A Millionaire Has An Affair. His Wife Throws Him Out. She Gets The Mansion, The Business, The Cash. His Parents' Business. His Parents' Cash. She Gets Shot And Doesn't Know It. The Bullet Disappears. He Goes To Prison. His Parents Flee The Country. He Weds The Other Woman Behind Bars. Has There Ever Been A Case Like This? -The Miami Herald "Flower delivery for Marie Luskin " That was a curious surprise. Her husband Paul used to send her flowers all the time, but those days had passed forever. A year and a half before, following Paul's affair with another woman, Marie kicked him out of the house his parents had helped them buy-the biggest house in Emerald Hills, which was the most luxurious section of Hollywood, Florida-then filed for divorce. And what a spectacular divorce. If nastiness could be judged quantitatively, the civil war of the Luskins was the meanest, most aggressive divorce Broward County had ever seen. "Who is it from?" "There's no name on the card." "What florist are you from?" "Emerald Hills Florist." Still apprehensive, she cracked open the wooden door just enough to see him. With a sudden incongruous movement, the man stuck his foot in the doorway and thrust the flowers at her with his left hand. As she reached to take them, he stuck a silver pistol in her face. Marie started shrieking uncontrollably. She tried to run inside, but the man grabbed her, one arm around her neck, grasping for her mouth with his hand. The flower pot fell to the black-and-white marble parquet floor and shattered, pink petals scattering. "Shut up Shut up " he yelled, closing the door behind him. "I'm not going to hurt you. Shut the hell up, stop screaming " She finally stopped when his hand formed a gag hard around her mouth, and she realized the gun was at her temple. She couldn't stop looking at the gun, which framed his cruel eyes. Then the man made an odd demand: "Give me all your cash Give me all your cash Show me where you keep your cash I'm not going to hurt you, but if you don't cooperate, I'm gonna blow your brains out " With the man clenching her long blond hair, the gun to the side of her head, she led him upstairs to a small room where she showed him a hundred-dollar bill. "Where's all your cash Give me all your cash " "It's in the bank " she whined. "It's in the bank This is it. This is all I have at home, I keep all my money in the bank " As the crescendo of voices in the Luskin house rose to a climax, exactly what happened next remains in dispute. Marie fell to the floor, a terrible pain in the back of her head. She didn't lose consciousness, but pretended to. Meekly, she opened her eyes and noticed there was blood all over her. She thought she was going to die... The man had left without taking anything. The issue would become, had she been hit like she thought, or shot? That would seem to be the difference between a robbery and an attempt to kill her that might have descended from her husband. Doctors found three minuscule pieces of lead in her bloody scalp. If they were fragments from a bullet, could she have been shot without realizing it? Or were they from the gun or whatever it was that hit her, or the decorative metal hair barrette she was wearing that had broken, separating its clip that had been held together by lead-based solder? Also, if a gun was fired in that small room, where was the rest of the bullet? The police didn't find it. And why hadn't it shattered one of the room's three full-length mirrors? That would become the story's essential mystery, and the answer would determine whether Paul and three alleged accomplices would go to prison. It must have been a shot, a federal court jury determined, because they convicted all four of attempted murder-for-hire. Doubting it, to discover the truth for himself, Miami true crime author Arthur Jay Harris went on an Odyssey through the heights and depths of Miami and Baltimore. To the very last page, what he found kep

"DAD, I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS CASE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?" A TRUE STORY Breathless, a woman's call to 911 interrupted a quiet night in the horse country suburbs: "I'm stabbed to death. Please " Did somebody stab you? asked the operator. "Yes And my husband, my baby " Within minutes, officers arrived at her remote ranch house but didn't know whether an assailant was still present. Announcing themselves, they got no response, then entered anyway, guns drawn, and began a dangerous, tense search, room by room. Then they heard a baby's scream. Although the house wasn't yet fully cleared, they followed the wailing to the master bedroom where they found, tied and gagged, her husband and elderly father-in-law. They and their 18-month-old all had been shot point-blank in the head-but were still alive. Shocked, the officers called out to bring in paramedics, who had to crawl through the living room because the house still had not been completely