Speaker 1: This call is subject to monitoring, recording, and identification of
Speaker 1: the location of the person being called.
Speaker 2: To accept charges.
Speaker 3: Press one.
Speaker 2: Thank you for using the curius. You may start the
Speaker 2: conversation now. One of my attorneys, Lenn Whatley, received a
Speaker 2: package on his doorstep of his anonymous package. He opened
Speaker 2: the package and found out that it contained hundreds of
Speaker 2: GBI files about the classified investigation that the agency had
Speaker 2: been doing into quite supremacist involvement in the Atlantic killings.
Speaker 2: It also contained, to our surprise, several tape recorded confessions
Speaker 2: some of the clansmen. They admitted and they were involved
Speaker 2: in the murder of some of the miscan murdered cases.
Speaker 4: And at another body was discovered today the twenty third.
Speaker 3: At Voice Task Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces
Speaker 3: on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
Speaker 4: We do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore,
Speaker 4: we do not have the money.
Speaker 5: From Tenderfoo TV in house TOI forks in Atlanta.
Speaker 6: Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently.
Speaker 2: Was a sphyxia victor.
Speaker 3: Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
Speaker 3: on killing.
Speaker 4: This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 1: This was the first time Wayne Williams has been photographed
Speaker 1: since his trial almost two years ago. Jail officials say
Speaker 1: he has gained forty pounds since he's been behind bars,
Speaker 1: but he didn't look heavier, just a little older. Sheriff
Speaker 1: Leroy Stinchcombe allowed him to hold this unusual news conference
Speaker 1: today because he says he thinks Williams deserves a chance
Speaker 1: to speak his peace before he has moved from the
Speaker 1: county jail into the state prison system. And predictably, Williams
Speaker 1: began by denying he's a child killer.
Speaker 7: I have been wrongly accused and connected with the series
Speaker 7: of peneous crimes, and all I ask is a chance
Speaker 7: to see justice.
Speaker 1: Police officials have insisted that since William's arrest, the murders
Speaker 1: of young Atlanta blocks have stopped, but william says he
Speaker 1: has evidence that at least forty murders fitting the pattern
Speaker 1: of the child murderers have been committed since he's been
Speaker 1: in jail.
Speaker 8: Wayne tried to get his case reopened. If you look
Speaker 8: at it, if you go back in history, of course,
Speaker 8: a lot of this is archive. This is long before
Speaker 8: the Internet, back in nineteen eighty one and eighty two.
Speaker 8: But if you pull old records. I mean there were
Speaker 8: people dying well after Wayne got convicted. For Wayne's attorneys,
Speaker 8: that's a good argument.
Speaker 7: Since my risk. Summer nineteen eighty one, the decomposed body
Speaker 7: of a young teenage black female found strangled on I twenty.
Speaker 7: Summer of nineteen eighty one, fifteen year old black male
Speaker 7: found shot on West Lake Avenue in front of home,
Speaker 7: no further information. Summer of nineteen eighty one, the twenty
Speaker 7: one year old uncle of murder victim Curtis Walker was
Speaker 7: found did no further information. As you can see, there
Speaker 7: are definitely homicided to need to be investigated, and all
Speaker 7: we're saying is that we want the chance to get
Speaker 7: in court and deal with this information.
Speaker 1: Will Jail officials say there have been threats on William's
Speaker 1: life almost daily since he's been behind bars. He will
Speaker 1: probably be moved into the state prison system sometime in January,
Speaker 1: but Sheriff's Stinchcombe warrens if he is put into the
Speaker 1: general prison population, he won't last a day. But William
Speaker 1: says he's not afraid.
Speaker 7: I have some reservations about it because it will be
Speaker 7: a change, as he said of address, but no I
Speaker 7: don't fear from my life. I just put him a
Speaker 7: faith in God and trust.
Speaker 1: William's attorneys have just two more days to ask the
Speaker 1: state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to uphold his
Speaker 1: two murder convictions. If the court denies that request as expected,
Speaker 1: william says he's prepared to appeal his case all the
Speaker 1: way to the US Supreme Court if necessary. Although today's
Speaker 1: news conference was greatly anticipated, there were certainly no surprises. Instead,
Speaker 1: Williams continued to play off the long standing public doubts
Speaker 1: that the wrong man may be in jail, but once
Speaker 1: his case is kicked up into the federal courts, the
Speaker 1: only thing that matters are very complicated legal issues and
Speaker 1: public doubts, no matter how strong, probably won't do anything
Speaker 1: to set him free.
Speaker 5: That may be right, especially after all these years, the
Speaker 5: public doubt has persisted. Tyrone Brooks, civil rights advocate and
Speaker 5: acquaintance of Wayne Williams, started his own petition to reopen
Speaker 5: the Atlanti Shaw murder cases.
