Serial Killers, Serial Liars | The Murder of Adam Walsh | 2

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It's the afternoon of August 10th, 1981 in Central Florida.

A pair of citrus farm laborers are walking alongside a drainage canal just off the Florida turnpike.

They've been fishing and are headed home with their catch.

They're talking about nothing, really, the weather, the fish, people at work, when one of them falters.

His steps slow and he falls silent.

He points at the canal, where he can see something floating on the surface.

The sun's bouncing off the water, so it's hard to make out.

But when he squints, he thinks it looks like a head.

At first, the guys laugh it off.

What a strange thing to see in a canal, that head off some mannequin or kid's doll.

But the laughs don't last.

The closer they get to the object, the clearer they can see it.

This isn't a piece of plastic bobbing in the water.

It's the head of a person, a child.

The men aren't sure what to do, but eventually they agree that one of them will stay here while the other will go find a phone and call 911.

Within the hour, investigators are on the scene, stringing up police tape and taking photographs.

The men who found the head are interviewed separately about what happened.

It's hard to stay focused, though.

There are police divers in the water just a couple dozen feet away, retrieving the remains and searching for anything else hidden beneath the surface.

under any circumstances, this would be a hard day for anyone.

Knowing that you found the remains of a child is traumatic enough.

But, alongside those feelings is a morbid kind of curiosity.

The longer they stand there talking to investigators, the men who spotted the remains start to wonder who this child is.

During a break in the interviews, one of them asked the other if it couldn't be the boy who went missing last month.

Little Adam Walsh vanished from a department store in Hollywood, Florida on July 27.

That's about a hundred miles from here.

It seems like everyone in the country knows about Adam and has been looking for him.

No one's had any luck finding him, but maybe they haven't found him because he's been here, in this canal where no one would ever think to look.

And if this is Adam, then the search for a missing child is about to become the hunt for a killer.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

In 1979, two men with extensive criminal records and plenty of prison time under their belts met outside a homeless shelter in Jacksonville, Florida.

It was the beginning of an enduring friendship.

We know that much.

From there, though, the story gets fuzzier.

Later, both Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole would claim that what came next was a cross-country murder spree.

Driving across state lines, never worrying that they'd get caught, Henry and Ottis killed all kinds of people in just about every way imaginable.

At least, that's what they said.

Verifying that story is difficult.

Because even though Henry and Ottis seemed to know a lot about plenty of murders that happened around the country, finding solid evidence that linked them to those crimes was another matter.

So when you get to that stage, things become a matter of trust.

And when you're talking about two men like Henry and Ottis, who are convicted killers and known liars, how much can you really take their word for it?

The problem then becomes, if Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole didn't commit all of the murders they copped to, who did?

This is episode 2 in our 4-part series on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, the murder of Adam Walsh.

It's early 1979 in the Springfield neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, two years before the murder of Adam Walsh.

Ottis Toole leads Henry Lee Lucas through the darkening streets towards the Toole family home.

Ottis, now 32, sometimes picks up men at the local homeless shelter, guys who will trade a few bucks or a six-pack for a fumble in a dark alley.

But tonight's score is better, a friendly face who's happy to listen to Ottis talk, someone who actually wants to spend time with him.

Ottis rambles about his life to his new friend as they walk.

He tells Henry how he lives with his mother, Sarah, talks about his job working as a cleaner for a local roofing company.

It doesn't pay a lot, but since he doesn't pay rent, he's usually got enough for beer.

Ottis says that if Henry's sticking around Jacksonville, he'll put in a good word for him at work and try and get him a job.

When they arrive at Ottis' family home, Ottis introduces Henry to his mother and stepfather and his sister's kids.

Frieda, who everyone calls Becky, is 12, with long dark hair and she seems kind of shy.

Frank's younger, but he doesn't catch Henry's attention like Becky does.

No one else in the house that night knows him, but Henry Lee Lucas has a history of sexually abusing young girls, and Becky is just his type.

