conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about TV's, America's, Wanted with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs, True Crime?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Tears of Rage'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tears of Rage
  By the early autumn of 1983, cops all over the country were hearing through the grapevine about a serial killer named Henry Lee Lucas, imprisoned in Texas, who was confessing to an almost unbelievable string of sordid crimes—strangulations and shootings, disembowlings and stabbings—somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 in all. It was almost impossible to believe that one human being could have caused so much carnage, but Lucas was saying that he hadn't acted alone. His traveling companion, he said, was a guy named Ottis Elwood Toole. That came as big news to the cops in the Duval County sheriff's office in northern Florida, who at that time were holding Toole, a near-illiterate, thirty-six-year-old drifter, for his involvement in a fatal arson case the year before.
  That was when the weird pilgrimage began. As the news spread, some dozen or so sheriff's deputies and homicide cops from places like Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana were beginning to descend on the Jacksonville jail with one thought in mind. They wanted to know if this Ottis Toole—who had been telling stories of some pretty grisly homicides himself—might be responsible for any of the unsolved murders in their jurisdictions—including some of the sickest rapes, mutilations, and knife murders they had ever seen.
  In the middle of all this excitement, during the second week of October 1983, Toole began making vague references to a crime he might have done in the Lauderdale area, farther south, a couple of years before—the abduction and decapitation, as he told it, of a young boy. He was providing some interesting detail, enough for the local cops to put two and two together. It didn't take long for the cops to figure it out: What if Toole was referring to the murder of Adam Walsh?
  HPD detectives Jack Hoffman and Ron Hickman had gone up to Jacksonville and spent quite a bit of time and energy looking into Toole's story. For a while, they thought they might have their man. They even called a press conference announcing his arrest. But then things started going downhill.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But two weeks later, Mistier did call back. He agreed to a polygraph, which an HPD examiner called "inconclusive." And consented to being hypnotized by someone from the Broward sheriff's office. Mistler described the man he had seen as having reddish brown hair, a two-week old beard, weird eyes, greenish teeth, and a yellow-stained shirt"the same color of a manila envelope. It was that filthy. Along with... what looked like a morning cup of coffee... right down the center." He described watching the man kneel down and talk to the child. Take him by the hand and put him into the car.
  During an interview with Hoffman, Mistier got upset when he started talking about how, if he had done something, he might have prevented Adam's murder.
  Because Mistier came forward, on October 17, 1991, Jack Hoffman and Bill Haggerty went up to reinterview Ottis Toole at Starke. During that interview, Toole said that the only reason he had ever confessed was for personal gain—that he had enjoyed being given food and cigarettes at the Indian River location.
  By this point in their review of the case file, Matthews and Smith knew some hard evidence was still needed. The most compelling kind, of course, would have been Adam's body. But it was never found. By the time the canal, the land along the turnpike, and even Toole's mother's backyard in Jacksonville were searched, two years had lapsed since the murder. It was now fourteen years later.
  But some physical evidence was still left, as both detectives knew. One of Joe Matthews's first suggestions, in fact, was that every piece of existing evidence be reexamined—and compared to whatever appeared about it in the written case file. In doing just that, Smith knew where he had to start: in the HPD's fourth-floor evidence room, an interior office filled floor to ceiling with industrial metal shelving and boxes, bags, and envelopes of evidence from hundreds of burglaries, rapes, and murders. The Adam Walsh evidence took up an entire shelf of its own, and Smith started making his way through it. One of the first things that he found shocked him: there, in an envelope, was a yellow flip-flop and a pair of a child's green shorts.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Me with my great friends John Monahan and Jeff O'Regan at the press conference for the 1983 premiere of the first made for TV movie about Adam. (Author's collection)
  The whole clan at a benefit for the Adam Walsh Center, Palm Beach, c. 1989. From left: Jimmy Walsh, me, Callahan, Cousin Thommi Walsh, Jane Walsh, Meghan, Gram, Revé, Joe Walsh. (Author's collection)
  I've never played partisan politics. Three successive administrations have been friends to missing children and crime victims. President Reagan, who was always especially gracious to us, shown here with our friend Florida senator Paula Hawkins, is giving jelly beans to Meghan. (Official White House photos)
  Of all the awards that I've received, the one that I got in 1985, National Father of the Year, the Everyman category, is the one I'm most proud of. Other recipients were Ben Vereen, Mario Cuomo, Bruce Jenner and Gary Carter. (Author's collection)
  Here we are (from left: Cal, Hayden, me, Meghan and Revé) at the Emmy Awards in Pasadena in 1995. I had been nominated for an Emmy for my prime-time children's safety special. (Miranda Shen/Celebrity Photo)