Speaker 9: Representative Tyrone Brooks says he is now demanding that all
Speaker 9: twenty eight murder cases blamed on Wayne Williams be reopened.
Speaker 9: Brooks claiming several police task Force investigators have long doubted
Speaker 9: Wayne Williams involvement.
Speaker 10: They pretty much were dissatisfied with the way things were going.
Speaker 10: They did not believe that Wayne Williams was the right suspect.
Speaker 10: They didn't believe that the investigators were really on the
Speaker 10: right track, and really that the pressure was coming from Washington,
Speaker 10: from the Vice President's office down to Governor Busby, through
Speaker 10: the GBI, through the District Attorney, and on down to
Speaker 10: the Atlanta Police Bureau.
Speaker 9: Pressure to do what, pressure to.
Speaker 10: Find somebody, to find a scapegoat.
Speaker 8: I mean, you had George Bush coming in and saying,
Speaker 8: we need these murders solved. The first black mayor of Atlanta,
Speaker 8: he was under a lot of pressure to get these solved.
Speaker 8: There were black kids dying in the city of Atlanta.
Speaker 8: That's not a good look for the first black mayor.
Speaker 8: You had a lot of pressure from Washington to get
Speaker 8: this solved. So, I mean, it looks like that's what happened,
Speaker 8: because you can't go from we don't have enough evidence
Speaker 8: to prosecute to oh my god, we have all of
Speaker 8: these patterns and Wayne is our guy.
Speaker 9: Brooks alluding to a secret June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one
Speaker 9: midnight meeting at the Georgia Governor's mansion, a meeting in
Speaker 9: which Fulton District Attorney Lewis Slayton was reportedly pressured by
Speaker 9: former Governor Busby to arrest Wayne Williams, despite Slayton's reluctance
Speaker 9: to do so at the time. Two days later, on
Speaker 9: June twenty first, Slayton did move against Williams, arresting him
Speaker 9: at his house.
Speaker 5: If the arrest was backed by pressure from higher authorities,
Speaker 5: what else was in those case files that didn't get
Speaker 5: enough attention?
Speaker 11: One box more than sixty two hundred documents twenty homicide
Speaker 11: files containing information never before revealed publicly on one of
Speaker 11: the most explosive criminal cases in the nation's history. The
Speaker 11: files don't paint a pretty picture. Instead, they sometimes paint
Speaker 11: the troubled city scape where some of the victims came from.
Speaker 11: One file explorer's possible ties between a group of homosexuals
Speaker 11: and three victims. The files revealed that at some points
Speaker 11: during the investigation, suspects in at least two of the
Speaker 11: killings had included close relatives. There are mentions of drugs,
Speaker 11: persons with criminal record surface, often one victim's mother allegedly
Speaker 11: admitted to investigators she was a prostitute, but most of
Speaker 11: that had little to do with the end of the
Speaker 11: investigation that came with a conviction of Wayne Williams in
Speaker 11: two of the cases.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, it was everything but Wayne Williams. I mean,
Speaker 8: there was so many other suspects in Wayne was not
Speaker 8: one of them at all.
Speaker 6: The newest defense rest and revolves around the murdered case
Speaker 6: of Lubageta and the supposed involvement of some unnamed members
Speaker 6: of the q Klux Klan. The new appeal resting as
Speaker 6: it does on the Lubijita case and the Klan involvement
Speaker 6: may be too fragile.
Speaker 8: Well, there was always speculation even before Wayne got arrested
Speaker 8: about some clan involvement.
Speaker 10: I do believe that there's an element of the Ku
Speaker 10: Kluk Klan embedded in the law enforcement community and still
Speaker 10: is today. I do believe that wiping out young black
Speaker 10: men was a part of the overall legitimate to weaken
Speaker 10: the black community.
Speaker 12: The KKK. When you were a kid, that's what we
Speaker 12: talked about, I mean, because it was strange for me.
Speaker 12: I mean when we were in middle school. You know,
Speaker 12: they still burned cross on Stone Mount. I mean that
Speaker 12: was the rallying point for the KKK. I mean it
Speaker 12: was just our ways to things.
Speaker 4: That you know that you heard.
Speaker 8: So there were a lot of theories right that people
Speaker 8: developed that because they were all black, because they were
Speaker 8: mostly male, this is you know, this was a KKK conspiracy.
Speaker 13: Some people in the black community thought it was the
Speaker 13: Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys. That
Speaker 13: whole theory around it being the clan came up because
Speaker 13: people in the black community did not believe a black
Speaker 13: person would do that to another black person, particularly a
Speaker 13: black child.
Speaker 5: How do you feel about the people who think that
Speaker 5: the clan is involved in the Atlanta chap murders.
