'Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children' Episode 2: Search parties formed as pedophiles were suspected
The second episode of the documentary series delved deeper into the investigations being carried out to find the missing children and the perpetrator behind the killings. It also dishes out more information about the alleged killer, Wayne Williams, who was tried for two murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The then Mayor Jackson described the situation surrounding the raging murders as 'insanity', wanting to assure the people that the authorities are doing what it takes to get to the bottom of the problem. All the children who hadn't made it out alive had either been strangled, bludgeoned or shot to death. It was a hard blow to the community and the parents of the dead children had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that their beloved child was gone forever.
It was a great emotional ordeal even for families whose young ones were at home, safe and sound. It was a terrifying thing for parents in general who had to take caution to ensure the safety of their kids. Dinner conversations were never the same. Stories from school over a home-cooked meal turned into safety regulations for the following day.
Mayor Bottoms said that the reopening of the cases is for examining them to see if there is something that the authorities overlooked, or if there was something else going on that they are yet to piece together.
Search party and self-defense patrol comprising community people
The special task force that was put together manages to compile a list of the missing and murdered children in Atlanta but didn't find a pattern in the murders until much later. Everyone worried about the monster that was lurking in the shadows, waiting to catch its next prey.
Then, in mid-1980, the police, marshalls, college students, communities and many others volunteered to form a search party to look for the missing kids. They did this every Saturday, for a span of a year.
Many volunteers recalled the intense feelings they harbored to be a part of the search team that looked for the lost children. But they also had severely dreaded it as well, because none of the volunteers wanted to be the ones to find them. Deep in their hearts, they knew that if these children were found, they wouldn't be living or breathing.
The search, however, was a real turning point for the investigation when some college students volunteering in the first search party found the body of a little girl in a securely gated area. The body was recovered from an area that the police had repeatedly assured had been checked thoroughly, the previous day. Then the anxiety began to build.
The murders didn't seem to be stopping any time soon, and the police were losing the confidence of their people, who began to suspect them instead. They hadn't been doing enough to protect the lives of the black youth.
So one group of people came together to form their own self-defense patrol to protect their own community and children. They stepped out on to the streets fully armed with baseball bats, pistols and rifles, never intending to cause harm to anyone but the culprit behind the brutal killing spree.
Wayne Williams — a budding crime reporter, radio broadcaster and music producer
A volunteer recalls having spotted Wayne Williams and his father, as part of the search efforts.
Williams had been working as a freelance photographer for Metro News and possibly saw himself growing as a crime reporter. He would cover accidents, fires, murders, but particularly after dark. The police knew of him as the guy who showed up at the scene at midnight. He also aspired to be a radio broadcaster and set up his own radio station in the basement of his home. He is described to have been smart, nerdy, and geeky looking, who never hired any sound engineers, technicians or electricians at his radio stations.
While Williams wasn't exactly suspected through the course of the investigation, details that emerged later on connected him to the murders. He was linked to several murders based on a thought that the children had possibly known who he was.
Williams was on the lookout for fresh musical talent, possibly for his radio station, as an advertisement on the Metro suggested. He went around scouting talent, claimed to be music or record producer of sorts and apparently told people, "I can make you the next Michael Jackson".
Investigators said this was the perfect bait to lure in young people. Williams was later arrested.
One of the teens who died in 1980, 16-year-old Patrick Rogers, was an aspiring musician, who, on the night of death, was on his way to a recording studio.
The FBI's involvement
The public pressure on law enforcement was weighing down on authorities, yet they had no answers. Ultimately, President Ronald Reagan's administration had to step in and respond, which most found unusual because Reagan was a Republican and Atlanta was under Democratic administration.
In November 1980, upon Mayor Jackson's meeting with the president at the White House, the FBI jumped on board the case. But, the murders still continued.
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali donated $400,000 towards helping find the missing children and many more influential people came forward to put their resources behind the case. Rewards were being offered but no one really knew anything.
Speculations
The FBI took over the investigation and their examinations sparked several speculations. One was that many believed the parents themselves were killing the children. Lewis Salton, the DA at Fulton County's theory proposed that the culprit was neither abducting, kidnapping or snatching kids out of the street. Instead, the children were willingly going with somebody for something.
Don Lakes, a search-dog trainer who assisted with the investigation process, made an assumption of there being more than one killer. His first theory was that it was a religious cult because of how certain bodies were found as if laid out as a sacrifice. The second was that it was a drug or porn-related group taking advantage of these children. The third was that it was family-oriented homicides.
Many families started also to speculated that someone was snatching their children and taking their bodily fluids for interferon, a drug used to treat cancer, which is made of white cells. These white cells were usually found in the head of the penis of boys aged five to seventeen. But the coroner shot those speculations down, affirming that the genital organs on every single body that had come to him had been intact.
The victimized kids were mostly from the streets or from broken homes. They became the subject of common stereotypes about troubled kids. This became a cover for the murder story generating a prejudice against street children as being druggies and suppliers or engaging in prostitution to make money.
A profile that was assembled from all the known details, concluded one fact that the investigation focused on: The killer had to be black, because if he were white he wouldn't have been able to go about without raising suspicion.
Child pornographers and pedophiles suspected
The children were believed to have been picked up off the streets of predominantly black neighborhoods or an area that black kids usually visited, like the OMNI Plaza. It was a large building that house arcades, shopping centers, offices and more. Many known pedophiles operated in the area behind the plaza.
Sex was a big part of the Atlanta underground and the 1970s were wild times. Ten kids of all those reported missing were found to have visited Tom Terrell's house, a known pedophile. One of the dead teens, 13-year-old Timothy Hill, apparently had sex with him.
Sometime later, John David Wilcoxen was arrested on charges of child pornography and pedophilia. The authorities found tens and thousands of photographs of nude children in his house and two of the victims were reportedly spotted there before their death.
The investigation turned a new corner with the information. The aim was to leave no stone unturned and so the police looked into all pedophiles, conducting extensive investigations. But in the end, there were only suspects.
The final assumption (in this episode) about the suspect was that he was a homosexual pedophile, who got off on killing his victims and playing with them.
In a completely unexpected scenario, The West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, which held an open discussion on the missing and murdered children, on April 18, phoned Wayne Williams in prison. The families of the victims were also present at church and were also offered an out in case they didn't want to listen to the alleged killer of their children. No one opposed.
Williams' voice came from the mobile phone and he was heard saying, "First of all, I just really wanted to say is to the families that, my heart goes out to you because I can't imagine what it's like to go all these years by being lied to and by not hearing the truth about what happened to your loved ones. All I hope that everyone in the community who's representing here tonight will demand answers, and not just answers but demand action."
"You know this isn't just about me clearing my name, but this is about getting some justice for you. God willing, let's make it happen. So, I just wanted to reach out with my heart and say God bless, and let's finally get some answers to this thing," he added.