The Atlanta Child Murders /// True Crime | Forensic Files

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[Music] [Music] This is True Crime Garage. And this is the case of the Atlanta child murders.
Our special segment tonight is a fresh look at the series of murders in Atlanta.
[Music] Aaron Jackson Jr. was among the youngest, only 9 years old. Lubie Jeter was 14, Timothy Hill 13, Patrick
Baltazar 11. For almost 2 years, the bodies have kept coming out of Atlanta's rivers and woods. And week after week,
police speak of sorrow and sympathy, but not a solution. This is just a a tragic,
horrible nightmare that we're going through. We're not in a position today to make an arrest. There are cases in
history that have gone on much longer than this has. At police task force headquarters, there are 27 faces on the
wall, 26 murdered, one missing. The killer, there is a handful of sketches. No one the same, no one certain to be
the person police want. Almost a year after the task force was set up, police can't answer who or why. They don't know
how or where or even how many of the black victims may have been killed by the same person. One investigator says
even if the killer walked in the door and confessed, there is not enough evidence now to convict him. A halfozen
of the cases may be isolated unrelated homicides. The victims found near home, killed perhaps by family or friends. But
somewhere in the city of Atlanta, there is a person who has killed 15 or 20 boys
and young men. The district attorney keeps a chart on the wall with names of the dead and room for more. With my
theory, the uh person is not abducted, not kidnapped, not snatched off the street at that particular time, but is
willingly going with somebody for something. At least at the instance they get in the car, they're going to make
some money. Are they going to meet somebody? They say they're going start now willingly. Like many victims, Jojo
Bell, 15, was a child of the streets, always in need of money. He worked for his supper once in a while at the
seafood carry out and always asked the owner to give him a ride home. He would walk through the night because if I let
it kill him, you know, he used to joke about it, you know. He's I ain't let the kid the kid snatch to snatch me, but
someone did. Somebody did. Belle had been a basketball buddy of Timothy Hill. Hill spent his last known
night at the Sidi Shack on Grey Street, the home of a 63-year-old homosexual called Uncle Tom. None of the victims
has been found sexually abused, but the obvious question intrigues investigators. Mickey Mintosh, one of
the adults killed, hung around the same carry out where Jojo Bell worked. You know, I have seen gays come down and
seen Mickey in the car with, you know, gays uh they would they would be dressed all up and stuff. They'll come by here
and sometimes look for me. Atlanta's safety commissioner will say only what he doesn't know. Where we are in the
investigation right now is we do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore, we do not have
the motive. The killer seems to have taunt police and read press clippings. After a well publicized but feudal
search along a road in an outlying county, the next child strangled with a rope was dumped there. And when a
suburban police official criticized Atlanta's investigation, a child choked to death was left just inside that
official's county line. After a press report that police had found fibers on some of the bodies, six of the last
seven victims have been dropped into rivers, all stripped to their undershorts or less, possibly to wash
away evidence. NBC News has learned in some cases the synthetic fibers were found on victim's clothing hanging in
closets at home, indicating those children may have visited their killer at times before their death. But
authorities have had this secret evidence for weeks and it still has not led to the killer. Police are under
manned and there is grumbling in the ranks. One patrolman is quoted, "They don't tell us anything. It seems like
they don't trust us." The murder investigation is being run by a 103 person task force. One official concedes
it's not even certain what to tell the cop on the beat to look for. The investigation seems beset by friction
and frustration. We're going to solve the cases. That's our resolve. The only unanswered question right now is when.
Meanwhile, at the cemetery, the dead, Bell, Hill, Macintosh are being buried faster than the cemetery can supply
grave markers with their names. Sadly, some officials concede Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he
keeps on killing. I will say that there's a better chance to catch him if he doesn't stop.
[Music] Tonight we are talking about the Atlanta child murders. This is a series of
murders that took place in the great city of Atlanta, Georgia. Way back in 1979 was when the first victim was
found. And it carried all the way until 1981. and it span about 2 years. Uh unfortunately saw a lot of victims in
this case. Um some, you know, there's some debate on on uh if all of the victims belong in this case or if
they're actually individual cases, but depending on the source that you check out, you could see a number as high as
28 victims. This was a case that uh gripped the city of Atlanta in fear. Um there was there were curfews. There was
everything that they could do to try to bring to apprehend this killer and to stop to stop the killings. Yeah. There
was a special task force set up by the police department. So there was a and then the FBI was involved. Um and also
they set up this thing called the Guardian Angels, which was a volunteer group mainly of like older teens and and
and uh males in their 20s. and they were kind of known as like the rougher kids.
But these kids were then taken to the streets trying to get any information, leads, uh some way of identifying a
suspect because they had a lot of, you know, um sketches made of, you know, when somebody thought they saw a suspect
or but we're talking about, I mean, one would be a black man, one would be a white man, one would be a Mexican man.
There sometimes there would be two men. uh sometimes two men. So it was they didn't have very in much of a solid lead
at all. Well, and on top of that too here the the citizens forming their own task force. The reason that this happens
is that they start to not believe in their own police force at some point. At some point the victim number gets to be
so high that they don't think that the police can solve this. Some of the people thought maybe the police did not
want to solve this. And we'll get into that more uh as we get into this case. Yeah. And we also had there was rumors
that the the people that they thought were suspects possibly were wearing police uniforms. So I think that's why
these task force were set up by the communities. The first victim that is is attributed to this case is Edward Hope
Smith. Uh he was a 14-year-old boy who was last seen July 20th, 1979. he was leaving a skating rink. Uh he was found
eight days later at Niski Lake Drive and the cause of his death was a 22 caliber
shotgun to the upper back. Remarkably, on the same day, police investigate investigators found the body of Alfred
Evans, a 13-year-old boy who was last seen July 25th. Alfred was last known to have been walking to a theater. Alfred
Evans, his cause of death was listed as undetermined. Unfortunately, and I'm and
I'm a little uncertain as to why or to the particulars of this, but Alfred's body would remain unidentified for about
14 months. And this, of course, certainly does not help the investigation. Through March of 1980, four more
children disappeared. This further complicating the investigation. The first was Milton Harvey, age 14. He was
last seen September 4th, 1979. He disappeared. He was out running an errand. He was going to the bank for his
mother. Uh he was riding a yellow 10-speed bike. Now, the bike was found a week later in Atlanta, but there still
was no sign of the boy. He eventually was found November 5th, so this is about 2 months later. He's found in a wooded
area in the neighboring city of East Point. Milton Harvey had been dead about 1 month when found. And of course, there
had been quite a bit of decomposition that had taken place, so his cause of death was listed as undetermined as
well. Detectives would not immediately connect Milton Harvey's death to that of the first two boys because his body was
found outside of the area. The second was Yousef Bell. He was last seen October 21st when he went to the
store to buy snuff for a neighbor. Later, a a witness would tell the police chewing tobacco. Yeah, for people that
don't know what snuff is. Later, a witness would tell the police that she saw Yousef getting into a blue car.
Yousef's body was found on November 8th by a school janitor looking for a place to urinate. His body was found in the
crawl space of an abandoned elementary school building nearby the boy's home. Wait. So, so the janitor was going to go
pee in the crawl space. He was going to go pee inside an abandoned building way in the crawl space. It's maybe he felt
it like he needed some privacy. I don't know. Seems like a strange situation to me, but that's who found the boy's body.
Now, keep in mind this abandoned elementary school building was near the boy's home. And because the boy's body
was found indoors and not outside in wooded areas like the earlier found victims, his case was not immediately
connected to the others as well. Yeah. The boy was found wearing the clothing that he was last seen wearing and he had
been hit over the head twice and his cause of death was strangulation. The third was Angel Laneir. This is a
12year-old female. This is the first girl victim that we would see. Mhm. Lenir had disappeared on May 4th, I'm
sorry, March 4th, 1980. She left her house around 400 p.m. wearing a denim outfit and she was last seen at a
friend's house watching TV. She is found 6 days later in a wooded area and she had been stabbed to death. Now, there
are some conflicting stories here. I saw a couple of uh sources here and I do want to point this out. couple sources
that said that she was stabbed to death and a couple sources that said she had been stabbed, but cause of death was
strangulation. Yeah. This is going to be a repeating cycle that you'll see uh different reports for each victim. Mhm.