cleared. Hurrying, and contrary to usual procedures, the officers spread out. One found a locked closet door; four officers gathered, and with guns ready, one of them kicked it in. Behind it they found their 911 caller-still holding the phone. "Oh, shit," said the kicker. In the history of Davie, Florida, there had never been such a savage and sociopathic crime, and police and homicide prosecutor Brian Cavanagh were determined to resolve it. For three years, they had two suspects under surveillance, then arrest. Both faced the death penalty. But as the legal case progressed, Cavanagh began to doubt that the defendants were partners. Possibly one had been a victim of the other, as well. In 1963, Cavanagh's dad, Tom, a Manhattan lieutenant of detectives, had a famous case called the "Career Girls Murder," two women in their twenties found horribly mutilated in their Upper East Side apartment. The newspapers played the story big, a random killer on the loose, meanwhile Tom and his precinct detectives had been unable to solve it. Months after the murder, Brooklyn detectives declared the case solved; they'd taken a signed confession from a man with a low IQ. Their additional proof was a photo in his wallet; it was of one of the girls he killed, he said. The man quickly recanted, although that didn't much matter to the Brooklyn detectives. As soon as he heard some of the details of the confession, Tom disbelieved it; the man didn't fit the profile. Needing to work quietly under the most difficult of circumstances, Tom sent out his own detectives to do the impossible: identify the girl in the picture. It had been taken in some sort of park setting. They first showed it to botanists, who recognized the type of trees in the background and where they grew. From that they could guess at where the park was. Targeting nearby high schools, the detectives then showed the photo to teachers to see if any could recognize the girl. One did. When they found the girl, she asked, "Where did you get that?" After all that impossibly good work, Tom and his detectives caught a break and found the real killer of the Career Girls. Until then, Tom said, he hadn't believed that police could make such mistakes. Afterward, as a result, New York State outlawed the death penalty. As well, this remarkable story inspired a TV movie and series starring a character playing Cavanagh's role. His name was Lt. Theo Kojak. As a child, Brian Cavanagh had watched his dad's anguish throughout that situation. Now, he had a case that was remarkably similar-except that he was potentially on the wrong side. Once his confidence level in the guilt of one of his defendants dropped to a level of precarious uncertainty, Brian showed the same courage as did his dad so many years earlier-proving that the son was the equal of his father. Arthur Jay Harris is the Miami author of the investigative true crime books Jeffrey Dahmer's Dirty Secret: The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh, Speed Kills, and Flowers for Mrs. Luskin.

PHOTOGRAPHS INCLUDED "Ocean racing superstar Don Aronow loved it when writers called him a living legend. His life of adventure is well known. It is his death that baffles police. "He was afraid of nothing, no one. In his final hour, when a stranger spoke to him in riddles and talked about killing, Aronow laughed. He felt no fear, until he lowered the window of his white Mercedes and looked death in the face. And then it was too late." -- Edna Buchanan, in The Miami Herald Bordering a canal leading to Biscayne Bay, a short dead-end stretch of Northeast 188th Street in Miami was the crossroad of the Americas in the mid-1980s for the biggest drug smugglers into the U.S.; the guys who ripped off the drug smugglers; the biggest South American drug suppliers; competing federal agencies investigating major drug trafficking and money laundering; the CIA, covertly advancing the Contra war against Central American land reform (which they called Cuban-sponsored communism); some of the highest national politicians in the country-and what attracted them all there, the most famous fast-boat companies in the world. On that splashy boulevard of (wet) dreams factories built marine magazine-ad ultra-sleek gleaming speedboats ostensibly for racers, royalty to show off on the Cote d'Azur, and wealthy divorced or divorcing middle-age overweight men to pick up South Florida's sun-soaked hot chicks in string bikinis (while the rest of us unwashed wondered how they did it), but the boat builders' real business was fueling an arms race between smugglers, who purchased them for cash, and Drug War feds to catch smugglers. The storied creator of the quantum-leap faster Cigarette boat, against which all other "penis" boats were measured, as well as a two-time powerboat racing world champion and the personification of a sport in which people crazily risked their lives and bodies to win-not to mention a wicked ladies' man to boot, Don