Atlanta murders of 1979–1981

During the murders, more than 100 agents were working on the investigation.[3] The city of Atlanta imposed curfews, and parents in the city removed their children from school and forbade them from playing outside.[3] Author Kim Reid has written a memoir about being a black child in Atlanta at this time.[9]

As the media coverage of the killings intensified, the FBI predicted that the killer might dump the next victim into a body of water to conceal any evidence. Police staked out nearly a dozen area bridges, including crossings of the Chattahoochee River. During a stakeout on May 22, 1981, detectives got their first major break when an officer heard a splash beneath a bridge. Another officer saw a white 1970 Chevrolet station wagon turn around and drive back across the bridge.[10]

Wayne Williams

Two police cars later stopped the suspect station wagon about a half-mile from the bridge. The driver was 23-year-old Wayne Bertram Williams, a supposed music promoter and freelance photographer.[10] The Chevrolet wagon belonged to his parents.[11] During questioning, Williams said he was on his way to audition a woman, Cheryl Johnson, as a singer. Williams claimed she lived in the nearby town of Smyrna. Police did not find any record of her or the appointment.

Two days later, on May 24, the nude body of Nathaniel Cater, 27, was found floating downriver a few miles from the bridge where police had seen the suspicious station wagon.[10] Based on this evidence, including the police officer's hearing of the splash, police believed that Williams had killed Cater and disposed of his body while the police were nearby.

Investigators who stopped Williams on the bridge noticed gloves and a 24-inch nylon cord sitting in the passenger seat. According to investigators, the cord looked similar to ligature marks found on Cater and other victims, but the cord was never taken into evidence for analysis. Adding to a growing list of suspicious circumstances, Williams had handed out flyers in predominantly black neighborhoods calling for young people ages 11–21 to audition for his new singing group that he called Gemini. Williams failed an FBI-administered polygraph examination, though polygraph results are not admissible as evidence in criminal courts.[12]

Fibers from a carpet in the Williams residence were found to match those observed on two of the victims.[3] Additional fibers from the Williams's home, vehicles, and pet dog were later matched to fibers discovered on other victims.[13] Furthermore, witness Robert Henry claimed to have seen Williams holding hands and walking with Nathaniel Cater on the night Cater is believed to have died.[14]

On June 21, 1981, Williams was arrested. A grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder in the deaths of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, aged 22.[10] The trial date was set for early 1982.

When the news of Williams's arrest was officially released (his status as a suspect had previously been leaked to the media), FBI Agent John E. Douglas stated that, if it was Williams, then he was "looking pretty good for a good percentage of the killings." Douglas had previously conducted an interview with People magazine about profiling the killer as a young black man. This was widely reported as the FBI effectively declaring Williams guilty, and Douglas was officially censured by the Director of the FBI.[15]

Jury selection began on December 28, 1981, and it lasted six days. Nine women and three men comprised the jury, among which were eight African Americans and four Caucasians.

The trial officially began on January 6, 1982, with Judge Clarence Cooper presiding. The most important evidence against Williams was the fiber analysis between the victims he was indicted for murdering, Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater, and the 12 pattern-murder cases in which circumstantial evidence culminated in numerous links between the crimes. This evidence included witnesses who testified that they had seen Williams with the victims, and some witnesses suggested that he had solicited sexual favors.[10]

The prosecution's presentation of the case has been criticized, to the extent that in some jurisdictions it might have resulted in a mistrial. In particular, two separate FBI special agents testified that the chances of the victims not having come into contact with Williams was "virtually impossible," based solely on the comparative rarity of the fibers which were found on the victims which seemed to match the fibers which were found in the suspect's car and home.[16] After reviewing the case, Georgia Supreme Court Justice George T. Smith deemed the evidence, or the lack thereof, inadmissible.[17]

On February 27, 1982, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury found Wayne Bertram Williams guilty of the two murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in Georgia's Hancock State Prison in Sparta.[10]

In a September 1986 issue of American music magazine Spin, journalists Robert Keating and Barry Michael Cooper (the latter of whom would later find fame as a screenwriter) reported that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation – who had been conducting a secret investigation into potential involvement of the Ku Klux Klan in the crimes, in tandem to that of the Special Task Force on Missing and Murdered Children – discovered members of the group may have been involved in the murder of victim Lubie Geter, and may have been linked to the murders of fourteen others.[18] Allegedly, a family of Klansmembers living outside of Atlanta had hoped to ignite a race war in Atlanta, and attempted to recruit others for this purpose. Charles T. Sanders, a narcotics dealer and recruiter for the group, was said to have told a criminal informant he intended to kill Geter several weeks before his body was found. After Geter had backed a go-cart into his car, Sanders allegedly told the informant "I'm gonna kill that black bastard. I'm gonna strangle him with my dick." Shortly thereafter, Sanders' brother Don was recorded telling another Klan member he was going out to look for "another little boy." Additionally, Charles Sanders was said to have a scar matching a description given by an eyewitness who reported seeing Geter enter the car of a White man with a "jagged scar on his neck," and a dog with similar hair to that found on Geter's and other victims' bodies. The article reported that, in 1981, members of the GBI and officials in other law enforcement agencies opted to close their investigation and seal their findings. However, a handwritten transcript of a conversation between Klansmembers regarding Geter's murder was sent anonymously to Lynn Whatley in 1985, an attorney who was then representing Wayne Williams.[19]

