Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
After the killings of more than 20 children that terrified the city of Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, police convicted Wayne Williams of the murder of two adults and said he was the prime suspect in what became nationally known as the ‘Atlanta Child Murders.’
original air date .december 2004
for two years ,the bodies of black childen had been found in the woods, then the rivers of Atlanta Georgia.
in all, more tan two dozen victims , most of them of them strangled.
by may 1981, the police and FBI were hiding in the brush. beside and below the river bridges. this was to be the last night , almost the last hour.
bob campbell. a police recruit heard splash jump to his feet and down beside the chattahoochee river . he was reallly strtled , it sounded like a body out on water.
he looked up at the bridge.
and he saw brake lights of a car coming. the car started slowly moving away from him across the bridge.
campbelll radioed the otherr team members up above him. he asked ,did the car stop on the bridge.because he couldn´t believe what he saw.
and each person told me they didn’t see it .
then a policeman in chase car,hidden on the other side came n the radio.
he just said the car is pulling around infront of him started coming back across the bridge coming back in his direction.
this is that white station wagon.police followed it and stopped it nearby.
FBI rush to the scene. the driver was standing by the highway.
he was talking with the officers .a black male , he had on a baseball that , had on glasses.
the young man was wayne williams,about to turn 23, a self – anointed music talent scout who slept days and roamed the city at night.
mcComas invited williams over to his car. he got in the car . and mc comas asked him why they were here. and he imediately said yeas ” its about the missing children.
and that kind of stunned mcComas. and he said ! what do yoi know about that ?” and he goes ” well , ” he said , ” don’t think that various news agencies are covering it adequately.do you?
two weeks later , this headlines would break the news o f that night on the bridge. vayne williams would be sent to prison to serve to life sentences for murder.
at first glance he hardly looks like a serial killers. not much more tan five and a half feet tall, barely 150 pounds . now in his 5os and growing bald.
wayne : ” the bottom line is , nobody ever testified or even claimed thet they saw me strike another person,choke another person , stab , beat, or kill ot hurt any body …because i didn’t.
this is the first time vayne williams has talked on TV in at least a decade.
wayne: atlanta at the time was in panic, they wanted any suspect that they could find, and let’s just be honest, it had to be a black person. because if it had been a white suspect , atlanta probably would have gone up in flames.
and would wayne ever be free?
wanye: no doubt , it’s not a matter of it to be, it’s a matter of when.
some 30 years after wayne williams ‘s trial and conviction,there is stil ldebate and some doubt. this time ,y ou can be the judge and the jury.
we’ll lsu out the evidence on boths sides. and you´ll hear from wanye williams at length. then we’ll invite you to reach oyur own verdict. guilty , innocent or a third choice, not proven.
the first clue was found on a dead boy’s tennis choes.
the victims was eric middlebrooks ,his body left here in a rainy alley.
a foster child who rode his bicycle away one night on an errand and was dead by dawn.
detective buffington saw something red stuck to eric’s tennis choe.
and he notice in the flap of the edge of the shoe, this tuff of what to him appeared to be wool.
and that was it , they couldn’t find no other evidence. .back at homicide ,buffington showed the fibers and his superiors. the lieutenant made a big joke of out of it .
and told the rest of the squad if buffington went over to the lieutenant’s house and clean out the the lint trap in his dryer,” we could probably clear out all the cases in the city of Atlanta.”
still biffinton sent the fibers to the state crime laboratory . a young forensic scientist larry peterson took a look.
so why was a fiber that was stuck n the crack of a choe , why was that important?
– because it somehwat loosely there and people dont normally hafe tufs of carpets fiber loosely stuck in thheir choe
from those few thin treads peterson would begin to build a case to try to catch a killer.
in the spring of 1980 no one wanted to believe a serial killer was loose in the city even when bob buffington spotted a distrubing pattern.
buffington:”there had been a sharp increase in a number of children under the age of 14 .who had been killed..
when buffington told his boss at homcide , te major threatened to transfer him .
and buffington truly think that they were afraid that would be a panic.
it was this mother ,after the loss of her nine .year old son who forced police to listen. but not unil almost a year after her boyd died.
camille bell and her childen lived in these project apartments…poor tot he eye but rich in mind and spirit.
yusuf bell was an honor student in the gifted progam at school.
on a warm october sunday in 1979 he walked away on an errand to by a snuff for an elderly lady downstairs.
he went barefooted, in a pair of brown shorts.he got to the store ,he bought the snuff , he started back home
less than half a block from this store,yusuf bell stepped off this curb and vanished…..
and nobody saw anybody do anything but they did see him come back across the street and that’s the last that they saw him
camille call the police. they came and said they´d write a report. days went by….camille waited with two older children and yusuf’s three -year-old sister.
camille hid her own fear from her children. and said youve’ got to hold them together so you can’t act as scared as your are.”
the body of yusuf bell was found in an abandoned school house.his body would not turn up for another month.yusuf bell had been strangled.
for a long time the three year old would look for yusuf every time it was a foggy day. and camille and the 3 year old would go out into the fog. and the thre year old would go as far as she could into the fog. and camille say ” come back here”
the thre uear old girl said ” i got to go find my brother.” and she said ” the clouds came down so yusuf can com down”.
the child . her mother said , had confused the fog with heaven.
still ahead the boy who was too brave.
a drive by threat , against the FBI chiefs child.some g guy in a picup truck said” iam going to get you nigga.”
the following coitanins graphic images. viewer disrection advised.
in the spring of 1980 , police were still reluctant to camille bell. children were dying on the streets of atlanta in the daytime.
among them , jeffrey matthis, only 10.
like yusuf bell ,he walked down the street onan errand
to this gas station to by cigarettes for his mother. she never saw him again.
what we had here was a preditor and what he was looking for somebody who was cut off from the herd.and if you don’t realixe you´re in trouble,until your in trouble. then you have no way of getting out.
it woud be another year before jeffrey mathis’ body
was found in a wood.