Speaker 14: That was a joke. That was an absolute joke. The
Speaker 14: Klan number one is not smart enough to commit twenty
Speaker 14: five perfect crimes. Number two. If they did do it,
Speaker 14: they were taking an ad out in the newspaper. They
Speaker 14: were toothless. But again, the Bureau insisted on keeping watch
Speaker 14: on them, so we just had informants monitor them meetings,
Speaker 14: make sure nobody was going to do anything crazy plans
Speaker 14: just not smart enough. A bunch of rednecks who hate
Speaker 14: blacks and they weren't bright enough to commit this crime,
Speaker 14: and if they did, they would have taken out an
Speaker 14: ad in the paper. Plus, how do you go into
Speaker 14: a black neighborhood dressed in a hood.
Speaker 15: The Klan wanted to take credit for it. I mean,
Speaker 15: they're racist. It would have been a feather in their
Speaker 15: hat if as group they could have said, yeah, we
Speaker 15: killed twenty eight kids and got bye with it. But
Speaker 15: they couldn't find anybody that would say, yes, I did it,
Speaker 15: and they didn't know enough of the facts to convince anybody.
Speaker 4: That they did it.
Speaker 8: There was a guy named Charles Sanders who was known
Speaker 8: to be a clan member. I think his brother or
Speaker 8: uncle was pretty high up in the Klan at that time,
Speaker 8: and there was speculation, there was talks that he was
Speaker 8: the one that actually killed Louby Jeter.
Speaker 1: For years, selling things on streets and in shopping centers
Speaker 1: has been a prime way for children to earn extra money.
Speaker 1: Fourteen year old Chuck Jeter was no exception.
Speaker 14: We didn't see any pattern. We didn't see anything, and
Speaker 14: then January third, after we came back, Louby Jeter happened.
Speaker 1: On January third, he went to the Stuart Lakewood mall
Speaker 1: in southeast Atlanta to sell cans of zep Gel, a cardiotorizer.
Speaker 4: Luby.
Speaker 14: Jeter was fifteen years old. He was selling zepp products
Speaker 14: at a outdoor mall in down in Southwest at once Sat.
Speaker 14: The afternoon he disappeared. So they organized a search on
Speaker 14: the ninth of January, and I remember a cold, rainy Friday,
Speaker 14: and they told us APD told us it gave us
Speaker 14: various areas in the city areas they thought that a
Speaker 14: body might be dumped.
Speaker 1: Investigators were literally beating the bushes looking for any trace
Speaker 1: of fourteen year old Chuck Jeter. Trained dogs sniffed the
Speaker 1: area around the mall today but turned up nothing. This weekend,
Speaker 1: volunteer searchers will be on the lookout for Jeter, but
Speaker 1: police say so far they're stumped.
Speaker 16: The roll call was impressive. Officers from the SWAT Team,
Speaker 16: the Task Force, the Motorcycle Squad were here, so were
Speaker 16: recruits who have yet seen much action. Even agents from
Speaker 16: both the federal and Georgia Bureaus of Investigation were helping out.
Speaker 16: This was the first ever massive search conducted by the
Speaker 16: Atlanta Police Bureau. The more than two hundred officers would
Speaker 16: look for anything that could help find fourteen year old
Speaker 16: Luby Jeter.
Speaker 15: My partner and I were walking up and down the
Speaker 15: side of that road trying to see if we can
Speaker 15: find any evidence, with no hope of finding anything. And
Speaker 15: I looked down in the creek and I said, there's
Speaker 15: a pair of jeans. The creek was overflowing its banks.
Speaker 15: He held my arms while I leaned over into that creek.
Speaker 15: Found those jeans and Louby's school schedules in the back
Speaker 15: pocket the pants. We took the pants and the belt,
Speaker 15: and one of the females in the family, I remember
Speaker 15: she identified the belt as being his because he was
Speaker 15: in such a state of deterioration that I did and
Speaker 15: identify him was.
Speaker 4: Kind of hard.
Speaker 14: I remember driving out there. The agent that had his
Speaker 14: case assigned was Frank Pickets. Heck of a guy. He's
Speaker 14: still around, hell of a man. And he came out
Speaker 14: of that woods with tears in his eyes. He was crying.
Speaker 15: Looby Jeter just broke my heart. Outstanding kid, I mean,
Speaker 15: just a phenomenal kid.
Speaker 16: Landover Road was still blocked off this morning. Only a
Speaker 16: few people could venture near the site where Jeter's body
Speaker 16: was found. Dozens of Atlanta, police and FBI agents gathered.
Speaker 2: At the site.
Speaker 16: The discovery of Jeter's body here now lends weight to
Speaker 16: the theory that one person could be responsible for several
Speaker 16: of the murders. The way Jeter died by strangulation fits
Speaker 16: into a pattern. Three of Atlanta's other murdered children died
Speaker 16: the same way. Two others died by suffocation. His discovery
Speaker 16: yesterday fits into another pattern. Location. Within the last year
Speaker 16: and a half, six children black males between the ages
Speaker 16: of seven and fifteen have all been found within a
Speaker 16: five mile radius.
