Thirteen-year-old Curtis Walker was reported missing on February 19, 1981.
He was last seen, wearing a brown-and-blue shirt, blue pants, and blue sneakers, on Bankhead Highway near where he lived in Bowen Homes.
Around this time, Earl Paulk, pastor of Chapel Hill Harvester Church in Decatur, began receiving phone calls from a man claiming to be the killer.
He described himself as a twenty-eight-year-old married man and father of a small child. He said he lured the victims into his blue van by posing as a painter and offering money for part-time work, and claimed responsibility for four of the murders, saying a voice tells him to kill. “Once the voice begins controlling me,” he said, “I have no control at all.”
The killer claimed he had help, that someone was assisting him in each case.
Following one of the phone calls, the man had agreed to meet with Paulk at his church but never showed. Later, Paulk was told that while he waited in his office for the man, two church elders saw a blue van pull up across the street, hesitate, then drive off.
According to Paulk, two police cars were just coincidentally in the neighborhood, which led him to publicize the call in the hopes that the man would realize he had not been part of a trap.
On February 14th, Paulk issued a televised plea for the killer to turn himself in.
“I work as a church man, a pastor,” Paulk said. “I will not set up a trap.” He went on to quote the caller saying nobody loved him, nobody had ever loved him, not even his own mother.
The pastor said he believed the man wanted to be free, wanted to be caught. He said the man seemed frightened that the voices would come back to haunt him, that he not only felt controlled by them but was afraid of them.
On March 6th, the body of Curtis Walker was discovered floating face down, snagged on a log in the South River at Waldrop Road less than a mile from Paulk’s church.
All Walker’s clothes were missing except his underwear, and latent prints were found on his body. The cause of death was ruled asphyxiation by strangulation.
On March 10th, the man called Paulk again. This time the caller discussed four killings, referring to them as the first three and the last one, Curtis Walker, who he mentioned by name.
My mind, like my heart, burst into flames.
I thought of all the possibilities.
What if Pastor Paulk had been contacted by the actual killer? What if it had been a copycat, the person responsible for some if not all of the victims who shouldn’t have been on the list or ones who never were?
Was he fixated on the pastor? Would he call him again? Was he a member of his congregation?
That last one stopped me.
Flipping through the files, searching for cases similar to Walker’s, I dialed the church.
And that’s when the next step in my path was revealed.
I was transferred to a young man named Randy Renfroe, who told me the church was starting a school of ministry in the fall.
By the time I hung up the phone, I was registered for classes at Earl Paulk Institute.
I would move to Atlanta, go to Chapel Hill Harvester Church, attend classes at EPI, studying and preparing for and engaging in ministry, while investigating the Atlanta Child Murders.
I sat there awestruck.
What just happened?
In the course of a single call everything had changed again.
A path had been revealed. A way made plain.
The wait and worry and was over, the ambiguity and indecision departed.
My adventures in ministry and murder investigation were finally about to begin.
10
“Think about what you’re saying,” Dad said.
“I am,” I said. “I have.”
“For what? All of an afternoon?”
I didn’t say anything, just shook my head.
He had found me in my room packing my things, boxing books, folding clothes into a suitcase.
It had taken four boxes just to hold my case files.
When he asked why, I told him.
Back then he wore a uniform––even on Saturdays, even to his son’s high school graduation.
“I just came to see if you were ready for graduation and you drop this on me?” he said.
“It can’t be surprising.”
“That you’re moving to Atlanta? Leaving tonight? Well, it is.”
Without the maps and photographs and photocopied scraps of evidence and information tacked to the wall, the room looked abandoned, barren, the white painted sheetrock walls now pocked with a million tiny holes, sad, lonely, looking like the scatter shot from a shotgun.
“You know I’ve wanted to move to Atlanta, to . . . work the case.”
“But that’s not what you’re talkin’ about doin’. It’s nearly a year before you can get certified to be a deputy. But you’re not even talkin’ about that. You’re talkin’ about . . . what . . . Bible college. It’s crazy.”
“It’s right. It’s . . . the next step for me. I know it.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“And?”
“What do you mean and?”
I was not being disrespectful in any way, but I wasn’t backing down either.
Unlike my brother Jake and my sister Nancy, I had never really had any conflict with either of my parents. I had always been more or less deferential, even submissive, never defiant or disrespectful––especially to Dad.
“I’m the one who has to figure out my next step and take it.”
“And you think it’s uprooting your entire life, running away?”
“I’m not running away.”
Was he confusing me with Nancy? She had run away. To New York. To escape. Two years before and she hadn’t written or called or returned or reached out in any way. She had utterly rejected our family. Did he think I was doing the same?
“I’m just going to college,” I said. “Just taking the next step in my journey. Nothing more. It’s time. It’s what we’ve been planning on. It’s just college.”