At a 1991 hearing on Williams' request for a new trial, wherein he was represented by attorneys Alan Dershowitz, William Kunstler, and Bobby Lee Cook, investigators from both Atlanta and Georgia law-enforcement agencies testified they had little or no knowledge of the GBI's investigation. At the same hearing, an informant for the GBI reported that in 1981, Charles Sanders had admitted to killing Geter while Whitaker was wearing a concealed microphone.[20]

In May 2004, about six months after becoming the DeKalb County Police Chief in November 2003, Louis Graham reopened the investigations into the deaths of the five DeKalb County victims: 10-year-old Aaron Wyche, 13-year-old Curtis Walker, 9-year-old Yusuf Bell, 17-year-old William Barrett, and 11-year-old Patrick Baltazar. Graham, one of the original investigators in these cases, said he doubted that Wayne Williams, the man convicted of two of the killings and blamed for 22 others, was guilty of all of them.[21] On June 21, 2006, the DeKalb County Police dropped its reinvestigation of the Atlanta child murders. After resigning, Graham was replaced by the acting chief, Nick Marinelli, who said, "We dredged up what we had, and nothing has panned out, so until something does or additional evidence comes our way, or there's forensic feedback from existing evidence, we will continue to pursue the [other] cold cases that are [with]in our reach."[22]

Criminal profiler John E. Douglas said that, while he believes that Williams committed many of the murders, he does not think that he committed them all. Douglas added that he believes that law enforcement authorities have some idea of who the other killers are, cryptically adding, "It isn't a single offender, and the truth isn't pleasant."[23]

On January 29, 2007, attorneys for the State of Georgia agreed to allow DNA testing of the dog hair that was used to help convict Williams. This decision was a response to a legal filing as a part of Williams' efforts to appeal his conviction and life sentences. Williams' lawyer, Jack Martin, asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge to allow DNA tests on canine and human hair and blood, stating the results might help Williams win a new trial.

On June 26, 2007, the DNA test results showed that the hairs on the bodies contained the same mitochondrial DNA sequence as Williams' dog — a sequence that occurs in only about 1 out of 100 dogs. Dr. Elizabeth Wictum, director of the UC Davis laboratory that carried out the testing, told The Associated Press that while the results were "fairly significant," they "don't conclusively point to Williams' dog as the source of the hair" because the lab was able to test only for mitochondrial DNA, which, unlike nuclear DNA, cannot be shown to be unique to one dog.[24]

Later in 2007, the FBI performed DNA tests on two human hairs found on one of the victims. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 99.5% of persons by not matching their DNA. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 98% of African American persons by not matching their DNA. However, they matched Williams' DNA and so did not eliminate the possibility that the hairs were his.[25]

On March 21, 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced that officials would re-test evidence from the murders, which will be gathered by the Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. In a news conference, Mayor Bottoms said, "It may be there is nothing left to be tested. But I do think history will judge us by our actions and we will be able to say we tried."[26][27]

As of 2019, Wayne Williams continues to maintain his innocence.[28]

The first national media coverage of the case was in 1980, when a team from ABC News 20/20, Stanhope Gould and Bill Lichtenstein, producer Steve Tello, and correspondent Bob Sirkin from the ABC Atlanta bureau looked into the case. They were assigned to the story after ABC News president Roone Arledge read a tiny story in the newspaper that said police had ruled out any connection between a daycare explosion, which turned out to be a faulty furnace, and the cases of lost and missing children, which had been previously unreported in the national media. In a week, the team reported on the dead and missing children, and they broke the story that the Atlanta Police Task Force was not writing down or following up on every lead they received through the police hotline that had been set up.[29]

In 1981, British novelist Martin Amis published "The Killings in Atlanta" for The Observer, later compiled into The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America (1986).

In 1982, writer Martin Pasko dedicated an issue of the comic book Saga of the Swamp Thing to "the good people of Atlanta, that they may put the horror behind them...but not forget." The story revolved around a serial killer who targeted minority children in the fictional town of Pineboro, Arkansas, who is revealed to be a demon who had possessed TV host "Uncle Barney" (a thinly veiled parody of Fred Rogers). While the demon is ultimately vanquished, the story ends on an ominous note criticizing the social inequalities that made the non-white children such attractive targets, as well as children's television shows that encourage blind trust of strangers.[30]

In 1985, the television miniseries The Atlanta Child Murders was released. The film was centered around the murders and the arrest of the suspect. The film revolved mainly around the aftermath of the killings and the trials. The film starred Calvin Levels, Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, Rip Torn, Jason Robards, Martin Sheen, and Bill Paxton. Atlanta officials criticized the film, claiming that it distorted the facts of the case. After a series of negotiations, CBS executives agreed to insert a disclaimer alerting viewers that the film is based on fact but contains fictional elements.