After Ottis brings Henry home with him that night, the two men settle into an easy friendship.

Just as he promised, Ottis helps Henry get work at the roofing company, and although it's not a lot of money, it's enough to keep them both in booze and cigarettes, and buy gas for Henry's new car.

How he got it isn't clear, but whether he stole it, traded for it or bought it, the car is the men's gateway to the freedom of the open road.

So when they're not working, Henry and Ottis drive around Jacksonville.

Usually young Becky and Frank are with them.

For the kids, it's fun to be included, and Sarah doesn't mind them getting out of the house.

She's the legal guardian for her two grandchildren, but she's 60, and is more than happy to get some time to herself.

If she knows everything that her son and his new friend are doing while they're out on the road, she doesn't say anything.

Then again, maybe Ottis lies to her about where they go when Henry gets behind the wheel.

Sometimes it's harmless stuff, driving just to be on the road.

On other occasions, the car is a getaway vehicle from when there's something they want, but can't afford.

The rest of the time?

Well, according to Henry and Ottis, that's when things get really interesting.

It's just after midnight on October 3rd, 1979 in Texas.

34-year-old Sandra Mae Dubs is on I-35 not far from Austin when she feels her car start to slow down.

Confused, Sandra pushes down harder on the gas, willing her Dodge Diplomat to keep going.

But she knows it's no good.

She can hear that the engine's completely cut out.

Frustrated, Sandra pulls off to the side of the road, letting the car roll to a stop.

She rests her head on the steering wheel and takes a deep breath.

She's so close to the end of her trip.

San Antonio is only about 80 miles away.

Just last month, Sandra made a snap decision to move to Texas from her hometown of St.

Louis, Missouri.

She's going to stay with her aunt until she finds her own place and gets on her feet.

She's already got a job interview lined up for later this week and is excited for this to be a fresh start.

That's the plan, at least, once she figures out what's wrong with the car.

The Dodge is brand new, so it doesn't make sense for it to just break down on her like this.

Still, Sandra knows that sitting here in the dark won't get her to San Antonio any faster, so she pops the hood, grabs a flashlight from the glove compartment, and gets out of the car.

At just 4'10, Sandra has to lean precariously on her high heels to see all the way into the engine.

The car already broke down outside of Oklahoma City earlier in the day, but a mechanic fixed it in about two minutes.

Sandra's hoping that there will be something obviously wrong and easily fixable right there for her to see.

No such luck.

Trying to stay calm, Sandra tucks her wavy blonde hair behind her ears and looks around.

Given the hour, the interstate's pretty quiet.

That's made it great for driving in the last hour or so, but now it means there are far fewer people passing by for her to flag down.

And she's too far outside of town to make walking to find a payphone an option.

Sandra sits back down in the driver's seat and is just thinking about locking her doors and staying put until morning, when headlights flood her rearview mirror.

She leans her head out the window and smiles.

Someone's stopping to help her.

She's saved.

It's October 8th, less than a week after her car broke down outside of Austin, when the body of Sandra Mae Dubs is discovered in a field in the south of the city.

Her remains are badly decomposed after being left in the last of the Texas summer heat.

But it doesn't take long for investigators to work out the cause of death.

Sandra was sexually assaulted and then stabbed.

Whoever killed her left her naked in the grass, some of her clothes and jewelry scattered around her.

The one valuable Sandra's family says is missing is a $4,500 diamond and ruby ring she never takes off.

It's a lead for investigators to follow in their search for the killer, but there's no sign of the ring in any pawn shops in the area.

And with no foreign prints inside Sandra's abandoned car, the trail goes cold as rapidly as the weather.

Unfortunately, the murder of Sandra Mae Dubs isn't the only mystery that catches the attention of Texans that month.

On the evening of October 23rd, 1979, a customer walks into a combined book and liquor store in Austin.

It's quiet, which is unusual.

The owners are usually quick to offer a friendly greeting to whoever pops by.

When the customer approaches the register, though, everything makes horrifying sense.