She was wearing the same clothes in which she had left home, but there was something different here. Something very
different. A pair of white panties had been stuffed in her mouth and her hands were bound with electrical tape. Yeah.
And they believe that those panties did not belong to her. Correct. They were not hers. So this is March 10th, 1980.
Now, here's something kind of strange here, Captain. Right. We have Angel Laneir who's found March 10th, 1980. And
she's found it in the wooded area near Campbell Road and Willowbrook Road. So about a year later, the body of Jeffrey
Lamar Matthysse is found in the same location. But the crazy thing here is Matthysse disappeared on March 11th.
This is just one day after they found the body of Laneir. So, you know, he he took took the girl, he dumps her in a
location, and then she's found and the very next day he's out abducting another victim. And they would they would find
this victim in the same area. So, whomever did this takes two victims within a week of one another and dumps
the bodies in the same location. Now, I have to wonder how long until he returned to the site of where he left
Angel's body and then he's back there again dumping another body. And this is right after the police were there. This
is taunting. It's it's no doubt in my mind that the killer he he felt like he could not be caught and that his armor
was so strong that they would never catch up to him. So, Jeffrey Matthysse was an 11year-old boy. He disappeared
when he went to run an errand for his mother. He was wearing gray jogging pants, brown shoes, and a white and
green shirt. A girl said that she had seen Jeffrey get into a car with a light-skinned man and a darkkinned man.
So, here we go. The first report of seeing two possible uh killers or abductors. From the way you're reporting
it, it seems like this is the first time that anybody's been seen. Yeah, we this
is any live vehicle. We have a vehicle that was spotted earlier, the blue vehicle. And then we have uh now these
two suspects. And now he's seen getting in the vehicle with with two people. And
this vehicle is blue as well. This is a he's seen getting into a car. No description of the vehicle, just a a
brief description of each man. Now, these two men could have had nothing to do with this case. It could have just
been a car that he happened to get into. On May 18th, a 14-year-old boy, his name
is Eric Middbrooks, uh he answers the phone and then he leaves in a hurry on his bicycle. His body is found very
quickly. It's found the next day along with his bike. Mhm. Now, here's a twist here. He's found in the rear garage of
an Atlanta bar. Uh next door is the Georgia Department of Offender Rehabilitation.
He has stab wounds on his chest and his arms. These are like small stab wounds and he died of blunt force trauma to the
head. His his pockets in his pants were pulled inside out. Yeah. See, uh it seems like again with a lot of these
victims, I mean, a lot of times people think, well, if there is a killer, then there he's killing uh his victims all in
the same manner. And in this case, you kind of see this mostly repeating theme of strangulation, but not always. again
in this case, uh, not lining up with the strangulation either. But again, like you said, that there was this taunting,
you know, effect going on. So maybe it was because um there was something in the paper that made him decide, well,
I'm going to leave a victim out in the open. Yeah. And this is one that I actually thought when when reviewing
this case, I wasn't convinced that all of the victims listed were part of the same case. I thought that there were a
few that might be individual cases. This is one that I thought could have been an
individual case. Um, but this is one where they will find evidence to be able to link this to some of the other cases.
The reason why I thought this was an individual case is this this young man, he had um some run-ins with some
thuggish people. He had uh he had testified in court against some people uh against like a a young gang of kids.
Um, and I think it was initially thought that that was Yeah. retaliation for testifying and exa and exactly he's
found in a different situation. He's not found in a wooded area. On June 9th, 12-year-old Christopher Richardson, he
is last seen going to a public swimming pool. He's last seen wearing blue shorts, a light blue shirt, and blue
tennis shoes. And he is found the the following January with yet another boy who was killed. and his name was Earl
Terrell. On June 22nd, 7-year-old Latana Wilson disappeared from her parents' apartment. This is the second girl
victim that we're seeing here. According to a witness, she appeared to have been
abducted by two men, one of whom was seen climbing into the apartment window and then holding Wilson in his arms as
he spoke to the other man in the parking lot. On October 18th, Wilson's body was
found in a fenced in area at the end of Verbena Street in Atlanta. By by then, the body had been skeletonized. And so,
again, we've seen a situation where there no cause of death could be established.
The next day, June 23rd, 10-year-old Aaron Wech disappeared after having been seen near a local grocery store getting
into a blue Chevrolet. Mhm. with either one or two African-American men. The witness's description of the car matched
a description of a similar car implicated in an earlier case. This was the Jeffrey Matthysse disappearance. At
6:00 p.m., the victim was seen at a shopping center. The following day, Whis's body was found under a bridge.
The official cause of death was exfixiation from a broken neck suffered in a fall. In July of 1980, two more
children, Anthony Carter and Earl Terrell, were murdered. We talked about Terrell. He was found with uh with
Christopher Richardson's body. Between August and November of 1980, five more killings took place. There were no known
victims during the month of December. All of the victims were African-American children between the ages of 7 and 14,
and most had been exfiated. The murders continued into 1981. The first known victim in the new year was
Lubie Ger uh who disappeared January 3rd. He had been last seen in the area of Steuart Lakewood Shopping Center in
southwest Atlanta. Ger's body was found on February 5th in a wooded area. This was Jeter. What's that? It's pronounced
Jeter. Oh, thank you. Just like Derek like Derek Jeter, but spelled differently. Uh so so Jeter this his
body is found 70 ft from Van Diver Road which runs off of Campbell Road which remember this is where two earlier
victims had been found. Jeter's friend Terry Pew also went missing in January. Now an anonymous caller called and told
police where to find Pew's body. They found Pew's body in Rockdale County. So, we have another jurisdiction to throw
into the mix here. Terry was last seen at the Crystal, that's Crystal with a K, restaurant on January 22nd. Terry
frequented a place called the Omni. Uh, this is also a place that a couple of the other victims were known to have
hang to hang out. It was like kind of a teenage spot to go to. Uh, Patrick Baltazar
would be another victim and he hung out at the Omni as well. Patrick was 11 and he was last seen in the evening hours on
Courtland Street. This was February 6th and his body was found February 14th behind the Corporate Square office park.
This is in Dealb Decalb County. Did I say that right? Yeah, I think that's correct. That's pretty close. Uh but
again, another jurisdiction. Enjoy the hate mail. Yeah. He was found fully clothed. uh although his clothing was
unbuttoned and the cause of his death was exfixiation due to legature. In February of 1981, an Atlanta
newspaper ran an article stating that the matching fibers that matching fibers were found on two of the victim's
bodies. This was a big turning point in our case because the killer, just like we talked about last week, our killer is
reading the newspaper. He's watching the news and he's reacting and adapting what
he is doing to go against the investigation. Now, there's one thing I do want to
touch on here real quick, Captain. You know that some in some circles, and I've heard it said uh several times, and I
think that this is a common misconception amongst the general public, and you hear this from time to
time, that serial killers want to be caught. Maybe not on the surface, but somewhere deep down inside that they
want to be caught and that is why they end up getting caught in the end. So, here's the thing. He's adapting, right?
