understood how important this announcement was—we now know who killed your son, and we should have found out sooner. And as a cop, Matthews also reveled in the fact that a killer had finally gotten his due.

As to the fact that his own name had not been mentioned prominently on this day, that was at his own request. The moment was for the Walshes. His wife Ginny had been in the room as Wagner made his announcement, and as she observed of the family, “It looks as if they’re taking their first deep breaths in years.”

To Matthews the words rang particularly true. Wagner’s pronouncement wasn’t going to change the Walshes’ lives in an instant—he was reminded of something Revé had once told him when he’d asked her about her grieving:

“It’s like you’ve been in a terrible accident and had your arm amputated,” she told him. “After a while, the pain goes away, and eventually you even learn to get along without your arm. Some days you’re sad that you’re missing your arm, and some days you’re angry about it, and some days you’re okay. But, no matter what, no matter how long it’s been, you never stop missing your arm.”

The simple observation had jolted Matthews at the time. But still, he thought, this day
was
a milestone, a place from which a new journey could begin.

Matthews had overheard Ginny bidding Revé farewell. “I wish you and your family a truly wonderful and Merry Christmas,” she said simply.

Revé paused and took her husband’s hand. “Thank you,” she told Ginny. Her eyes were brimming, but she managed a smile. “This
will
be our first Merry Christmas in twenty-seven years.” Even Matthews found himself choked up at that one.