Speaker 8: Either the pattern doesn't exist, there is no pattern, or
Speaker 8: we got a much bigger problem. There was an independent
Speaker 8: witness that said, this guy, Charles Sanders, said he killed
Speaker 8: Louby Jeter. What is your evidence to say Wayne killed
Speaker 8: Loubis Jeter. They have none.
Speaker 17: Wayne Williams is being represented in this healing for a
Speaker 17: new trial by his former attorney, Lynn Watley and two
Speaker 17: of his country's most prominent attorneys, Bobby Lee Cook of Somerville, Georgia,
Speaker 17: and William Kuntler of New York.
Speaker 2: We were at Avieu's Corpus court in Butts County.
Speaker 18: The defense is trying to show that the police were
Speaker 18: investigating that the Ku Klux Klan may have been responsible
Speaker 18: for some of the child murders, but that that file
Speaker 18: was never turned over to help with Williams's defense.
Speaker 2: Apparently, what we found out after we got in the
Speaker 2: Avieu's corpus court and the source source within the GBS,
Speaker 2: was that they had a confidential informan I believe his
Speaker 2: name Whittaker.
Speaker 19: The first witness today, Billy Joe Whittaker, says he worked
Speaker 19: as a police informant during the missing and murdered investigation.
Speaker 17: Whittaker says he told police.
Speaker 19: Detectives that a klansman from Mountain View, Charles Sanders, told
Speaker 19: Whittaker he killed.
Speaker 17: One of the child victims, Louby Jeter.
Speaker 2: And we were able to contact Whittaker and he did
Speaker 2: appear in court and testify under old force stating that
Speaker 2: one of the families I believe they were mounted viuekbas
Speaker 2: Panders families was indeed responsible for that. When I told
Speaker 2: you that, I believe Charles Sanders the clok clerk Kilder
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 19: Jail Robby Lee Cook and William Huntlers say they have
Speaker 19: a letter from Atlanta Police Major Herman Griner. They called
Speaker 19: Sanders the klansmen, the prime suspect in the murders four
Speaker 19: months before Wayne Williams was arrested in charge with two
Speaker 19: of the murderers.
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety one, Wayne's attorneys called for a court
Speaker 5: hearing were police informant Billy Joe Whittaker testified for Wayne Williams.
Speaker 5: This man, Billy Joe Whittaker, was in jail during the
Speaker 5: early eighties, but when he heard that Louby Jeter had
Speaker 5: become one of the victims, he contacted the Georgia Bureau
Speaker 5: of Investigation. Whittaker stated that a man named Charles Sanders
Speaker 5: made threats against Louby Jeter's life. Whittaker claimed he wore
Speaker 5: recording equipment, went to Sanders home and got him to
Speaker 5: admit to the child's murder. If that was true, then
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams was not responsible for Luby Jeter's death.
Speaker 8: It definitely makes you question. Okay, first, not enough evidence
Speaker 8: to convict Wayne. Now there's these tapes from this clans
Speaker 8: member which is mind boggling, and I've actually heard in.
Speaker 2: The way chap recordings at all, and they talk about
Speaker 2: openly and brazenly about saying, yes, I killed a little
Speaker 2: black be yes, I'm going to black black black with him,
Speaker 2: and we went to court trying to get this in
Speaker 2: but however, the court in Budson County Block just refused
Speaker 2: it and they put the tape recordings under seal and
Speaker 2: not Judge Craggs Court. And we attempted to bring this
Speaker 2: up at Feneral Higgs Quarters Court and that was where
Speaker 2: the issues started the appeal. So we've been trying for
Speaker 2: decades to getting this information out because the GBI did
Speaker 2: not want it out because they issued in one of
Speaker 2: the documents that the statement saying that they were fred
Speaker 2: and prop Releasing this information was got a race war
Speaker 2: in Atlanta.
Speaker 17: As in certain county District Attorney Joe J. Lay prosecuted
Speaker 17: Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: He says he was never told about the plan file.
Speaker 17: Do you think you should have known about it?
Speaker 4: Not? Particularly, It wasn't right about at the time.
Speaker 3: The GBI had it, The police department had it, two
Speaker 3: prosecutors had it, two judges had it.
Speaker 8: If Lewis Slayton didn't have it, means he didn't want it.
Speaker 5: After Whitaker testified, Williams was still not granted a retrial.
Speaker 5: The strangest part is that now the tapes are nowhere
Speaker 5: to be found.