So, go ahead and believe that they want to be caught if that makes you feel safer. But, but the absolute truth is
no. No, they don't. They don't want to be caught. The majority of them do not want to be caught. There there have been
a few. There's one I and don't ask me his name right now, but there's there's one serial killer I can remember that
turned himself in. Um, and you know, so there there might be a few that want to be caught, but but the majority of them
do not want to be caught at all because this is their drug killing and all that is involved in in the in the ritual for
them, this is it's their what gets them high. you know that the sexual assaults involved, the rape or the just the act
of kidnapping, the terror on the person's face, the look in the in their eye when they're strangling them. It's
this is all part of their of their game. The that's a little graphic for me, but
Right. But those those are the things that that I think that's assuming going Yeah, I think that's I think that's what
we assume. I think especially in this case, too, a lot of people will say that these aren't connected. Um there, you
know, they're not connected because the different deaths and that a serial killer would kill somebody the same way
over and over and over. There would be no uh inconsistencies, which we've seen time and time again that that's normally
not true either. Well, I don't know that it's assuming a whole lot of stuff because I mean again, time after time in
these cases, we see the killer adapting his techniques to elude detection. You know, he is this guy is now dumping his
victims in the river and leaving them in only a pair of shorts or nude so that there are little to no hairs, fibers,
pet hair, anything on the bodies. Yeah. They the the police end up talking about
these fibers and therefore then it's like, well, now I got to change up my game. How can I dump the bodies without
there being fibers on them? I'll dump them with water. Yeah. And and even if I do happen to still leave fibers, animal
hair, pet, you know, yeah, it's going to hair evidence, the the water should be washing this away. But there there's uh
conflicting reports on this anyways because there's multiple times that the news um in the in 1979 and 1980, they're
talking about that uh the majority of these victims were sexually abused. And then later on, uh, it's really hard to
find any talk about sexual abuse and any of the reports after, you know, 81. Uh, and as we said, after this report
comes out in in February of 1981, now the new victims are being dumped into the rivers. Uh, in March, there were
four more murders that took place. Uh, this included Eddie Duncan. He's the first adult victim. Mhm. Um in April
there was Larry Rogers was murdered and there were two more adults, John Porter and Jimmy Ray Payne. Well, and that's
again if you assume that all these victims are part of the whole Atlanta child murders. And then after that we
have William Barrett. He went missing May 16th, 1981. His body was found close to his home. And this is the last victim
added to I'm sorry, the last victim added to this list that I'm aware of is Nathaniel Carter, who was 27 years old.
So, we're seeing all kinds of different activity here, right? If if if we're to believe that they're all connected. Mhm.
And it's a really tough thing to go through because there are so many victims in such a short amount of time.
you know, if we assume that all 28 are connected, depending on what report you're going with, um, that's 28 victims
that they find within a two-year period. It's becomes this crazy list. And so, you know, sorry that we have to go
through that morbid uh, list, but uh, this also is the reason why they spawned uh, they spawned a book called The List.
And if you dive into this case more, you're going to see that as a reference point over and over. That's called the
list. Uh we'll talk more about this case right after a quick beer break. All right, and now we're back from our beer
break. Cheers everybody. Cheers. We have already gone through the victims in the
Atlanta child murders case. And earlier we touched upon the idea that the the locals, the civilians had set up their
own task force because they weren't really believing in the police efforts and didn't trust the police to to finish
the job, right? But they had we've already are seeing multiple jurisdictions, multiple agencies working
together to try to solve this case. Yeah. The FBI is involved at this point as well. The FBI gets involved as well
as the BCI units. They come in and they're trying to figure out how to apprehend this person that is killing
off the youth in Atlanta. Mhm. Now, there's a couple problems here, though. They they come up with some different
ideas, and we'll touch on those in a minute. What what I do want to get into right now is the super cops. So, enter
the super cops. Uh these this was an idea that they would grab some of the detectives and police officers that were
involved in some of the most notorious cases in the United States. They would get them together for a meeting. They
would present them with the victims, much like we just did earlier, and they would ask the super cops to as a group
form several opinions about the case. Yeah. kind of a profiling session. Yes. Uh so what who were the super cops?
These were people that were involved in the most notorious cases. Uh they were looking for officers and detectives who
had handled one or two or sorry one of two different types of serial cases. The first being detectives who did not know
that a series of murders had taken place before the offender was caught. The second being detectives who were already
pursuing serial cases but did not know who the killer was. And here is a list of the members making up the task force
that was the super cops. We have Captain Sydney Smith and Detective David Milikon. These were two guys that
investigated the sexually sadistic killers Dean Coral and Elmer Wayne Henley who killed 17 people and buried
their bodies in a boat storage building in Texas. Mhm. Next we have Detective Frank Braun. He
was one of the detectives in the famous John Wayne Gayy case from near Chicago. Gayy killed 27 young men and buried
their bodies in his crawl space and some in the yard as well. We also have Inspector Joseph Belli. Uh and we've
actually discussed him on this show. He investigated the famous Son of Sam case in New York City. And of course, you
know, he he was the one that was out shooting couples that were sitting in their cars. We have Lieutenant Ed
Henderson and Detective Philip Sartuchi from Los Angeles and Bellingham, Washington. They investigated the
Hillside Strangler case. We also have Inspector Jeff Brch. He investigated the Zebra killings in San Francisco which
were committed by African-American religious extremist. And last but not least, we have Lieutenant Frank Chase
and Detective Robert Keell from the Ted Bundy murder cases. Now the super cops as said they were presented with with
the cases and with the crimes and they were asked to come up with they had three objectives. All right. The first
was to give an opinion on how many murders were connected. The second objective was to provide a criminal
profile and the third to give a plan for apprehension. Now let's talk about the first objective
murders connected. The super cops believed that at least 23 of the 27 murders that they had reviewed were
connected and committed by the same person. Okay. And using this, they they they're going off of the idea that they
had animal hairs and fibers linking nine of the victims. So there was not much debate over those nine. Right. Yeah. But
then we had a lot of the victims that ended up in the water. Mhm. So that could uh you know deter some of the
evidence. So I I think that's what they're going off of is we got nine that we can link. So
then we can probably link some of the ones that went into the water as well. You're exactly right. We have the nine
that were were linked by fibers or animal hairs or both. Um and then we have other victims that were found with
some of those victims or near those victims. Uh and again as you mentioned or they also had relationships to the
other victims and then we start seeing the victims showing up in the rivers. So this is the um this is the killer
adapting to the investigation and they believe that these are all linked as well. So that bumps up the number quite
a bit. They did say that they could not and would not rule out the other four murders. Uh all 27 could have been the
work of one serial killer, but they felt very strongly about the 23. Mhm. The second objective was to create a
criminal profile. Now, nobody, it's hard to find somebody that's willing to take
responsibility for this, okay? Uh there was a theory going out there in the beginning of this case and and it was
going on until these super cops got involved. Now, this theory was that these crimes were committed by a white
racist group, by a white racist person or persons or an occult. uh and they used these theories thinking with the
thought that somebody or someone's they were working together to eliminate African-American youths in the community
to create this all kinds of fear. Yeah. Well, I I I don't think fear would be the type right motive. I think what
if it was um white supremacist group, what they're trying to do is create one fear, but outrage and then basically
what you want to cause is a race war. Well, the first thing that the super cops come up with, and they're not very
far into the presentation that they all seem to agree that the Atlanta child murders were more likely committed by an
African-American male in his 20s. And they Yeah. Okay. And they were going to they have some theories on this. All
right, let's hear these these genius theories. Okay, very condescending. But uh some of the killings had victims
disappearing and or were last seen in areas popular with young African-American males. Um and
affixiation asphyxiation was being the predominant method of death. And this does not logically fit the white racist
theory. These were not terrorist murders. This was committed by somebody, a young African-American male in his 20s
whose method of operation reflected a personality with a need for hands-on activity with each victim before and
after death. This would be a killer that had the ability to move about freely. He
would have to have had relationships in the community, and he needed his presence in the area. He he so he could
be in the area on any given day that he would choose and it would not be considered anything out of the ordinary.