.
jeffrey’s mother would join camille bell
in forming. a commitee to confront the city’s leaders.
the reaction of the police was that camille and jeffrey’s mother among’s others wew overreacting and there was no serie killer.
even though by now sic black children were dead, four others were missing.
perhaps the parent were like distraught.and thata needed every one’s sympathy. but nobody needed to do anyting.
for years ,it has been a diry little secret among the press and the police.
death of blacks than death s of whites.
nobody care ,so you could have several killings go on,and if the people were poor , then no one discovered there were a serial killing.
if you were black and poor , then really nobodoy locked , especially ig you’re nlsvk snf poor and southern.
police were slow to recognize this deaths were different.many of the bodies were left in the woods far from home. unlike most murder victims who are found where they fall.
unsolved murders of children is very rare.if a nine year old got killed. it was because somebody slapped him acrossthe room, he hits his head and he died.
police did not create a task force until year after the first murders began.
FBI profiler, roy hazelwoos came down to help.
three detectives drove him aeound the city.and turned into jeffrey mathis neighborhood
as soon as they turned ontothatt street.everythng stopped the guy wwho was cutting the grass stopped,guys playing domino’s on the porch stopped.
roy said ” what’s going on?” everything stopped ” they said .laughingly. thas because we have a honley in the car”
john glover ,who took over as FBI chief in Atlanta that summer ,says that’s why he and hazelwood decided the killer had to be black.
the killer is someone whos invisible in rhe black community .and who is invisible in the black community but another black person .
harris was one of the first task force detectives. he knew it had to be someone who went unnoticed.
he said ” we felt lile it was somebody who could come in the neighborhood and get these children.
the question of whichrace struck a raw nerve.
it had been only a dozen years since the murder of dr martin luther king.
on the surface ,atöamta was a well – integrated city.
it remained separate and unequal.
harris said they wanted the person to be black. and reason why you want him to be black,i knew whta it would do to this town.if it had been a white person or somebody of another race.
in the black community in the early 80s a black serial killer was unheard of.all the classic serial killers were white , never black.it doesn’t mean we don’t have one now.
today black serial killers are not rare.in 2009,here in cleveland, as well as in milwaukee and los angeles.
each time ,the accused serial killer turned out to be african american.
dr eric hickey is a psychologist, who keeps track of serial killers.
overall in his study ,one out of every five serial killers is afrcan american.in the past since 1995 over 40% are african american.
there were whites who fed the fear in atlanta. as FBI chief john glover had moved into this upper-class white neighborhood. his 12 years old son was playing outside one afternoon.
some guy in a pickup -truck .he was out inthe yard in the side yard. john were on a corner lot . said.i am gonna get you nigga as he was driving by.
kasim reed seen in these childhood photos was only 10 .
when the first two bodies were found in the woods close to his home in the summer of 1979
in 2010 reed would become the mayor of atlanta. but then as the youngest boy in the family his teenage brothers were his protectors.
people were suspicious of everybody.and they were afraid. and the children -you had children walking the street, a car go by and you could see some of them were in fear.
and for good reason . the mirder were about to increase to a body almost every week.
the following program containes graphic images. viewr discretion advised.
so many of the children who died were poor. who earned spending money carrying groceries, running errands for others .
or like lubie geter, peddling car deodorizers outside this supermarket.on new´s weekend ,1981.hi’s mother worried about his going off alone .
Lubi was a good student , a sohpmore in high school
a wittness at the shopping center that day , saw lubi with a man and help the police draw this sketch,
a man with a baseball cap, perhaps a a scar on his cheek. lubi never came home .
police searched the woods around Atlanta.they did not find lubi.
instead, police found, two other bodies.
two young boys disapeared ten miles and a month apart.
yet both left here at the same dumping ground.
the number of known dead , now 15. the unsolved murders of so many children. had been come front page news around and the world.
this is the reward.
the city announced a reward a 100.000$ reward , soon to grow to half milion.
the task force was samped with sketched of suspects.non of them alike, many suggested by psychics.
at the state crime lab , larry peterson was sifting through southsands of fibers.nylon. tsuon ,acrylic. acetate.
then in janary 1981 , a breakthrough. peterson realized they were seeing one green carpe fiber.
with a unick shape. this is a cross sedction of that fiber . magnified many times.
tihis particular fiber had two very large lobe and one short lobe.
the lobes are are the three ends of the boomerang shape.the shape was the most distinctive feature of the fiber.
an even more sophisticated microscope can seperate colors to identify a specific fiber. now peterson knew what to look for.
when peterson was looking for the fiber at first , he had no idea who had made it. he just knew it was very distintive and he would recognized it instatntley. but he didn’t knwo where to find it.
wayne williams was not yet on anyone’s radar. he had r reelanced as a TV camera man who shot fires and overnight news.
now almost 23 . a wanna be music producer. he was triend to form a singing group
model after after the jackson five.
in fact ,the afternoon lubie Geter disappeared, williams says.
this receipy shows that he had an alibi.audition young singers from from 4:30 to 8:30 that evening.
