ARiaDneOne Rockin New Orleans Witch's blog: "THINGS I CARE ABOUT"

Florida police say Adam Walsh murder solved Buzz Up Send Email IM Share Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By Jim Loney Jim Loney – Tue Dec 16, 7:36 pm ET Play Video CBS4 Miami – Family Gets Closure In Adam Walsh Case Play Video Video: Police say Fla. boy's 1981 murder is solved AP Play Video Video: Closure in 27-Year-Old Cold Case ABC News Reuters – Adam Walsh in an undated photo. The 6-year-old son of television crime show host John Walsh was kidnapped … MIAMI (Reuters) – Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old son of television crime show host John Walsh, was kidnapped and killed 27 years ago by a drifter who later died in jail, police in Florida said on Tuesday in closing the books on one of America's best-known unsolved crimes. The gap-toothed boy, famously pictured holding a baseball bat and wearing a red cap, went missing from the toy department of a mall in Hollywood, Florida, in July 1981. His head was found in a canal two weeks later but his body was never found. Hollywood police announced on Tuesday that Ottis Toole, a longtime suspect in the Walsh killing, was in fact the murderer. Toole died in prison in 1996. "For 27 years we've been asking, 'Who could take a 6-year-old boy and murder him and decapitate him? Who?'" John Walsh said at a news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know." "The not knowing has been torture," he said. "But that journey's over." Hollywood police said they had decided to end the investigation and declare that Toole was the killer after a thorough review of records. The murder of Adam Walsh galvanized a movement to protect children from predators. John Walsh became a leading voice for missing and exploited children and founded the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center. He became the host of "America's Most Wanted," a television show that debuted in 1988 to publicize and help capture fugitive crime suspects. U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act in 2006 to establish a national sex offender registry and to make it harder for predators to reach children on the Internet. Toole was a partner of notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas and confessed to scores of murders. He admitted to killing Adam Walsh but later recanted. Toole was serving five life sentences for murder when he died of liver failure and was buried at a state prison when no relative came forward to claim his body. "We believed for years that Ottis Toole killed Adam," John Walsh said. (Reporting by Jim Loney, editing by Jane Sutton and Sandra Maler)

Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said RV trailer manufacturers knew that the trailers they sold to the government had excessively high levels of formaldehyde but didn't disclose the information for fear of bad press. The trailers, which were used to house hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast, have been a touchy subject at FEMA ever since occupants began reporting headaches, nosebleeds, dizziness, and shortness of breath. The agency has since asked many families to move out of the trailers. One trailer-company chairman told the Oversight Committee he thought the results of tests showing high levels of formaldehyde were "irrelevant information" because the Federal Emergency Management Agency already knew about the high toxicity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month blamed much of the trailer fiasco on poor ventilation and lax government standards for formaldehyde in RVs, a view the Oversight Committee's Republicans seized on in their defense of the companies. "The problem was and remains confusion among federal agencies, not some conspiracy among trailer-makers," said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.). sources: The Washington Post, Associated Press