He was somebody that could walk amongst the people and not not stand out. The super cops also believed that the killer
was taking victims that had no idea that they were in danger. Asphyxiation is the
most likely cause of death in most of the cases and in those cases there are no signs of struggle. This most likely
points out that the killer was strangling them by surprise or they were drowsy. He was he was doing something to
create to so they would let their guard down. Uh and that he'd be able to surprise tox
they have a toxicology report. That was the first thing that the super cops asked of the Atlanta Police Department
that they wanted to see if there were toxic toxicology reports done on the victims. M they were not provided with
this. The super cops did stick with this theory though. They were saying that it
was most likely that he was using drugs or alcohol to induce this drowsiness and
that he could quickly and and well and what we hear from the one uh I believe he's a detective in the
trailer is he says that he believes that the that these victims are going with uh
the suspect willingly. So there is no like struggle. There's no like, "Hey, get in the car. I got a gun." That So,
so again, going with the super cop theory. Yeah. And then once that they were drugged or or drowsy that he could
then quickly suffocate the children or the victims. Um, and one thing that they're pointing out here is just like
that other detective said that you just spoke about that for somebody to be able
to do this, for a killer to be able to do this, this would mean he would have had to have patience and a plan. And it
meant that the killer would have spent considerable time with each victim from the initial point of contact to the
induction of the state of drowsiness and then to the eventual murder. To accomplish all of this meant that the
killer was deceptive and that the victims trusted him. They also believed that the killer would have had something
that the young victims would have wanted and that this would be how he would lure
them into his trap. Money or something. You're exactly right. I mean, all these victims were coming from poor areas.
Yeah. And they thought that the killer's line of approach was most likely an offer of a short-term job to make quick
money. Mhm. And they also noted that this is something that they had seen in their previous cases and that this is a
typical serial killer lure. To the young victims, the killer may have looked like
a role model or a big brother type figure. He is able to get his victims that range in age from 9 years old to 28
years old under his complete control. And what added to his ability to attract each one of those boys was that they
were exact clones of the murder of the murderer himself of what he thought of his own self-image. He looked, thought,
walked, and talked just like the victims. And that would be what would appeal to the victims the most. He
identified with his victims so well that his victims probably never were afraid of him. He would have presented himself
as educated, well integrated into the community and always having a good job. His victims because they were young,
they were unable to see through his mask of superficiality. So the killer has the ability to mingle
across a spectrum of elementary boys, teenage victims, and young adults. That would lead you to expect to find the
killers comfortable in each of those atmospheres. He was or probably still is a volunteer or employee of a boy of some
type of boys club, you know, like the Boy Scouts of America or the YMCA or so on. Yeah. Or after school program. And
he very well likely might have been a volunteer substitute teacher or vendor in an elementary school. He may have
frequented boy prostitutes or been involved in the gay scene. He is not likely to have been an out of the closet
homosexual. In fact, he might have been known to hate homosexuals in some circles and be superficially
heterosexual in his own family. Then there was the need for total possession of the victims by engaging in
post-mortem activities with them. He had a sex drive that embraced necriliac tendencies and a willingness to spend
considerable amount of time with the victims after their death. Mhm. and he was also leaving the victims nude or
close to nude and posing them in sexually degrading manner. As the police began to look more and more inept, this
gave him a feeling of superiority. He wanted the police to feel psychologically like he really felt
helpless and controlled. They also knew that the killer was very aware of the environment and sensitive to the nature
of the police pursuit and clever enough to modify his methods of movement and he
and the people that he prayed on. Again, we talk about the changing of victim dump sites from mainly land to rivers
was the response to the publicity of his crimes. This also shows his ability to monitor the police investigation through
public resources. how the police tracked him mainly with the what they were doing with the
bodies. They were examining the remains and they're looking for these similar fibers and this was very very important
to him. And then he chose to leave the victims in rivers and this would diminish these chances greatly. He did
not want to get caught ever. The killer was engaging in post-mortem activities with the victim should have led
investigators to check out individuals who had worked no matter how briefly in the death services field or were
applicants for places like funeral homes or the medical examiner's office. That was their lengthy uh profile of the
killer. But when it breaks down, when you break it down to simplicity, what they're talking about is an
African-American male who can go into these neighborhoods and be almost unseen because he fits into the neighborhoods.
People don't expect to, you know, a white racist person could stand out and might be more noticeable if there's
children getting into his vehicle, but they want to point out that his his race and his age. And they also talk about
some of the things of his personality. They talk about he could be a volunteer, somebody that would work with children
or work inside of communities, somebody that would be trusted, someone that the victims would go along with willingly
and not ever suspect that they're in danger. Now, I think this is a fantastic profile, but of course, I've been able
to see it through the eyes of somebody that's seen the case solved. Now, at the time, the local police decided that they
did not want to release this profile. They wanted to keep this to themselves. Whether they believed the profile or
not, I don't know. But what they did continue to do is allow the public to believe that it was a white racist
person or white racist group or or the occult that was involved in these child killings. Their third objective was to
come up with a plan for apprehension. Now, we do have to give credit to the Atlanta police force because they
already had a plan that they decided that they wanted to run it by the super cops to see if the super cops agreed
with this plan and if they thought that it would work. The reason being it was going to be a very expensive plan to
execute. Now, their plan was they now know that the killer wants to dump the bodies in the rivers. Well, they have
two rivers to be concerned with. They have the uh the South River and the Chattah the Chattahuchi River. Yep. So,
they have what? They have bridges that they want to monitor and they want to monitor these bridges around the clock
because they believe if they can catch the person red-handed on the bridge with the body in his car or leaving the
bridge after a body is dumped, then they've got their guy, right? Yeah. or possibly start to deter him from dumping
the bodies into the river. So they have a but go ahead. Both of those rivers are
gigantic. So yeah to assume that one that a killer is just dumping the body above a bridge I think is silly for one
cuz I mean there's a million entrance points to that river. Mhm. And so so the fact that we go okay we're going to go
with these two locations. This is what we believe. We believe because of the fibers and what what you haven't been
talking about is the fibers that they believe that they have on these victims come from a vehicle, possibly a trunk or
something. So that's why they're uh the Atlanta cops want to hone in on these bridges, but I still think it's it's
asinine because why would you stop on these major roads on these major bridges to dump off a body? It doesn't make a
lot of sense to me. Well, what their plan's going to entail is that they have 11 bridges that they want to monitor.