-the studio was small demos tudio.” kathy andrew was co -owner of that studio.
-to my best recollaction he auditoned young kids fro a groupt tht never existed., they were roughly as young as eight and as old …for the kids they were as old as 11 or 12.
now living in another state.kathy did not want her face shown,because what she saw another day at her studio.
– at one point when wayne came for one of the sessions , he walked back of the studio and he had horrible scratches on his arm.
deep and painful, crisscrossing both arms.
-and they were angy looking. and when i looked at him, the first words out of my mouth was :” oh , wayne , what happened? that lools awful.” and he said he has falling into a bush.
15 year old Terry pue died later that january.his body dropped by the roadside .
in a rural 2o miles from home. he had been strangled
– it gives me chills down my spine still.
kathy andrews does not believe wanye’s explanation.
wayne wiliams.
-he did not fall in a bush , that was after your realized it ,it was very obivius, and i mean and i don’t know what else could have caused that kidnd of wound on his arm.
the intervals between murders were shrinking.19 days from lubie ‘s disappearance until terry ‘s death,
then 15 days to the next victim, soon 13 , then 11, and before long ,a body a week.
FBI profiler roy haxelwood says this is not unusal for serial killers.
-they come to believe that they in fact are almost immune to mistakes if you will. and they can take greater risks because it’s more exciting and because they’re so superior , they don’t havet o worry about the inferior police catching them.
after a month lubi’s body would be found in the woods. the boys left naked ,exept for scraps of underwear.
The medical examiner would testify lubi. apparently jsfr nrrn killed by a
” a choke hold around the neck . a forearm across the neck.”
its a question we’lll have reason to ask wayne williams by the end of all of this.
soleda: its actually a simple question , can you killl someone with a chokehold?
wayne : you probably could under the right circumstances.
soleda- i know for a fact i could ot.
the following cotains graphic images . viewer discreation advised.
there’s yet another twist in the missing and murdered childrend case. the body was indeed another victim of atlanta’s child killer or killers.
Atlanta is a city of frustrations and fears as the missing and murdered children grow
patrick baltazar was the kid he could catch a killer
sheila – he was like. ” man , i want to find this killer and get this reward money i am going to buy my mama a house. and i’m going to do this , and … i am going to find this killer”
his stepmother sheila baltazar was worried.
patrick was a latckey child living unsupervised with an older brother in a project apartment near downtown. he stayed out late at night.ofthen at the Omni center
now the headquarter of CNN.
but back then, a hotel hotel complex with an indorr skating rink and game room for kids. thats where he spent a lot of his time .at the games arcade.
whayne williams was known to frequent the Omni,
passing out these flyers as a talent scout. to offer auditions to boys from age 11 on up.
by early february 1981, more than a dozen young african american boys had been found dead.
many dumped in the woods around Atlanta.
sheila pleaded to send patrick back home to his rest of his family in rutal Louisiana.
one evening , a white man ina a big car appeared to threaten patrick and a small friends.
the little boy said that patrick said ” man , that might be the killer”
patrick used a payphone to call police. he told them a man was chasing him and his friend in a brown caddilac.
the police actually thought it was a prank phone call. they didn’ t send a car out.
this is a sketch.the other boy provided to police after patrick was dead.
two weeks later on february 6 by the resturant where his father worked to ask for money.
then walked back toward the Omni, he never made it hom that night.
the Atlanta missing persons bureau continued their hunt for this missing child. 11 year old patrick baltazar
on the seventh day a maintenance man spotted a body, tossed down into the woods behind a parking lot at a suburban office complex.
medical examiner josef burton had to hold on to a rope to get down to the scene.
he had a ligature mark on his neck like if somebody had a ligature and they were behind you or off to the side behind you and they close their hands or fist together and pull the l ivature basically.
in other words- killed from behind
state crime lab scienttist larry peterson, attended the autopsy.he recall one autopsy pulling a fiber off one of the victims. it was a green carpet fiber, i mounted the sample on the slide, he went over and looked under the microscope,he went ” it’s the same one”
local televison carried these pictures from the crime scene.
shield baltazar got a call from her mother.she said they found another body .she say i really feel like this is patrick’s body here.
but if the is one o f the three missing children the chance are strong that he was 11 year old patrick baltazar who disappeared.
mrs baltazar and her husband went to the funeral home to identify their child.
they said he had struggled for his life and seeing the print , the rope print across his neck, all way around in front.
at patrick baltazar’s funeral. she would insist on an open casket.
sheila: ” i just wanted the world to see that this child could have been anybodys child”
patrick’s fifth grade classmate wrote a poem .
the following contains graphic images . viewer discretion advised.
in february 1981. a troublesome tip reach the police.a man involved in the ku klux klan could be Atlantas serial killer.
