tonight on "nightline," the ex-factor. charlie sheen's soon to be ex-wife steps in and cops take the actor's twin sons from his home as his own father wrestles with a parent's nightmare. we've got the latest. america's most wanted. it's been called the crime that changed america. before he was a famous tv host, his son was brutally murdered. the crime never solved until now. we go inside the adam walsh killing. and, apple's juice? we're on the scene as the company roms out another slimmer, lighter gizmo. so, how low can they go? tonight, we size up apple, by the numbers. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden

and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," march 2nd, 2011. >> good evening, i'm terry moran. and we begin tonight with another difficult chapter in the very public struggles of actor charlie sheen. last night, police removed his twin sons from his care after his estranged wife filed a restraining order against him. in an interview with abc earlier this week, sheen, one of four children himself, said he wasn't worried about his kids being negati negatively impacted by his lifestyle in all of this. i can say, hey, kids, your dad's a rock star, the actor said. here's andrea canning with the latest. >> reporter: police under court orders arrived at sheen's home last night to supervise the removal of the twins from his

custody to hand over to their mother. surrounded by friends, sheen remained calm while authorities removed the boys from his home, as seen in this radar online video. we met the twins this past weekend when we spent the day with sheen and the children at his home in l.a. sheen introduced me to the women he says are like second mothers to his children. two women he calls his goddesses. in a sworn declaration, brooke mueller claims sheen took the children from her residence without her permission and alleges sheen threatened her, saying,ly cut your head off, put it in a box and send it to your mom. he seemed to be cooperating fully with the authorities as one of his wife's lawyers looked on. but he vowed to fight for their children. >> good-bye. >> see you soon, buddy. we'll see you soon, absolutely. we'll see you soon.

you have my word. pop don't lie. >> reporter: and early this morning -- >> i was told a restraining order was being delivered. i thought, okay, i can deal with that. and then it was something much more serious. >> your kids were taken away. are you hurting? >> yes, i am. but on the battlefield, it's emotion and ego and panic that get in your way. and that's -- i profess that i don't live in those places and this is a time to exhibit, display the level of salt that i have in my soul. defeat is not an option. rrl he's a man obsessed with winning. it's a word he uses as his catch phrase on the twitter page he started yesterday. and is already gained over 1 million twitter followers -- >> we actually shut down the server. that was pretty exciting. i had 100,000 in the first hour. >> reporter: he seems to be totally focused on the media is this typical of an addict?

>> we have to understand that charlie sheen is not like any regular addict that we know. he's riding high right now. i think more on a mania than anything else. >> reporter: when i sat down with sheen this weekend, he seemed to be enjoying his role as dad. you seem to be the primary care giver right now to the boys. >> today i am. tomorrow she might be. everything's cool. there's enough love and help to go around for everybody. >> reporter: in those court papers, mueller says sheen had not seen the children for close to a year before he took them. he had this to say to us about mueller, currently in outpatient rehab. she around enough for the boys? >> i can't answer for somebody who is not here. then it's my opinion. yeah, i mean, call her. her thing is full. we can call her. >> reporter: are you the main person right now taking care of them? for the most part? >> right now, yeah. yeah. it's all right. whatever. it shifts, it changes. it takes a village. >> reporter: and it usually takes extended family.

but sheen's relationship with his own famous father, martin sheen, is also complicated. this touching moment between father and son acting in the movie "wall street" was reportedly unscripted and all too real. >> i guess i never told you i love you, dad. >> reporter: for years, martin has tried to help his son get clean in 1998, he had to publicly admit how difficult their struggle had become. >> this is not an easy moment in our lives. but my son was admitted here yesterday as a result of a drug overdose. >> reporter: charlie sheen has been battling addiction for a long time and his family reportedly has tried several interventions. >> at a critical point, i had to decide who would speak at the funeral. who should carry the casket. we are talking about a life and death issue. >> reporter: last week, in an interview with sky tv, martin sheen compared his son's addiction to cancer. >> if he had cancer, how would we treat him, you know? the disease of addiction is a

