The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh - 13
Episode 13: What Jimmy Campbell and Mrs. Walsh told the police about their affair
Or start at the series beginning and binge from there: (Link to Episode 1)
This is what was in the Hollywood Police file, revealed years later:
Jimmy Campbell had been helping with the search, even answering calls to a police tip line at a desk inside the detective bureau. A week and a half after the disappearance, the detectives who interviewed John and Reve decided they also wanted to speak to him.
It was a Friday evening, days before the Monday evening when the head would be found. Something Jimmy said stopped Detective Jack Hoffman in his tracks:
He told them John had often been away from home for long stretches, working in the Bahamas, and that living in their house made John feel comfortable. He was additional protection for Reve and Adam.
But after John got a new job that was local, just a short distance from home, John asked him to find a new place to live. Jimmy stalled, in part because he had nowhere to go or money to get a place, but he did leave. After that, he crashed on friends’ couches, in a cheap hotel room, and at the ocean hotel beach cabana where he worked, renting sailboats for the day to tourists. The cabana wasn’t air-conditioned, and this was in July. But the last place he wanted to go was back to his parents’ house, in Hollywood.
Two weeks after Jimmy had left the Walshes’, Adam disappeared.
This had not gone unnoticed.
Five months before the Miami Herald published Lt. Hynds’s quote that the Walshes were “the All-American family,” he knew that Campbell had said he’d been in affair with Mrs. Walsh “up until the kidnapping of Adam Walsh.” As well, Hynds knew it four days after Hoffman did this interview, when he went to the morgue with John Monahan to see if he could identify the remains.
Later that Friday evening, Campbell consented to a polygraph test, which he passed, but detectives asked him to take a second one, done on Monday, August 10. He passed that one, too. Later that evening, the severed head was found. He was asked again about the affair — but this time gave a different answer:
Adam was 6½, so Campbell said here that he and Reve had been having sex for up to five years, not just three. And that it continued even after the Walshes had asked him to leave their home. Also, their sexual relationship had begun before Jimmy had moved into their house.
Later that Friday night, the polygrapher asked John Walsh if he’d had affairs:
After Walsh became a TV host, the supermarket tabloids got tips that he had younger girlfriends and chased him to get photos, which they published. He told Larry King in 2003 that he’d since apologized to his wife and had recently been in therapy:
In his second interview, Campbell said he’d told Reve what he’d said in the first interview:
Even after Jimmy left the house he would still visit:
Also, Campbell described where he was when he found out that Adam was missing. He’d been part of shooting a video for the hotel where he worked, which showed off the sailboats he rented:
Reve hadn’t tried to call John, but Campbell said she’d tried to call him.
Detectives wanted to ask Reve about it the next Monday but the Walshes flew to New York to appear on Good Morning America, and that was the day the remains were found. A memorial service followed, and it was another week before they spoke to her.
Jimmy had said it was serious.
The finding of the remains meant the case was now a homicide. Detectives could not ignore these things Jimmy had also said: he and Reve had discussed her leaving John and taking Adam to live with Jimmy; and that after the Walshes (if not just John) had forced Jimmy to leave, that the affair had continued.
And then something else they couldn’t ignore: Reve had lied when Hoffman first asked whether she’d had an affair. Jimmy had said that he’d already told her that he’d told the polygrapher about it. Pressed, Reve confirmed the affair.
The cops had just searched full-out for her child for two agonizing weeks and then confirmed he’d been murdered, and a week later she’s lying to them?
Was this the key to the abduction? At that point they had little else. Detectives mounted the pressure on Campbell.
In Tears of Rage, John wrote:
Um, hadn’t John admitted to the police that he’d had sex outside his marriage, too?
The police’s interrogation of Jimmy continued until John Walsh hired a lawyer to represent him. And not just any lawyer, but Joe Varon, the county’s premiere criminal defense attorney, locally famous for having represented Meyer Lansky. Ron Hickman, the co-lead detective, told me that Varon got $5,000.
When Walsh paid for the attorney to represent Campbell’s interests, was part of the reason to also protect the Walshes’ interests? A kidnapping or murder prosecution against Campbell and a public trial would have been personally devastating to them and the missing children movement. Even if the case didn’t produce a conviction.
Two years later, Varon was still representing Campbell:
The TV movie had none of this. That’s because it wasn’t a True Crime story. It wasn’t told from an objective point of view, nor even the police’s point of view.
Well, yes, to a point.
Actually, the movie was a polemic:
Of the polemic story? No, he wasn’t.
And that comment, made in October 1983, assumed that the Walshes had even told the producers about Campbell.
And then there was Adam’s T-ball shirt with the name of his team, the Campbell Rentals. The movie scrubbed it. It was literally whitewashed.
Three years later, for a story commemorating five years since Adam’s disappearance, which mentioned that the sequel movie was in production, Walsh dissed Campbell:
“Unjustified” and “malicious.” Still, Walsh didn’t accuse Campbell of lying, as the Walshes’ attorney had in 1983. Because although the police case file was then still years from being made public, Reve had already admitted to detectives that she smoked marijuana, had an affair with Campbell, and that he’d been at the Walsh home on the morning of Adam’s disappearance.
In advance of the airing of the sequel, JoBeth Williams, who played Reve in both films, talked about speaking with Reve to prepare her for the role:
By the time the sequel was shot, allegations of the affair had been public for years, even if they were only reported in South Florida. Much of the sequel is about how John and Reve as a couple coped with life after Adam’s death. But again, the movie gives no hint of the affair, its aftermath, and the embarrassment of its public exposure.
For what was said to be a fact-based story, what was the responsibility of the filmmakers? The producers, the screenwriter, the actors playing John and Reve? The affair is the 800-pound gorilla in the room they ignored. A film that included it would have been that much more dramatic, that much more honest, and still could have concluded with how the couple had stayed together, which they did, if not forgiven each other or tried to. Viewers would have understood and really cried their eyes out in sympathy for the Walshes.
What a great movie that would have been.
But what do I know?
The sequel did portray a post-murder rift between the couple, but because John was working too hard and was away from home too much, trying to influence lawmakers to pass missing children’s legislation. One TV critic wrote:
Maybe JoBeth Williams really did know more about Reve’s life than she let on. Months later, doing promotion for the release of a feature film, she was quoted:
Next on Adam Walsh: America’s Missing Child:
You’ve gotten this far, you’ll want to keep reading, there’s so much more about this story you had no idea about. And we’re only into Part 2, of six parts. FOLLOW, or SUBSCRIBE now for FREE and you won’t miss any new episode. But if you’re the type who pays for subscriptions on Substack, maybe you might consider me too? (I wouldn’t mind in the least.)
Another compelling piece! Clearly Campbell would have had a detrimental effect on the wholesome ‘all American family’ narrative and missing children message.