A witness to one of South Florida's most famous kidnapping and murder cases has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to obtain an investigative report that was never made public.
It's been nearly 30 years since Adam Walsh disappeared from the Hollywood Mall, in the summer of 1981, but Willis Morgan, who says he saw and even conversed with Jeffrey Dahmer on the day Walsh went missing, believes the case was never truly solved.
On Tuesday, Morgan, a former printing press operator for the Miami Herald, filed a lawsuit in Broward County to force a three year old report to be made public.
The report, prepared by retired Miami Beach homicide detective Joe Matthews and completed in 2008, fingered drifter Otis Toole as the killer of the 6-year-old Walsh.
Matthews, a friend of John Walsh, Adam's father and the host of "America's Most Wanted," turned the report over to the Hollywood Police Department and prosecutors, who used it to officially close the case, according to the lawsuit.
Morgan believes Dahmer, who killed at least 17 people before he met his demise in prison in 1994, killed Walsh and would like to take a look at the Matthews report to bolster his claim.
So now Morgan has sued Matthews, Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner and State Attorney Michael Satz to make the Matthews report public.
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"[Morgan] believes that Dahmer is the murderer of Adam Walsh, that Otis Toole is not the murderer, and that for reasons that are unclear, John Walsh, has wanted police and law enforcement authorities to name Toole as the murderer even though Toole did not commit the murder," the lawsuit reads.
Morgan claims Matthews destroyed all electronic versions of the report and has just one printed copy, in the hands of a co-author in Cuba. He said he's attempted to obtain the report but Matthews has yet to hand it over.
Morgan claims that since the report was used to help close the case, it is now public record. Hollywood Police and the Broward State Attorney's Office didn't keep copies of the report either, according to the lawsuit.
Morgan claims he saw Dahmer in the Hollywood Mall's Sears store and even had a brief conversation with him on the day of the Adam Walsh disappearance. "Hi there. Nice day, isn't it?" Dahmer said, according to Morgan.
The mall, located across the street from the Hollywood Police station, has since been demolished and replaced by a Target store.
