Authorities on Tuesday identified the late Ottis Toole as the murderer of Adam Walsh but one author doesn't buy it. Six-year-old Adam disappeared from a mall in Hollywood Florida in 1981. Only his severed head was found a short time later. True-crime researcher Arthur Jay Harris believes Jeffrey Dahmer was the boy's murderer and adds the crime matches the serial killer's m/o. Dahmer was found with 11 severed heads in his Milwaukee apartment before being sent to prison.
Dahmer also lived 15 minutes away from the mall where Walsh disappeared. Harris says two witnesses spotted Dahmer, at the mall, the day of the boy's abduction.
Harris first published his Dahmer-Walsh connection claims in 2006.
John Walsh, the father of Adam, has said he does not believe Harris' claim about Dahmer.
Harris says the police are the ones who've got it wrong.
"John Walsh relied on the Hollywood police. The Hollywood police did not do their job," says Harris.
Early on, the case was plagued by sloppiness on the part of Hollywood police including misplacing crucial evidence.
Toole had been a suspect as early as 1983 but authorities discounted him. He confessed to the Walsh murder twice and recanted twice. He died in prison in 1996 after being convicted of homicide on three counts in unrelated cases.
Harris claims that Toole confessed to hundreds of murders, none of which turned out to be true. He says Toole was not a serial killer but a "serial confessor."
The Florida-based author attended Tuesday's landmark press conference and says authorities have not brought forth any convincing evidence.