Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [105]
Soon after Stone came on board, in early February 1997, former chief Sam Martin died of a heart attack, and in the story that accompanied that news was a reminder of how profound the impact of one case had been: “Although his 11-year tenure as chief was marked by rapid modernization and a raising of educational standards on the force,” the Herald reporter noted, “it was marred by a still-unsolved crime that shocked and horrified the nation: the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh.”
Nor was Chief Stone immune from reminders that his department had failed in the matter. In September 1997, stung by charges of “laziness, stupidity and arrogance” against his department made by John Walsh in his own recently published chronicle of the case, Tears of Rage, Stone told reporters, “I’d like to go back and start from scratch, but none of us can do that.” While he would not acknowledge that the department had made mistakes in the investigation of the case, he did assert that with contemporary technology and the “professional team I have today, it’s possible things could have turned out much differently.”
Stone refused to address specific blunders Walsh pointed out in the investigation of the crime, choosing instead to focus on the fact that nothing could have saved Adam’s life: “The FBI didn’t kill Mr. Walsh’s son,” Stone said. “The media didn’t kill Mr. Walsh’s son. And the Hollywood Police Department didn’t kill Mr. Walsh’s son.” While true, it might have sounded a bit callous of the new chief, who was quoted in closing, “I’ve spoken with the few people who are still here who worked the case, and they feel they bent over backward to help the Walshes and investigate this case.”
Undeniably, “bending over backwards” and “doing one’s best” are admirable traits, but when it comes to assessing the quality of the investigation of a murder case, questions of capability are more germane. In any case, Stone would not last much longer at the top in Hollywood. He may have gotten along well with his own superiors, but before another year had passed he had begun to clash with the police union, and in late 1998 he was dismissed.
At that point, Finz approached Broward sheriff Ken Jenne for interim help, and Jenne assigned Major Al Lamberti as temporary chief while commissioners launched another search. Finally, in July 1999, they were successful in luring James Scarberry, assistant chief for the city of Miami Beach, to the position. Scarberry, a twenty-seven-year veteran with a reputation as a “cop’s cop,” was endorsed by the police union and was capable as an administrator as well.
Nor was Scarberry confronted in any meaningful way regarding the Adam Walsh case, though reminders of its enduring power continued to surface. The March 14, 2001, death of Henry Lee Lucas, serving a life term in a Texas prison, prompted a call to Hollywood PD for a comment on Lucas’s onetime role as a suspect in the case, but Detective Sergeant Mark Smith, by then in charge of the department’s homicide unit, reminded reporters that Lucas had been in a Maryland jail at the time of Adam’s disappearance. When questioned about the status of that investigation, Smith said simply, “It’s still an open case.”
In July 2001 the Miami Herald ran a pair of lengthy articles by staff writer Daniel de Vise concerning the case, concurrent with the twentieth anniversary of Adam’s disappearance. The first focused on the impact of the case on the nation’s attitudes, rewriting laws and redefining relationships between adults and children. Many tragic child murders had faded from the public consciousness, de Vise wrote, “but Adam Walsh’s endures.”
That was likely due to the indefatigable John Walsh, de Vise opined, who included in his piece criticism directed at Walsh by some experts. “In some ways, he’s taken his personal tragedy and inflicted it upon the nation,” a Mount Holyoke College sociologist was quoted as saying.