Also in 1985, James Baldwin published The Evidence of Things Not Seen, a non-fiction examination not only of the case and Williams' trial, but also of race relations in Atlanta and, by extension, America. The book grew out of an assignment to write about the murders for Playboy, commissioned by then-editor Walter Lowe.[31]

In 2000, Showtime released a drama film titled Who Killed Atlanta's Children? starring James Belushi and Gregory Hines.[32]

In 2002, Tayari Jones published the novel Leaving Atlanta. The book focuses on the lives and experiences of three fictional fifth graders at Oglethorpe Elementary School, Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Fuller, during the murder spree. During the time of the murders, Jones attended Oglethorpe Elementary School and was classmates with two of the real-life victims, Yusuf Bell and Terry Pue.

On June 10, 2010, CNN broadcast a documentary, The Atlanta Child Murders, with interviews by Soledad O'Brien with some of the people involved, including Wayne Williams. The two-hour documentary invited viewers to weigh the evidence presented and then go to CNN.com to cast votes on whether Williams was guilty, whether he was innocent, or if the case was "not proven." 68.6% of respondents said Williams was guilty, 4.3% said he was innocent, and 27.1% chose "not proven."[33]

In the 2016 song "the ends" by American rapper Travis Scott featuring American rapper André 3000, on the former's second studio album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, Atlanta-native André 3000 raps about the killings.

In January 2018, documentary filmmaker Payne Lindsey began releasing a podcast called Atlanta Monster, covering the murders with interviews from family members of victims, law enforcement officials, individuals alive in the Atlanta area at the time of the murders, and Wayne Williams.

The second season of Mindhunter (released in August 2019) covers the murders. The series, which is focused on the history of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) builds that dramatic arc of the series over the FBI's two BSU agents who join the Atlanta investigation. In the series fictional treatment, Agent Ford has the role of insisting that the 13 murders (at the time of the series arc) they are investigating are the work of one single serial killer, and that to gain the victims' trust, he may be African-American himself. This line of deduction clashes with that of his colleague Agent Tench, the Atlanta Police Department, and the African-American community of Atlanta – many of whom believe, in light of Georgia's history of hate crimes and racial violence, that the killings are the work of the Ku Klux Klan.[34][35]

The Atlanta Child Murders, a three-part documentary series produced by Will Packer Productions, aired on Investigation Discovery in March 2019.[36]

In April 2020, HBO released a 5-part documentary titled Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, directed by Sam Pollard and Maro Chermayeff.[37] HBO's documentary revealed information that focused heavily on the appellate process of the case against Wayne Williams. Williams' attorneys filed a habeas corpus document and it was denied. Similarly, his request for a retrial was denied in 2004.[38]

• List of fugitives from justice who disappeared
• Post–civil rights era in African-American history

• James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen 1985. Holt, Rinehart and Winston
• Bambara, Toni Cade. Those Bones Are Not My Child. New York, Pantheon Books, 1999. A novel about a mother who lost a child as part of the murders.
• Chet Dettlinger, Jeff Prugh, The List 1983. Philmay Enterprises, Inc. The most comprehensive account in print written by the private detective once considered a suspect because of his thorough knowledge of the case.
• John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, Scribner, 1995, See: Chapter 11, Atlanta, pages 199–224.* Keppel, Robert. The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. New York, Pocket Books, 2004 (revised and updated). Contains a chapter on the Atlanta Child Murders and Keppel's participation as a consultant with the investigation.
• Drolet, Joseph. "The Pursuit of the Atlanta Child Murderer: Facts, Fibers, and Forensics." Alpharetta, Ga.: BookLogix, 2022.
• Jones, Tayari. Leaving Atlanta. New York, Warner Books, 2002. A novel that focuses on children during the time of the murders.
• Mallard, Jack. "The Atlanta Child Murders: the Night Stalker" (Jack Mallard, 392pgs) released 2010-12-02. Jack Mallard was one of the Fulton County Assistant District Attorneys who prosecuted Wayne Williams for two murders. Includes footnotes and charts of testimony, physical evidence, trial strategy that led to the guilty verdicts.
• Reid, Kim. No Place Safe, New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2007. A memoir by the daughter of one of the police investigators.
• Strand, Ginger. Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. History of highway-linked serial killers including a chapter on the Atlanta murders.

• FBI file on the Atlanta Child Murders
• Crime Library: The Atlanta Child Murders
• Atlanta's Missing and Murdered
• "Maynard Jackson Mayoral Administrative Records". RADAR. Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. - The Atlanta Child Murders subseries in the Maynard Jackson Mayoral Administrative Records chronicles the time period between 1979-1981 when multiple young black children and adults were murdered in the city of Atlanta.