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Box Set: Flowers for Mrs. Luskin and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh Books One and Two
Box Set: Flowers for Mrs. Luskin and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh Books One and Two
Box Set: Flowers for Mrs. Luskin and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh Books One and Two
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Box Set: Flowers for Mrs. Luskin and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh Books One and Two

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FLOWERS FOR MRS. LUSKIN: The divorce was vicious, but at least it hadn't turned deadly. Then came the flowers.

At the best house in the best neighborhood in Hollywood, Florida, Marie Luskin answered her front door and saw a deliveryman holding a floral arrangement. From behind the leaves and petals he pulled out a pistol and pointed it at her. At the time, she was embroiled in the biggest divorce in the county's history.
But why didn't the gunman shoot and kill her? According to Marie, he demanded all her money and then hit her with the gun. According to the prosecutor, he shot her. But the jury agreed on one thing: that Marie's wealthy, estranged husband, Paul, was clearly behind a murder-for-hire. Then the truth came out.

THE UNSOLVED MURDER OF ADAM WALSH

A CASCADE OF CONVENIENT FICTIONS
A famous old crime. No linking physical evidence. For decades, 6-year-old Adam Walsh’s murder was a mystery. Suddenly police declared a solution resurrected on a theory they’d long discredited, clearly a convenient fiction to benefit the victim’s family, who at a live nationally-televised police press conference were tearful and grateful.

The national media bought it; the local press knew better. As Fred Grimm wrote in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on July 30, 2021, days after the 40th anniversary of Adam’s disappearance:

“A sensational alternate theory blamed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was living in Miami in 1981. But in 2008, despite no new evidence, Hollywood police hung the crime on long-dead Ottis Toole.
“The only mystery left unsolved was how any cop could have possibly believed Ottis Toole.”

Before the 2008 announcement, Adam’s father John Walsh had bitterly complained, often crying, that there was “no justice, no justice” for his family. But while Toole was still alive and in state custody, and could have been charged with Adam’s murder and brought to trial on the same information, Walsh had belittled the idea:

“A lot of people still think Ottis Elwood Toole did it. But he and Henry Lee Lucas confessed to a lot of murders they didn’t do. It’s a great ploy for convicts: They read about a murder and they’re in solitary. They call the police, desperate to clear a murder, and they say, ‘Fly me there and buy me a pizza,’ and they get out of their cells for two days!”
—South Florida magazine, July 1992

Police had statements from six separate police witnesses at the mall who said they saw Dahmer at the time Adam disappeared, but police couldn’t confirm that Dahmer had been in town at the time. Then reporter Art Harris, working with ABC Primetime, found a Miami police report with Dahmer’s name 20 days before Adam disappeared. Still the police weren’t interested. But by 2008, both Dahmer and Toole were dead, there couldn’t be a trial against either, so what did it matter? Although the police’s conclusion was eye-rolling, it seemed harmless.

Grimm was wrong only in that police’s belief in Toole was the only mystery left. Actually, it became the least of the mysteries.
By closing the case, probably without realizing it, police unlatched a door, locked nearly 30 years before, guarding a previously-impenetrable secret that possibly only one man, maybe two, seemed to know about—not even the detectives. At that point you just needed to know to ask to open the door.

Only one reporter did. Who knew what would be inside?

Inside Harris discovered another, much larger convenient fiction, but this one not at all harmless. It was the key to the story because in looking back it explained everything irregular in the case investigation that had followed. As long as the secret was kept, the case could never be solved. Harris was then working with The Miami Herald, but even when they confronted them, the chief medical examiner who’d hidden it, the police—and most surprisingly, even the Walshes all turned blind eyes.

What was the never-meant-to-be-seen truth i

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 7, 2016
ISBN9781311576774
Box Set: Flowers for Mrs. Luskin and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh Books One and Two
Author

Arthur Jay Harris

A feature film, SPEED KILLS, based on my book, opened in November 2018! You can stream it.Watch the trailer:https://www.screendaily.com/news/first-look-trailer-john-travolta-in-speedboat-drama-speed-kills-exclusive/5129868.articleTrue crime writers primarily pursue the question "Why?" Why did somebody commit the crime? How could he get away with it for so long?In my true crime books, I pursue a different primary question: about the case's outcome, I ask, "Are you sure?"Every true crime story has loose ends that naggingly just don't fit into the constructed narrative. They make for a challenge: stay with your narrative and ignore or play them down, or follow them and risk your narrative.There is an essential messiness to true crime that a reader of it must both resist and embrace. But that's why we read it, right? If you want everything well-tied up at the end, read crime fiction. To start, give up on the idea that a story must have a bottom. How can there not be a bottom? Yes, theoretically there is a bottom, but to us on the outside looking in, it's just not accessible. In reality, what we think are story bottoms are really false bottoms; beneath them, if we dare to look, are more bottoms. That wisdom, I should add, did not come to me easily. My stories are always less about the crimes themselves than my endurance to stay on the rollercoaster rides to find the truth. Countless times I'm upended, and I never see it coming.Yet the job of a guide, narrator and investigator, such as myself, remains to organize that mess. However, I also scrutinize the work of the other guides, narrators, and investigators on the story. When I approach a story, I look for, then follow, significant pathways not taken: people who law enforcement couldn't get or weren't then ready to talk; witnesses who weren't asked everything important; and things the authorities were blind to or simply missed.Then there are the stories in which the official investigators suppressed facts. On those, I am unrelenting in pursuing public records (always politely, politeness is essential in all information gathering). In obscure files and from additional reporting based on them, I've discovered a few rare things that were never known outside of law enforcement.Always remember that to some extent, every interested party in a crime story is intentionally misleading us. They tell mostly true things but withhold or lie about other facts that are contrary to their interests. Trust only the people with no skin in the game not to intentionally mislead.In each of my books, I first bring you up to speed by composing the story from what's on the record, then I make a narrative switch to first person and have you follow my investigation. When I pick up the right trail, it becomes obvious. I always advance my stories, including Speed Kills and Until Proven Innocent, but the two books in which I made the most significant (and contrarian) contributions are Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret: The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh, and Flowers for Mrs. Luskin.And now, because it seems obligatory in such biographical summaries, among the television shows I have appeared on with my stories include: ABC Primetime; Anderson Cooper 360; Nancy Grace; Ashleigh Banfield; The Lineup; Inside Edition; Catherine Crier; Snapped; City Confidential; Cold Blood; and Prison Diaries.

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