Molly and Harry Schlesinger are lying in spreading pools of blood, both of them shot in the head.

Miraculously, they're still alive when they're found, but both Molly and Harry die of their wounds later that night.

In the aftermath, people in the community speculate about what happened in the store that night.

The business had been robbed several times over the last couple of years, and Harry had been heard vowing not to give in to any criminals who showed their face when he was working.

Now it seems like he stood his ground and paid the price.

People who live in the semi-rural area are left shaken by the slings, especially considering that the store is on the corner of Breaker Lane and I-35, only around three miles away from where police found Sandra's body just a couple of weeks ago.

Whether anyone makes the explicit connection between the two crimes, their close proximity in both distance and time is chilling.

Either I-35 is a magnet for senseless murder or there's a particularly cunning killer, or pair of killers, working the interstate.

Halloween is already a creepy day as it is, but in 1979, October 31st offers up a scene like something out of a horror movie.

That afternoon, right before sundown, kids are flooding the streets of Georgetown, Texas in search of candy.

That's when a call comes into the sheriff's office.

There's been a body found, just off I-35.

Though she won't be identified for four decades, the woman's name is Deborah Louise Jackson.

The 23-year-old's been raped, then strangled to death and left near a drainage culvert not far from an overpass.

Her pale skin stands out against the reddish brown waves of her hair, and the only item of clothing her killer left her wearing—a pair of orange socks.

Sadly, investigators aren't able to work out who Deborah is, and she'll go by orange socks throughout the investigation into her murder.

And despite everyone's best efforts, there are no strong leads for detectives to chase down.

Eventually, just like the deaths of Sandra Mae Jackson and Molly and Harry Schlesinger, some 30 miles up the interstate, Deborah's case will go cold.

And while authorities in Austin and Georgetown are trying to puzzle out at least three baffling murders, another small town on the other side of Texas is visited by a tragedy of its own— ostensibly the work of the same killer or killers.

Brownfield, Texas is about 40 miles southwest of Lubbock.

It's a small place, a town where it's hard to go to the grocery store without running into several people you know.

It's also the kind of town where high school students can make easy money babysitting for their neighbors.

That's what 17-year-old Diana Bryant's doing on April 26, 1981.

Ordinarily, Diana works at a fast food joint in town, but her younger sister couldn't make a regular gig watching a pair of siblings and asked Diana to fill in.

When the mother of the children gets back to her apartment around midnight, the light's on in the kitchen and there's a spilled bowl of cereal and an overturned flower pot on the floor.

suddenly frightened, the mother rushes to check on her children.

To her relief, she finds them safe and sleeping in their beds.

But when she passes her own bedroom, she finds Diana face down on the carpet.

The teenager's been strangled to death with the cord from a vacuum cleaner.

In the aftermath of Diana's murder, local police admit that they've got absolutely no clues pointing them to any suspects.

All they know is that Diana was last seen alive around 9 p.m.

when the children's father dropped them off at the apartment for the night.

Whoever the killer was, it doesn't seem like they forced their way into the home, and they left the back door open on their way out.

Very quickly, the murder of Diana Bryant becomes just another cold case in a string of them across Texas.

But although these brutal crimes might seem disconnected in many ways, the way the victims died, the state of the bodies when found, the circumstances of the attacks, they all have one thing that will link them.

The men who will eventually claim responsibility.

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It's early June 1981, right around dusk in Jacksonville, Florida.

Ottis Toole has found that's the best time of day to visit the cemetery.

It gives him the most privacy.

Less than a month ago, Ottis' mother, Sarah, died of a heart attack.

She had problems with her heart for a while and had recently had surgery to try and fix the issue.

But it didn't work, and now Ottis' lifelong defender and supporter is gone.

The only way he can think of staying connected to her is to come and visit her grave.

The reason Ottis likes to be alone for his visits, though, is that he's not the kind of guy to stand stoically on the pathway and pay his respects with a bunch of flowers.

