JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Nearly three decades after an unthinkable crime, the investigation into 6-year-old Adam Walsh's murder was closed.
Police said the boy's killer is Jacksonville native Ottis Toole, who died in prison after being sentenced for a murder in Springfield.
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In 1981, Adam Walsh disappeared from a mall in Hollywood, Fla. His head was found two weeks after his disappearance. The child's body was never recovered.
Adam's father, who has devoted his life to helping missing and exploited children, said the news that his son's case is solved has ended a torturous journey.
"Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" John Walsh said at Tuesday's news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."
Toole was long considered the lead suspect in the child's slaying. A machete and blood were reportedly found in Toole's Cadillac, but because the evidence was not processed properly, Toole was never charged.
In 1982, when Toole first became a suspect in Adam's case, the man was also convicted of setting a house on fire that killed a 64-year-old man.
Former Jacksonville Detective Jessie Terry, who helped put Toole behind bars for the fire, said during that investigation Toole admitted to him and police that he had also killed Adam Walsh in south Florida.
Toole told Terry he originally wanted to bring the boy back to Jacksonville to raise him as his own son.
"He got Adam in the car, and when they left he said Adam started crying and everything and he got mad and hit him in the face ? he cut his head off and threw his head in a water management area down the road," Terry said. "He was sincere about it."
Toole claimed that he took part in more than 100 slayings across the United States, but police have determined that most of the confessions were lies.
In the case of Adam Walsh, Toole had admitted to killing the boy on at least two occasions but later recanted the confessions. However, one of Toole's nieces said he admitted on his death bed to killing Adam Walsh.
Terry said he never doubted that Toole was the person responsible for the 6-year-old's death, and he doesn't understand why it took so long to close the case.