And they estimate that each one of these bridges, it's going to take about five persons to monitor these bridges because
they need to put one person on each end of the bridge to record who goes on and who leaves. They also need somebody in
the middle of the bridge or below the bridge to monitor the water to see if there's a splash noise heard. Uh this
would be them the killer dropping the body into the water, right? They also needed two persons to send out nets
because if they need to prove that it's a body that was dumped, you know, that it wasn't just somebody throwing a brick
into the river. Um so what their plan was was as soon as a splash was heard, that officer or patrolman, he would then
make a call out to the to the persons with nets. They would they would deploy the nets and then the persons on each
end of the bridge would be responsible for monitoring and recording who the person was that left the bridge or had
most recently arrived on the bridge. And the reason why this is going to be so expensive, we talked about five officers
per bridge, 11 bridges, and now you're talking about guys working in eight hour shifts so they can watch these bridges
around the clock. Now, what is the math on that? That's like 165 guys just for a
24-hour shift to monitor 11 bridges. Mhm. To me, this is not the best use of tax dollars. That's a good thought, too,
because you don't know how long how many days in a row are you going to have to monitor these bridges. It could go on
for days or weeks. And we saw at one point in this case that there was a month or so without even with with no
victims, right? Um but they do catch a break. Uh this is during a stakeout of the bridges on May 22nd, 1981. Um they
one of the officers hears a splash beneath a bridge. Um another officer notes that a white 1970 Chevrolet
station wagon had turned around and drove back across the bridge. After going up to the bridge, it stopped,
turned around, and came back. Two police officers later then stopped this station
wagon. This would be about a half a mile from the bridge. The driver turns out to
be 23-year-old Wayne Williams. Now, they stop him. They question him. Where are you going? What are you doing? He claims
that he is he has an appointment uh for an audition. He is a uh music promoter and a photographer, kind of like a
talent scout basically. And he's got an audition with an audition with a girl named Cheryl Johnson. She was trying to
be a singer. Um, and Williams claimed that she had lived in a nearby town, but police could not find any record of this
person or the actual appointment. Yeah. He also claims that he didn't turn around on the bridge. He claims that he
turned around. He actually went across the bridge and then actually further down turned around. They claim he turned
around on the bridge. He claimed that never happened. Two days later on May 24th, the nude body of Nathaniel Carter,
who was 27 years old, he's one of the victims that we spoke about earlier, was found floating uh down the river. This
was about a few miles from the bridge where the police had heard the splash and had seen the suspicious vehicle and
stopped Williams. But here's where it starts getting pretty muddy. is because there's actually four w four
eyewitnesses, maybe more eyewitnesses that believe that they saw Nathaniel alive the day after they stopped
Williams on the bridge. So this would be on May 23rd. Williams is stopped on the
22nd, right? So basically this would make their suspicion null and void because he never dumped this body on
that day. The other issue with this, and this is where it gets more muddy, is they believe they don't know how long
Nathaniel was in the water. And it could have been up to two weeks based on the evidence that they found. They couldn't
tell. Maybe he's been in the water for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Mhm. And so
now you get these very crazy opposing uh accounts because if people did see him alive, well then Williams is not your
guy. But also, if they did see him alive, then how how is it not clear how long he was in the water because he
would would have only been in the water two days at that point, right? And but they do have in their defense on their
side, they have that Williams, Wayne Williams was the only person that was stopped on their their monitoring of
these bridges. Yeah. But how many weeks were they monitoring these bridges? It was several weeks. I believe it was four
weeks. Yeah. So, you got four weeks and you got nothing's happening. How many cops were we talking about in a 24-hour
shift? 165. So, 165 and and 24 hours. You don't pull over anybody suspicious. Then you pull over this young
23-year-old black black boy basically. Mhm. And and because he turned around, he turned around somewhere, whether it
was on the bridge or if it was a little further down from the bridge. I think that's why they pulled him over. I don't
think I who knows if they heard a splash. Yeah, it's been called the splash heard around the world. Um and
but regardless, they pull over but the problem that we have with this is yeah, you hear a splash who who you don't know
that that's Nathaniel. Yes, they find Nathaniel, but the two opposing accounts are one, he's been in the water for
weeks. So weeks before you you heard a splash that happened two weeks ago, that's either an account or the other
account is that Nathaniel was actually live the day after. Mhm. And so there would be no splash at all. Unless Unless
the one eyewitness account is completely wrong. It's not one. It's at least four.
At least four. And and and different reports that I've seen have said four credible, eight total. Now, that's a lot
of eyewitnesses. When when Williams is pulled over, um the officers notice a 24inch nylon cord
is in his vehicle. Um and this this would be what they would say would be the um murder weapon in several of these
cases. Mhm. And again, we talk about how the attack may have went down. Um, these
were attacks where there didn't seem to be any type of defense wounds on some of
these victims. Some of the victims didn't even appear to have reached up to defend themselves to pull whatever it
was from their neck that was choking them. Um, and they they believe that this when you took that that nylon cord
that they found uh that when you would lay it across the neck of some of these victims that that it would match up
perfectly in size. Yeah. Now, I don't know the science on that. I don't know what changes with the neck after death
occurs or Yeah. But then when they go to trial, they don't bring this up as the murder murder weapon. Yeah. And another
thing because when they go to trial, they basically say, "We do not have the murder weapon." Yeah. And the other
thing that that makes Williams look bad, but again, something that they cannot use in in court is that he does fail a
polygraph examination. Um, now we're we have to circle back to Well, okay. First
of all, he's a music promoter, so we know he's lying. Uh, it's kind of like a lawyer, right? How do you know they're
lying? Their mouths are moving and their lips are moving. Yeah. So, it's I think
it's the same thing. The other problem too is that you know these profiles, these super cops as you call them, they
say that the that the perpetrator would be h having um you know killing these victims and taking them places and take
and these these victims would have to go back to Williams house. Now one one would think so, right? And and the only
fiber that matches is this carpet fiber. Correct. that could be in thousands of houses. But therefore, it it's either a
transfer. Williams is transferring this carpet from Williams onto the victim or the victim ends up in Williams house.
Now, how is it likely Williams mother is what? She's a teacher. Mhm. And what's his father? Is um I think he's a
teacher. I think he is a teacher. Yes. Yeah. So, two educators and he has to get these uh these kids into his house.
uh whether they're murdered beforehand or afterhand and you're going to tell me that they have no suspicion of this
doesn't make a lot of logical sense to me. You're exactly right. You you are exactly right. But the but with the
fibers Okay. So, we have fibers from a carpet from the Williams residence uh was found to match those that were found
on two of the victims. Additional fibers from the Williams' home, their vehicles,
and their dog were later matched to fibers discovered on other Yeah. Yeah. But matched is uh they're using that
word pretty loosely because when they first found the dog fibers, they claimed that it was from a Siberian husky. Mhm.
But then once they got Williams, he What does Williams has? He he has a German Shepherd. So therefore, they said,
"Okay, well, yeah, well, this pretty much matches a Siberian husky, but we're going it also matches a German
Shepherd." Well, what range is it going? I mean, it it matches a dog. We know it's dog hair. Close enough. I mean,
that's what it seems like to me. You don't make a you don't make u a report that you have dog hairs and it's this
breed and then later on say, "Well, it's all it could be this other breed as well." Well, and then you have your four
eyewitnesses that say that they saw Nathaniel Carter alive the next day on the 23rd. However, there was an
eyewitness that said that they had seen Nathaniel Carter holding hands with Wayne Williams on the night of the 22nd.
That's the night that police believe he was killed and then dumped in the river.
And this eyewitness uh account is a little fuzzy anyways because I I believe the first account was that he was
holding hands with a white male and then later on that recanted to no it would be
Williams because Williams was a lighterkinned black man. Mhm. And so it was like oh I kind of got that wrong.
Well again in this case we have tons of eyewitness reports seeing white men white man with a black man. We also have
this report coming out too that I saw him with a white man uh two white men and one of the white men had a a visible
scar on his right cheek slash um jaw area and does and this is a eyewitness account that comes o comes out more and
more and more. Okay, Williams has no scar on his right cheek. So are these people just misidentifying everything?
But I thought he had a some type of birth mark on his right cheek. Uh I I don't know if you look at the picture. I
don't see it myself. It may have been confused for a uh for a scar. Um it should be pointed out the vehicle that
he's pulled over uh the night of when they believe that Williams was dumping the body was actually his parents'
vehicle. Mhm. He was living with his parents at the time and they had a station wagon which they recently just
received because before that they had a blue vehicle which we have the accounts the eyewitnesses saying they saw a blue
vehicle. And what makes this kind of interesting as far as the Williams scenario goes is
during this whole time they have this blue Ford I can't remember what it's called but it's constantly breaking
down. So they're constantly getting new rental cars. Um because he's like upper middle class. We're not upper middle
class. I'd just say middle class, right? Uh even so much so that the detectives when they were like, "Okay, now here's
our number one suspect." Even when they went to the house, the first thing was, "Gez, this is a nice place." It was It's
very shocking for the detectives. But all these cars that they're giving them, majority of the time are Fords. So
all of them would have the same lining in the trunk, normally the same lighting lining and you know where your feet go.
Um and but they have records of all that and that was presented in the trial as well. Uh unfortunately for Williams, a
lot of that um does not exonerate him. Yeah. And it it's interesting because having access to so many different
vehicles probably helped him elude detection for so long. I mean you you get confusing reports. Oh, we saw this
car. Oh, we saw that car with the next victim and so on and so forth. That goes that helps Williams carry out these
crimes and go undetected. Furthermore, you know, he's driving his parents' car the night that he's pulled over, but he
also had his own vehicle as well. So, we see an additional vehicle that he had access to. Yeah. And I I in a lot of the
stuff that I read I they don't talk much about that. It just seems like it's pretty maybe that vehicle isn't working
in in working order too. I mean he is you know basically doing some freelance photography and vid I think videography
as well. Uh but primarily he's like a this like kind of a loser music promoter you know fast talker trying to make uh
something big happen. you know, talked about how, you know, we have this group and we want to model them after the
Jackson 5. Well, I got this group, too. I want to model it after the Beatles, the bestselling group of all time. So,
he's he's kind of a fast talker. Well, speaking of of the the uh the music promoter, uh one thing that they noticed
after the case, okay, this was after the fact, um they noticed that on several telephone polls around where kids were
last seen or had gone missing from, uh there was a sign posted on some of these telephone polls and it read, I'm going
to read it just as it reads. Okay. The sign said, "Can you sing or play an instrument?" If you are between the
ages, if you are between 11 and 21, male or female, and you would like to become
a professional entertainer, you can apply for positions with professional recording acts. No experience is
necessary. Training is provided. All interviews private and free. For more information, call between 3 pm and 7 pm.
