UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: The prosecutor was no longer sure both murder defendants were guilty. So he asked his dad -- the real-life Kojak.
A mother’s dying, gasping call to 911: “My husband! My baby!” In her secluded ranch house, she’d been stabbed with a kitchen knife. Her husband, infant and elderly father-in-law had all been shot in the head, point-blank. For three years, police had two suspects under surveillance, then arrest. Both faced the death penalty. But prosecutor Brian Cavanagh began to doubt that the defendants were partners. So he consulted with his father, a retired NYPD cop whose reputation for savvy sleuthing had inspired the creation of one of the most beloved characters in television history. Now the question was: Could Dad help solve the case?
THE UNSOLVED MURDER OF ADAM WALSH (SPECIAL SINGLE EDITION): The medical examiner misidentified the body. The cops blamed the wrong suspect. What really happened to Adam Walsh?
In 1981, America was captivated -- and horrified -- by the kidnapping and reported murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh. Florida police ultimately identified the decapitated head of a found child as Adam, and implicated an out-of-town drifter as the murderer. But something about the investigation was incomplete. And wrong. In this special Single Edition of his controversial two-book chronicle, journalist Arthur Jay Harris reveals that Walsh’s kidnapper was actually the notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, that the body found by police was misidentified, and that Adam Walsh is quite possibly -- even probably -- still alive.
Arthur Jay Harris is the author of the investigative true crime books Speed Kills, Flowers for Mrs. Luskin, Until Proven Innocent and the two-book series with a Single Edition, Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret: The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh. He lives in Florida.
For the Adam Walsh case, he has appeared on television many times: ABC Primetime; Anderson Cooper 360; Nancy Grace; Ashleigh Banfield; The Lineup; Inside Edition; Catherine Crier; Cold Blood, and on local TV in Miami and Milwaukee. He has also written stories on the case that have appeared in periodical print in The Miami Herald, Broward-Palm Beach New Times, and Miami Daily Business Review.
In addition, Art has presented on television other crime stories he has investigated at length, including on the shows Snapped; City Confidential; Prison Diaries, Inside Edition, A Current Affair, and Hard Copy.