Atlanta was about to explode , and here was information, potentially the klan could have been doing this.
bob ingram with the GBI.got the case.
it was an entire family of brothers,that were in the klan that were focus of this particular intelligence information.
an informant said , one brother had threatened lubie the child found dead only weeks before.
the klan associate lived here on a dead end street .
on the railroad of mountain view.on rgw outskirt of Atlanta.
tapping telephones, heard a lot of rhetoric, heard a lot of racial slurs.
on one wiretap ,the detectives heard this said “go find you another little kid??
the GBI followed the four brothers for almost two months. this family members were under surveillance at that time, physical surveillance.GBI had an eyeball on them .
in those six more black youths would dissapeared and die detective saw nothing to link the klan to them
if somebody was in there with a van or two or three men, who grab somebody and dump them. in the back of a van , people would have noticed if they were white.
the brothers were callled in. they took lie detector tests and passed.
they were polygaphed and cleared as to their involvement. clearing the klan didn’t stop the murders.
jo.jo bell was one of the victims who vanished during the surveillance.
he used to hang out at this seafood carryout place
Jo -jo bell . unerelated to yusuf bell,came byCAPT’N PEGS one last time.
about 3:30 four o’clock, monday, he came by and stuck his head in the door, he said
” im going to shoot basketball, i’ll see you later.
this witnesss , luigene laster , knew jo-jo and saw him leave the game.
he said he left in a station wagon and looked like this.
lester testified ” he got in the car.”got in wayne’s car.”
in court , laster would identify wayne williams as the driver.
wayne claims he did not.he never gave a ride to jo-jo but didn’t denay that he was the driver. and insteas insisted his passenger had to be someone else.
jo-jo bell was never so be seen again…
as a young child kasim reed would help the volunteers searching atlanta’s woods saturday.
literally walk through wooded areas chaperoned ,and would walk for a period of time. until about anhour before nightfall.
but , a new twist to the murders.patrick baltazar,the 20th victim would be the last child to turn up in a wooded area.
a day or two later , an official would tell reports fibers and dog hairs were being collected from the victim’s clothing.
the next child to die would be found in a river wearing nothing but underpants.
fewer clues now for larry peterson.we talking about maybe a doxen or dozens of fibers as opposed to hundreds or potentielly a thousands fibers.
the 13 year old victim was found beneath this bridge.over the south river in atlanta’s suburbs
a driver crossing that bridge earlier in the week so a man leaning over the railing. it turned out to be the same afternoon jo-jo bell disappeared.
the witness said the man was wayne williams.
jo.jo’s body would not be found for seven more weeks.until easter sunday.
it had floated far down the south river almost inot another county.
he also had nothing on but underwear basically.
medical examiner jospeh burton in a boat to retrieve the boy. got the body wrapped in a sheet, and one with a shirt off.
dr burton rulws vorg jo.jo and the other boy found in the river had been asphyxiated.
didnt have any histroy of either one of these boys, swimming in the south river in their underwear.
other bodies were now washing up to in chattahoochee river to the west and the north of atlanta.
five victimes in that river in the next sis weeks.
FBI agent mike mcCormas grew up along the river in tennessee, he knew if something were to float on downstreram it had to be dropped in the middle of a rver.
mcComas suggested the bridge stakeouts they looked at remote places ,dark places and they believed it would be at nighttime as opposed to daytime.
the FBI and police began nifgtwatches at 14 brigdes.over the chattahoochee and south river.
the stakeouts were to last four weeks.nothing until the very end.
at that point ,detective were ready for that to be they’re last night.and wayne william showed ip that night.
just before 3:00 am the station wagon drove on to the bridge.had he waited a couple more hours detectives might not have been there. otherwise detective would have missed him.
that night on the bridge wayne williams says ,police made him the scapegoat because he was black .
-when this case happened,if those police had arrested a white man ,Atlanta had been erupted. as well as several major cities you poddinlr would have had another race war.
no said the FBI chief.on the atlanta police departement’s side,they were looking for a white guy so why would all of a sudden black guy be considered a scapegoat?
williams dispute almost everything police witnesses said about that night.
wayne: in the first place , and i’m not being facetious, but nothing happend on the bridge , that’s the whole misconception, as he tells it , there was no splash. he never stopped and didn’t turn around. and didn’t throw a body ,defenetly not a body .
his story.
he crossed the bridge, i turned out briefly after i crossed the bridge at what i called liquor store. william said he pulled into the parking lot only to look up the phone number of a singer. he was trying to locate at thet hour.
he turned back back on the highway , i went to a starvin’ marvin store i usused a telephone and i came back.
the call didn’t go thrue
this is the closests thing to an adress. he had for the singer he said was cheryl johnson.
the FBI looked hard and could never find her, it say to the detectives that cheryl johnson didn´t exist.
william says , only after that call from the gas station did he turned around to cross back over the bridge again.
police would stop him moments later.
wayne:”it’s about the boys isn’t it. that what wayne said. i mean ,the preception in Atlanta was at the timd kids were missing and if i’m not mistaken thep erception was a lot of young males missing and that’s what i asked them. or boy or something like that.isn’t it?”
remember what FBI agent mike McComas said ,he was when he got to the scene.?
he saw a black male , a baseball hat. this is the sketch provided by the witnesses who saw lubi talking to a man the day lubie disapperead and died.
mcComas had never seen this until CNN came back show it to him nearly 30 years later.
this is a real strong resemblance to the person that i talked to waint williams. he had on a baseball cap. his haie was inafro so this look like him. mcComas said.
williams agree to let mcComas search his station wagon.
on the floor , om the front of the backseat he saw a nylon cord ,the best he could describe the nylon cord was a ski rope type. the woven type and it was mcComas guess about 24 inches long.
william denies there was any such cord. because if that rope would have been in the station wagon that night ,he’s sure they would have taken it.
the fact that mcComas didn’t confiscate,it doesn’t make it go away , it was there. the nylon cord would never be seen again.
could have been the murder weapon as far as i know says mcComas.
yet , FBI supervisors decided to let wayne williams go that night.
first if all, didn’t have a body.secondly ,there was no one who saw wayne williams outside of his car ,no one saw him throw anything overbord.
