Atlanta child murders

The Atlanta child murders, known locally simply as the "missing and murdered children case", were a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia from the summer of 1979 until the spring of 1981. Over the two year period, twenty-nine African-American children, adolescents and adults were killed.

The Murders

The murders of Edward Smith (14) and Alfred Evans (12), which were just two days apart, began the series of murders committed by the Atlanta child killer. The next murder victim, Milton Harvey (who was 14 years old at the time), disappeared on September 4, 1979, while traveling to the bank to pay a credit card bill for his mother.

Yusef Bell went to the store to buy snuff for a neighbor. A witness said she saw Yusef getting into a blue car before he disappeared. Still, the police did not make a link to the three recent killings.

The next victim, 12-year-old Angel Lenair, was the first female victim of the Atlanta Child Killer. Within the next two weeks, Jeffery Mathis and Eric Middlebrooks had also disappeared.

Then on June 9, Chris Richardson went missing while on his way to a local pool. On June 22 and June 23, 7-year-old Latoyna Wilson and 10-year-old Aaron Wyche went missing.

Two Atlanta child murders -- those of Anthony Carter and Earl Terell -- occurred in July 1980.

Between August and November, five more killings took place. However, there were no known victims during the month of December.

The murders continued into 1981, and the first known victim in the new year was Lubie Geter, who disappeared on January 3. Geter's body was found in February. Lubie Geter's friend, Terry Pue, went missing in January also. An anonymous caller and told police where to find his body. [ [http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/williams/15.html Famous Atlanta Child Murders & Wayne Williams - the Crime Library - The Crime library ] ]

There were two more murders in February, and March was the month which saw the most Atlanta child murders (four in total, including the first adult victim, Eddie Duncan).

Larry Rogers was murdered in April, as well as an ex-convict named John Porter and Jimmy Ray Payne.

William Barrett went missing on May 16, 1981, and his body was found close to his home. The Atlanta Child Killer's last known victim was Nathaniel Cater, who was 27 years old.

After this, the investigation created a map about the victims' whereabouts. Despite their ages, the parameters were the same. They were connected to Memorial Drive and 11 major streets in the area.

Capturing the suspect

As the news media divulged physical evidence was being gathered from the corpses, the F.B.I. secretly profiled the killer would dump the next victim into a body of water to remove any evidence that had accumulated. Police staked out the James Jackson parkway/south Cobb drive bridge over the Chattahoochee river between Atlanta/Fulton county and suburban Cobb county to monitor any sign of suspicious activity in connection with the murders. On the last night of their stake-out, May 22, 1981, detectives got the first major break in the case when an officer heard a splash in the water beneath the bridge. Shortly thereafter a white 1970 Chevrolet station wagon was seen slowly driving away from the bridge. An Atlanta police patrol car and a second unmarked car carrying federal agents first followed and then stopped the station wagon about a half mile from the bridge. The driver was 22-year-old Wayne Bertram Williams. The Chevrolet Wagon belonged to his parents and dog hair and fiber evidence later recovered from the rear of the vehicle would be a major factor in building the case against Williams. During questioning, he said he was going to help a woman named Cheryl Johnson who Williams claimed lived in the nearby Cobb County town of Smyrna to audition to be a singer. Police found no record of Cheryl Johnson or Williams' appointment with her.

On May 24, the naked body of Nathaniel Cater was found floating downriver just a few miles from the bridge where Williams' car was stopped. The medical examiner determined the body had been in the river no more than 36-48 hours. Based on this evidence, including the splash, police believed Williams killed Cater and disposed of the body while police were there without his knowledge.

Several pieces of evidence finally made police consider Williams a prime suspect. Finally, on June 21, 1981, they arrested and indicted Williams for first degree murder in the deaths of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne. The trial date was set for early 1982.

Trial

Jury selection began on December 28, 1981, and lasted six days. When seated, the jury was composed of nine women and three men, with a racial breakdown of eight blacks and four whites.

The trial officially began on January 6, 1982, with Judge Clarence Cooper presiding. The most important evidence against Williams was the fiber analysis between victims and the 10 pattern murder cases.

On February 27, 1982, Wayne Bertram Williams was found guilty of the two murders and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in the Georgia state prison at Reidsville.

On May 6, 2005, DeKalb County, Georgia, Police Chief Louis Graham ordered the reopening of the murder cases of the four boys killed in DeKalb County between February and May 1981 that were attributed to Williams. Chief Graham believes that Williams may be innocent of all of the murders. However, the remaining cases are under the jurisdiction of Fulton County, Georgia, and are still considered closed by the relevant authorities.

Recent developments

Now 49-years-old, Wayne Williams continues to maintain his innocence.

About six months after he became DeKalb chief, Graham reopened the investigation into the deaths of the five DeKalb victims: Aaron Wyche, 10; Curtis Walker, 13; Joseph Bell, 15; William Barrett, 17; and Patrick Baltazar, 11. Graham, one of the original investigators in the case, said he never believed Wayne Williams — the man convicted of two of the killings and blamed for 22 others — was guilty of any of them.

After Wayne's conviction in 1982, over the next twelve years there was a string of unsolved child and adolescence murders in and around the Atlanta area, similar to the murders for which Wayne was convicted.

On August 6, 2005, it was revealed that Charles T. Sanders, a white supremacist affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan who had been investigated for a role in the Atlanta child killings, once praised the crimes in secretly recorded conversations. Although Sanders did not claim responsibility for any of the deaths, lawyers for Williams believe the evidence will help their bid for a new trial. Sanders told an informant for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the 1981 recording that the killer had "wiped out a thousand future generations of niggers." Police dropped the probe into the KKK's possible involvement after seven weeks, when Sanders and two of his brothers passed lie detector tests.

Criminal profiler John E. Douglas has stated that while he believes Williams committed many of the murders, he did not commit them all. He adds that he believes law enforcement has some idea of who the other killers are, cryptically adding "it isn't a single offender and the truth isn't pleasant." ["Mindhunter" by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker]

On June 21, 2006 DeKalb County police dropped their reinvestigation of the Atlanta child murders. Graham resigned the previous month and was replaced by 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 in our reach.".

On January 29, 2007 lawyers for the state of Georgia agreed to allow DNA testing of dog hair that was used to convict Wayne Williams. The decision came in a response to a filing as part of Williams' efforts to appeal his conviction and life sentence. Williams' lawyer, Jack Martin, asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge to allow DNA tests on dog and human hair and blood that might help win Williams a new trial.

On June 26, 2007 the test results were released but failed to exonerate Williams. [DNA Won't Clear Williams. [http://www.dailyreportonline.com/Editorial/News/new_singleEdit.asp?individual_SQL=8/3/2007@15752_Public_.htm] . Daily Report. 2007-09-03. Retrieved 2008-02-23.]

Known Child Victims

References

Further reading

*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.
*Jones, Tayari. "Leaving Atlanta". New York, Warner Books, 2002. A novel that focuses on children during the time of the murders.
*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.

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088750/ IMDB] - "The Atlanta Child Murders"
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088750/ IMDB] - Who Killed Atlanta's Children?
*FBI - Freedom of Information Act - [http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/atlanta.htm Atlanta Child Murders]
* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/williams/index_1.html Crime Library: The Atlanta Child Murders]