by Colin Wilson
The boys were friends, although they lived in different parts of town. There was no sign of sexual assault upon either boy, but Smith’s football shirt was missing; so were his socks. Evans was wearing a belt that was not his own. In each case, this could imply that the boy had been undressed.
Because both victims were black, even the double murder failed to attract widespread attention. The police hinted that the deaths were “drug-related.”
Milton Harvey, fourteen, lived in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in northwest Atlanta, a far cry from the slums in which Evans and Smith lived. On September 4, Harvey cycled to the bank on an errand for his mother, and disappeared. His bicycle was found a week later on a deserted dirt lane.
On October 21, 1979, a neighbor asked nine-year-old Yusuf Bell to fetch her a box of snuff. Yusuf, the son of an ex–civil rights worker, Camille Bell, was an unusually gifted child whose hobby was mathematics, and who read encyclopedias for recreation. He also disappeared, and was reported to have been seen getting into a blue car. This time, the event stirred up some media excitement, since Camille Bell was a well-known figure in the Mechanicsville neighborhood where she lived, and made on-air pleas to the abductor to release her son. A week later, a decomposed corpse was found near College Park; it proved to be the missing Milton Harvey. Then Yusuf’s body was found stuffed into the crawl space of an abandoned elementary school. He had been strangled. Although he had been missing for ten days, it was clear that he had not been dead for more than half that time. His clothes had been cleaned, and the body washed. His funeral became a media event, with black leaders and politicians in attendance. They all promised a full investigation into Yusuf’s death. His had not yet been linked to the three other boys’—although Camille Bell and her friends saw a definite connection.
In early March 1980, a twelve-year-old black girl, Angel Lenair, was found tied to a tree with panties that were not her own stuffed down her throat; her hymen had been broken and minor abrasions to the genitals suggested sexual attack, but police concluded that she had not been raped. It was difficult to assess whether this murder was related to the other killings, since the assumption was that the killer—now known to black children as “the Man”—was homosexual. Cause of death was strangulation by an electrical cord.
The day after Angel’s body had been found, ten-year-old Jefferey Mathis left home to buy cigarettes for his mother from a nearby store; he also vanished. After his family had searched all night his mother rang the missing person’s department, but they paid little attention, the assumption being that a missing child was probably a runaway. But a witness later reported seeing the child get into a blue car, possibly a Buick.
The vanishings continued. On May 18, Eric Middlebrooks, fourteen, received a phone call at 10:30 at night and, grabbing his tools, told his foster mother that he was going out to repair his bike. His bludgeoned body was found early the next morning. On June 9, twelve-year-old Christopher Richardson disappeared on his way to a swimming pool in nearby middle-class Decatur.
A seven-year-old girl, LaTonya Wilson, was carried from her bedroom during the early morning hours of June 22, presumably by someone who knew the house well. Like the murder of Angel Lenair, authorities assumed that this abduction had no connection to the previous disappearances and deaths of young boys.
The day after Wilson’s kidnapping, the body of ten-year-old Aaron Wyche was found under a railway bridge in DeKalb County; police said he had died of an accidental fall, but his parents insisted that he was terrified of heights; a second autopsy concluded he had died violently.
Although the Atlanta police department was receiving its share of criticism for its inability to solve any of these murders, in mid-June, Deputy Chief Morris Redding had decided to consult the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico. When Roy Hazelwood arrived in Atlanta, the police were still insisting that the murders were unconnected, citing the high crime rates in their city. Hazelwood had immediate experience of the high Atlanta crime rate when his wallet was stolen before he could even leave the airport, and he had to borrow $200 from a friend at the Atlanta FBI.
His review of the murders so far left him convinced that a serial killer was at work, although he doubted that the two girls were his victims. A few of the murders struck him as possible copycat killings. But his most important conclusion was that the killer was black. As he took a drive with black officers in an unmarked car through one of the neighborhoods from which children had disappeared, people stopped whatever they were doing to stare at him; obviously, a strange white man would have been noticed instantly.
