Public Enemies: The Host of America's Most Wanted Targets the Nation's Most Notorious Criminals - Hardcover

9780671019952: Public Enemies: The Host of America's Most Wanted Targets the Nation's Most Notorious Criminals
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The host of America's Most Wanted offers a gripping, inside look at his popular crime-busting TV show and discusses a variety of landmark, high-profile cases--including those of sexual predator Kyle Bell, accused terrorist Kathleen Soliah, and rapist-murderer Rafael Resendez-Ramirez-and the dramatic, behind-the-scenes stories of each case.

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About the Author:
John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted since its 1988 debut -- and New York Times bestselling author of Tears of Rage and No Mercy -- is a longtime veteran of the battle for victims' rights. He and his wife, Revé, were central in the fight for passage of the federal Missing Children Act and the founding of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as the enactment of hundreds of state and local laws.

Honored in Rose Garden ceremonies by three presidents, John Walsh has been selected as Man of the Year by dozens of law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, the National District Attorney's Association, and the FBI -- and, in 1992, became the first civilian to receive the prestigious Special Recognition Award of the U.S. Attorney General. American Portraits named him one of the 160 Americans who have made an outstanding contribution to the history of the United States. His proudest achievement, however: being named the nation's "Father of the Year" in 1985.

John is also the head of his own production company, Straight Shooter Productions; one of its first creations was the Emmy® Award­nominated prime-time children's special Smart Kids.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One: Public Enemy Number One

I remember the first time I felt true fear.

It was just before dark on Monday, July 27, 1981, in the parking lot outside a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida. It was the day my son Adam disappeared.

The fear did not come right away. I had spent all day in desperate but controlled activity, questioning police, demanding answers, rushing around, trying to find anyone who'd seen anything that day. The frantic activity of a father whose son has disappeared is fueled by adrenaline and panic; you do everything you can to try to will that little boy back into your arms. You are moving so fast and so furiously that you do not notice the hole in your stomach, the gaping hole growing larger and larger.

But just before dark, the lights began to be turned off at the mall, and they were locking up; most of the cars were gone, and suddenly there was nothing to do but leave this place, leave without Adam, go home without my little boy. And then, for the first time, I felt that hole, the gaping hole in my stomach, that felt like the wind was blowing through it, that my life was blowing through it, as though I were so much sand in the wind and only by force of will could I keep myself from disintegrating. It is an all-consuming fear: your child is gone, and, God forbid, is it possible that there is nothing you can do?

You push the fear down, and you move forward, resolutely: of course there are things you can do. You will find that child. Let's go. Let's get the flyers out, let's muster the troops, let's sound the call to battle. My child is somewhere and he needs me and by all that is holy I will do what my child needs and bring him back to me.

But late at night the fear creeps back as you lie silently in your bed, knowing that you will not sleep tonight, wondering if your wife is asleep and knowing she is not, feeling like you are falling, feeling consumed by an awful, nauseating, dizzying, overwhelming loneliness. As indescribably painful as it has been, all these years, to deal with the death of that lovely boy, those days when we did not know where in the universe he was, whether he was in the hands of some madman, suffering God-knows-what pain, those days of not knowing were the worst.

In those days I understood true, blinding, paralyzing fear.

It is now twenty years since I died the thousand deaths that a parent of a missing child suffers, and in those twenty years I have seen the look of that fear in the faces of so many other parents, ravenous for information, desperate to find their missing children.

I know it's not right, and I know it's not fair, but I will admit this to you now: there are some cases that affect me more than others. I don't know why that is -- something in a mother's plea as she holds your hand and tells you little things she remembers about her daughter: how she laughed, how she smelled, where she liked to Rollerblade. Something in a father's downturned eyes as he sits before you, afraid to look at you directly, afraid to start crying because he fears he'll never stop, feeling he has to be inhumanly strong for his child. Something in that first photo you see of a missing child, a photo hurriedly pulled from a family album or ripped from a frame on the mantel, a photo of a child who by all rights should be driving her parents crazy right now because she refuses to turn off the TV and go to sleep.

