Today In History - August 10, 1981

August 10, 1981 : Child found decapitated
The severed head of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who disappeared from a shopping mall two weeks earlier, is found in a canal in Vera Beach, Florida. Two years later, serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole confessed--and then recanted--their involvement in the crime. Authorities believe that they were the killers.
Lucas and Toole met at a soup kitchen in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1978. Lucas had already spent most of his adult life in prison for the murder of his mother and for an attempted abduction. Drifting across the country, the couple killed at random, both together and separately. Lucas was arrested in Texas in June 1983. He pleaded guilty to one murder and confessed to hundreds of others, naming Toole as his most frequent accomplice. Although authorities believe that Lucas and Toole have exaggerated their crimes, they may well have been responsible for nearly 100 deaths.
In the wake of Adam Walsh's kidnapping and murder, Congress passed the Missing Children's Act, giving the FBI greater authority to track the disappearance of children. A television movie about the case, Adam, aired a week before Toole confessed to the crime.
John Walsh, Adam's father, became a national spokesman against crime. He went on to host America's Most Wanted, a television show that profiles fugitives whose capture is sought by the FBI. Since it debuted in 1988, nearly 1,000 criminals have been caught as a result of viewer tips.