No, Ottis likes to get closer than that.

So tonight, right as the sun's going down, he crouches, then flattens his body across the fresh grass atop his mother's grave.

Turning his head to press his face where he guesses Sarah's head is, Ottis breathes in deep.

No one else understands it, but there's a warmth radiating from below, and he can feel the earth moving beneath him.

It's the beat of Sarah's heart.

He's sure of it.

The steady pulse keeps time with the pounding noise in Ottis' head, giving him something else to think about for a few minutes.

Here with his mother, he finds some peace.

Once he stands up and leaves the darkened cemetery, though, everything comes flooding back.

Ever since Sarah's death, Ottis has been haunted by voices, all of them screaming that he's worthless, that he should take his own life.

And sometimes Ottis thinks that the voices might be right.

He figures that if he's dead, at least he'll be with his mom again.

But reuniting with his mother would mean leaving behind the best friend Ottis has ever known.

So ignoring the noise in his head, Ottis resolves to stick around, to stay alive for Henry Lee Lucas.

With Sarah gone, Jacksonville doesn't hold much interest for Ottis anymore.

He's not particularly close to his stepfather, and he has no sentimental attachment to the city itself.

A couple of weeks after the funeral, Ottis and Henry start talking about a change of scenery.

They're both eager to head north for a while.

Only trouble is, they need cash for that.

Neither of them have any kind of savings, and setting out on their own means they'll need more than just money for gas and beer.

So, once they decide that they're ready to make their break, they wait until Ottis' stepfather is out one day and clean out Sarah's house of everything of value.

Furniture, a few cheap jewels, anything they can pawn for cash.

They don't hit the road right away, though.

They hang around the area for a few more weeks, and on June 23rd, the family home goes up in flames with no one inside.

By this stage, no one's seen Ottis and Henry since they burglarized the place, so there's no way to prove they're behind the blaze.

But Ottis' fascination with fire isn't a secret, so it's not hard to guess what's gone down.

A few days later, Ottis goes to his sister-in-law and asks to borrow her truck.

He tells her that he and Henry are looking to haul some scrap metal to the dump.

Once they have the keys, though, Henry slides behind the wheel and turns the car north.

The men bring Ottis' niece Becky and nephew Frank with them.

The two kids squeeze between them on the pick-up's bench seat.

It's more than a week before anyone seems to notice that Becky and Frank are gone.

Sarah had been their primary guardian, and the kid's mother hasn't been in the picture for a while, so no one thinks to go looking for them.

It isn't until July 8th that anyone figures out what's happened.

That's when police find the borrowed truck over 800 miles away from Jacksonville in Delaware, and call Ottis' sister-in-law to tell her to come pick it up.

She's already reported the truck is stolen and tells the Delaware police that Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas are the men who made off with it.

So, unbeknownst to Ottis and Henry, they're wanted men.

An APB goes out for the pair of them, and on July 22nd, a Maryland state trooper notices 44-year-old Henry in the town of Pikesville, just north of Baltimore.

The two children are with him, but Ottis is nowhere to be seen.

evidently, the two men have had some kind of dust-up and have gone their separate ways, for now.

But the trooper's just happy to have found one of the suspected car thieves.

He places Henry under arrest, charging him with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and sends him off to jail.

That leaves the kids to be dealt with.

Child Protective Services are called, who work out where Becky and Frank are from and bring them back down to Florida.

Meanwhile, 32-year-old Ottis is off by himself and he's not in a good way.

The voices in his head have been getting worse and he's self-medicating with booze.

It dulls it some, but it doesn't drown out his paranoia completely.

That's why he's convinced that Henry, his best friend in the world, has fallen in love with his 13-year-old niece and is planning to run away with her.

That might sound like a twisted way to look at the world and a strange thing to think about your friend, but Ottis isn't that far off the mark.

Maybe, if he hadn't been spotted by the cops, Henry would have skipped town with Becky, who he's definitely been grooming this entire time.