Speaker 2: So this was information that the TBI had, but like
Speaker 2: I say, they kept it suppressed because they weren't a
Speaker 2: piece of worried about a racial war instead of trying
Speaker 2: to solve the killing in Atlanta.
Speaker 8: You didn't want a race war in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 8: or eighty two.
Speaker 4: You just didn't.
Speaker 8: I mean, we weren't that far removed from the civil rights.
Speaker 8: You had your first black mayor, You had all of
Speaker 8: these elected officials because of the mayor that were black.
Speaker 8: So it wouldn't look good for the city at all.
Speaker 8: I liken it to Rodney King when those officers got off,
Speaker 8: look what happened in that city. And then I likened
Speaker 8: it to O. J. Simpson. Now say what you want,
Speaker 8: I believe the evidence should it was that OJ killed
Speaker 8: Ron and the colet, But there was talks in the city. Well,
Speaker 8: if he's convicted, there's gonna be riots, It's gonna be
Speaker 8: a whole racial thing. If you look at that case,
Speaker 8: that was right down the middle, black and white. You know,
Speaker 8: had OJ been convicted, we would have saw another nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety two Rodney King. I think that would have happened
Speaker 8: here in Atlanta back in nineteen eighty one eighty two.
Speaker 8: If it would have been a klansman, there's no doubt,
Speaker 8: no doubt in my mind.
Speaker 2: We are saying, you know that the white suspects declared
Speaker 2: was responsible to allow them, but we know that they
Speaker 2: were responsible for this particular group of killers.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: We had a confidential informant that was black Eyed Canton.
Speaker 2: We had a GVI source I can't reveal his name.
Speaker 2: The agent then enough to box some lens George Stiff Litterally,
Speaker 2: it had several real real Kate recorders of wire gather
Speaker 2: jail as doctuments on their on their file stared to
Speaker 2: widecat disappers admitted to killing the movie cheter had been
Speaker 2: involved in several of the other cases. And we've got
Speaker 2: that all white.
Speaker 8: When you have a name like Charles Sanders and you
Speaker 8: have a witness who knew Charles saying that yes, Charles
Speaker 8: is the one that said he killed Luby Jeter. Way
Speaker 8: back when there were secret recordings, there was some incident
Speaker 8: supposedly around the Star Wars theater where Luby Jeter hit
Speaker 8: his car with like a shopping car to a go cart.
Speaker 2: Apparently there was a go cart accident in which he
Speaker 2: collided with Sandra's car according to the information we had,
Speaker 2: and that Sanders made a thread against him that he
Speaker 2: was killing and he reiterates the threat in the Wildcat
Speaker 2: that we heard. I'm para raised him down to the
Speaker 2: visit my rememory. He said, I basically, yeah, I killed
Speaker 2: a little black beat black, black black Jim. And then
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, I'm going to get sport.
Speaker 8: And he had made the comment he was going to
Speaker 8: kill that little black kid for hitting his car and
Speaker 8: he was going to strangle him to death, and of
Speaker 8: course that's how Luby Jeter was killed.
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty six, Spin magazine published an article titled
Speaker 5: A Question of Justice. The article's authors, Barry Michael Cooper
Speaker 5: and Robert Keating, raised doubt about way William's guilt and
Speaker 5: brought the idea of the KKK involvement to mainstream news.
Speaker 5: It was a hugely popular article, and really it was
Speaker 5: the first time the Atlanta child murders KKK theory was
Speaker 5: given any legitimate credence by the media.
Speaker 8: It's from a publication, so of course people can argue
Speaker 8: that it was slantt you know, argue that it's fake news.
Speaker 8: That's the new term nowadays. But what's interesting is not
Speaker 8: only is it in the Spin article, but the FBI
Speaker 8: talks about these recordings. Yeah, so I don't think the
Speaker 8: tapes were made up. I definitely don't think the transcripts
Speaker 8: were made up.
Speaker 5: I asked Vincent what Charles Sanders said in those transcripts
Speaker 5: that alluded to him being the Atlanta child murderer killing
Speaker 5: more than one person.
Speaker 8: In one of those conversations, there was talk, and I
Speaker 8: believe it came from Charles Sanders that he was going
Speaker 8: to go out and drive around and look for another
Speaker 8: black kid, another victim.
Speaker 5: If this was true, then why wasn't this a bigger deal?
Speaker 5: From all the records I've seen, that's the closest to
Speaker 5: a confession that law enforcement ever had.
Speaker 8: Time affects any investigation or any case, because you know,
Speaker 8: memories get skewed and a lot of stuff gets lost
Speaker 8: or destroyed. You know a lot of people along the
Speaker 8: way pass away, like Charles Sanders is no longer here,
Speaker 8: so we could never go back and question him. Here
Speaker 8: we are thirty plus years removed, and time actually allows
Speaker 8: any false narrative to become true, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: there were a bunch of kids that died and this
Speaker 8: guy did it. That's the narrative. Pretty much everyone knows.