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s not even a real college. It’s a new upstart Bible school. It’s not even accredited. It’s a joke. You can’t really believe it’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“I do,” I said.
His disappointment was palpable, the force of it powerful. We were in, for us, uncharted territory and it threatened to dampen my joy and excitement.
“Dad,” I said, my voice peaceful and placating, “I know it doesn’t make any sense but I also know it’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“It’s a mistake.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, “but even if it is, it’s one I’ve got to make.”
“It’s my job to keep you from making mistakes,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not anymore.”
“What? You’re suddenly all grown up and independent because you’re graduating from high school?”
“I just meant––”
“I can’t let you do this,” he said.
“Let me?”
“I won’t. I can’t.”
“Dad, it doesn’t have to be this way. Please. Don’t make it something that it’s not.”
“I won’t be a part of this,” he said. “I told you I’d help with college, but not this one. I won’t pay a single dime toward this . . . this impulsive error in judgment. I can’t.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll thank me one day. Take some time to think about some real options. Like Gulf Coast or FSU. We’ll talk tomorrow about those. I’ll––”
“I won’t be here,” I said. “I’m leaving tonight.”
“You can’t. How will you pay for––”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said. “It’ll work out. I believe that. It’s all too irrational, illogical, unexpected, and fortuitous not to. But I’d like to at least go with your support.”
“Well, I can’t give you that.”
A lot hap
pened that night. It was another new beginning of sorts. I gained much from the experience, including a new level of autonomy and adulthood, but I lost something too.
I lost some innocence, a sense of home and belonging, but most of all I lost a friend.
My relationship with my dad would never be the same again.
Anna was at graduation. It was the first time I’d seen her in several months. Since Nancy had left town and she had started college we had fallen out of touch.
If anyone could keep me from leaving for Atlanta tonight it was her.
Anna was no longer a secret crush. I was in love with her. Profoundly and absolutely.
It wasn’t infatuation or mere attraction, though she was the most beautiful girl in all the world to me. It was unequivocal adoration. A love only a poet could hope to understand. I loved every cell and every second of her, every moment and every molecule.
Of course, not being a poet myself, I was unable to tell her, unable to express the fire for her smoldering inside my chest.
And she had come to graduation with her new boyfriend whose sister was in my class, and I avoided her, quickly ducking out of the gymnasium at the eternal event’s conclusion.
Following pomp and circumstance––or all the pomp and circumstance that could be mustered for forty-two graduates, I loaded my car and filled my tank using some of my graduation gift cash at the only convenience store in Pottersville.
After a tearful goodbye at which my mom smelled of booze and from which my dad was absent, I set out for the city too busy to hate, the birthplace of my hero and spiritual mentor Martin Luther King, Jr., who was killed the same year I was born, the home of Coca-Cola, the CDC, CNN, the Carter Center, America’s baseball team, the Varsity, Stone Mountain, the Fox Theater, where Lynyrd Skynyrd’s famous live version of “Free Bird” on One More from the Road was recorded, the place where Gone with the Wind had been written, and a series of murders had been committed that had affected me as profoundly as any single event in my entire life.
I drove nearly all night.
Sipping Dr. Pepper and munching on Combos, I sang until my voice grew hoarse with Rick Springfield, John Cougar, Steve Camp, Steve Taylor, Boz Scaggs, Robert Palmer, Russ Taff, Lionel Richie, Hall and Oats, and Phil Collins.
I sang to stay awake. I sang to celebrate. I sang to forget. I sang until I couldn’t picture the look of disappointment on my dad’s face or the look of happiness on Anna’s.
I spent some more of my grad gift money on a cheap motel room. And at nine o’clock the next morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I was walking into the exciting, integrated mega church whose pastor a killer had called, where less than a mile away the small body of Curtis Walker had been found.
11
“I hear very good things about what you’re doing for the kingdom of God,” Earl Paulk said. “We’re so pleased you chose our school of ministry. I truly believe we’ve got the resources to equip our students to touch the world.”
We were in his upstairs office in the back of the K Center or main sanctuary, a large building he had described as an airplane hanger, built to accommodate as many people as possible due to the growth the church had experienced over the past decade.
What would become Chapel Hill Harvester Church began in December 1960 in Saint John’s Lutheran Church on Euclid Avenue, in the Little Five Points community. The thirty-nine people in attendance included founders Earl and Norma Paulk, Don and Clariece Paulk, and Harry and Myrtle Mushegan.
From the first day, Paulk was committed to opening the doors of his church to all people, regardless of racial, economic, or moral background. Not surprisingly, given his opposition to segregation, he was one of the first white pastors to open the doors of his church to black members.
The very first bulletin cover showed a picture of a white hand and a black hand clasped together with the accompanying slogan A Church of Compassion.
The church moved to South Dekalb County in Decatur in 1972, and quickly became one of the first truly racially integrated congregations in the entire South.