Two days later , only a mile downsteam from that bridge ….another body.
after two years , one suspect now
wayne williams.
the following contains graphic images . viewer discretion advised.
he second day after wayne williams was seen on the chattahoochee river
the body of nathaniel cater washed up downstream
he was a down on his luck drunk , 28 years old, but small , weighing under 150 pounds,
again.the medical examiner said ” with a choke hold … trapping the neck inthe crook of the arm.”
he would be the last body found in atlanta murders.the 27 male victim.
at cater’s funeral , w ayne williams ‘s fther homer.took this photo for the Atlanta world newspaper.
on june 3, the brought wayne in for a long night of questioning.
wayne agreed to a lie dtector test. he was as composed and calm as you can get. he got 25 bodies out there in the woods and rivers and hi’s just sitting thre lie ,total control.
richard rackleff was the FBI polygraph examiner.
he said don’t care what wayne were doing on the bridge. he doesnt care what wayne threw in the river if it wasn’t a little boys body . wayne did fine in this test.
he told william in advance what he would ask him.
did you kill nathaniel carter? did you kill him that night that you were on the bridge? and did you throw nathaniel cater in the river into the chattahoochee river?
and when richard ran that test , its lile , wow , this is it.
wayne william flunked all three questions. ” well this test would reflect that you did kill nathaniel carter and you threw his body threw off the bridge that night”
the polygraph measures swating, heartbeat, bloodpressure ,all rise with tension.
he breath a little fster you have a hard time getting your breath ,you seat a little more . he did all those.
wayne wiliam took the test three times. he failed each time.
richard said some reaction like i´ll be darned,your the guy we have been looking for for two years” it suprised him that he didn’t beat that polygraph test. he was convinced that he could beat the polygraph test. he sa tt here and studied it , and he said.
“that ‘s pretty good.that’s …did you cause the death of nathaniel carter?” and he said what’s this question? richard said ” well did you throw his body in the river?
with te media waiting outside th e FBI, the mayo’s spokesman, angelo fuster , was called om to handle the press.
press photographer
homer williams says that’s my son. fuster thought ” oh jeez”. homer told fuster that they detained him and and inpounding my car because for litterling. that was he said.
and fuster said ,its not spimd right. and i said littering? homer yeah he was driving over the this bridge, and he tstopped to trow some garbage,and by ,thy rusched him and stopped him”
and that point fuster said to him” homer , i don´t think you nedd to talk to me anymore”
wayne denied his father ever said that, i never said that , my father never said that.
while farher and son was inside the FBI, evidence technicians were combing the williams home.
the FBI topf five harold dedmon led the search.
in wayne’s bedroom he took clippings from a purple bedsspread and fom a yelow blanket.
the yellow blanket was lokated under wayne’s bed
on the floor a greem carpet
this is blow up of those carpet fibers.
there are the only company to produce a fiber like this.but larry peterson was still in the dark.
he had no idea there wasa bridge incident.
he had been called to the FBI office to help search this station wagon,but not told why.
then he spotted FBI techs retruning from their search. and so he went out to the hom to snip a fiber for himself. he saw the green carpet. he didn’t feel this was it .
because it wasa middle class home,living with his parents. but peterson thought foing to run this back to the lav and just look. he started with the green karpet under the microscope, he means he knew instatnly that was it .
he knew they had the killer . he had mad hundreds of hundreds of comparisons to carpeting and various suspects and environments before amd mpthomg was evem cöpse imto that night
he literally did jsut onece say ” oh my god”
still williams was alowed to go home that night.
in the morning wayne williams and TV crews who agreed not to show his face.
wayne acknowledge he failed a lie detector test. then asked about the victims , wayne said this.
wayne: some of these kids are in places they don’t have no business being at certain time of the day at night.they just running around the streets while i’ am saying when your doing that, that not giving anybody a license to kill, but your’e opening toueawld up for all kind of things.
wayne : my point is very simple . alrgiht , if you’re out roamin the streets like not all of these , but some of these victims were, you p ut yourself for bad things to happen.
for days ,the district attorney was relucted to take wayne williams to court based on fibers alone.
while he hesitated ,the FBI ,police and media ,all kept a watch on wayne . in this parkring lot one day.he shwoed angry face to a CNN camera crew
-hey . i’,m telling you to quite following me. and you’re on private property.and if i were you i’d get the hel off.
finally on father day’s evening ,1981. detectives arrived to arrest wayne williams for the mrder of nathaniel cater .
once he disappeared in the back of this police car, williams would never be free again to this day
wayne williams would go on trrial atthe start of 1982
testimont would last almost two months, it would be a trial like no other before.
a case built on fibres , no fingerprints, no murder weapon,no appparent motive.
now ,remember you ´re one of the jurors; thre choices. guilty , innocent, or simpy not proven.
this time the verdict is yours.
williams was charged with and tried for only two murders.
nathaniel cater
and jimmy payne
both adults , found in the same of the same area of chattahoochee.
cater’s body was nude but his hair was caked with mud.