Speaker 8: That's the narrative that they know, but they don't know
Speaker 8: the ins and outs of Well, this person could have
Speaker 8: been a suspect. This person, this person, this person, you know,
Speaker 8: they just know Wayne Williams, you know, which they were
Speaker 8: deep into a lot of people, right They were deep
Speaker 8: into the guy in the Blue Nova. They were deep
Speaker 8: into the Sanders, they were deep into the Klan. They
Speaker 8: could have known that they were plotting something that the
Speaker 8: public wasn't privy to. You know, if you look at
Speaker 8: some of these terror groups that are investigated now that
Speaker 8: you hear about later the FBI says, oh, we halted
Speaker 8: a terror threat because we are investigating you know, this person,
Speaker 8: which no one heard about besides Charles Sanders, who admitted
Speaker 8: to killing Louis Jeter.
Speaker 20: What started as a joke one hundred years ago when
Speaker 20: a group of men donned bed sheets for a romp,
Speaker 20: has over the years attracted to it persons charged with
Speaker 20: acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence throughout the South. Even
Speaker 20: though the nation has been outraged for many years, the
Speaker 20: Ku Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings,
Speaker 20: but one hundred years is a long time for a joke.
Speaker 5: I talked to Felix Harcourt, author of the book Ku
Speaker 5: Klux Culture, for some more historical background on the KKK.
Speaker 21: The Ku Klux Klan effectively operates as a white supremacist
Speaker 21: terrorist organization founded after the Civil War, during what we
Speaker 21: commonly refer to as the Reconstruction period. It's founded in Pulaski, Tennessee,
Speaker 21: and it's not super popular to start with. It lies
Speaker 21: fairly fallow through the First World War. If you're looking
Speaker 21: at the Reconstruction Clan, they stand for white supremacy and
Speaker 21: the maintenance of white power. If you're looking at the
Speaker 21: Civil Rights era, they largely are standing for the same thing.
Speaker 21: If you're looking at the twenties, they achieve this much
Speaker 21: much larger success in the twenties because they effectively diversify
Speaker 21: their hatreds. They say, hey, you know, if you hate
Speaker 21: African Americans, we are there for you. But also if
Speaker 21: you hate Catholics, we.
Speaker 4: Are there for you.
Speaker 21: If you hate Jewish immigrants, we are there for you.
Speaker 21: If you hate immigrants of all kinds. We are there
Speaker 21: for you. If you're worried about prohibition, we're there for you.
Speaker 21: By the time you get to the Clan of the
Speaker 21: late seventies early eighties, the Klan is all in on
Speaker 21: immigration and our staging stunts on the Mexican border. So
Speaker 21: there is this kind of this fundamental racist tenet and
Speaker 21: then these variations over time as to what draws people
Speaker 21: to the clan and what people see the clan standing for.
Speaker 21: To some extent, the Clan of the eighties sets the
Speaker 21: model for what we see with white supremacists now, particularly
Speaker 21: through what David Duke does. David Duke really comes out
Speaker 21: in the late seventies and tries to remake the public
Speaker 21: image of the clan to some extent, and effectively, what
Speaker 21: he tries to do is bureaucratize hate. It's a methodology
Speaker 21: that we're seeing being used to great effect by the
Speaker 21: alt right now. And David Duke is really astute at
Speaker 21: using the media to get this message out, saying that
Speaker 21: there is a new Clan, whatever that may mean, and
Speaker 21: in doing so effectively spearheads a clan revival in the
Speaker 21: late seventies early eighties. And this doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 21: There is a big upsweep in white supremacism in the
Speaker 21: late seventies early eighties in the United States, and so
Speaker 21: you do see a very active and very visible white
Speaker 21: supremacist movement on the March by the early eighties. I
Speaker 21: will say that certainly that is a period when we
Speaker 21: are seeing a rise in clan activity, and it's a
Speaker 21: period in which we are seeing an uptick in white
Speaker 21: supremacist activity. More generally, all clan members are white supremacists,
Speaker 21: not all white supremacists are clan members, and so we
Speaker 21: have always seen significant white supremacist activity that fundamentally is
Speaker 21: not linked to the clan as an organization. Most of
Speaker 21: the anti civil rights violence is being carried out not
Speaker 21: by clan members but by average white supremacists, if that's
Speaker 21: a term we can use, and to some extent, that's
Speaker 21: what we see today. The clan as an organization is weak,
Speaker 21: it is diffuse. Still, there is no single clan. There
Speaker 21: are all these individual organizations kind of battling for the
Speaker 21: title of who is the legitimate clan, But they are
Speaker 21: part of a much broader tapestry of white supremacism that
Speaker 21: we can see operating very clearly. I think white supremacists
Speaker 21: have always been ordinary people. That doesn't mean that we
Speaker 21: should normalize them. It means that we should look at
Speaker 21: ourselves and say, what is it that is giving cover
Speaker 21: to these people to exist within our society and to
Speaker 21: exist very comfortably within that society. Just because they are dapper,
Speaker 21: that word that kept getting tagged to Richard Spencer, doesn't
Speaker 21: mean that they are not still subscribers to a hateful
Speaker 21: ideology of racism and white supremacism. The fact that the
Speaker 21: clan is on the rise in the late seventies early eighties,
Speaker 21: the fact that racial violence is on the rise to
Speaker 21: the extent that congressional hearings are being held into anti
Speaker 21: black violence at the time, and the fact that Atlanta
Speaker 21: holds this significant position within the history of the clan
Speaker 21: makes it understandable why someone would link these child murders
Speaker 21: to clan members. It is an entirely reasonable assumption to
Speaker 21: believe that white supremacist violence is touching your community in
Speaker 21: this way.
