Who Killed Adam Walsh? Inside the Decapitation Case That Inspired a Father to Host America's Most Wanted By Jessica Sager

Before John Walsh was the host of America’s Most Wanted, he was a devastated father desperately searching for answers in the disappearance — and subsequent murder — of his 6-year-old son.

Forty-four years ago, on July 27, 1981, Adam Walsh vanished from a department store with his mother nearby. “[Losing him] broke my heart; it almost killed me,” John told PEOPLE in 1996. “Believe me, you never get over it.” Two weeks later, Adam’s head was found in a drainage ditch.

The case, which wasn’t closed until 27 years later, haunted John and his wife, Revé, who harnessed their grief into action.

“The pain is a huge wound that scabs over, and certain things set it off: birthdays, memories, pictures. You’re not supposed to bury your children,” John previously told PEOPLE. “They’re your legacy. But I would never have accomplished the things I have, such as the Missing Children’s Act, which brings the FBI immediately into cases involving missing children, if it wasn’t for Adam and my love for him.”

John and Revé also helped create the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 1984, as well as the Code Adam program and spearheaded the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which was signed into law in 2006.

In 1988, John became the host and the face of America’s Most Wanted, which ran for 23 years on Fox and had a brief revival on Lifetime in 2012. The series was brought back once more in 2021 with Elizabeth Vargas hosting, and in December 2023, John and his son, Callahan Walsh, took over as co-hosts. The dad is also the host of In Pursuit with John Walsh.

Here is everything to know about the killing of Adam Walsh and how it inspired his dad, John Walsh, to advocate for missing children and host America’s Most Wanted.

What happened to John Walsh’s son Adam?

On July 27, 1981, Adam, then 6 years old, went shopping with his mother, Revé, at a Sears department store in a mall near their Hollywood, Fla., home. Revé left Adam in the toy section with a group of boys playing a video game and went looking for a lamp, per the police report. When she returned, Adam had disappeared.

A store security guard allegedly ordered the group of boys to exit the store and mistakenly thought Adam was with them, so the Walshes believe he may have been outside when he was abducted, per Missing Kids.

After an in-store search and police investigation proved fruitless, a mutual friend helped John reach then-Good Morning America host David Hartman. The anchor then showed Adam’s photo on air.

Two weeks after Adam disappeared, John and Revé flew to New York to appear on the morning talk show, when they received horrifying news: Adam’s severed head was discovered in a canal in Vero Beach, Fla., about 120 miles north of the mall where the boy first went missing, per Florida Today.

“I started screaming and trashed the hotel room. I didn’t believe that someone could kill this beautiful little boy,” John recalled to PEOPLE. “The most horrible thing was telling Revé. It was unbearable.”

Who killed Adam Walsh?

Serial killer Ottis Toole — partner of one of history’s most prolific serial killers, Henry Lee Lucas — confessed to murdering Adam before later recanting his testimony.

According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Toole said he abducted Walsh and subsequently started hitting him when he wouldn’t stop talking. Despite being insistent that he had killed Adam, Toole later recanted.

Toole had reportedly previously confessed to and then recanted his words about several crimes, including Adam’s murder, but both police and Adam’s parents consistently believed him to be Adam’s killer. In a taped interview with Texas Rangers, Toole said Adam was the youngest victim he ever had, per ABC News.

Toole died in prison in 1996 while serving life sentences for other crimes. In 2008, police closed the investigation and announced that they fully believed Toole was Adam’s killer, though he was never charged in the case.

“Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?” John said at the time. “We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey’s over.”

Still, some theories have emerged since: In March 2010, a report suggested that witnesses actually saw serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer with Adam on the day the boy went missing. While all of Dahmer’s confirmed slayings took place in or near Milwaukee, at the time of Adam’s abduction, Dahmer was living in Miami Beach, about 20 miles from the Hollywood, Fla., mall where Adam was last seen alive. The Miami Herald reported that Dahmer denied involvement in Adam’s killing.

Did police ever find Adam Walsh’s body?

The rest of Adam’s remains have still never been recovered, according to The New York Times.

John told Nightline that in 1988, Toole wrote him and Revé a letter asking for $5,000 in exchange for telling them where the rest of Adam’s remains were located.

The dad also claimed that the Hollywood, Fla., police department didn’t take the missing persons case seriously enough when Adam was abducted, and mishandled the murder investigation, calling it “one nightmare after another.”

Given Toole’s confession, police planned to test his car and blood-stained vehicle carpet, but they could never locate the items in their storage, per NBC News. When the case was officially closed in 2008, Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner apologized to John and Revé and acknowledged the pitfalls of the department’s investigation.

What is Code Adam?

Inspired by the terrifying loss of Adam, John and Revé helped create Code Adam, a program to help businesses, parks and other busy or public areas and their staff help locate children who get lost or go missing on or from their grounds.

As of 2001, Code Adam was used in at least 20,000 establishments, including Walmart, Lowe’s, ShopRite and more. John told The New York Times of the initiative at the time, “There are contingencies for protecting shoppers from fire and tornadoes, and now with ‘Code Adam’ all retailers can fight an even more frightening problem — missing children.”