Aronow was shot and killed in broad daylight in front of his factory in 1987. Police found they didn't just have a murder mystery-they had Murder on the Orient Express. FEBRUARY 3, 1987 USA Racing Team, Miami, Florida Someone entered the front door and walked in front of salesman Jerry Engleman's desk. He asked to speak with Don Aronow, then looked right at him without recognizing him. "What do you want?" Aronow said. "I've been trying to get ahold of you," the man said. He said he worked for a very rich man, with an Italian surname, who wanted to make an appointment to buy a boat. "I never heard of him," Aronow answered. Engelman could tell something else was happening, and he thought Aronow was trying to find out what. Then the conversation got weird. He was proud of his boss, he said. "He picked me up off the street when I was sixteen and took care of me. I'd even kill for my boss." For the moment, none of the observers thought anything more of it. Minutes later, Aronow drove his new 1987 white Mercedes 560 sports coupe across the street, found Mike Britton, a marine supplier, and asked if he could help him at his new house. Driving out of his parking space forward, with Aronow behind him, Britton saw a dark Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows, about ten yards away, facing east as Britton was about to head west. The driver's window was down, and Britton could see the driver looking at him. At their closest, when they passed, they were just a few feet apart, keeping eye contact the entire time. Then Britton drove on, about fifty yards. Then he heard gunshots. Britton finished parking his truck, then raced back toward Aronow. In a hurry, the Lincoln passed him, going west. It had turned around. By the time Britton got to the car, he found Aronow's driver's side window down, the automatic transmission in neutral, and Aronow's foot pressed against the accelerator like a rock, forcing the engine to rev at its most shrill. Apparently, Aronow had stopped to kibitz with his killer.

INCLUDES PHOTOS AND DOCUMENT EVIDENCE FROM PUBLIC RECORDS THE BODY IDENTIFIED AS ADAM WALSH IS NOT HIM. IS ADAM STILL ALIVE? A TRUE STORY ALSO READ BOOK ONE, FINDING THE KILLER: WAS THE MAN IN THE MALL THE MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERER IN HISTORY? THERE IS ALSO A SPECIAL SINGLE EDITION, A CONDENSATION OF BOOKS ONE AND TWO, FOR BRIEFER READING: FIRST THE POLICE FOUND THE BODY. THEN THE KILLER. NEITHER WAS RIGHT. BOOK ONE shows that in 1981, in Florida, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer kidnapped 6-year-old Adam Walsh and that police named the wrong suspect in Adam's presumed murder. BOOK TWO begins with a Facebook friend request after I'd published Book One: I thought you might be interested to know that J. Dahmer did kidnap me... I have to give you credence outright for laying most of the blame on the man behind my own abduction. Sincerely, Adam J. Walsh Wasn't Adam Walsh dead, wasn't that what this story was all about? Two weeks after Adam had been last seen at the Hollywood Mall, a severed head had been found in a canal 125 miles north, and a medical examiner there said it was Adam. Nothing else of him was ever found. He'd had a funeral service, the community and his parents cried their eyes out, and the Walshes dedicated themselves to helping find other missing children. And at a 2008 press conference, they'd endorsed the Hollywood Police chief's decision to finally close the case by declaring that Ottis Toole, not Dahmer, killed Adam. For a week, I listened to the man who said he was Adam Walsh. So much of everything else in the story had turned out contrary to what the police and the Walshes had insisted on. How could I just dismiss this? The man said Dahmer had kept him for possibly a month. He let him hear the news about the discovery of Adam, dead. After that, Dahmer tortured him horribly and left him near-dead himself. Unconscious, he'd been rescued but knew no details. Another family took him in and raised him, with their surname. The man was clearly sincere, but was he self-deluded? Could I possibly verify anything he had said? It seemed impossible. Dismissing him would have been the easiest thing. Rather than prove that he was Adam Walsh, I first tried to prove that he wasn't. The upstate M.E.'s report was in public record. He'd made an ID by comparing the teeth in the head to Adam's dental records. Also, a Walsh family friend had made an ID. But John Walsh wrote that the friend didn't immediately recognize him, he said it was Adam only after seeing that he was missing a top front tooth. When police closed the case, all the Walsh case files became public record. The child's autopsy was done in Ft. Lauderdale and I got to see the file. It was stunning: it had no report of the autopsy, no forensic dental report, and no copy of Adam's dental records. Nor were they in any other official file. The M.E. who did the autopsy responded