There are some cases that affect you more than others. At those moments, you freeze in your tracks and say, we have got to find this child. Now, here, this is where I draw the line. This time, the kidnapper is not going to get away with it. The son of a bitch will pay. This time, we will stop him. Enough is enough.

This was one of those cases.

Because this time, we would go to battle with evil itself.

The missing-child stories that reach the public's consciousness seem to come in waves. The summer and fall of 1993 was one of those times. It seemed every time you picked up the paper, another child had been abducted. In Northern California the abduction of eleven-year-old Polly Klaas -- a man had actually snuck into her home, into a slumber party she was having with her friends, and dragged her away while her mother slept down the hall -- sent a chill through every parent's heart everywhere. The fact that the case was trumpeted by a parade of celebrities, including Winona Rider and Robin Williams, kept it high in the public consciousness.

This was also the summer when twelve-year-old Sara Wood disappeared in upstate New York. She was last seen bike-riding home from vacation Bible school, and that afternoon police found her bike and papers strewn by the side of the road, another image that cast an indelible imprint. The proximity to New York meant that the parents had access to the morning talk shows, which picked up the case and ran with it. Being from upstate New York myself, I also knew some of the cops involved in the case, and I was drawn into it as well.

The summer had started with a case of an adorable six-year-old, whom I'll call Nancy. (We named her at the time she was missing, of course, but her parents have asked that we stop using her real name publicly, so I'll leave it out here.) Nancy and two friends were sitting in a driveway when a man approached and -- I swear to God -- offered them candy. He then grabbed Nancy and drove away with her. The cops, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and America's Most Wanted launched a massive search. We broadcast satellite alerts out to cover the region, blanketing the state with media coverage.

After fifty-one hours, the kidnapper felt the heat and dropped Nancy off at a public phone booth.

She called her mom, and we joined that rare celebration, that wonderful moment when a stranger abduction ends in a tearful, loving homecoming.

A few days later, I sat down with Nancy for a little talk.

"What did the man say to you?" I asked her.

"He said, 'Do you want some candy?' " Nancy replied.

"And what did you say?"

"Yes." An embarrassed smile crossed her beautiful little face.

"Oooh," I said, trying not to sound mean. "Big mistake, huh?"

"Yeah!" she said with a nervous laugh.

"Then what happened?"

"I come with him, and he dragged me and tossed me into the car."

"Bet you were scared, huh. Then what happened?"

"I had to go down on the floor."

"And he drove away?"

"Uh-huh."

"What did you think was happening to you?"

Nancy fell silent. "Being kidnapped," she said, finally.

"He told you what?"

"Don't move a muscle."

"Don't move a muscle?"

"Not even one."

"Not even one," I repeated. "Bet you were scared. You know, other kids are going to be watching this. If you could say something to those kids about strangers who come up to you, what would you say to those kids?"

"Don't listen to them."

"And what if they want to give you candy?"

"Say no."

"And then what?"

"Go to the house what you're close to."

"Good advice. And what do you think should happen to the man?"

Her little face brightened. "I think he should go to jail for a hundred years!"

I thought, from your mouth to God's ear, little darling. From your mouth to God's ear.

It will haunt me to my dying day that, at the same moment I was sitting and talking with Nancy -- having the wonderful joy of knowing that we had helped bring a missing child home safely -- at that same moment, a thousand miles away, a woman named Sue North was walking over to a friend's home to get her daughter Jeanna and bring her home.

But Jeanna was not there.

And the nightmare was about to begin again.

She was a tiny baby, weighing just a little more than six pounds. The hair that would later turn to beautiful, fluffy waves of auburn started out jet black. That tiny head was peeking out of

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  • PublisherAtria
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 0671019953
  • ISBN 13 9780671019952
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages320
  • Rating

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