And then it gives a a 10-digit phone number there. Uh 404 area code, right? Which is his parents house, I presume.
And well, it Yeah, the the number was for Wayne Williams. Yeah. Now, here's another issue with this whole thing,
though, cuz Wayne Williams claims that yes, we were a talent scout. We are looking for talent. and that when these
murders were taking place that they actually contacted the the special task force that they set up just to go over
these murders and explain to them what they were doing. Mhm. So again, that's something that wasn't brought up on
trial either. Yeah. It is strange though how much the and I'm not saying that he's guilty
because he matches the profile presented by the super cops, but it is strange how
much he does match that profile, right? I mean, he he's the right age, he's the right race, uh he has the right
involvement in the community. Uh some of his freelance work as a photographer was
taking school pictures, so he was familiar with those environments and those that age group of kids. Um, and
then the other thing they said with the possible offer of a short-term job for quick money, uh, we see these these
signs posted on the telephone polls where it's offering, you know, if you want to get involved and become a
musician or an entertainer, a professional entertainer, call me at this number. Yeah, that the problem I
have with it is again the number he's using to have them call is his parents' number. both being educators themselves
and I just don't think that, you know, I'm I'm sure there's a lot of teachers that by the end of the year they're
tired of their brat students, but uh nobody's going to stand by why you're going to let your son murder these these
kids, right? So, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And also, you hire these
super cops and they just so happen to come up with a profile that it's a young black male and this fits a better
narrative for him because if it is if it is a a racist white guy or a racist white group, then we got a we got a
whole another issue, right? Well, of course. Um, but that's what I believe that's what the community
wanted it to be in the end and that's why you saw the uprising of these uh civilian groups that were coming up with
their own task force. Um, I I got to give the my hat is off to the super cops. I believe that they were on to
something and I believe that in the end the right guy was apprehended. Now, how many of these cases was he involved in?
I can't say. Well, technically, so what happened is he went to trial. They they convicted him of two of the murders, you
know, two of the adult murders. Yeah. None of them being children and um zero there. I mean, they didn't have the the
murder weapon. Uh I mean, almost little to no evidence at all. He gets tried for
those. He's sentenced to two life terms in prison. And then what they do with the other cases, they disclose them.
Yeah. They they closed the majority if not all of the cases and attributed all the crimes to Wayne Williams.
But we do have to address the elephant in the room, right, Captain? There one doesn't have to look very far to see,
you can see and hear and read multiple interviews with Wayne Williams where he's proclaiming his innocence to this
very day. Yeah. And normally this is something that I mean this is something that happens by a lot of uh suspects and
murder cases. This one's a little different though because in 1986 Spin Magazine runs an article. Mhm. In 1985
they get a tip from the group Guardian Angels. This is a group that was pretty successful. They would take um citizens
of normally urban areas. They'd be walking the streets getting information uh and basically keeping street crime
down to a minimum. They contact Spin Magazine saying, "Hey, by the way, we have some information for you. The
prosecutors got it wrong. We think that these murders or at least majority of these murders were um racially related
and they were done by the Clu Clu Klux Clan." Mhm. So, Spin Magazine wants to know more about this. They set uh Barry
Michael Cooper which did the first uh published story on crack cocaine and Bob Keading
um and he did a story on the live aid scandal. They go down to Atlanta and they investigate these uh claims. Now,
the tip was that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was actually at the time uh that they were looking into Williams
or before Williams, they had this parallel investigation. So, you had the child murders happening, but there was a
par a parallel investigation into the clan being involved not in all the murders, but being involved in one
murder with a small town boy. And if that was true, they believe that that one murder connected them to
another 14. So where does this all come from? It comes from informants. The first
informant would talk about his relationship with Charles T. Sanders. Charles T. Sanders was a known clansman.
He was uh connected with the new order of the Ku Klux Clan. One day, this informant, his name was BJ Jones, uh was
out with Charles Sanders and uh Jeter, one of the boys that went missing, actually hit Sanders car with a go-kart.
This pissed off Sanders. He said, "I am going to get that black bastard and I'm going to choke him to death with my and
I'm not going to say it." Um didn't think much of it. The Charles Sanders also was running his mouth to
this informant, this BJ Jones, basically talking all this stuff about how, you know, they're going to they're killing
these children. He wanted to uh recruit him into the clan because Jones had some
experience with bombs and explosives. He just thought that Sanders was just running off of the mouth. Well, once
Jeter came up missing, this BJ Jones then submits this stuff to the police saying, "Look, I was with I was with him
the day that his car was hit." And then uh then he made these remarks the next time that we we uh saw Jeter and then
Jeter shows up dead. Now when Joe when Jeter shows up dead uh his genital his genitals are missing his lower pelvic
area and both feet are also missing. Yeah. He he was the boy that he would have been about 14 or 15 years old. He
wouldn't have had a driver's license. So it makes sense that he was in a go-kart.
Uh he he hits uh Sanders vehicle and uh he was the one that disappeared on January 3rd and his body wasn't found
until February 5th. This was in a wooded area. Uh he was last seen in the area of
Steuart Lakewood Shopping Center in Southwest Atlanta. Right. And we have a eyewitness claiming that she saw Jeter
get into a car with a tall white male with a scar on his face. Scar on his neck, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Scar on his
face or his neck. That's roughly the the eyewitness testimony. Well, this would come into play because now we have this
parallel investigation into the clan and now we have somebody to target. We have
Charles T. Sanders. Now, his family, the Sanders family, there's at least five members, five known members that are
involved in the Ku Klux Clan. Multiple charges, multiple convictions to these members and their family.
Everything from child molestation, murder, assault, battery, drunk driving. These are just not great people. Uh also
charges with narcotics. Uh Charles Sanders was a known uh his business was narcotics basically. So the the main
suspect is Charles Sanders, the brother Don Sanders. Uh there's also like I believe a Terry Sanders, and then we
have a Carlton Sanders. The Carlton Sanders is the dad. He's a tall white man. People would describe him a sunken
jaw, but he has a scar on the right side of his neck. Carlton Carlton Sanders was
charged with over 35 counts of child molestation. He was acquitted on those charges, but um you know, this family
overall is just connected to some evil stuff. So you make threats to somebody saying that you're going to choke
somebody to death. Um and then they end up dead. Dead by strangulation but missing body parts. Yeah. And on top of
that, as you said, the the the father matching the description roughly of what the one eyewitness says is the last
person, you know, he had seen he or she had seen him getting into the vehicle with a person matching that description.