By the beginning of July 1980, in what was later aptly labeled the “Summer of Death,” the murders had continued for a year, and seven black children had been murdered and three had vanished. Understandably, there was outrage on the part of the African American community, which still assumed that the killer was a white man who hated blacks. One outrageous rumor asserted that scientists needed the penises of recently dead blacks to make the protein interferon for combating cancer. But a far more widespread rumor was that the Ku Klux Klan was behind the murders. Blacks all over the country were convinced that a white racist was responsible. Camille Bell and the mothers of two other murdered children, Mary Mapp and Venus Taylor, mobilized a group of parents who had lost children, and in early July the newly formed STOP called a press conference to protest police inaction, arguing that even if the killer was an African American, the police were dragging their feet because the victims were not white children.
Two more children vanished that month: On July 6, nine-year-old Anthony Carter, who was found behind a warehouse near his home the next day. He had been stabbed to death. On July 13, eleven-year-old Earl Terrell vanished after leaving the South Bend Park swimming pool. His aunt received a call from a man claiming that he had the boy with him in Alabama and demanding $200 for his return.
The crime of kidnapping and transporting a person across state lines falls under FBI jurisdiction. It was soon decided, however, that the ransom call had been a hoax; nevertheless, Agent John Douglas went down to join Hazelwood. Meanwhile, the task force had been increased from five members to twenty-five. Civic groups raised a $100,000 reward for the killer, and a plan was set up to promote athletic and cultural programs to keep young blacks off the streets. Later, a curfew on children would be imposed.
Some blacks held a theory that the killer was a policeman, but the police argued that he was more likely to be a black teenager, who would be trusted by other teens. The belief that the killings were racially motivated was strengthened by the fact that, with the exception of Angel Lenair, none of the victims had been sexually assaulted.
The last killing of the summer was that of thirteen-year-old Clifford Jones, who was visiting his grandmother in Atlanta. His strangled body was found in a Dumpster on August 20. He was dressed in clothes that were not his own.
On September 14, fourteen-year-old Darron Glass disappeared. By then, although many of the killings were still considered unconnected, authorities knew they had a crisis on their hands. Mayor Maynard Jackson asked the White House for help, but it was still a question of whether there had even been any interstate violations to justify the FBI’s involvement in the situation. Nevertheless, Douglas and Hazlewood began their joint investigation using the methods of the BSU—studying crime-scene photographs, interviewing family members, studying the dumpsites. Their problem was to put themselves into the mind of the killer, and they even took a test under a psychologist to try to view the world through the eyes of a paranoid schizophrenic—the psychologist was deeply impressed by their results.
As had Hazelwood, Douglas concluded that this killer was a young black man, probably about twenty-nine years of age. This would explain why the children would trust him enough to accept a lift. He would be a “police buff,” who enjoyed posing as a police officer and probably carried a badge. He might even have a police-type dog.
As to motivation, the killer would be homosexual,
attracted to young boys, but sexually inadequate, which would explain why there had been no rapes. He would probably have some kind of practiced ruse to attract the kids, and Douglas thought that he might pose as a music promoter. He hypothesized that the children probably knew their killer, and trusted him—these were not casual pickups.
The Atlanta Police Department checked through their records of known pedophiles, and ended with a list of fifteen hundred possible suspects. But not all Atlanta cops were impressed by the profile—one black officer told Douglas, “I’ve seen your profile and I think it’s shit.”
In Conyers, a small town twenty-five miles away, police thought they had a lead when they received a tape from someone who claimed to be the killer, declaring that he had left a body on Sigmon Road. He sounded like a white man with strong racist views. Douglas said immediately: “This is not the killer, but you have to catch him because he’ll keep on calling and distracting us until you do.” He then suggested how this could be done. The taunting tone implied that the man saw the police as idiots. Douglas advised them to go and search Sigmon Road, and make sure that they looked incompetent and failed to follow the caller’s instructions. Just as he expected, the man rang to tell them what fools they were; they were waiting for his call, traced it, and arrested him in his own house—from which he had been stupid enough to make the call.