to me only in writing that he never wrote a report. There were some photos of the child's teeth, though. They showed, as the upstate M.E. wrote, that of the child's top two front teeth, the left was in most of the way, and the right had just erupted. But Adam's famous Missing photo clearly showed that he had neither of his top front teeth. That picture, I found, had been taken about a month before he disappeared. In the police file was the best last seen alive description of Adam. Of his top front teeth, it said that his left had just emerged, and his right was missing. In the found head, the top front tooth that's mostly in is the left, and it's the right that just erupted. Could Adam's teeth have grown in that much in the 14 days after he disappeared? Unlikely. Plus, the M.E. who did the autopsy estimated that the child (Adam, he said) had been dead possibly all of that time. Now I had to keep going, could I determine if this man indeed was Adam Walsh? There were many more su

BOOK ONE: FINDING THE KILLER WAS THE MAN IN THE MALL THE MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERER IN HISTORY? A TRUE STORY ALSO READ BOOK TWO, FINDING THE VICTIM: THE BODY IDENTIFIED AS ADAM WALSH IS NOT HIM. IS ADAM STILL ALIVE? THERE IS ALSO A SPECIAL SINGLE EDITION, A CONDENSED VERSION OF BOOKS ONE AND TWO, FOR BRIEFER READING: FIRST THE POLICE FOUND THE BODY. THEN THE KILLER. NEITHER WAS RIGHT. In summer 1981 6-year-old Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh, vanished from a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida. After two frantic weeks in which the entire community searched for him, a child's severed head declared to be Adam's was found 125 miles north in a drainage area. No other body parts were ever found. In 1991, Milwaukee police arrested Jeffrey Dahmer and found 11 severed heads in his apartment. He admitted then that in the summer of 1981 he'd lived in Miami 15 minutes from the Hollywood Mall. Dahmer denied killing Adam because, he said, he didn't have his own vehicle. But immediately after Dahmer's arrest two separate insistent witnesses went to Hollywood police and identified Dahmer as the man they saw at the mall on the day Adam disappeared. In 1981 they'd both told police what they'd seen but police had kept no record of their tips. One said Dahmer had approached him inside the mall in a drunken, threatening way. He'd followed him at a distance into the toy department of Sears, where Mrs. Walsh had said she'd left Adam. The other witness said he was outside and saw Dahmer grab and violently throw a protesting child into a blue van that screeched away. That matched what a 1981 witness had said about a blue van, and for the first month of the case, police had stopped every blue van they saw. Yet without seriously checking, Hollywood police simply believed the word of a manipulative serial killer when he said he didn't kill Adam Walsh. Investigative author and journalist Arthur Jay Harris did what Hollywood police wouldn't do: he traced Dahmer's movements in Miami and built a case against him. He learned that at the sub and pizza shop where he worked there was a blue van for deliveries that employees often took for their own use. Also, Dahmer often showed up for work in the morning drunk and was sent home. As well he discovered a police report dated 20 days before Adam's abduction in which Dahmer reported finding a dead body of a homeless man in the alley behind his shop. Dahmer had never mentioned this. When ABC Primetime and Harris entered a meter room in the alley behind the shop, where Dahmer said the homeless man had slept, they found an old lumberman's axe and a sledgehammer next to a huge amount of what a retired crime scene investigator identified as blood spatter. The homeless man had not bled. Was this evidence of other extreme violence by Dahmer? Even after an ABC producer informed Hollywood Police, they never bothered to enter that room, much less test the blood evidence. In 2008 Hollywood police announced the case was finally solved-incredibly, they said the killer was Ottis Toole, a drifter who in 1983 said he'd killed Adam but soon after had been dismissed as a suspect. Police presented no new evidence. Toole had not been able to tell police any specific true thing about the case, and much of his initial information was painfully wrong. He'd blamed Henry Lee Lucas for killing Adam, but Lucas was in jail that day. He said Adam's murder happened around January and he was wearing mittens It was July in sweltering South Florida. No DNA evidence was ever matched to him. Further, Toole had also confessed to hundreds of other murders for which he was never charged. But in closing the case police made public its entire case file. In it Harris found four more insistent witnesses who had also seen Adam, Dahmer, and a blue van in the same precise spot at Hollywood Mall that day in 1981. Inexplicably, Hollywood police had turned them all away.