form of cancer. >> he has no right to do that, and that's judgment and i have no interest in that. i don't care if he's my dad or someone that fell out of the sky. no interest in that. i don't care if he's my dad. back off with your judgment. >> reporter: is he trying to help you? >> i don't care what you have to say. >> reporter: what can martin do for his son? >> let him know that he loves him, that he'll be there for him no matter what. call him, let him know that he's really going off the tracks and that he needs to wake up and realize that he's sabotaging his life. >> reporter: back in 2007, martin sheen clearly hoped that a father's love would get through. >> you have to be prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth at that time and say, i did everything that i possibly could. >> reporter: but with his on rejecting his help and everyone else's, charlie sheen seems right now to be on his own. >> everything is exactly as i've stated it to be, you know, clean, focused, ready to go back

to work, you know, there's nothing that i'm going to reveal today that is not in concert with what i stated thus far to everybody. >> reporter: i'm andrea canning for "nightline" in new york. >> a family's struggles, many families have that struggle. thanks to andrea canning for that report. when we come back, it's one of the most famous cold case murders in recent history. and it finally comes to a close 30 years later. ooh, a brainteaser. how can expedia now save me even more on my hotel? well, hotels know they can't fill every room every day. like this one. and this one. and oops, my bad. so, they give expedia ginormous discounts with these: unpublished rates. which means i get an even more rockin' hotel, for less.

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before the disappearance of 6-year-old adam walsh, there were no amber alerts or missing kids on milk cartons. but during the decades the case went unsolved, adam's father john got famous for hunting down bad guys on "america's most wanted." adam's mother has been largely silent until tonight. >> this is "america's most wanted." >> reporter: on his show, john walsh has helped capture more than 1,000 criminals. >> next time i see his face, i want to see bars in front of it. >> reporter: but unbelievably, for decades, the one case he couldn't crack was the murder of his own son. until several years ago, when his wife reve said she had had enough. >> i can't go to my grave not doing everything that i could possibly do. i said, we're going to get a cold case detective and we're going to start from the beginning. i don't care if you go to work just to pay the bill of this private investigator. we're going to get somebody. >> reporter: it has been 30 years since adam was abducted in

america's most famous case of a missing child. during that time, reve has largely stood by silently while her husband held the spotlight. but in this rare interview, she tells her story. the story of one mother's quiet, fierce determination. do you remember the last thing that he said to you? >> sure. i said, i'm going to the lamp department. he said, okay, mommy, i know where that is. >> reporter: with no thought in your mind that that was the last conversation? >> no. >> reporter: adam was abducted from outside a suburban shopping mall on july 27th, 1981. two agonizing weeks later, john got the news that adam's severed head had been found floating in a canal. >> i got that call. and they said, we got to find your wife. and, we got to tell her.

and i said, you know what, i'll tell her. i'll be the one to tell her. toughest thing i've ever done. >> when all of this was going on, i just thought to myself, god, i can't wait, you know, until it's 20 years, 25 years from now, i don't care about getting old. i just want this experience in my life to be that far away from me, because i thought it would be, you know, different. but it's really not. >> i don't know who would do this to a 6-year-old child. i can't conceive of it. >> reporter: the horror of losing a child was made worse, say the walshes, by their bitter disappointment with the local police in hollywood, florida, who they believe botched the murder investigation. >> little did we know that nothing was being done. >> one nightmare after another. >> reporter: it was even a prime suspect, this man, adn admitted

serial killer who was already in prison. >> it gets easier and easier and it don't really bother you. >> reporter: he made 24 documented confessions to killing adam walsh, including during this 1984 interview with the texas rangers. >> have you ever wished you hadn't killed someone? >> well, i kind of feel bad about that adam walsh kid. >> that's the only person you've ever killed that you feel bad about? >> that's the youngest child i ever killed. he was only 6 years old. >> reporter: but even this confession was not enough for the hollywood police department to push to file charges. and, so, after the case sat idle for roughly one quarter of a century, reve urged john to hire a cold case investigator, this man, joe matthews, a retired police detective. >> so, you look at the markers. >> reporter: matthews went back and pain stakingly poured over every one of the 10,000 pages in