Wayne Williams poses along the fence line at Valdosta State Prison in Georgia. His 1982 conviction for the slayings of two adults, and the decision by authorities to blame him for the murders of twenty-two others without taking him to trial for those crimes, officially ended what became known throughout the world as the “Atlanta child murders.” (Associated Press)
The killing went on. After Darron Glass, twelve-year-old Charles Stevens disappeared on October 9; his body was found the next day, suffocated. Nine days later, a search of woodland area revealed the body of the missing LaTonya Wilson, but the body was too badly decomposed for the cause of death to be determined. By then, the Atlanta police chief, George Napper, was admitting that all leads had been exhausted. Fearing a Halloween attack on trick-or-treaters, the mayor initiated a citywide curfew, and police patrols were beefed up. Nonetheless, the suffocated body of nine-year-old Aaron Jackson was found on November 2. Although he had been a friend of an earlier victim, Aaron Wyche, there was still no clue to the identity of the killer. On November 10, sixteen-year-old Patrick Rogers disappeared. Rogers had once had a crush on Aaron Jackson’s older sister. His body was found on December 21, facedown in the Chattahoochee River. A blow to the head had killed him. On January 4, 1981, Lubie Geter disappeared from a shopping mall. Five days later, police found the badly decomposed bodies of two missing children in a wood south of Atlanta—Christopher Richardson and Earl Terrell. Lubie Geter was found in early February.
Also in early February 1981, the Task Force received a call from eleven-year-old Patrick Baltazar, saying that he thought the killer was coming after him. Unfortunately, the detectives failed to ask him why he thought so, and when Baltazar vanished on February 6, it was too late. His body was found a week later in an office car park, strangled with a rope. It was announced that a hair fiber found on his body matched that found on five previous victims.
On February 22, fifteen-year-old Terry Pue was last seen at a hamburger restaurant; he was a friend of Lubie Geter. An anonymous white caller told the police where his body could be found on Sigmon Road, in Rockdale County. The body was found there, strangled with a rope, and police announced that they had been able to raise a fingerprint from the flesh, but no match proved to be on record.
Douglas recalled that there had been another Sigmon Road in the case, and that the police search there had been widely publicized. Was it possible, he wondered, that the killer was carefully following the press reports, pleased at the level of interest he was generating, and that he dumped the last body in another Sigmon Road as if making the point that he could abandon bodies wherever he liked? The two Sigmon Roads were more than twenty miles apart, so the killer had a long drive in order to make his point. Might it be possible to manipulate the killer through publicity? Would he now start dumping bodies in the river, to wash away evidence? Douglas’s insight proved correct; the next body to be found, thirteen-year-old Curtis Walker, was in the South River. That same day, the remains of Jefferey Mathis, who had been missing for more than a year, were finally uncovered. His funeral made national news.
FBI agents now strongly advised that a surveillance team should be set up to watch the rivers, particularly the Chattahoochee, Atlanta’s main waterway. This was not easy, since it involved several police jurisdictions. It took the best part of two months to organize it, but by April it was in operation.
After Curtis Walker, the next two bodies, fifteen-year-old Joseph “Jo-Jo” Bell and his friend Timothy Hill, thirteen, were found in the Chattahoochee River, Timothy on March 30, Jo-Jo on April 19. Like Patrick Baltazar, both boys had been stripped of their outer garments. Two days after he had gone missing on March 2, a coworker of Bell had told his manager at the seafood restaurant where they worked that Jo-Jo had called him and told him that he was “almost dead” and pleaded for his help.
