Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And if you listened all the way to the end

of last week's episode, you heard me say that Britt and I were going to be off this week.

But per the usual, I'm not just going to leave you hanging. I'm going to give you something

on a Monday. And thankfully, we have more precedent-setting stories to share with you all.

When a child goes missing today, we know what to do. Call the police, issue an amber alert,

together a search team, and start looking. But back in 1981, when a six-year-old boy disappeared

from a department store, none of those things were in place. And no one, certainly not his

frantic, terrified, overwhelmed parents knew what to do, where to go, or how to find him.

Today, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children supports families of missing kids

and helps bring those kids home. But before there was a National Center for Missing and Exploited

Children, there was Adam Walsh. This is his story.

It was shortly after noon on July 27, 1981, when Rave Walsh and her six-year-old son, Adam,

headed to their local Sears department store in Hollywood, Florida. So, Rave could look

at these lamps that they had on sale. Now, Adam is about as excited about lamp shopping

as you can imagine. And he begged, literally begged his mother to let him stay with this

group of boys playing video games at the display in the toy department. And since she

was only going around the corner, Rave said yes. She was gone five, maybe ten minutes tops,

because the store didn't even have the lamps in stock that she wanted. But when she came

back to meet Adam at the video game display, he was gone. All the boys were gone, actually.

Now if your parent listening to this whose lost sight of a kid for even a second in a

mall or grocery store, then you can appreciate Rave's panic in this moment. She immediately

started searching the store for Adam, up one aisle and down another. Over to the lamps

...