Um now, how does this tie them to any of the other victims? Well, remember we had
said that um that Jeter he had frequented a place called the Omni. Um this would be a place that several of
the other victims were have known to have hung out as well as his body was found 70 ft north from Vindy Road uh
which runs off of Camel Road which was where two of the earlier victims were found. Another piece of evidence is that
they have actually a tape recorded phone conversation with Sanders talking about
wanting to buy guns and grenades and things like that cuz basically they were tapping his phone. And all this
basically proves is the mo the motive. If we kill these little black children and we can create
a race war and and and if that's their motive, well, we kind of know that there's that's their motive because
they're also collecting weapons at the same point, right? and not only collecting weapons, but he is urging and
encouraging other clan members to arm themselves and to to create these arsenals and and um because he even says
that if there were to be a race war, I believe he even puts a date on it and says that this this will happen sometime
in 1981. So, you better gear up and be prepared uh because you're going to be involved in this. and and one one
wonders if they were preparing to come forward and say, "Hey, we're responsible for these murders or if they were being
or if they were prepared that they were going to get busted." So, some odd things in the Jojo Bell case was that
Jojo Bell runs in, tells his friend, "Hey, look, there was this white man and a black man. They wanted me to get in
their car." Um, you know, he thought it was a little sketchy. He told his friend
he ended up leaving that night. His friend saw him missing on the evening news. Uh Jojo Bell's work, the captain
and Peg, I believe that's his work or place that he would do odd chores for for a little bit of pay or maybe even
just dinner. They get a call the following evening and the assistant manager answers the phone and on the
other line it says, "This is Jojo and they're about to kill me and I'm about dead and they're about to kill me.
Jerry, they're about to kill me." Then the phone went dead. Now again in this report he's he is stating they Yeah.
He's not saying he, he's saying they. And again, it doesn't go along with what the super cops were saying. They were
saying that uh this would take somebody that had patience and had a plan and that the the victims most likely at no
time would suspect that they were going to be in danger. And then uh 9 days after Jojo um goes missing, that Timothy
Hill, Jojo's best friend, goes missing as well. They get another um mysterious phone call to this cap
Captain Peg restaurant and this one is from a woman sounding white and uh somewhere maybe in her 30s. She says uh
her man is dangerous. She says Jojo Bell was different from the other kids who had been murdered because she liked him
and she was trying to have him released. She said, "Do not call the police." Um because if they did that, this person
would kill her, too. Now, she just says she's talking more singular. Her man her
man is dangerous. And heck, for all we know, these could just be prank phone calls. Um but you
know, again, these are things in the trial of uh Wayne Williams that are not brought to light at this point. in the
parallel investigation into the Ku Cook clan or just members uh especially the investigation to the Sanders family.
It's full-blown allout wiretapping and they have a conversation. Basically, what they're trying to do is find
something that's a little more concrete. We know that they're buying weapons. We
have these um this informant that said that um he heard Sanders, Charles Sanders, threaten this boy um Jeter that
ends up missing or went missing and then found dead. So, they're ramping up this
investigation. They get this phone call. I could read it to you all, but it's in
the article, the Spin article, if you want to check that out. Uh I'll try to put a link or something in in the show
description. But basically, it's not Charles Sanders talking. It's Terry Sanders and Donald
Sanders. And back and forth through this conversation, Donald Sanders basically uh, you know, is trying to, "What are
you up to tonight?" Oh, not much. Okay. Well, I might swing by. Okay. Well, I'll
see you later. And then the one guy goes, "You going to go look at for another boy?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm
going to go I'll go look around uh for another kid and scope out some areas." Now, this is very to me credible and
very damaging to again is Wayne Williams responsible for all of them? I would say
no. 100% certain. I believe he's not. Uh is he responsible for a couple of them?
Possibly. I I don't know at this point because this becomes so muddy and murky. It's
like you don't know what to believe. What is up now? What is down? And I'm not really for sure.
Robert Keell. He was the author of the Riverman book. He was also a member of the Super Cop unit that we had talked
about earlier. He was involved in the Ted Bundy investigation later on in the um Green River Killer investigation, but
he was one of the super cops that they brought in to be involved in the three objectives that we talked about. You
know, were all of these cases linked? Now, he did have a a a big complaint that he didn't care for when they were
being presented their information. He did say that there was a lot lacking uh as far as the information that they were
provided to determine if all of these cases were connected. They basically received a a bit of a limited timeline
with a victimology uh talking about the deaths of each one of these victims. Well, we talked about
the co toxicology report not being uh submitted to them as well, right? That was one of the things the super cops had
asked about was the toxicology because they did believe that some of these or all of these victims may have been
drugged or alcohol used on them. They couldn't prove that without having the toxicology results. And furthermore,
actually, Robert Keell believes that maybe that the toxicology wouldn't have even been done on some of these cases.
Furthermore, he goes on to say that in one of the cases, the one that I had brought up that I thought was probably
not connected, but then the police later say, "Well, there's fibers that match some of these other victims." Uh, we had
talked about the the victim that was found uh in a garage with his with his pockets pulled out, right? Um, and one
thing that Keell had asked in this situation was, "Well, can we see we need to be able to see these fibers? We need
to have uh the the actual reports on these fibers because one thing that the super cops had questioned were is there
a chance that these fibers are so generic that anybody could have them in their homes or anybody could have them
in their cars. And the captain brought up one one thing that was really interesting earlier about uh Wayne
Williams's parents having multiple vehicles whether it be rentals or because they were replacing vehicles or
whatnot. And we know Wayne Williams drove a separate vehicle as well. Um, we're seeing all these fibers and
they're saying that those are all linked, but we're also talking about multiple vehicles. Well, and also what
how are they linked? I mean, like everything with DNA or fiber analysis, it's always linked to a percentage. Oh,
one out of a hundred. I mean, if you break down what the percentage is, if it if it's these fibers are found in 25% of
the homes in Atlanta, well, now you've got this huge uh spectrum. Um but basically the other conclusion too is
that the you know the vice president at the time uh pushes the prosecution and and and Atlanta's police force pushes
the prosecution saying if you're not going to rush this trial uh with Wayne Williams, we're going to replace you.
And then then the defense is thrown under the bus because not only are we going to be tried for these two murders
that William Williams then gets found guilty of, but we're going to allow information into all these other deaths.
So, you're talking about thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence on a trial that's going to be rushed. So, um,
because of the spin article, it was reopened. Uh, then it was closed and they put him
back in his box. Now, I I think the point of all this is I don't know if this I'm not sitting here saying, "Well,
it has to be this Charles T. Sanders." But if you have this investigation, you know, it seems like sometimes
uh law enforcement, government, or whatever it is, they're not interested in the truth. You know, they're just try
they're trying to mop up this bad problem, you know, but they're mopping it up with a wet mop, right? you know,
you're just pushing the water around. And at the end of the day, if he if if Wayne Williams didn't do this, then you
got an innocent man sitting in prison, right? So that that's the first flaw, but also um the community has a right to
know. and the parents of the victims and majority of them now after the articles
like this after these other informants come out the parents of the victims say look we don't buy this Wayne Williams
theory anymore and it's not fair to them for them to not ever know the truth but
the truth of the matter is that most of the time law enforcement government officials the vice president of the
United States they don't give a [ __ ] about you and it's Not because you're white and it's not because you're black,
it's because you're poor. Mhm. So, even if this happened to a group of poor white kids, it'd be the same thing. It's
a poverty thing. And I think uh it's it's a shame that we're not any I don't think we're anywhere further from
solving this thing than they were in 1981. Well, I mean, okay, so here's the thing.
Think about this, though, too. We have Robert Keell who who was pointing out clear clear holes in the investigation.
And yet this police department, this police force flew in all these super cops from different states and different
cities and paid them and put them up in in nice hotels and asked them to stay in
their city for a handful of days and and meanwhile they present them with with Swiss cheeselike information. Yeah. Or
they put their you know it's like hey fight this fight. Oh, by the way, we're going to put your hands behind your
back. Yeah. And they're they're like, "Okay, well, if these super cops are willing to put their stamp on it that 23
out of 27 murders are connected, then all we got to do is find the guy that does an ex murder and if we can link him
to more than one, then we probably found our guy, right?" The other interesting thing here, too, is they presented a
completely different profile than what the public was already working off of. the public was working off the profile
that it was a white supremist or it was a group of white supremists. Right. And when when these people were when these
super cops were flown into Atlanta and paid to be there and they offered this very extensive profile that's goes
against everything that was already the the original thought. Well, also that then they're told that we don't want to
release that profile. Well, why did they not want to release that profile? Did the Atlanta police force know something
that they did not present to the super cops? Um, right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, well, that's the thing is you can only
present uh your profile of the evidence that of what you are given. Now, the the
apprehension, the the plan for apprehension, it did lead to Wayne Williams. Do I believe that he was
involved in some of these deaths? Yes, I do. Because there are there are some things, you know, like the carpet fibers
from his home. Uh I think that those are going to be different than the the fibers that we talk about from the
vehicles. Well, there's it's very flimsy evidence at best, but but the the if you
do dive into the the fiber evidence, it it is more likely. It points into the direction of him, but that is on just a
couple of them. Yeah. there. Well, and then one of the victims, there was two human hairs found on them, and they have
tested those since then, and they cannot rule out Wayne Williams on that one particular victim. Yeah, that that one's
weird, though, because um they actually believed initially when they found that that those two hairs were of a Caucasian
male. Mhm. But then they found out, well, actually, it's a very small percent that would also match with an
African male. Right. And that very small percentage is like 2%. You're you're exactly right. It it would rule out like
97 or 98% of African-American males males, but Wayne Williams falls into that 2% to that very small percentage.