The early eighties witnessed a shift in ministry and message, and explosive growth.
In addition to its unique racial unity, the church became famous for its worship style, which combined visual arts with liturgy, and its social outreach programs.
In 1982, Paulk was ordained as a bishop in the International Communion of Charismatic Churches. His public housing ministry was named one of a thousand points of light by President George H. W. Bush.
I had never been much of a churchgoer and had little use for organized religion, but I appreciated many aspects of this unique, inspiring church, especially the integration, emphasis on compassion, and the social outreach programs to the poor and disenfranchised.
It had taken me a while to get an appointment with Bishop Paulk. I had been in town a few weeks, getting settled, getting my bearings, getting a job.
“I understand you’re working for us too?” he said.
I nodded.
Don Paulk, Earl’s brother and co-pastor of the church, had been particularly helpful to me, welcoming, supportive, and had even found me a job on the janitorial staff of the facilities department.
“That’s great,” he said. “Pastor Don’s very impressed with you. Says you’ll soon be leading a covenant community group.”
Covenant communities were the church’s home meetings, small groups scattered throughout the city.
“I look forward to it.”
There was a presence about Bishop Paulk, an energy emanating from him, particularly from his mesmerizing bright blue eyes. He was trim and fit and sat upright behind his enormous desk. At sixty, his forceful bearing and youthful vitality were extraordinary.
“God’s got his hand on your life,” he said. “I sense a powerful calling.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m very excited to be here.”
Thanks to Pastor Don waiving part of the tuition, I was already enrolled in summer classes. In addition to the classes, I had been assigned a practicum that involved, among other things, taking food and medicine into an extremely low-income apartment complex and regular visits to Grady hospital to see a man with AIDS in the last days of his short life.
And all of it––the transition from small to big town, the new job, the classes, the work of actually helping people in need––was exhilarating and exhausting.
I longed to share everything that was happening with Dad and Anna. Being unable to tinged the edges of everything with a certain ever-present, dull-ache sadness.
“Don said you plan to combine ministry and law enforcement somehow.”
“I don’t know how exactly or if I even can, but I feel equally called to both.”
He nodded. “That’s what we need. We have too many ministers limiting what they can be, spending all their time in a pulpit. I think you’re right on track. Don’t limit God. Just stay open to the Holy Spirit. Let me know any way we can help you.”
“Pastor Don said you might be willing to talk to me about the child murders that happened a few years back.”
He nodded.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said with a heavy sigh. “So many black parents in our congregation . . . wondering if their child would be next. We began a round-the-clock prayer vigil early on but became publicly involved when I received a call from Dr. Frazier Ben Todd––he was president of the NAACP at the time.
“On February fourteenth––this was back in eighty-one––I made a television appeal to the killer or killers and ran a full-page advertisement in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that said, ‘If you are responsible for the crimes against our children, this television appeal is to you. Watch Saturday, February 14th, Channel 46 at 11:00 p.m.’
“I assured the killer that he could speak to me in private and I ended by saying, ‘Jesus loves you and He will forgive you for what you have done.’
“The very next day, phone calls began coming in from supposed killers. On
February sixteenth a mysterious caller instructed me to go to a local TV station for the six o’clock evening news broadcast. The person didn’t show but later called saying, ‘I didn't see you on camera.’ The following Sunday afternoon, I was asked to speak to a city-wide prayer meeting held at the request of the NAACP.
“The day after that a call came in from someone calling himself ‘the one Earl Paulk was trying to reach.’ I rushed to the phone but when he heard my voice he hung up. He called back an hour later but refused to set a time and place to meet.
“The same voice called later and told us to look for a particular van and when it would arrive. Don and I waited in our car and saw a van matching the description drive into the parking lot across the street from our church. Another car pulled into the lot. I don’t know if it was the FBI or police or what. Then two more and suddenly the van spun its wheels and disappeared, moving too fast for us to get a tag number. The two cars didn’t pursue so I guess their pulling in when they did was just coincidence.”
As I listened to him recount his story I realized there were differences in what I had read and thought from what he remembered, and it occurred to me that it must be that way with every report, every statement, everything I knew or thought I did.
“When he called the next time, he asked us to come to a truck stop at the edge of town. Don went with me. There were cars everywhere when we arrived. If the caller came he had apparently panicked and left.
“After that, FBI agents surrounded the church property and told us they would be monitoring our phone conversations.
“On February twenty-eighth, I made another television appeal and the caller spoke to me for the last time.
“On March sixth, the next victim was found in a creek about a mile from here.
“A few months after that, Wayne Williams was arrested and eventually convicted, but I’ve always believed there was more than one killer at work.”
“Was there anything that made you think the caller might be a member of your congregation?”
He shrugged. “I never had a knowing one way or another but I don’t think he was. He may have attended a service at some point . . . but . . .”
True Crime Fiction Page 6