Speaker 5: In the eyes of Vincent, it was nearly impossible that
Speaker 5: there was only one killer involved. Of course, there is
Speaker 5: a pattern, but according to Vincent, it doesn't match up
Speaker 5: in each and every case.
Speaker 8: Where was this Atlanta monster that everyone was so in
Speaker 8: fear of for two years? There were several monsters. All
Speaker 8: of these victims, they had different suspects other than Wayne Williams,
Speaker 8: other than Wayne Williams. So there, Yeah, there were several monsters,
Speaker 8: but there wasn't just one monster going around killing these kids.
Speaker 8: Is there a conspiracy going on here? You have to
Speaker 8: You can't not question that, you know, So.
Speaker 5: Is there a conspiracy at play here? The term conspiracy
Speaker 5: tends to immediately incite ridicule. Many people will equate conspiracy
Speaker 5: with total fantasy, unbelievable stories to explain away historical events.
Speaker 22: A conspiracy theory and a nactual conspiracy are two very
Speaker 22: different things nowadays.
Speaker 5: To gain some perspective, I talked to one of the
Speaker 5: guys from How Stuff Works, who has his own podcast
Speaker 5: on this very topic.
Speaker 22: My name is Ben Bollen, and along with my co
Speaker 22: host Matt Frederick and Noel Brown, I produce and host
Speaker 22: a podcasts called Stuff They Don't Want You To Know,
Speaker 22: which applies critical thinking to what we would call conspiracy theories.
Speaker 22: So government cover ups, unsolved crimes, various allegations of that sort.
Speaker 22: So are you a conspiracy theorist, I would say, I
Speaker 22: find them interesting, but the term gets kind of problematic.
Speaker 22: So a conspiracy at its most basic level is a
Speaker 22: situation where in two or more people or entities work
Speaker 22: together to deceive or manipulate a third party.
Speaker 5: When I even hear the word conspiracy theory, I'm already
Speaker 5: tuning out, and I wanted to talk to you about
Speaker 5: just sort of the origin of conspiracy theories to begin with.
Speaker 5: Obviously there are some true ones, right, I mean, where
Speaker 5: did this all come from?
Speaker 22: So what tends to happen when people hear a phraser term,
Speaker 22: especially the the phrase of the term conspiracy theory is,
Speaker 22: as you said, kind of shut out and sort of
Speaker 22: the idea that, oh, okay, anything that happens after I
Speaker 22: hear this phrase is going to be utter hogwash. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 22: the reason that's the case in the United States today
Speaker 22: is because shortly after the jfk assassination, most Americans did
Speaker 22: not believe the official government explanation, and so intelligence agencies
Speaker 22: spread memos to newspapers media outlets of the time saying
Speaker 22: this is what happened. The Russian government is attempting to
Speaker 22: spread propaganda. So if you hear anything else other than
Speaker 22: this official story, be sure to dismiss it and call
Speaker 22: it a quote conspiracy theory. We do know that certain
Speaker 22: things that were once considered conspiracy theories are true. It
Speaker 22: did turn out that banks were laundering money for international
Speaker 22: drug cartels, and it turns out that it is somewhat
Speaker 22: disingenuous to group that kind of phenomenon along with CIA
Speaker 22: drug spunkling in the same bucket as the idea that
Speaker 22: what the British Royal family is a bunch of evil,
Speaker 22: half alien lizard people. You know, those are both called
Speaker 22: conspiracy theories, but they're very different, and there's one incredibly
Speaker 22: important difference, and that's that the first stuff is true.
Speaker 22: The second stuff, I'm just going to go out on
Speaker 22: a limb and say is not true.
Speaker 5: I asked Ben to outline the most prevalent conspiracy theories
Speaker 5: for the Atlanta child murders case.