diggging through that silt,the peterson was able to recover dog hair and fibers that was close to his scalp
the dog hair was consistent with sheba , the wayne williams family dog. in cather’s hair esd onr og yjdor unusual green carpet fibers.
under microsope peterson could thee the voomerans shape. just like those in the william family carpet.
this is an actual piece of thar carpet,which which FBI’ harold dedmond said was quate rare
it’s got an unusal carpet fiber.it was manufactured for a limited amount of time ,it was a 10 year old carpet.
on jimmy payne ,the other victim, dedmon found yelloe rayon fibrer dtuck to hiscotton shorts, fibers consistent with the blanket under wayne’s bed.
dedmon personally took the cutting from the yellow blanket. that was under the bed.
this yellow blanket fibers that dedmon clipped that night.
but when larry peterson had returned that june for a second search a couple weeks later .
there was no yellow blanket to be found . that peterson could find.
there are lot of things in wayne williams case that disappeared. yellow blanket. disepered.
wayne says in the first place there were no yellow blanket. .there were fibers allleged to have come from a yellow blanket, nobody had been able to produce the yellow blanket. there was no yellow blanket he said. if i were a police officer, i would have confiscated the blanket too it doesn’t make sense.
the prosecution was allowed to bring in 10 other deaths,among them , patrick baltazar , eric middlebrooks, jo-jo -bell. to trie to shwo a pattern.
this is a chart showing fibers that were recovered from the body of patrick baltazar .fibers consistent with that blanket with wayne williams bedspread, th e green carpet , hair from wane’s dog ,plus a leather jacket.
the jacket was as dedmon recall was haning in from his closet.
and dedmon told the jury , two human hairs were found in inside patrick baltazar’s shirt.
this two hair were consistence with originating from williams
then there were eric middlebrooks. and the fiber stuck to his tennis shoe.
this is a blow up of those red fibers. the same kind were in a car williams was driving that year.
this out middlebrooks both in the interior of the 79 ford and the trunk of the 79 ford.
wayne says he never met the young men who were victims.no once.
it’s incalculable the odds that it’s not that ,they were not in contact with him in his environment. peterson said.
the fiber evidence is wayns biggest obstacle.
that fiber evidence may well have been manipulated in this case poiny nlsnk and simple because they had a suspect . it was wayne . and that manipulation no doubt has continued even after my trial and up until this point said wayne williams.
there were just too many fibers placed on too many bodies.
mike durham , in blue, seen here. the night of the verdict , was one of the jurors.
what would the chances be of finding these same … all of this fibers the chances would be just astronomical.
this witness , robert henry , did place williams with the very last wictims , nathaniel cater. henry worked with cater.
he say he saw him leaving this theather with wayne williams. on the night of the bridge incident
henry has no doubt even today about what he saw.
there were holding hands, like male and female.well,if you’re holding hand with oneo f my co -workers and both of you are male . what am i supposed to do? turn my head? said henry. the next time i saw him he was in the courtroom.
when wayne williams took the stand , he swore he never met nathaniel cater.on the evening henry said he saw them , wayne testified he was home , aick and asleep in bed.
his mother and father . now deceased ,backed him up.homer williams said he had the white station wagon until almost midnight.
under cross examination in his third day on the stand when williams blew up at prosecutor jack mallard
-that morning he was a complete different person. immediately he started attacking , he came out of the chute like a bull. when he said” you want the real wayne williams? you’ve got him ” i think all of us,the jury understood that.
wayne: i was probably my own worst enemy .i was a arrogant bus headed idiot at that time.and i played right into these people’s hands.i could see almost the shot in the jurors faces as if they sa, “my god, , is the thame wayne that was up here yesterday?”
patrick baltazar’s stepmother was watching in court that day.
-im like, this man got to be crazy. this man , i mean , he – its´lile he´s saying you know , “yeah , killed them , but you better prove it” you know it. ” can you prove it?”
he was doing everything, he can too utsmart everybody. and it was like ” did it , but can you orive i did it?”
camille bell , yusuf’s mother believed wayne to be innocent. she feels that last day on the witness stand convicted him.
-and then when he flared off , then they were ready to say, ” well okay, so he does have fire”
wayne called the prosecutor a ” a drops hot” that means ” Quite simply , “in our vernacular , a drop shot is a guy who’s not worth much of anything , you know.just drop him and shoot him and get him out of the way.
CNN reminded wayne that he aslo called poor black children on the streets the same thing “drop shots
-that does not make me s murderer simply because i say somebody is a drop shot, that does not make wayne williams a murderer. because i say somebody is a street urchin. you know , come on we’re talking about murder. the fact is , i didn’t kil anybody.
the jury didn’t come back until late the second evening.the verdict -guilty.of both counts of murdering the two adults cater and payne.wayne williams was sentenced to serve two life terms.
wayne: people only wanted to look at the negative side. because they wanted to lool at the negative side because they wanted in their heart for this case to be over.and for wayne to be the atlanta monster at any cause.
leaving court ,homer williams walked by the prosecutors’s table.
– he looked at us and called us sons of bitches said the prosecutor.
still to come , no wercit in the deaths of any of the children
defense attorney mary welcome did not expect the guilty verdict.
