Adam Walsh Redrew the Boundary of Childhood

For Kids Raised in '80s, Abduction Changed All

Many came to know 6-year-old Adam Walsh through this photo. (Associated Press)

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By Monica Hesse

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 17, 2008; Page C01

Sometimes we would catch a glimpse of his face and it would take a second to place him. The red baseball cap, the missing teeth, the sweaty hair. We'd think for a second that we knew him, and we did, in a way.

Ah, we would realize, when we were age 4, then at 6, at 7. It's Adam.

It was always Adam. He was still dead, his father was still looking for the killer, and we were still haunted by the freckled face of Adam Walsh, the specter of 1980s childhood.

Yesterday, Florida police closed his case after 27 long, unsolved years. Ottis Toole, a drifter whose confessions and recants agonized the Walsh family until his death in 1996, was guilty after all.

"The not knowing has been a torture," said John Walsh, Adam's father, at a news conference. "But that journey's over."

Adam Walsh was the reason why, when we played on the front lawn, we couldn't go past the irises. Why we 1980s children couldn't wait in the car at the grocery store, even for 10 minutes. This was a few years after Adam died at age 6 and hundreds of miles away, and though adults would discuss it, the terminology (decapitated?) was unfamiliar.

What exactly happened to Adam Walsh?

I'll tell you when you're older.

Tell us now.

And she did, and then we wished we didn't know.

And then we knew, and then we replayed it again and again. We played Adam Walsh at sleepovers, pretending to escape from mall parking lots, and when grown-ups asked what we were playing, we said, "Nothing."

But they found the killer, right?