These were the last child victims. For reasons unknown, the killer now moved on to adults. Yet it is possible that the reason for the choice of the first adult victim, Eddie Duncan, twenty-one, was once again dictated by publicity. Residents of the Techwood Homes housing project took to the streets to protest that the police force was not doing its job. Residents decided to form a patrol carrying baseball bats. It was on the day this “bat patrol” started, March 20, 1981, that Duncan, who was both physically and mentally disabled, disappeared. His body was found in the Chattahoochee River on April 8.
Despite massive media attention and rewards offered for any help in capturing the killer or killers, the body count continued to rise. Twenty-year-old Larry Rogers was the second adult added to the list of victims. As was Duncan, Rogers was retarded. His strangled body was found in an abandoned apartment. Next came twenty-three-year-old Michael McIntosh, who had known Jo-Jo Bell and was pulled from the Chattahootchee River in April. John Porter was twenty-eight when he was found stabbed to death that same month. The body of twenty-one-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne was also found floating in the Chattahoochee that April. In May, seventeen-year-old William Barrett was found strangled and stabbed after leaving home to pay a bill for his mother.
On May 22 came the break. Police posted close to the Parkway Bridge over the Chattahoochee River spotted headlights, heard a splash, and saw a man climb into a station wagon. They stopped it, and found that it was driven by a plump young black man who identified himself as Wayne Williams, age twenty-three. He claimed to be a freelance photographer and music promoter, traveling across the bridge to audition a woman named Cheryl Johnson. In fact, her phone number was incorrect and her address did not exist. Williams was questioned for an hour, but the police could see no reason to detain him, so he was allowed to go, and placed under constant surveillance.
Two days later, the body of twenty-seven-year-old Nathaniel Cater, the oldest victim, was found floating in the river. Dog hairs found on the body matched those found in Williams’s station wagon and in his home. One witness testified to seeing Williams leaving a theater hand in hand with Cater just before his disappearance. Another witness testified to seeing Williams in the company of another of the victims, Jimmy Ray Payne, also found in the river. A young black who knew Williams well testified that Williams had offered him money to perform oral sex, and another described how, after he had accepted a lift, Williams had fondled him through his trousers, then stopped the car in secluded woods; the teenager had jumped out and run away. He also said that he had seen Williams with Lubie Geter. When laboratory examination established that fibers and dog hairs found on ten more victims were similar to those found in Williams’s bedroom, the police decided to arrest him. He was charged only with the murders of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne.
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br /> Wayne Bertram Williams was the only child of two schoolteachers, Homer and Fay Williams, in their mid-forties when he was born on May 27, 1958. He was a brilliant and spoiled child. He studied the sky through a telescope and set up a home-built radio station. When his transmitter was powerful enough to reach a mile, he began selling advertising time. He was featured in local magazines and on TV. When he left school at eighteen he became obsessed by police work and bought a car that resembled an unmarked police car.
The prosecution later described him as the typical “Manichean” personality (the Manichees were world-haters): intelligent, literate, and “talented, but a pathological liar” (“a bullshitter” as one friend described him). He was a frustrated dreamer, and a man who felt himself to be a failure. He was obsessed by a desire for quick success, and first became a photographer, studying television camera work. He claimed to be a talent scout, trying to set up a pop group to sing soul music. He seemed to hate other blacks, according to several witnesses, referring to them as “niggers.” Yet he distributed leaflets offering blacks between the age of eleven and twenty-one “free” interviews about a musical career. One of the victims, Patrick Rogers, was a would-be singer.
The evidence was, as the prosecutor conceded in the trial that opened on December 28, 1981, entirely circumstantial, and it was with some reluctance that the judge, Clarence Cooper, allowed it to be strengthened by details relating to other murders besides those with which Williams was charged.
Carpet fiber was a key component of the prosecution’s case. Fibers found on the bodies of the victims were similar to fibers found in Williams’s home and automobile—twenty-eight fiber types linked to nineteen items from the house, bedroom, and vehicles driven by Williams.
Five bloodstains were also found in Williams’s station wagon, matched to the blood of victims William Barrett and John Porter.