As it is, though, Ottis wakes up in the hospital in Newport News, Virginia on July 23rd, having overdosed on pills and booze.

He's got no idea where Henry or the kids are and figures he'll be all alone.

When the doctor's okay, Ottis, for release, he's got nowhere to go home to and no one to look after him.

But he assures the hospital staff that he's at least got a job waiting for him back in Jacksonville.

And when Ottis' old boss at the roofing company says he'll take the guy back if he wants to work, the local branch of the Salvation Army offer to pay for Ottis' bus fare home.

It's July 25th when Ottis rolls into Jacksonville, only a month after he left the place.

He's frustrated to be back.

Things were only bearable here when he had Henry around to keep him company.

Now, his friend's gone, as are his niece and nephew who he's always liked spending time with.

Kids just get Ottis better than adults do.

Still, Ottis knows that he can't mope around forever.

With his mom gone, there's no one to look after him anymore.

And although he's never been great at taking care of himself, that's what he's going to have to do now, even if his methods aren't quite above board.

Within hours of arriving in Jacksonville, Ottis has stolen a car.

It's a white 71 Cadillac with a black roof.

He's got plenty of experience driving it.

Earlier this year, he'd agreed to buy the Caddy from his boss' aunt, but stopped making payments on it and had to give it back.

Now he's broken into the yard where the car is kept, found the keys, and driven off with it.

No one else has driven the car since Ottis gave it back, and it feels familiar inside.

Even the tools he used to haul around with him for work are still there.

But Ottis isn't going to work today.

Well, not to a job he could tell the Salvation Army about.

Ottis knows that if he drives down to Miami, there's at least one park he can go to pick up guys.

If he plays his cards right, he figures he can score 20 or 50 bucks from a few different Johns.

If nothing else, it might ease the sting of losing Henry.

It's about a five-hour drive from Jacksonville to Miami.

But because it's summer, it's still very much daylight when Ottis gets close to his destination.

That's not going to be good for business.

He'll have a better time of it if he waits until the sun goes down.

So he pulls off the interstate and heads toward Hollywood, Florida.

He drives around the city for a while, thinking about maybe getting a burger to fuel up.

But when he sees a department store up ahead, he gets a different idea.

Ottis pulls the caddy into the Kmart parking lot and cuts the engine.

He watches people coming and going for a while until he sees a woman and her daughter walking across the lot to the store.

The young girl catches Ottis' eye.

She looks about Becky's age.

Figuring that he might have just found a fix for his loneliness, Ottis gets out of the car and hurries after them.

Close to the store, he races ahead and picks up the receiver from the payphone, trying to act casual as he watches the mother and daughter go inside.

Arlene Mayer and her daughter Heidi absolutely clock Ottis as he leers at them from the bank of payphones, though.

Arlene steps closer to 12-year-old Heidi as they walk through the door, placing a protective hand on the girl's shoulder.

Once they're safely inside the busy store, though, Arlene relaxes some.

Hopefully, the creepy unshaven man with the straggly hair will be long gone by the time they're done shopping.

After a few minutes of walking around, Heidi asks if they can go look at the toys.

Arlene looks at her watch.

Her husband just finished work and she's eager to get home to him.

So trying not to think about what happened in the parking lot, Arlene walks with Heidi to the aisles full of brightly colored toys and tells her to stay exactly within this department.

Arlene's gonna be just a few aisles over grabbing something from the home goods section.

After that, Arlene heads off to find what she came in for and she spots a set of towels that would look great in her guest bathroom when she hears a scream.

It's Heidi.

Arlene drops the towels and runs back to where she left her daughter.

By the time she's back amongst the dolls and board games, Heidi's alone, but absolutely terrified.

When she's calmed down enough to gulp in some breaths, Heidi tells her mom that the man from the parking lot cornered her.

He said something about taking her for a ride in a shopping cart, the kind of thing a really little kid might have thought sounded like fun, but Heidi knew better.

By this stage, other people are gathering around to see what the commotion is about.

