Did Dahmer Kill "Most Wanted" Host's Son?

(AP)  The host of "America's Most Wanted" said he has seen no evidence linking his son's unsolved kidnapping and slaying to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, despite a recent report laying out a possible connection.

Theories of a Dahmer tie to the 1981 killing of John Walsh's 6-year-old son Adam date back years but resurfaced with a report in the Daily Business Review, a Miami publication.

"America's Most Wanted" issued a news release Tuesday saying its producers and investigators have long been aware of the rumors but that no credible information has emerged. Walsh believes another serial killer, Ottis Toole, killed his son.

Arthur Jay Harris, who wrote the Daily Business Review story in December, has written three true crime books — including an unpublished one on Adam's killing that he is trying to sell.

Harris says a review of the 7,000-page case file shows two men claimed to have seen a man who looked like Dahmer at the mall where Adam was abducted during a shopping trip with his mother. One of the men said he saw the Dahmer look-alike carrying a struggling boy into a blue van.

Adam's head was found 100 miles away in a Vero Beach canal.

The witnesses told police they recognized Dahmer's photo after he was arrested in Wisconsin in 1992. Dahmer lived in South Florida at the time of Adam's slaying and reportedly had access to a blue van.

"I'm not way off on this," Harris said Wednesday. "This is something that needs to be investigated."

The Hollywood Police Department, the lead agency on the case, did not immediately return a call late Wednesday afternoon. Capt. Tony Rode told The Miami Herald, "We investigated the Dahmer link and spoke with Dahmer. We don't believe he murdered Adam."

Prosecutors said they would re-examine past statements related to a possible Dahmer connection.

Toole, a drifter who was convicted of or pleaded guilty to several murders and claimed hundreds of others, told police he killed the boy with the help of a partner. But the alleged accomplice was in jail at the time and Toole was unable to correctly describe the child's hair or clothing.

Authorities made a series of crucial errors, losing the bloodstained carpeting from Toole's car — preventing DNA testing — and the car itself. Still, Toole's niece told Walsh that her uncle gave her a prison deathbed confession to the murder in September 1996.

Walsh has said he believes the confession in part because investigators found clothing similar to Adam's at Toole's Jacksonville home.

Dahmer was killed by another inmate at a Wisconsin prison in 1994 while he was serving a series of life sentences after admitting to the murders of 17 young men and boys, some of whom he mutilated and cannibalized.

[legendary240]

People like John Walsh exude a lot of gravitas. (democrat word of choice lately) As with this author of dime-store toilet tank books, that kind of lightweight trash is easily attracted to them. John should not even respond to this purveyor of criminal worship.

[randalds]

Otis Toole killed Adam Walsh. He confessed and then recanted and then died before he could confirm the confession. John Walsh believes Toole did and it fits his MO. It doesn't even come close to anything that Dahmer was looking for and the odds that it was Dahmer (or indeed anyone other then Toole) are somewhere between a snowballs chance in he*ll and no fuc*king way.

Otis Toole murdered Adam and that as much a given as anything outside of a court verdict could be.

[gunownerdan]

Killers always prefer easy victims.

[legendary240]

I agree Random, when we will understand that we are too lenient on the guilty at the expense of the victims?

[legendary240]

Adam is dead - God rest his little soul. Dahmer is dead and in torment forever. Mr. Walsh is truly a winner of a guy. Let him deal this his own way. And if you are writing a for-profit book, just shut-up and leave him alone.

[random_radar]

Why do inmates understand that you execute killers when the general population doesn't get it? What do the inmates know about evil that we don't understand yet?