Did Jeffrey Dahmer kidnap and decapitate John Walsh's son?

Home Top

Lamar comes out of coma: Athlete speaks to Khloe, gives a thumbs up and is taken off life support as bill shows how he spent $79,000 on prostitutes, pills and cognac at 'Love Ranch' brothel
Johnny Manziel stopped by police in domestic dispute with girlfriend after 'drinking and slamming her head into a window'
Are YOU smart enough to join Mensa? Take the quiz to see if your IQ measures up against 250 child geniuses
Escaped cartel kingpin El Chapo 'is suffering from face and leg injuries' after showdown with Mexican marines last week
Get ready for 'The Monster': Forecasters reveal El Niño will bring a cold and wet winter but say it WON'T be enough to ease California's drought
Teen pleads guilty to horrific murder of Iraqi immigrant, 13, who he tied up, sodomized, and strangled to death
Malia Obama is 'photographed at Brown University party as she watches students play beer pong and drink during college visit '
Which schools help their students get ahead: Ranking orders America's colleges based on their economic mobility boost
Veteran The View producer sues Rosie O'Donnell for being a 'bully' and says she feared the comedian would assault her
Third female to graduate from Army's elite Ranger school is a 37-year-old engineer and mother of two
How a daytime nap IS good for you: 90 minutes of shut eye after learning 'helps you remember new facts and skills'
Hundreds of students return to the cafeteria after Montana high school gives up $120,000 in federal funding and drops Michelle's hugely unpopular lunch program
United Continental's stock plunges on Friday after airline's new CEO suffers heart attack and is admitted to the hospital
EXCLUSIVE: 'In all the years we were together he never talked about those men' - Widow of drug smuggler who claimed he ran into the Alcatraz escapees in Brazil says husband was a 'con artist'
EXCLUSIVE: RHOA's Sheree Whitfield duped! Reality star claims she was hood-winked by producer who cut back her role and then took her idea for a show about African-American real estate agents
Scott Kelly becomes US astronaut to spend the most time in space: Commander breaks the world record by living on ISS for 383 days (and he still has another 139 to go)
This is Liz Taylor at 16. Had she ALREADY been seduced by half of Hollywood? Mickey Rooney, Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn and a threesome with JFK. A new book raises extraordinary questions
US envoy says recent Iran missile test 'was a clear violation' of UN sanctions
Toddlers in the U.S. have been responsible for one shooting PER WEEK this year
'Officer, what are you doing?': Cop shoots dead unarmed 17-year-old driving back from church basketball game after teen flashed his lights to signal fault with patrol car
British man described as 'Abu Hamza's personal assistant' is sentenced to 20 years in prison after he tried to set up a terrorist training camp in America
The moment a husband's quest for a new life ended with the death of his beloved wife: Iraqi relatives weep for 65-year-old who drowned as they crossed from Turkey to Lesbos
The unwitting star of the 'Ermahgerd' memes is all grown up, and she looks nothing like the retainer-wearing pre-adolescent girl in the immortal photo
'I've been vindicated': Randy Quaid speaks out after he and wife Evi were freed on American soil for the first time since 2010

The boy vanished from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981
Two weeks later his decapitated head was found in nearby woods
Grisly death prompted his CNN-star father John to hunt fugitives
Case was unsolved for 27 years until police pinned it on Ottis Toole
But Willis Morgan claims Jeffrey Dahmer was in the mall on that day
Was convicted of 17 murders, cannibalism and hiding remains in fridges
He was ruled out as a suspect and never admitted to the crime

Published: 23:00 EST, 15 October 2015 | Updated: 14:22 EST, 16 October 2015

View
comments

The murder of a six-year-old boy that inspired the creation of TV show America's Most Wanted was pinned on the wrong man, a new book suggests.

Adam Walsh disappeared from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981. Two weeks later his decapitated head was found in nearby woods, but his body was never recovered.

The case was left unsolved for 27 years until police said convicted killer Ottis Toole was responsible.

But a man who was in the mall the day Walsh disappeared believes he saw Jeffrey Dahmer, a child predator who went on to commit a string of horrific murders in Wisconsin and Ohio.

The case became cemented in U.S. criminal history after the boy's father, John Walsh, went on to host America's Most Wanted and has more recently starred in CNN's The Hunt with John Walsh.

Scroll down for video

Adam Walsh, the son of TV star John Walsh (right) was kidnapped from a Hollywood, Florida, mall in 1981 and decapitated. A new book claims police pinned the case that was left unsolved for 27 years on the wrong man

Willis Morgan makes the astonishing claims and accuses the police of ignoring him during their investigation in their new book Frustrated Witness.

In 1991, 10 years after Adam Walsh went missing, he working in the printing room at the Miami Herald when he spotted Dahmer's mugshot in the paper.

'That's him,' he recalled saying to himself at the time.

'The article said nothing about [Dahmer] being in South Florida, yet I knew he had been,' he wrote according to Fusion. 'The article said nothing about a connection with Adam Walsh, yet I knew he had one.'

Morgan and another witness told police they saw a man that looked like Dahmer at the mall when the boy vanished - but cops didn't take their accounts seriously.

Dahmer, who was already a convicted sex offender, was sent to prison in 1991 after he confessed to killing 17 men and boys between the ages of 14 to 33.

His brutal murders, which spanned a decade from 1978, included rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. He was beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994.

Police said convicted killer Ottis Toole (left) was responsible. But a man who was in the mall the day Walsh disappeared believes he saw Jeffrey Dahmer (right), a child predator who went on to commit a string of horrific murders in Wisconsin and Ohio

By day Dahmer worked in a chocolate factory but by night he would go out to find many of his victims at gay bars. He would invite them to his Milwaukee home so they could drink alcohol and he could take pictures of them naked.