-i was crestfallen,because he might have been guilty.
during the trial , medical examiner robert stives , told the jury there had been very few strangulations of black males in the years before these murders began , and none at all with bodies left in rivers or by the roadside
since that night wayne williams was stopped leaving this bridge.
mary / attorny :“they were convinced that the crimes had stopped because wayne had been arrested
wayne:” …and i think what happened is people stopped looking and stopp counting.
murders have continuesd in Atlanta,shootings of black men , stabbings of black women ,but not strangulation like before.not black youth dumped far from where they were killed.
detective welcome harris would stay on the police force another 25 years.CNN asked him, how many more children were killed the way they were in the 80s.
harry: none that i can recall.
wayne williams appeals wold drag on for years. he almost won the first one.
Georgia supreme court justice george smith helped a colleague write a ruling tht would have reversed the vedict.
george: he would have found that the evidence didn’t support the cnviction. that’s what he did find originally.
but the five other justice resisted.
george: when we met , they pitched a a royal fit, they were not going to overtun the conviction the fiveof them.
in the end , all the justices. exept smith agreed to uphold the conviction.wayne william said that the court was bullied into making its U turn.
wayne: i think the pressure came from the white house.
not so said george smith , now retired from the court but still practicing law in his 90s
(Justice smith died august 2010 at age 93)
smith did write a dissenting opinion, he said the fiber evidence fell short of scientific certainty and the prosecution should not have been allowed to use so called pattern evidence on 10 other murders.
smith said that the only similarity in the crime in this case is the fact that all of them are dead.
smith was denounced on the floor of the gerogia legislature.
smith:i was an N lover . you know what N stand for .
mary welcome agreed when justice smith wrote the defense attorneys were ineffective.
mary/ attorney: we were rendered ineffected . we were rendered incompetent because of the lack of funds. lack of time and the lack of resources. absolutely.
things did go wrong in the trial that should not have.an ambulance driver suggests an explosive motive for wayne williams. this from CNN’s report at the time.
-bobby toland said williams asked him once had he ever considered hoe many blacks could be eliminated by killing one nigga child.
but unknown to either side , toladnd eas not his real name.infact he had a crminal record
he testified under a fals name, he had an extensive arrest record under his real name.
mary / attorney: i’m not sure that we knew all of that at the time,or it was disclosed to us.
Roger’s home is aboutt eight blocks away from from where he was found today.
then there was the murder of larry rogers , a retarded youth.
this witness testified she saw rogers slumped over in a station wagon as wayne williams drove away. but another person also so rogers in that station wagon at the same intersection that day.
he helped the police artist draw this sketch.it does not look wayne williams.
however ,the defense never called the other witness to ask about the sketch.
mary / attorney: no i don’t remember seeing that.
supporters of wayne williams say there was one murder wich shows the fiber evidence could be faulty .
the death of 12 -year old clifford jones , left in a dumpster in an alley on a summer nigt in 1980
some of those unusual green carpet fibers were on his body. yet another boy said he saw a coin laundry operator killed clifford jones.
detective welcome arrs said the boy was not believable.he exaggerataed stuff, he could… in other words, he was open to suggestions. and if yhou said that mickey mouse was up there ,and he ‘d sense that you wanted him to say that , he said yeah.
wayne supporters point out the laundry manager failed to police lie detector, but few are aware of a third test.giving by the FBI examiner Eichard ratcliffe. te result?-in layman’s terms , he passed.
only days after wayne wiliams was convicted to killling two adults, atlanta’s police commissioner closed the books on 21 other murder victims.declaring they too were killed by williams.
most were children, among them clifford jones and yusuf bell.
but without trials the mothers were left without a verdict one way or the other in the death of all of the children.
the prosecitor’s answer?
– it would serve no purpose ,you can only serve one life sentence
four years after the trial robert henry would changes his story about the last victim nathaniek cater. holding hands with wayne williams.
in this affidavite , henry wrote , ” if my life depended on it,i could not say the man i saw with cater was wayne williams” his signture is at the bottom.
henry:yes this is my hand writing.
producer: whose words are those?
henry: they’re not mine.
producer: whose words are they?
henry:i’d rather noth say.
in the summer of 1985 henry was in prison here.when he said an associate of wayne williams came to see him and told him what to write.
producer : when you said ” i could ID the face of wayne williams as the man i saw with nathaniel cater ” are those your eords?”
henry: those words i was told to say.
producer: by?
henry: i ‘d rather not say. i might cause problems.
producer : could you ID the face?
henry:the person i saw holding nathaniel cater’s hand was wayne williams ,the man that was convicted of it.
in fact, hneryhad passed a lie detector test ,before he took the withness stand. when his visitor came to see him , henry was serving five years for sex crime. his fals affidavit was used in court appeals.
wayne william lost each time anyway.
producer : to this day , is there any question in your mind whom you saw with cater?
henry: no theres’ not .
producer: it was?
henry: wayne wiliams.
robert henry is not the only one whose story has changed back and forth over the years.
so has wayne williams. at trial williams testified he was home all evening ,sick in bed . when henry said he saw him holdng hands with cater.
now william said ,he has a different alibi for that evening.
wayne: i was at a place called hotlanta records in college park.
williams says he drove to that office near the airport. he had taken photos for thos poster the night before.
and went there to turn in this invoice to get paid. wayne left about 9:00 0r 9:30
we reached atlanta’s owner melvin ware,now living in los angeles. he wrote the check behind the desk but said williams didn’t stay that long.not as late as 9 :00. it was like five or ten minutes.
how did wayne get to the office? he drove he had he’´s dad car if melvin not misstaken.
wayne’s father homer testified he had the station wagon until almost midnight that night.
but chet dettlinger,an investigator for the defense,said wayne told him long ago this was a lie .
