Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [97]
Adam Walsh’s twenty-first birthday passed later that year, and then, less than a month later, on Tuesday, December 5, convicted serial killer Gerald Schaffer, former cellmate and erstwhile legal adviser of Ottis Toole, was found dead in his cell at Starke, stabbed several times in the eye, his throat slit. In an interview with the Palm Beach Post, Schaffer’s mother and sister said to reporters that he had told them that he was about to cooperate with detectives on the Adam Walsh case. He had agreed to testify in an upcoming proceeding, he confided to them, and explained that he hoped to gain early parole as a result. That explained why he’d been killed, the women told reporters.
If the bits and pieces of the case against Ottis Toole already seemed to be dissolving, what happened in early 1996 appeared to be the death knell for the matter altogether. In early May 1995, the Mobile Press-Register had filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, asking that the contents of the Hollywood Police Department file on Adam Walsh be made public.
As often happens in any missing child case, there had always been a certain amount of innuendo involving the parents. There was the scandal involving Revé’s short-lived affair with Jimmy Campbell, and the bizarre suggestion made by Hoffman’s partner Hickman that God would bring Adam back if Walsh would only repent for his misdeeds.
Also, as armchair theorists warmed to their work over the long history of the failed investigation, the notion was kicked around that John Walsh had become involved with the mob as a result of his work with an international hotel chain. He’d either screwed up some drug deal—or, more charitably, refused to partake in one—and the killing of Adam was payback.
The real reason that the case had failed to progress, such thinking went, was that Walsh had himself obstructed the investigation and pressured the Hollywood police to drag their feet. Conspiracy theorists everywhere were licking their chops at having the case files laid bare—all the dirt could finally be revealed. And what ace reporter would not dream of being the hero who finally revealed what police couldn’t or wouldn’t prove in this case of cases? In any event, and whatever they hoped to discover as a result, three other newspapers—the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post, and the Miami Herald—joined the Mobile Press-Register in its suit.
Walsh was dismayed at the prospect, for he knew what opening police files would mean to any serious ongoing investigation. Accordingly, he went directly to Chief Witt to press for assurances that the department would fight the request. Meantime, Walsh suggested, during a May 15 meeting at which Joe Matthews and Mark Smith were present, that perhaps Witt could issue a statement that suggested how ridiculous the rumors were that tied him to the Mafia. Witt seemed a bit befuddled at the request, however. As Joe Matthews and Walsh stared expectantly at Witt, the chief answered by saying that in his opinion anyone who frequented a certain well-known Fort Lauderdale restaurant for lunch—as Walsh did—“must have something to do with the Mafia.”
“With friends like Dick Witt,” Matthews told Walsh on the way out the door, “you don’t need any enemies.”
And then in December, the Walshes received more disturbing news from Hollywood police, when Mark Smith called to check on something. John Walsh listened patiently to a rambling preamble before finally asking the detective to get to the point.
“Well,” Smith said, “they did show you these