Here is the article from Yahoo!
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"Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" an emotional John Walsh said at Tuesday's news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over."

Walsh's wife, Reve, at one point placed a small photo of their son on the podium.

Police named Ottis Toole, saying he was long the prime suspect in the case and that they had conclusively linked him to the killing. They declined to be specific about their evidence and did not note any DNA proof of the crime, but said an extensive review of the case file pointed only to Toole, as John Walsh long contended.

"Our agency has devoted an inordinate amount of time seeking leads to other potential perpetrators rather than emphasizing Ottis Toole as our primary suspect," said Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner, who launched a fresh review of the case after taking over the department last year. "Ottis Toole has continued to be our only real suspect."

Toole had twice confessed to killing the child, but later recanted. He claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders, but police determined most of the confessions were lies. Toole's niece told the boy's father, John Walsh, her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he killed Adam.

Wagner acknowledged numerous missteps in the investigation and apologized to the Walshes.

"I have no doubt," John Walsh said. "I've never had any doubt."

Many names have been mentioned in connection to the case in the years since the killing, including serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but Toole's has persistently nagged detectives. John Walsh has long said he believed the drifter was responsible, saying investigators found at Toole's home in Jacksonville a pair of green shorts and a sandal similar to what Adam was wearing.

Toole died in prison of cirrhosis in 1996 at the age of 49. He was serving five life sentences for murders unrelated to Adam's death.

The Walshes, who appeared Tuesday flanked by their other children, long ago derided the investigation as botched. Still, John Walsh praised the Hollywood police department for closing the case.

"This is not to look back and point fingers, but it is to let it rest," he said.

Adam Walsh went missing from a Hollywood mall on July 27, 1981. Fishermen discovered his severed head in a canal 120 miles away two weeks later. The rest of his body was never found.

Authorities made a series of crucial errors, losing the bloodstained carpeting in Toole's car — preventing DNA testing — and the car itself. It was a week after the boy's disappearance before the FBI got involved.

"So many mistakes were made," John Walsh said in 1997, upon the release of his book "Tears of Rage," which harshly criticized the Hollywood Police Department's work on the case. "It was shocking, inexcusable and heartbreaking."

For all that went wrong in the probe, the case contributed to massive advances in police searches for missing youngsters and a notable shift in the view parents and children hold of the world.

Adam's death, and his father's activism on his behalf, helped put faces on milk cartons, shopping bags and mailbox flyers, started fingerprinting programs and increased security at schools and stores. It spurred the creation of missing persons units at every large police department.

"In 1981, when a child disappeared, you couldn't enter information about a child into the FBI database. You could enter information about stolen cars, stolen guns but not stolen children," said Ernie Allen, president of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, co-founded by John Walsh. "Those things have all changed."

The case also prompted national legislation to create a national database and toll-free line devoted to missing children, and led to the start of "America's Most Wanted," which brought those cases into millions of homes.

What it also did, said Mount Holyoke College sociologist and criminologist Richard Moran, is make children and adults alike exponentially more afraid.

"He ended up really producing a generation of cautious and afraid kids who view all adults and strangers as a threat to them and it made parents extremely paranoid about the safety of their children," Moran said.

Im glad

i already posted this.. but guess what it was already solved several yrs ago as it was mention on his show.. so not sure why it is now stating this info when it was mention yrs ago

Actually I had just started reading this as I signed on tonight. What torture the family had to have gone through on a daily basis not knowing who or why for sure. Most family's tend to put things of such nature back in their memories in order to get through life. But.....with the Walsh family they could not do that for their everyday lives reminded them of Adam and what happen.

I can say one thing we should all be thankful for what they have done in their lifetime to give other family's the closer they only got as of today. But not one time did they ever think of giving up or putting Adam's memories on the back burner.

I salute John Walsh for all that he contributed to so many others.

I just wonder since there is no DNA proof if the case would have stood up with a grand jury. It's always easy to blame a dead guy. Gives the victims family closure, and since he's dead no one really refutes the evidence since there is noone to convict.

I'm just not so sure that a major case that changed the nation was just picked back up and solved lick-ity-split.

It was never in fact solved they thought it was him he actually confessed at one time but then he took it back. He had lied so many times they were not sure due to there was no DNA to have the solid proof.

And it only took the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) 27 years to figure it out...Amazing!!
Wonder if they'll do better with Caylee?
somehow... I doubt it...

Have they identified the child's body that was found by the utility worker a couple of miles away from the house? I read about it a couple of days ago on yahoo.

they took 25yrs to find sherry erlys killer
as he was already in jail
but yet they never found her body

i went to school with her and my older sister used to babysit her

FDLE motto:
Blame it on the dead guy! less paper work!!
Last year the FDLE issued playing cards to all inmates.. trying to solve murders they are unable to figure out...I hear series 2 will be arriving shortly, another 52 unsolved murders..
the deck of cards is almost as popular as the mini bibles they get from the inmate chapel..then again I did see one inmate use the 23rd psalm as a piece of rolling paper..and No, this wasn't a joke..