More Sinned Against

I’m trying hard not to keep a close watch on the latest developments of the Shawn Hornbeck/Ben Ownby case, but it’s difficult. The news is to be expected, but it’s no less shocking and sad.

Meanwhile, it looks as if another celebrated case may be reopened:

Did Jeffrey Dahmer confess to all his crimes? There’s a call to reopen the investigation into Milwaukee’s most notorious killer.There

are new questions about Dahmer’s criminal history before he returned to

Milwaukee and never-reported details that some believe link Dahmer to

one of the United States’ most notorious cold cases.

The boy at the center of that cold case is now a household name. Who

can forget the toothless grin of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, the Florida boy

abducted, dismembered and dumped in a drainage canal in 1981. A Miami author is making the case that Dahmer may be responsible for the Walsh slaying.

For now, I’m very much in the “maybe” camp. The youngest of Dahmer’s victims was 14, and he was convicted of molesting a 13-year old boy, but Walsh, at 6, was considerably younger. But there’s also a nine-year gap between Dahmer’s first and second killing, and perhaps an impulsive crime may have deterred him, at least for a little while.