A store security guard eventually arrives and initiates a sweep of the store to look for the guy Heidi describes.

But Ottis is long gone.

He's already back in his stolen Cadillac, out of breath and feeling exhilarated.

He doesn't want to leave the parking lot just yet though.

People will probably be looking for a guy fleeing the scene.

No, he's fine to stay put for a while, thinking about what just happened.

He'd been looking for someone to replace his niece now that she's off somewhere with Henry, but it hadn't gone how he'd wanted.

Still, it was a valuable learning experience for him.

He's sure he'll do better next time.

It's the afternoon of July 27th, 1981.

Ottis Toole is parked at Stolen Cadillac outside a Sears department store in Hollywood, Florida.

Two days ago, he cornered a 12-year-old girl in a K-mart not far from here.

Today, he knows he has to be more careful.

On the plus side, though, it's summer, so there are plenty of kids hanging around the mall.

As Ottis sits, people watching, he sees dozens of children coming and going, most of them holding tightly to a parent's hand.

None of them will do.

Ottis is looking for a child who won't be missed.

It's around noon when Ottis spots them.

A group of kids exiting the store in a clump, none of them with grownups.

He waits as the group disperses, the older kids drifting off to the parking lot in pairs.

One of the boys, though, is all alone.

Adam Walsh is just six and looks kind of lost.

He's wearing a white boat captain's hat and yellow flip-flops, which he scuffs on the pavement as he looks around squinting in the midday sun.

Ottis decides that Adam Walsh looks like the kind of boy he'd like to talk to.

So he gets out of the caddy and heads towards the store.

Also in the parking lot just now is 33-year-old William Mistler.

He's in his car waiting for a parking space to open up, when some movement by the Sears entrance catches his eye.

He sees a tall man with stringy hair and several days worth of stubble approach a young boy in green shorts and a white hat.

The man crouches down to talk to the little boy, which strikes Bill as odd.

They just don't seem like they belong together.

The little boy looks like he bathes regularly for one thing, and it doesn't seem like they really know each other.

But after the man talks to the boy for a minute, they start walking across the parking lot together.

Bill watches as Ottis Toole leads little Adam Walsh to the white Cadillac with its black top.

Figuring he just misread the situation, Bill shrugs and shifts his gaze elsewhere.

Anyway, his parking spots opened up.

Meanwhile, in the caddy, Ottis is pretty pleased with himself.

After just a few words, he decided he liked Adam enough that he wanted to take him back to Jacksonville to be his son.

Promises of toys and candy were all it took to lure the kid back to the car.

Now Ottis is heading out of the parking lot, ready to get on the interstate and head north.

After just a few minutes on the road, though, Adam realizes that he shouldn't be in a car with a stranger and starts to complain.

He wants to go back to the store and find his mom.

But Ottis isn't going to turn around.

He's determined to stick to his plan.

That resolve waivers pretty quickly, though.

When Ottis has to drive through a toll booth, Adam tries to get the attention of the operator.

Improvising, Ottis chuckles at Adam, saying something to the operator about kids saying the darnedest things.

When they're clear of the toll booth, Ottis reaches over, hits Adam, and tells him to shut up.

But that only makes Adam louder.

Ottis keeps hitting the boy until he strikes hard enough to knock him out.

Ottis realizes maybe he doesn't want to take Adam home with him after all.

Not if this is the way he's gonna act.

But that means Ottis is gonna have to do something else with Adam.

He can't just let the kid go.

He's clearly smart enough to tell people what happened.

And he might even be able to describe what Ottis looks like.

So in Ottis' twisted mind, there's only one thing he can do.

Ottis Toole is rarely without some kind of blade.

And when he briefly owned the Cadillac, he stored a large one under the front seat.

As he steers the car down an empty service road just off the turnpike, Ottis knows exactly what he's about to do.

He's glad he already knocked Adam unconscious.

That'll make the next part easier.

