One Day in the Life of Adam

[Twin City Lines]

27 July 1981
Hollywood, Florida, USA

Reve Walsh and her six-year-old son, Adam, went shopping at Sears. Reve was there to buy a lamp, her son was just there.

Adam was fascinated by the video game display that some older boys were playing at and asked his mother if he could stay there and watch. Normally, Reve was very strict with Adam and worried about him all the time, but Reve thought there'd be no harm in letting Adam stand there while she looked at the lamps a few aisles away, so she said yes, as long as he stayed there and didn't go anywhere else.

While Reve was engrossed in the various lamps, the boys that Adam was standing behind and watching got into a scuffle. The security guard, mistakenly thinking Adam was involved in the scuffle, ordered him as well as the other boys to leave. Not knowing what to do after leaving, Adam just stood outside the door after the other boys took off. He sure hoped his mother would find him there. He knew he would get in trouble, but he might get in even more trouble if he disobeyed the security guard's orders and went back inside.

Ottis Toole, sex pervert, was driving around the parking lot in his Cadillac, hoping to find a little boy to steal for some "fun". He saw Adam standing by the Sears door, and said to himself, "Yummy!" That word made him realise he was hungry - for food! There was a McDonald's just down the road. Ottis decided not to kidnap the boy and just go have a Big Mac, then go home and masturbate to his thoughts about that beautiful boy.

"Adam!" yelled Reve in a sharp voice, "What are you doing out here? Didn't I tell you not to leave that spot?" Adam tried to explain about the other kids fighting and the security guard kicking them all out, but Reve didn't believe Adam was innocent. After all, authority figures are never wrong, so if Adam was kicked out, he must have been fighting too. "Just wait till your father gets home!"

That night, John Walsh comes home to hear his wife's story about how Adam misbehaved at Sears.

At bedtime, Adam silently broods over how he was unfairly punished for something he didn't even do. He would never know how a sex pervert having a Big Mac attack kept him from an even worse fate....

 

[The Marauder]

Wonder if this will lead to worse awareness about sexual predators and such. Do you plan on continuing?

 

[Twin City Lines]

Wonder if this will lead to worse awareness about sexual predators and such. Do you plan on continuing?

I don't have a TL in mind yet, but in OTL the Walsh case had profound impacts on American (and probably Canadian, I have no idea about the rest of the world) law, society, and culture.

Some of these are:

1. "Awareness" of sexual predators has risen to a point bordering on hysteria at times.

2. Kids don't play outside as much as they used to.

3. Draconian laws regulating sex offenders: registration, residency restrictions, their names and faces being posted on the Internet, "civil commitment" effectively extending prison sentences to life, etc.

4. John Walsh's TV show, America's Most Wanted has been a major driver in the "get tough on crime" mentality (generally, not just regarding sex crimes) in the US. Personally, I believe it would've happened anyway, as part of the conservative backlash against the 1970s, but it might not have gone to the same extremes as OTL.

 

[Swan Station]

Although this does remove John Walsh's activism from the mix, I don't think the Adam Walsh case is the sole force driving the development of modern U.S. reaction to sex offenders and child abduction. It was only a spike in a much larger trend. Keeping Adam Walsh safe takes the face off the monster, but the monster still exists.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a different face to put on it later. There are plenty of them. See Etan Patz, Johnny Grosch, both from around the same time. Without an Adam Walsh kidnapping, butterflies could easily lead to someone else... maybe a potential kidnapper who decided not to give in to his whims when he learned about the fate of Adam Walsh OTL.

On a completely different note regarding your story: Speaking as a parent of a seven year old, unless Adam Walsh habitually got into fights with older kids, I think I'd be more likely to believe Adam's story than that he had deserved to get kicked out of the mall. At the very least, I would have wanted to have a long talk with the security guard who kicked him out without trying to find his parents.

Someone who has the guts to become the activist that John Walsh became OTL might just be the sort who would bring the actions of that guard to the attention of the evening news. Of course, it would probably only lead to five minutes of local fame.

 

[Adam]

It is true that I read this thread... and yet, I am not its reader.

 

[Twin City Lines]

Although this does remove John Walsh's activism from the mix, I don't think the Adam Walsh case is the sole force driving the development of modern U.S. reaction to sex offenders and child abduction. It was only a spike in a much larger trend. Keeping Adam Walsh safe takes the face off the monster, but the monster still exists.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a different face to put on it later. There are plenty of them. See Etan Patz, Johnny Grosch, both from around the same time. Without an Adam Walsh kidnapping, butterflies could easily lead to someone else... maybe a potential kidnapper who decided not to give in to his whims when he learned about the fate of Adam Walsh OTL.

On a completely different note regarding your story: Speaking as a parent of a seven year old, unless Adam Walsh habitually got into fights with older kids, I think I'd be more likely to believe Adam's story than that he had deserved to get kicked out of the mall. At the very least, I would have wanted to have a long talk with the security guard who kicked him out without trying to find his parents.

Someone who has the guts to become the activist that John Walsh became OTL might just be the sort who would bring the actions of that guard to the attention of the evening news. Of course, it would probably only lead to five minutes of local fame.

You're probably right about the trend line. Jacob Wetterling would probably have been the "poster boy" ITTL. As to my story about Adam's parents not believing him, my understanding was that they were very strict with him OTL, and had trained him to never say no to an adult. John Walsh realised after the fact that was a terrible mistake. The non-belief in the story is meant to reflect the kind of mentality that would teach a child that way. Anyway, that's a minor point as most of the divergence between timelines would be on the rest of the world, not on Adam himself.

John Walsh's personality is a major factor here too, as he had both the guts and the skill to head an anti-crime movement. The only other parent of a kidnapped child from that era who even came close in terms of activism was Patty Wetterling, Jacob's mother. She did run for Congress (against Michele Bachmann in 2006 and lost), IIRC, but other than that you never hear of her.

 

[Swan Station]

You're probably right about the trend line. Jacob Wetterling would probably have been the "poster boy" ITTL.

Was Wetterling as famous as Walsh outside of Minnesota? I can't say, since I was also living in the Twin Cities at the time.

But, yes, assuming that Adam Walsh's survival doesn't somehow butterfly Wetterling's disappearance (I don't think anyone can say for sure since they still haven't solved his case)...

The interesting part, though, is that this almost a decade later. Which means that there may be some differences in the establishment of the NCMEC, which happened in 1984. I think it would still happen, but Walsh won't be among those lobbying for it, and there won't be someone else to replace him... so it might happen a little differently.

As to my story about Adam's parents not believing him, my understanding was that they were very strict with him OTL, and had trained him to never say no to an adult. John Walsh realised after the fact that was a terrible mistake. The non-belief in the story is meant to reflect the kind of mentality that would teach a child that way. Anyway, that's a minor point as most of the divergence between timelines would be on the rest of the world, not on Adam himself.

That's a very good point. I can't say what my parents would have done. Parenting methods have changed a bit in the past 30 years.

Another butterfly I just thought of. According to wiki, John Walsh was a partner in a hotel management company in Florida. That's probably not bad money... what would happen if Walsh continued to focus on that? What opportunities would Adam have had?