In 1981 John Walsh, star of the popular television show America's Most Wanted and co-founder of the Centers for Missing and Exploited children lost his six year old son Adam.
Little Adam was abducted from a Sears store in Florida after his Mother, Reve Walsh, "dropped him off" alone in the toy department while she went off to another section of the store to look for a lamp. When she returned to the toy department, the boy was gone.
His decapitated head was later found in a swamp, but never his body, or his killer. The Walsh's filed a lawsuit against Sears blaming them for what happened to their son. Claiming a security guard had thrown the boy out, (which proved later to be false.) Sears filed a counter-suit claiming that what happened to Adam was due to his Mother's negligence. The Walsh's then dropped their suit against Sears. In return, Sears did the same.
Could Adam's death have been prevented?
FACT: Adam Walsh's killer has never been found and there is no evidence linking his death to a known sex offender. There is also no evidence that this crime was even sexually motivated at all.
Know Where Your Kids Are
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In July of 1994, seven year old Megan Nicole Kanka was murdered by a neighbor in a quiet New Jersey town. Her killer was a convicted repeat sex offender who had been released from prison. There was much talk in the neighborhood about this man's past. Indeed Mr. Kanka even acknowledged after Megan's death he had known about the man's past. Yet little 7 year old Megan was allowed to go to a friend's house down the road, unsupervised and unescorted.
Mrs. Kanka did not call the friend to make sure an adult, or even her friend, was home. She was in fact NOT home. Nor was Megan instructed to call her Mom when she reached her destination. When Megan arrived at her friends home and no one answered she began to roam the neighborhood, again, alone. She stopped to talk to the man in the neighborhood that everyone had been talking about. She followed him inside his house and he killed her. Several hours passed before Mrs. Kanka even became concerned about her daughter, who had now been gone from her home and subsequently dead for several hours.
Could Megan's life have been saved if something were done differently?
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