U.S. NEWS
NEWS, OPINION + ANALYSIS
New technologies are being used to revolutionize the hunt for America’s missing persons
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WHEN 6-YEAR-OLD ADAM WALSH WENT MISSING from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, in 1981, local police didn’t immediately start a search, the National Crime Information Center didn’t track missing children and it took the FBI seven days before they showed up to tell the boy’s parents that the agency wasn’t “in the kid business.”
“No one helped us in 1981, when Adam was kidnapped,” his father, John Walsh, told Newsweek. “The little Hollywood, Florida, police had no idea what they were doing...They didn’t search for Adam that night. I was so worried when it got dark.”
Walsh ended up designing his own missing persons flyer and took up residence at the local police department as he launched his own search effort for his son. But it was too late. Adam Walsh’s severed head was found two weeks after he disappeared, in a drainage canal in Indian River County, Florida.
The search for America’s missing has evolved since then—and changes in technology, law enforcement approaches and involvement of civilian investigators are making a difference. Yet, as the United States marked National Missing Persons Day on February 3, the challenge remains enormous. Each year, more than 600,000 people are reported missing in America, according to the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUs) database.
“ With the changes that we’re seeing today, the needle has moved,” said John Bischoff, vice president of the missing children division at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “It has moved certainly in a positive direction in terms of the speed in which we’re able to engage with the public, the speed at which we’re able to pull in lead information... And we’re seeing faster turnarounds in how quickly we are able to find missing children and get that information to law enforcement. Get that child back to a safe place,” he told Newsweek.
Yet so many children and adults go missing every year, even this progress has not been enough to keep up.
Shifting Laws and Ideas
In the decades since his son’s disappearance, John Walsh has been best known for his roles hosting TV shows, including America’s Most Wanted and, currently, In Pursuit With John Walsh on Investigation Discovery. However, Walsh is most proud of the many changes in national legislation that he helped to bring about, which have fundamentally shifted the way law enforcement now searches for missing children and adults.
In the years since Adam disappeared, Walsh has played roles passing a law requiring the National Crime Info