the case file, reporting back almost daily to reve. matthews concluded that the lead detective on the walsh case, a man named jack hoffman, had become convinced, despite come peopling evidence, that this man didn't do it. so he confesses to this crime repeatedly, knows things about the crime that only the police knew, yet the legal investigator, detective hoffman, doesn't believe him. why not? >> ego and tunnel vision. the tunnel vision is, you come up with your own hypothesis as to what took place and you work that case to validate your own hi hypothesis. >> reporter: matthews made a major discovery. a roll of film from the crime scene of tulle's car, film that the original detectives never bothered to have dropped. the film contain what matthews considered to be a monumental

revolution. on the rear floor bard of the car, where tulle admitted to tossing adam's severed head, the outline of a face with a darkened eye sockets and open mouth. >> you see his image. it's as clear as the, you know, shroud of turin. >> to me, it was the one thing that a mother knows, is that this is their child. this picture is their child. >> reporter: in 2008, based on these new pictures and a mountain of other evidence that detective matthews finally pulled together in a way that the original detectives had failed to do, the new hollywood police department chief officially closed the case, definitively naming tulle, who, by this time, had died in prison, as the man who killed adam walsh. >> if tulle was alive today, he would be arrested for the abduction and murder of adam walsh on july 27th, 1981. >> listen to the words that came

off of the chief's lips. just penetrate my soul. >> reporter: it took detective matthews, working with the walshes, just two and a half years to do what the hollywood police department could not do over the course of decades. today, john and reve are still living in florida, where they have a horse farm and three children, all born after adam, who would now be 36 years old. >> nothing's going to bring adam back, you know? nothing's going to bring him back. so the most we can hope for was to have peace, knowing that we know what happened, we know the end result and the puzzle is finished. >> reporter: for "nightline," this is dan harris. >> and jack hoffman, that police detective, he didn't respond to our requests for a comment. the story of how the adam walsh case was finally closed is told

in a new book "bringing adam home," co-authored by joe matthew. thanks to dan harris for that report. coming up next, let's lightning up. 16 1/2 pounds. that's how much a mac computer weighed in 1986. coming up, today they're making them a little lighter. we'll have appleby the numbers. e 50 - 90% on great daily deals all over town. vo: they're going to discover new... restaurants, spas, museums, famous people, helicopter rides juggling classes a different kind of juggling classes concerts, yoga studios, theatre golf, lessons, more lessons, movie tickets and a whole lot more. end vo: if your week doesn't sound quite that exciting, maybe you want to sign up for ours. groupon.com [music playing] confidence available in color.

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the new version of apple's ipad made news today, not least of all for the appearance on stage of apple's ceo, steve jobs, who had been on medical leave the apple faithful leapt to their feet in applause and the stock price jumped even higher. well, my co-anchor bill weir was there and now he is with apple by the numbers. >> good morning. >> reporter: 33. the number of seconds the crowd

cheered for steve jobs today, during his first appearance since taking a medical leave. three. the amount in dollars apple's stock jumped when he did. 6400 -- the percentage apple stock has jumped since jobs returned to apple in the mid-'90s after his own board pushed him out. $500 the amount steve wozniak got for a second-hand calculator in 1975 so he and jobs could buy the parts to buy the apple 1. $325 billion -- what that garage startup is up today. $666.66 the price of the apple 1. not because they were satanists, they just liked the poetry of repeating numbers. $499, the base price of the ipad. 15 million, the number of i pads sold in the first nine months. 300 pounds. that's how much the beatle's four-track tape deck weighed when they recorded the "sergeant

pepper album." 16.5 pounds what a mac or average tuna weighed in 1984. if you bought a floppy disk, it would hold 30 seconds of music. .44 ounces what an ipod weighs today, holding around 500 songs. 67. the number of i'm a mac, i'm a pc ads that have run in america. 13. the number of the same ads that have run in japan. 2001 -- the movie that inspired the name ipod. >> and we call it the ipad. >> several million. the number of times people chuckled when the name ipad was announced last year. and 0. the number of times people laughed today. it is seared into the vocabulary. in just a few short months, friends and foes alike can't wait to see what this guy