John Walsh - Tears of Rage

THE HOST OF AMERICAS MOST WANTED SPEAKS OUT IN THE ACCLAIMED NATIONAL BESTSELLER TEARS OF RAGE

Ive never really spoken about these things to anyone before, but I want to talk about Adam before he died. I want people to know just exactly how horrible it is to lose your child, how painful it is. But I also want to talk about how people can help you, and how you can help yourself. About how to come to terms with life when you think youre dying of a broken heart.

John Walsh

I remember thinking, our sons been murdered, and now weve got to be the ones to do something about it? It was a sad thing for this country that the fight had to be led by two broken-down parents of a murdered child. But we had to, because no one else was going to do it.

Rev Walsh

TEARS OF RAGE

tells a spellbinding story, tragic yet inspirational. The most remarkable thing it reveals is how one man, happy and successful, can suddenly be plunged into the most unspeakable tragedy imaginable, then gradually emerge with a strength he never knew he had, to lead a crusade he never wanted... and be brilliant at it.

The Sun-Sentinel (FL)

The story [of Adam Walshs murder] is already part of contemporary lore, a wrenching lore to break our hearts.... TEARS OF RAGE ... turn[s] a familiar tale into one full of fresh detail, undiminished pain and troubling revelation.

Time

The tumultuous, painful existence that follows the violent death of a child is related in frank and sincere terms.... Walsh emerges as a true hero by being a man not afraid to challenge the system.

The Topeka Metro News (KS)

This book is as heart-rending as you imagine it would be.... Its a brave book, and you have to be a brave soul to read it.

The Republic (Phoenix)

[A] horrific, compelling and ultimately triumphant story.

New York Post

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For Adam, Meghan, Callahan, and Hayden.
And all the children well never meet.

Rev and I would like to thank the people who have loved and supported us:

The friends and family who suffered with us during unbearable grief.

The volunteers whose time, money and effort fueled the battle for childrens rights.

The caring politicians who drafted the laws.

The members of the law enforcement community who protect me in the streets.

The victims of violence who have opened their hearts.

And the untold thousands who have regarded Adam as their own.

A simple child,

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death?

W ILLIAM W ORDSWORTH

A ND WHEN THEY ASK, AS I M SURE THEY WILL, WHY I HAVE decided to speak about these things, I will have an answer for them:

My hope is that these words will stand as a testament to the many sacrifices that were made.

My wife, Rev, and I did not make all of these sacrifices ourselves. There were others who helped carry the burden. We did not respond, for example, to the particular request that I am about to relate. We were spared little over the whole course of events. But we were saved from this, at least. The request was for someone close to us, a friend. A family member would have been ideal, but was judged, ultimately, to be unwise.

And so a friend, one who knew us well, went instead. Years before, I had done him what he regarded as a great favor, and now he believed that, as difficult as it might be, it was time to repay the kindness.

He left, accompanied by a detective, and drove recklessly in his white convertible up the divided concrete highway at an irresponsible speed. The August sun beat down on him, and the hot, dry tarry smell of the road swirled around them both. They did not speak. He was marshaling his strength, focusing himself, concentrating on the task at hand.

And finally, after an hour, they came to the place.

For some time, I did not know about what happened next. I was later told some of it because I asked to be told. I did not want to know all of it, and still do not. But it is important for these unspeakable things to be spoken of, because they actually happened in this world.

My friend remembers walking up what seemed like an endless flight of wooden stairs, to a set of swinging doors, scuffed at the bottom by impatient technicians who had kicked them open with their feet. Panes of frosted glass in these doors let light through, but obscured the things that took place within. He remembers the odor of disinfectant and formaldehyde. Cold, fluorescent light was reflected on ceramic tile, and rows of stainless steel instruments lay precisely on countertops beneath the overhang of metal cabinets. In the center of the room was a wheeled, stainless steel table.

A man wearing a clinical, white, knee-length smock walked up to him.

Can you do this? my friend was asked.

Yes, he replied.

Then they brought out something swaddled in white towels, like a newborn, and laid it in front of him.

The warm, brackish water had done its work, transforming something once known intimately into something that could not exist even in the darkest imagination. But it did exist. It was now irrefutable.

The eyes, once clear, were not fully open. They were clouded, unseeing. The soft blondish hair, always straight, was now tangled and matted. The unblemished skin, the kind that had never deeply tanned, was taut, like a thin sheathing of plastic that no longer contained anything.

Beneath that, below the thin neck, where T-shirts had once covered the muscles of a small chest, and where fingers and feet had once been held in loving hands, there was nownothing.

What was presented for identification in this strange, unfamiliar setting was all that remained.

The day before, two workers from the citrus fields who had cast their lines for brim and catfish had been walking along a fetid drainage canal not far from the Florida turnpike when they saw something floating in the still water, among the saw grass and pepperweeds. They later said that, at first, they thought it was the head of a little girls life-size doll.

Now there was only this procedure of official identification. And so my friend asked, in a single breath... if he might be shown... if they could please... part the lips?

They did.

Only then did he see again what he had seen and remembered, just days, a lifetime ago: there, in the delicate gap, was a small, emerging tooth.

And then he knew.

All these years later, he still dreams of it. The face, he says, appears out of the darkness while he is sleeping. The image still comes to him when he cannot protect himself from it, during the night. And sometimes when it comes, he says, it is wearing a childs red baseball cap.

It is fitting that these things are called the remains. Those words describe what still exists when all that has gone before it no longer does. The deed, the chosen action that would come to be called the crime, had taken away everything that had been and had left in its place something that could not be comprehended or understood, something that, sixteen years later, we still cannot believe.

There had been promise, and now there was none. There had been an endless wellspring of hope and future, and now it was gone. What we had once loved with all of our beings, and believed we would always continue to love, that which we had cherished above all else, no longer existed. This was all that remained of a little boy.