Atlanta Child Murders: Retracing a series of 29 unsolved murders that haunted city's black community in 1970s
In the late 1970s, the city of Atlanta became a dangerous place for the black community. A serial killer was on the loose and terrorized the metro area which at the time was reforming into a progressive era for the black Americans, following the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Between 1979 and 1981, 29 people were brutally murdered and the victims ranged between children and young adults in their early 20s. The victims were black, impoverished and mostly boys who had previously been reported missing. The devastated community and the families incessantly searched for these lost children, only to discover their corpses days or months later. Authorities then went on to dub this killing spree as the 'Atlanta Child Murders'.
In March 1980, the murder count had reached six, with no clue as to who the culprit may be. By May 1981, investigators noticed that many of the bodies that linked the case together had been recovered from the same geographic area, with some being pulled out of the Chattahoochee River.
Wayne Williams was taken into custody in 1981 for the murder of two young men in Atlanta. Seeing how he had gruesomely murdered his two victims, many began to believe that he may have been the culprit behind the Atlanta Child Murders. It seemed that his arrest had also ended the steady stream of murders that had been tormenting the city.
HBO is also delving into the 40-year-old semi-solved cases after they were reopened in 2019. Existing evidence from the original cases was re-tested through advanced forensic technology and yielded new results. 'Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children', is a five-part documentary series created by an Emmy award-winning directorial team slated to release on April 5.
The victims
The first victims of the Atlanta Child Murders where Edward Hope Smith, 14, and Alfred Evans, 13. Both had disappeared in the summer of 1979 within three days of each other. The bodies of both the boys were recovered days later from an empty parking lot. One had died of asphyxiation while the other had been shot. The discovery of these bodies hadn't exactly incited panic and the authorities wrote them off as a drug-related incident, as Washington Post would report.
In late 1979, 14-year-old Milton Harvey and nine-year-old Yusuf Bell's bodies were discovered. Bell's remains were found in an abandoned school, about four blocks away from his home. But the Atlanta police hadn't linked these disappearances and murders together.
In 1980, 12-year-old Angel Lenair's body was found tied to a tree, and again, the police asserted to her mother that she'd run away from home, Washington Post reported. Jeffrey Mathis, 11, had gone missing next, but his body wasn't discovered until almost a year later. In May of the year, the battered body of 15-year-old Eric Middlebrooks was found.
From there on, more children were reported missing and their bodies would turn up in similar unoccupied locations: Latonya Wilson, 7, and Aaron Wyche, 10, in June; Anthony Carter, 9, and Earl Lee Terrell, 10, in July. At least 18 more people disappeared by 1981 and no one made it back alive. Their bodies would either surface days later or after several months.
Some of these victims even knew each other as they lived only a few houses apart.
The investigation
The local authorities came under fire from the community and the bereaved families for their incompetency in the investigation. For the first few months, it was as if they even refused to believe the murders could be linked, possibly to prevent damage to the city's reputation. When they failed to find any leads in the murders, the FBI was eventually asked to take over.
The investigation only took a serious turn in August 1980 when 13-year-old Clifford Jones' body was found, showing signs of strangulation. The boy wasn't from Atlanta and had traveled from Cleveland to visit family. This likely caused an uproar and helped the case gain national attention. The FBI took matters into its own hands and opened a kidnapping investigation called 'ATKID' in November prompted by an investigation into the disappearance of Darren Glass, 11. The nightly news would report regularly on the case and a six-figure reward was allocated towards capturing the killer. Naturally, thousands of people rendered their help in the investigation.
John Douglas, a bureau agent for the FBI, came down to Atlanta in early 1981 to review the cases and helped profile the suspect. He visited the crime scenes where five of the children's bodies were found and concluded that the killer was most-probably black. If he were white, he couldn't navigate through a black neighborhood without raising any eyebrows.
The suspect: Wayne Williams
In late 1980, the killer's pattern had shifted and the FBI was finally able to find some leads. So far, the bodies of the victims had been found on dry land, but now they were discovered along the banks of nearby rivers. Authorities were of the opinion that the killer was trying to get rid of any evidence by dumping the bodies in the rivers. An FBI agent then proposed scanning bridges along rivers for any form of evidence, which eventually led them to survey dozens of bridges in the area.
While surveying the area, they came across 23-year-old Wayne Williams who had been driving on one of the bridges. He was pulled over by Atlanta police officers when they spotted his station wagon on the bridge shortly after hearing a loud splash in the Chattahoochee River, but Williams denied any involvement in the case. Two days later, 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater's body surfaced around the same spot where Williams had been pulled over. He had died of asphyxiation.
Williams claimed to be a talent scout, trying to find a singer named Cheryl Johnson, but the authorities could never verify that such a person even existed. Turns out that Williams was indeed a music scout who was on the lookout for 'the next Michael Jackson', which means he may as well have been in contact with boys and teenagers in the same age group as the victims.
In June, police found green fibers at William's residence which linked him to one of the murders. He was then arrested on charges of murdering Cater and 22-year old Jimmy Ray Payne, whose bodies were found in close proximity from each other. Prosecutors then began to build the case with evidence retrieved from William's house, which included several different fibers and dog hair from a mixed-breed German Shepherd, which matched those found on a number of victims. Douglas gave descriptive details of the case in his book titled, 'Mindhunter' (which was adapted into a season for an eponymous TV series).
However, despite the evidence, Williams was only charged with the murders of Cater and Payne. In 1982, he was tried and given two sentences — both life imprisonment. Only later did the investigators connect Williams to most of the unsolved murders.
Case reopened in 2019
The advancement in forensic technology helped gain significant insight into the 30-year-old case in 2010. Hairs retrieved from the original murder scenes were tested for DNA by the forensics, which further complicated the case. Officials involved in the original case continue to insist that Williams was behind all the killings.
In 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reopened the cold cases for a new investigation. Mayor Bottoms has stressed time and again that the reason behind doing so is to give closure to families of the victims, who for years have wanted to identify the real killers of their children.