Later that afternoon, Ottis spends time scattering the remains of Adam Walsh around the swampy terrain beside the highway.

There's one part of his victim he decides to keep, and it rolls around on the floor of the car as he drives back up towards the turnpike.

After a few minutes, though, Ottis thinks better of it and pulls off the road again near mile marker 130.

He walks through the scrub until he comes to a drainage canal beside a field.

There's a small wooden dock jutting out over the water, and Ottis strides towards it.

With a quick look around to make sure no one's watching, he pitches Adam's head into the water, then scurries back to his car.

He's got a long drive back to Jacksonville.

But at the Hollywood Sears, meanwhile, Adam's mother, Ravée Walsh, is frantic.

As soon as she notices that Adam's gone, she alerts the store's security, and spends a couple of hours searching the store and adjoining mall.

Eventually, the police get involved.

The Hollywood PD is located on opposite sides of the parking lot of the Sears.

Adam Walsh was abducted right under their noses, and now, hours later, the trail is completely cold.

As word spreads of Adam's disappearance, the Walsh family's friends and neighbors come together to help search.

A few friendly faces wait at the Walsh's home in case Adam should somehow find his way back there, and everyone else forms search parties to sweep the neighborhoods around the house and store.

In the coming days, the story of Adam Walsh gets plenty of attention in the media.

Adam's father John is a sales and marketing manager who knows how to capture the public consciousness.

He designs simple, eye-catching missing posters and runs off tens of thousands of copies to hang around the city.

Within days, John's worked a connection to ensure that every passenger boarding a Delta flight in Atlanta is handed one of the flyers.

After that, anyone boarding any flight in Fort lauderdale gets a poster featuring a photo of Adam and mention of a $5,000 reward.

John and Reve promised that they won't press charges if Adam's brought back safe.

Whoever returns him can have the money, no questions asked.

Before long, the reward money has risen to $100,000, making it the highest ever offered for a missing child in the US at the time.

Within days, it seems like the whole country is talking about Adam Walsh.

It's the kind of attention every parent of a missing child wants for their case, and it seems like it's only a matter of time before the little boy is found.

Unfortunately, when that happens, it's not the happy ending everyone's hoping for.

On August 10, 1981, two weeks after Adam was abducted from the Sears in Hollywood, two men spot a portion of his remains floating in a drainage canal about a hundred miles away from the store.

The heartbreaking news means that the search for Adam Walsh is over.

But the investigation shifts gears.

Now it's a hunt for a killer.

In the coming months, though, the investigation goes steadily cold.

The Hollywood PD is a small team with limited experience running murder investigations.

And to outsiders, they look hopelessly out of their depth.

So as 1981 draws to a close, it seems like the murder of Adam Walsh might never be solved.

And in Jacksonville, Ottis Toole is settling back into life in his hometown.

He returns the Cadillac to where he found it, rents a room, and returns to work.

If he ignores the stories in the papers and on the television, he can almost pretend that he never killed a little boy by the side of the turnpike.

And while he's in the habit of forgetting things, he figures he may as well also scrub the memory of Henry Lee Lucas from his mind.

Those two years were just a chapter of Ottis' life that's over now.

But he's wrong.

The saga of Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas has barely even begun.

From Airship, this is episode two in our series on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.

On the next episode, two impulsive murders lead to the arrest of Henry Lee Lucas and the shocking confessions begin.

We used many different sources while preparing this episode.

A few we can recommend are The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas by Mike Cox, Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford and Joe Matthews, as well as reporting in the Austin American Statesman.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mahabat Shahzi.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham for Airship.

There's no escaping murder Most Foul in my new weekly podcast, Rabia Jothri presents The Mystery Hour with the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines.

I'll lead you into twisty mysteries that will keep you on the edge of your seats and guessing until the very end.

Written by award-winning mystery writers, we bring you a new Who Done It each week.

Search for The Mystery Hour on your favorite podcast app and subscribe now to experience the thrill of the best mystery storytelling in the world and let the murder mystery begin.