Dahmer would then drug his victims and killed them by strangling or stabbing them. The killer would dismember his victims, eating parts of their bodies and saving others in his refrigerator or other parts of his house.

But he was caught out in July 1991 when his 18th intended victim, 52-year-old Tracy Edwards, managed to escape after Dahmer had put him in handcuffs and tried to attack him with a knife. Edwards flagged down a passing police car and officers went into the house to talk to the calm Dahmer.

He was never connected to Walsh's murder, and insisted he had nothing to do with it.

But files obtained by Wilson suggest many people contacted the authorities saying they saw Dahmer trying to accost young children at the mall on the same day.

Others also said a man who looked like him also targeted children at other malls in the area.

A Tennessee man in the Florida mall on the afternoon of Walsh's kidnapping contacted the FBI after seeing the mugshot, claiming he saw 'a man who looked just like Dahmer propositioning young males', the documents state.

Dahmer, who was already a convicted sex offender, was sent to prison in 1991 after he confessed to killing 17 men and boys between the ages of 14 to 33

His brutal murders, which spanned a decade from 1978, included rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. He was beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994

The witness added: 'His behavior was strange and [the witness] remembers him because of his actions. He also described him as a cold eyed, disturbed-type person.'

A week before the kidnapping, a man attempted to abduct a boy in another nearby mall. The mother didn't report it as she wanted to leave as quickly as she could.

However she did tell police after seeing Walsh's case and described the suspect's appearance to a sketch artist.

What they produced was very similar to a mug shot of Dahmer, taken when he was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct the following year.

Dahmer was said to be escorted by a prison guard at all times because of the nature of his crimes until one occasion in 1994 when Scarver claims he was left alone with him and another prisoner, Jesse Anderson, whom he also killed.

Janice Santamassino told the Palm Beach Post in 2010: 'Once I saw that picture of Dahmer, I said, "That's him," That's who I saw.'

She was on vacation and was visiting the mall on the same day Walsh was abducted.

A mother described a man who she believes tried to kidnap her son in the small mall Walsh vanished a week earlier to a sketch artist. The finished drawing was very similar to a mugshot taken of Dahmer just year later when he was arrested in Milwaukee for disorderly conduct

Dahmer was found guilty of murdering (L-R) Curtis Straughter, Steven Mark Hicks, Ricahrd Guerrero, Jeremy Weinberger, Jamie Doxtator, Ricky Beeks, Oliver Lacy, Errol Lindsey, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Ernest Miller, Anthony Hughes, Joseph Bradehoft, Matt Turner, Anthony Sears, David C Thomas and Edward Smith Read

A refrigerator, apparently containing a severed human head, is removed by police from Dahmer's apartment

In 2007, Milwaukee TV station WISN ran a story with the headline:'Did Dahmer have one more victim?'

FBI agent Neil Purtell told the station many members of law enforcement in Milwaukee believed Dahmer was behind the decades-old case.

They also mentioned a letter from John Walsh, admitting that he was interested in the angle.

He wrote: 'Many people have forgotten that Jeffrey Dahmer started out as a pedophile, kidnapper, and torturer of young boys.

'He certainly fits the profile of someone who might be capable of murdering a beautiful 6-year-old boy.'

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 before the FBI got involved.

Willis Morgan makes the astonishing claims and accuses the police of ignoring him during their investigation in their new book Frustrated Witness

'So many mistakes were made,' John Walsh said in 1997. 'It was shocking, inexcusable and heartbreaking.'

For all that went wrong in the probe, the case contributed to massive advances in police searches for missing youngsters and a notable shift in the view parents and children hold of the world.

Toole was already behind bars for starting a fire that killed a 64-year-old man when he told investigators he kidnapped and killed Adam Walsh.

He told Hollywood police that he and his friend Henry Lee Lucus had driven down to South Florida in a Cadillac, snatched Adam, and used a bayonet to cut off.

But he couldn't locate the body when police took him out to of prison to find it.

He changed his story again saying, he fed the boy's body to alligators and finally that he cremated it.

Police later discovered Lucus was in a Maryland jail at the time the crime was committed.

More evidence suggests Toole was in Jacksonville - 334 miles away - at the time.

Memos discovered by Wilson and published in the book suggest detectives worried that Toole would confess to anything, so long as it got him out of jail, got him some good food and cigarettes.

In 1984, he did a u-turn and told investigators he didn't do it.

He died in 2006 and, despite no new evidence being put forward, he was pinned for Walsh's murder two years later.

A FAILED 18TH MURDER: HOW JEFFREY DAHMER WAS CAPTURED

On July 22, 1991, Jeffery Dahmer lured 52-year-old Tracy Edwards, his intended 18th victim, back to apartment 213 at Oxford Apartments.

According to Edwards's statement, Dahmer first tried to restrain him with handcuffs. When this failed, Dahmer produced a butcher's knife and forced Edwards into the bedroom.

Edwards managed to escape the apartment after punching and kicking Dahmer, and flagged down a police car outside - with handcuffs still hanging from one of his wrists.

Police officers Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller followed Edwards back to apartment 213, but they were struck by how calm and friendly Dahmer at first appeared.

Edwards told the officers about the butcher's knife in the bedroom, and when one of them went in to check he saw photographs of mangled bodies posted on the wall and a foul-smelling blue barrel in the corner.

He called for his partner to arrest Dahmer and, as one officer subdued the now struggling killer, the other opened the refrigerator and found a human head inside.

Further searching of the apartment revealed three more severed heads, multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains - and evidence of some kind of dismantled alter adorned with human skulls in his closet.

Two men in chemical suits were pictured removing a barrel, apparently containing body parts and acid, from Dahmer's home after he was arrested and his apartment was searched