-he told me he had their, his dad didn’t have the car. wayne said , “but i had the vehicle and id idn’t want to corrupt the my dad ‘s testimony in the eyes on the jury , so i lied about it and said i din´t have it on the stand”
what makes this important ,is what time robert henry says he saw wayne and nathaniel cater-
henry: it was about 9:15 and 9 : 30
it was lucky and forsyth street ,downtown Atlanta.
at the trial wayne said he was i n bed till 10:00 pm. he was sooo sick that his mother said that she help to lie wayns body out on the bed ,her son was sick
this where the confusion wayn e got beck from hotland about records about 9: 30.
but there’s no one to corroborate that ,his mother was still alive. wayne said , she probably didnt see him come in.
prosecutor mallard : he was out that night, no question in my mind he was not at home , he was out and about
less than six hours after henry said he saw william and cater here,
police heard a splash under this bridge. cater’s bdoy washed up downstream two days later.
30 years ago there was no DNI testing.now there is .and so new evidence.
remember those two human hairs found inside 11. year old patrick baltazar shirt in 2007,
the hair fragments were sent to the FBI´s DNA laboratory inQuantico, virginia. the result?- the lab said it found this DNA sequence in only 29 out of more than 11 00 samples of african american hairs in its database , less then 3 %
most important had the same sequence.
wayne :i think-i dont thinktheysit it was a match ithinkthey said they could not rule outwhomever the hair from as being the possible donor
the FBI hal dedman a DNA expert said this finding is as string as it can get with this particular type of testing.
-and it probably would exclude 98% or so , of the people in the world.
so did wayne killl 11 year old patrick baltazar? – no he did not or anybody else sid wayne.
he never met patrick baltazar. he don´t even know a patrick baltazar.
The FBI report said wayne williams cannot be exludedas the source of those two hairs.
then sheila said “without a shadow of a doubt , i really in my heart believe that wayne williams killed patrickbaltazar
FEBRUARY 2010
final interview with wayne.
there´s was one question wayne wasn´t expecting,
what wayne had writtenabout being recuited for espionage training as a teenager ,at a secret government camp.
hidden in the woods near this north Georgia lake where he was given what couldamiunt to a license kill.its called finding myself.it reads like an autobiography. its a acount of your CIA training.
wayne: we´re not going to get into that.
soledad : i have a copy of that
wayne: yeah ,but we´re not going into that.
by his account , wayne was fresh out of high school , jsut 18 year old when was approached byan asssociate of an old worlde war II spy living in the Atlanta area.
and was initiated into a secret world.
soleda: is it fake?
wayne: no.
soleda:is it fictional writing?
wayne: no.
soleda: did you work for the CIA?
wayne: we´re not going to get into that.
in these pages ,he said he spent his summer weekends in those woods , learing how handle plastic explosives ,hand genades, and something even more chilling……
soleda: you wrie how you fired rifles , sub .machine guns, handled assault weapons , grenade launchers , C-4 learned unarmed combat techique throguh this training group over weekends.is it true or or isit false?
wayne : im not going tocommnt on that.
soleda: when you erre 19 years old. you´ve been recruited
wayne : i let the document speak for themselves.
soleda :did you work for the CIA?
wayne : i´m not going tocomment on that.
soleda: copyrigt 1992,vt w. williams. is this an autobiography?
in his own words, wayne williams said this was part of a secret plan to send young black agents
in the worse spot in africa in the late 1970s. he wrote that he finished training , then withdrew from the program
soleda: either this is a true story and you have been trained in basic tactics exfiltration techniques weapons use unarmed combat tecniques which would include a deadly choke hold , or is made up.
wayne: let me ask one question ,where did you obtain that?
soleda: i can´t tell you that.
wayne : les say that were true ,that were the case.or let just say that i had some experiences that i do not want to comment on today for reasons , that the document says , ok?the fact is , what does that have to do with the situation today?
soleda: everything. a big part of the conversation when i talked to your lawyers was ,could williams grab somebody ,did he have the strengh? hé´s not a big guy, could he grab someone in an unarmed technique and killed them. and your attorneys would say”his not a big guy.”and you told me “yeas i was trained by CIA. basically was this document says. -on weekends when i was a teenager. and i am trained in the choke hold techique.
but you writing a long fantasy about being trainedf or the CIA in a weaponry and the chokehold technique,that takes it a whole other direction .
remember,dotorssaid at least two of the victims were probably killed by chokeholds.
wayne didacnowledge ir was CIA training ,but said no more, so its this true or only a fantatsy in his mind?the mind of a man the courts have found to be a killer.
we´ll leave that question with you ….
the verdict is now yours todecode om your own mind.again ,the choices ,guilty , innocent or a third choice,not proven either way.
we´ll show you the vedict tht CNN´s audience reached. when this documentary was first broadcast.but befor then , a lool at some of the answers from those wholived through the terrror 30 years ago
the prosecutor.-obviously guilty.
the defense attorney -not proven one way or the other.
the FBI agent in charge-guilty of two double homocides
Sheila baltazar- he couldhave killed all of them .
the supreme court justice-not prove.
the witness -guilty.
camille bell -innocent but stupid.
that first task force detective- no maybes ,he´s guilty.
the original audiece vedict?
