Adam Walsh witness sues for investigation report

6-12-2010 Florida:

A witness in the 1981 abduction and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh wants to see a missing investigation report that was key in the controversial 2008 decision to declare the case solved.

All copies of an investigative report that played a key role in the Hollywood Police Department's closing of the unsolved 1981 murder of Adam Walsh have either been destroyed or relocated to Cuba, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in Broward Circuit Court, demands a copy of retired cop Joe Matthews' documents detailing his independent investigation into the case of the 6-year-old boy who was kidnapped from a Sears store in Hollywood and decapitated. Matthews is a confidant of John Walsh, who is Adam's father and host of the America's Most Wanted television program.

Police and prosecutors cited Matthews' report as a key factor in closing the case in December 2008 and naming deceased drifter Ottis Toole as Adam's killer.

However, neither agency kept Matthews' files, and a Miami Herald investigation found large holes in the case against Toole, who confessed and recanted multiple times to the murder and was never prosecuted before his death in 1996.

Thomas Julin, a First Amendment attorney, filed the complaint on behalf of Willis Morgan, a witness who has told police he saw serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the Sears store from which Adam Walsh was abducted on the day the child went missing.

The store, since demolished, was in the Hollywood Mall, across the street from the police station.

The lawsuit argues that Matthews' report is a public record, and names Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner, Broward State Attorney Michael Satz and Matthews as defendants.

``They made a mistake in giving that material back to'' Matthews, Julin said of police and prosecutors. ``If they were going to use that to evaluate whether to close the file, it was their obligation to maintain a copy of their files . . .''

Julin said both agencies have demanded that Matthews make his files available, despite not keeping their own copies.

According to the complaint, Matthews spoke to Julin on May 13 and said ``he had destroyed all electronic copies of the report due to the fear that [Morgan] would break into his office and steal the report, asserted that one written copy of the report remained, and claimed that he had given that copy of the report to his `co-author' and that the co-author had taken it to Cuba.''

Julin, who represented several media outlets in a successful 1996 lawsuit that led to the first release of the case files, said he was skeptical that Matthews did not have access to his documents.

``It seems odd to me that someone who prepared something like that would risk its loss by giving it to someone to take to Cuba,'' Julin said.

Attempts to reach Matthews were unsuccessful, and the lawsuit does not name his co-author. Wagner, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Ron Ishoy, a spokesman for Satz's office, called the files a ``manuscript'' and wrote in an e-mail that Matthews planned to write a book.

Ishoy wrote that ``all the parties in the suit continue to have discussions with Mr. Matthews regarding his manuscript. The State Attorney's Office has no authority in this matter to compel him to do anything with it.'' ..Source..David Smiley, The Miami-Hearld