Towanda, Kansas
BY TIM POTTER
The Wichita Eagle
January 6, 2009
On Super Bowl Sunday in 1999, the year Adam Herrman went missing but no one reported it, one of his aunts says she saw the 11-year-old chained to a bathtub faucet at his Towanda mobile home.
It looked like he had handcuffs on, said his aunt, Kim Winslow. Winslow, now 48, said it was the last time she saw Adam.
Other close relatives of Adam's adoptive mother, Valerie Herrman of Derby, say they saw her abuse him over the years and that he was forced to sleep in a bathtub. In at least one instance, a relative reported alleged abuse to authorities.
Butler County sheriff's officers plan to bring in search dogs and ground-penetrating radar to help solve the mystery of what happened to Adam Herrman.
The Wichita-Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Child Unit received a tip about a month ago that the child had not been seen for nine years.
Detectives are investigating the case as if Adam were dead, even though they can't rule out that he is still alive, Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy said at a news conference Monday.
Warner Eisenbise, the Wichita attorney representing Herrman and her husband, Doug Herrman, Adam's adoptive father, said, "I firmly believe that they are innocent and had nothing to do with his death, if in fact he died."
But Eisenbise conceded that it is possible that the parents could be charged with failing to report a missing child.
Murphy released a fourth-grade picture of Adam, who authorities think disappeared from Towanda in the summer of 1999 when he was 11 or 12. Murphy asked the public to call with any information.
Relatives say Valerie Herrman, who is in her early 50s, had told them over the years that Adam was taken back into state custody. Recently, the adoptive parents have said through their attorney that Adam ran away and they did not report it.
Law enforcement agencies are bringing in search dogs from other states, Butler County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Kelly Herzet said. "We're asking for all the resources we can ask for on this case," Herzet said.
Relatives' accounts
Winslow said Valerie Herrman, her sister, had told her that Super Bowl Sunday in 1999 that she locked Adam in the bathroom because he was behaving badly. But Winslow said she never saw Adam be a problem child or disobey Herrman.
Winslow, now living outside the Wichita area, and some of Herrman's other close relatives said they saw Herrman abuse Adam other times over the years but for the most part didn't report it and now feel terrible that he is missing.
When Adam was younger, maybe 7 or 8, and living with his adoptive family in Derby, Winslow said she heard her sister tell Adam to eat food that his younger siblings had left on their plates. He told her he was full, and she hit the back of his head, causing his face to come down in a plate, Winslow said.
Winslow said it bothered her. "I went over to him, and I rubbed his little head... and I talked to him" to soothe him, she said. "I feel sick" for not reporting the incident, she said.
She said she can't remember seeing Herrman be affectionate to Adam, as she was to her other children.
A brother's memory
Justin Herrman, 29, who is the biological son of Valerie and Doug Herrman, said he not only saw his father abuse Adam, "He's actually stopped it many times," said Justin Herrman, who was about 7 years older than Adam.
Over the years, at different homes around the Wichita area, his mother "would start hitting him or beating him with a belt," Justin said. His father "would stop her and say, 'That's enough, Valerie,' " he said.
One time, Justin Herrman said, his mother threw Adam, then around 4 or 5, against a wall and pulled his hair, and Justin stepped in to stop it.
Justin Herrman said he called to report it and Derby police officers came to the home. But he said his mother persuaded him to tell the police that he lied. He said the officers lectured him about lying and left.
His mother started locking Adam in the bathroom, and the boy slept in the bathtub, Justin Herrman said. "She would just tell us he was threatening us," and that he had mental problems and couldn't be trusted, Justin Herrman said of his mother.
He said that for years his mother told the family that Adam had gone back into state custody and only recently said that he ran away.
'We all believed it'
Margaret Davis, mother of Valerie Herrman, said she was stunned to hear that the attorney now says that Adam ran away. Valerie and Doug Herrman had a number of foster children before adopting Adam and his two younger siblings, Davis said. She said her daughter "can be very, very mean sometimes" and that they have been estranged off and on.
Once, at a Derby home where the Herrmans lived before they moved to Towanda, Valerie's aunt had to use the bathroom, and Valerie Herrman had to unlock it first.
Behind the locked bathroom door, Davis said, she saw Adam in the tub with a pillow and blanket.
Valerie Herrman told Adam to go immediately to his bedroom, and he obeyed, Davis said.
"She told us that he had threatened them... he was going to wait until they went to sleep, and he was going to kill them," Davis said. Although Davis said she wasn't around Adam much, she said that when she was, he seemed to be "a darling little boy." She said her daughter told the family that Adam went back into state custody. "We all believed it," she said.
Christmas Eve call
Linda Bush, a former sister-in-law of Valerie Herrman, said Valerie Herrman called her Dec. 24 and in a shaky voice told her that Adam was missing and that investigators suspected the Herrmans had something to do with his disappearance.
Bush, 55, of Wichita, said Valerie Herrman asked her to call detectives investigating his disappearance "and tell them about how they loved Adam, and she only wanted to do good when they took in foster children... that they would never hurt a child." Bush said she never called the detectives.
In the Christmas Eve conversation, Valerie Herrman told her former sister-in-law "that she beat Adam once with a belt" and that Valerie had gone into her room and cried about it, remorseful. Bush said Valerie Herrman told her that after she used the belt, someone at Adam's school saw bruises, and authorities were called to investigate.
Authorities' next steps
At the news conference, Murphy said this is the first case he has dealt with in which officers didn't learn that a child was missing until years later. Sheriff's officers searched the Towanda mobile home park last week where the family once lived but did not find any human remains, Murphy said.
Investigators are planning to conduct more searches but have not said where.
Murphy said Adam, who is described as having brown hair and brown eyes, may have been home-schooled. They believe he disappeared during the summer of 1999. According to records, the family moved from Towanda to the town of Sedgwick later that fall.
Investigators plan to release a computer-enhanced photo soon showing what Adam would look like today if he is still alive. He was born June 8, 1987, in Wichita and would now be 21.
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