August 1981, Hollywood, Fl. – the head of a child was found floating in a drainage canal. Two years passed, then Ottis Toole confessed his responsibility for the abduction, the rape, and the murder of six-year old Adam Walsh.[1] Toole stuck to the story for thirteen years until he died, legally innocent, of hepatitis. His investigators, who had used the “velvet glove” treatment that sometimes delivers a large profit, had discredited Toole’s word even though it corresponded perfectly with his reputation and with the evidence. Adam Walsh was refused justice, and his parents’ grief was all the more poignant.[2]
The psychologically-savvy velvet-glove treatment can be compared to Gay Talese’ New Journalist style in his story “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”[3] Sinatra was reporter-shy and evaded a direct interview: Talese attained a familiarity with the singer which a scripted interview might not have achieved by becoming familiar with a wide range of his acquaintances. Although the portrait charms and appears accurately drawn, a hole gapes in the story where the most important voice should be: Sinatra, like the convict Toole, has nothing to say in his own story. The absence of Sinatra’s voice, and the assumption that we could all the same know the truth of his character, is a belief which means the dissolution of justice in the courtroom. Once again, the emperor is out naked while a velvet-handed crowd admires his finely-tailored suit.
[1] John Walsh, Tears of Rage (New York: Pocket Books, 1997), 262.
[2] Ibid., 247, 284, 288.
[3] Gay Talese, “Frank Sinatra has a Cold,” Esquire, April 1966.
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