Yeah. And I it's maybe it's a little more than 2% but it's not it's not at 5%. Is it possible though that that part
of the reason that this case was so tough and that why we saw 28 victims or that that there were two killers working
in a similar area um probably killing with two completely different MOS but this would definitely you would
definitely think this would throw the police off. And the other thing that makes it hard to believe that Wayne
Williams would have done all this we're talking about 27 or 28 victims. Super cops say maybe 23 of them. That's a lot
of victims in like a 24-month time period. That's I mean the that's a lot of rapid action. I mean you you almost
would be doing nothing other than killing and covering up the crimes, you know, in certain situations. Well, and I
think sometimes knowledge hurts you. I think mo most of the time knowledge helps you. I think in this case it kind
of hurts people because they do this thing where they go, "Oh, well the killer the killer must be reading the
paper. the killer must be following what the cops are doing because now the killer is throwing the bodies into the
river. And there's a possibility if they aren't linked, if less of them are linked, right, maybe there's only three
or four that are the same then, you know, or or maybe just the ones that were found in the river are connected.
Mhm. It it necessarily doesn't mean it's the same person. And then just in this case with the whole um the Ku Klux Clan
um connection, yes, you made these threats and maybe uh Charles Sanders carried out these
threats on one victim that just happened to know three or four of the other victims, right? But it is very possible.
Now, that's when you just get into this crazy world. But, you know, so it's very
possible that Wayne Williams is responsible for two of them and then this Sanders guy is responsible for one
or two of them and then there's just somebody else. Uh, you know, all these things come out about the KKK
afterwards. There were a couple things that did come out against Wayne Williams after the fact. Uh, one being that a
police officer would later say that at one of the crime scenes, Wayne Williams had stopped by uh, and offer to
photograph the body for the medical examiner's office, that he was a freelance photographer and that he would
do this to help out with the investigation. There's it's also suspected that he was that he um may
have signed up to try to help search for one of the victims. And then in a third
case, there was an eyewitness that had reported seeing Wayne Williams in his vehicle attending uh the funeral of one
of the victims. Yeah, that's very odd. Uh again, I mean, I think uh it's weird because if you watch an interview with
Wayne Williams, he doesn't seem like that bad of a guy. He just seems very um slick, you know? He seems like uh Yeah,
he's slippery, isn't he? Yeah. Well, he seems like, you know, he's, you know, he's hot [ __ ] or something. But, uh,
this whole case in general is frustrating cuz one, uh, the victims, they didn't, they didn't get to live,
um, a meaningful life. They didn't get the opportunity to do something productive with their life. Um, and the
other sad thing is that there's no real answers. I mean, you have a guy behind bars, but there's no real answers. And
we we really need to start pushing for the, you know, this truth. That's what we
should push. You know, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. You know, uh, you know, just find the truth. And while
the captain and I might not agree on if Wayne Williams was connected or if he was responsible or how many of these
murders he was responsible for, I think one thing we can agree that we uh that one thing we do agree on is that uh it
was irresponsible of law enforcement to close all of those other cases just because you had a conviction on two of
them. Well, what that what the law enforcement did was they told the parents of those victims and the
families of those victims, you are nothing more than a number. That's the statement that they made to me. And I
and I think that's uh absolutely wrong because white or black, it doesn't matter. And and frankly, I get tired of
people going around and identifying as such. I'm a white male or I'm a black male or female or whatever. At the end
of the day, we are a human race and we should start acting like it. Thank you, Captain. I'm so inspired right now. Oh,
right. I'm just I'm I just sometimes these cases just piss me off and and I try to just be light and airy, but God,
it just pisses me off. Well, you want to hear something else that's going to piss
you off? My We have to do a show next week. My recommended reading for this week. Captain's going to hate this. I'm
going to recommend a book that I recommended before. Oh my god. Just do your job. Yep. This is one that I
recommended way back when, probably on our third or fourth episode. But the reason why I'm recommending it again is
because it is on my very short list of true crime books that I keep returning to that that multiple times in my
lifetime. I've read this thing four times and I went back to it when we started looking into this case for this
week. And that is by the author and detective Robert Keell that we talked about in this case. uh and his book, The
River Man, Ted Bundy and I hunt for the Green River Killer. The reason why I keep going back to this book is because
it's it's by an investigator, one that was involved in some of the biggest, most notorious crimes in this country.
Uh it involved the Ted Bundy case. It involved the Green River case. He was also one of the super cops in this case.
And it discusses the uh the Michigan the Oakland County child murders as well. Um, this is one of my favorite true
crime books of all time. You can pick it up by going to our website, true crimegar.com, click on the recommended
page, and look for the riverband. Ted Bundy and I hunt for the Green River Killer. And you can get anything through
Amazon. So, go to true crimegar.com, click on our Amazon banner. You can buy anything. And they kick back a little
love, no extra cost to you. Uh if you saw my Instagram uh video of making the trailers and making the music for the
show, you would have seen my beautiful, beautiful divers helmet and that was picked up through Amazon. And a big
thank you and a big I like your jib to all the listeners. The love in the last year has been amazing. Thanks for
telling a friend. Thanks for the support. Uh and big exciting things coming up for the garage. That's right.
And until next time, be good, be kind, and don't live. And be a human. [Music] [Applause]
[Music]

The Atlanta Child Murders ////// 56

TrueCrimeGarage.com

In Atlanta, Georgia over a two year period between the summer of 1979 through the spring of 1981 there was a killer striking with an unheard of frequency. At least 28 African-American children and young adults were killed. This series of murders is sometimes called the Atlanta Child Murders. When it comes to criminal investigations we often hear how "it's not like it is on tv" yet this case was different, very different because it truly was a lot like how you would see a case work out on tv. The Atlanta Murders has all of the necessary attributes of a really good mystery and movie like investigative drama. An unknown person or persons is killing a major cities African-American youth sometimes at the rate of two or three a month and remains undetected despite the police's best efforts. The FBI and BCI units are called in. They even assembled a group of "Super Cops" from all over the country to come to Atlanta and lend their expertise. When the killer is finally caught it turns out to be one of the cities' own, a native. Then years after Wayne Williams is convicted of the murders some would come forward and wonder just how guilty is he and was he in fact responsible for all of the murders?

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Brief Summary

This episode examines the Atlanta child murders, the investigation, and Wayne Williams' controversial arrest.

Key points

The Atlanta Child Murders. A fresh look at the series of murders that gripped Atlanta from 1979 to 1981.
The Investigation Struggles. Police face immense challenges in solving the case, with many unanswered questions.
The Discovery of Pew's Body. Pew's body is found in Rockdale County, adding another layer to the investigation.
The Super Cops Task Force. A group of elite detectives, known as the super cops, is formed to tackle the case.
Profile of the Killer. The super cops create a profile suggesting the killer is an African-American male in his 20s.
The Killer's Profile. The police kept the profile secret, allowing public speculation about the killer's identity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The only unanswered question right now is when.

Police express frustration over the investigation timeline.

7:40WatchJul 3, 2025

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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