Speaker 22: One would be the idea that law enforcement did not
Speaker 22: have a clue who the real killer was and they
Speaker 22: wanted to close the cases, so they pinned them, or
Speaker 22: they pen many of these child murders on Wayne Williams
Speaker 22: in court just to get them off the books. Another
Speaker 22: would be the idea that there was some sort of
Speaker 22: clandestine sex trafficking ring at play, and that again law
Speaker 22: enforcement for some reason or another assisted in covering up
Speaker 22: this information and keeping it from the public. And then
Speaker 22: the third idea would be that the KKK or other
Speaker 22: white supremacist groups were committing the murders with either tacit
Speaker 22: assistance or approval by sympathetic law enforcement officers. A great
Speaker 22: deal of it does come from the conversations relayed by Sanders,
Speaker 22: and in the excellent Spin article from the time, there's
Speaker 22: some top notch journalistic investigation. They had one of the
Speaker 22: journalists who I think broke the first Spin story on
Speaker 22: crack cocaine, who was writing this and exploring this angle,
Speaker 22: and they had an informant named b. J. Jones that
Speaker 22: they thought was a solid guy who came to them
Speaker 22: and said that there was proof that the KKK, specifically
Speaker 22: the Sanders, and possibly not just this individual, but members
Speaker 22: of his family or his close associates were involved in
Speaker 22: these murders with the goal of killing one black child
Speaker 22: a month or something of that nature. And there's a
Speaker 22: further aspect here that we have to remember, and that's
Speaker 22: the context or the cultural ecosystem in which this occurs.
Speaker 22: Distrust of a largely white police force is already incredibly high.
Speaker 22: If there were a doomsday clock for race relations in
Speaker 22: Atlanta at this time, it would be about three minutes
Speaker 22: to midnight.
Speaker 5: The only publication that pushed this out there was the
Speaker 5: Spin story, and you can't go find these original recordings,
Speaker 5: but these guys at Spin were able to get their
Speaker 5: hands on some transcripts. But besides that, there's nothing out
Speaker 5: there that publicly exists that says Charles Sanders was a
Speaker 5: part of the Atlanta child murners.
Speaker 22: Yeah, and that's one of the frightening, tantalizing, and I
Speaker 22: would say a base frustrate things for anyone investigating this.
Speaker 22: We're really in a situation where and if we want
Speaker 22: to prove or disprove this sort of connection, we would
Speaker 22: need someone to go speak directly to a primary source to.
Speaker 5: Get to the bottom of this theory. I would have
Speaker 5: to find someone who is close to Charles Sanders, still
Speaker 5: alive and also willing to talk. It seemed pretty unlikely,
Speaker 5: but after weeks of searching, I got a strange email
Speaker 5: that led me to one of Sanders's old friends.
Speaker 4: I don't want to tell anything because my wife right now,
Speaker 4: as you're a nervous we've been through this before my
Speaker 4: name was put out there and it was a scary ordeal.
Speaker 4: Family spent a few weeks in a hotel just out
Speaker 4: of being scared. And I don't know you from Adam.
Speaker 4: It's a story that I've held home to for a
Speaker 4: long time that I've known about. I don't know how
Speaker 4: you want to go about this pain.
Speaker 5: You can always come here to the office that we
Speaker 5: have at part rather or not.
Speaker 4: I first met him back in nineteen eighty. We would
Speaker 4: hang out and sit around and shoot the shit and
Speaker 4: drink beers and smoke pot and you know, after working
Speaker 4: hours and whatnot. Him and his brothers were in the KKK.
Speaker 4: When I met him up here in this sleep little
Speaker 4: town I live in, he was not involved. He had
Speaker 4: gotten out. He was a nice guy, good old Redeck
Speaker 4: had a few teeth missing, you know, had a beard
Speaker 4: and a small stature, and you know, you wouldn't think
Speaker 4: here in this little sleepy town anything different that he
Speaker 4: was any kind of a monster. He certainly didn't act
Speaker 4: like it until we drank and then he got the
Speaker 4: eyes of Charles Manson that would look right through deil.
Speaker 4: It was scary. It was real scary. It scared all
Speaker 4: of us. But it wasn't that often. He stopped in
Speaker 4: one day with this copy of Spin magazine. He had
Speaker 4: that look in his eyes. He obviously had been drinking
Speaker 4: some hard liquor. He said, I got something for y'all
Speaker 4: to take a look at. And you know, we didn't
Speaker 4: have a clue what he was talking about. Pulled out
Speaker 4: the magazine and we started reading. It was jaw dropping.
Speaker 4: Somebody asked him if it's real and if the article
Speaker 4: was true. He told us it was. He said it was,
Speaker 4: it was true. He told us about certain situations that
Speaker 4: where was he The FBI or the ATF would come
Speaker 4: in and read their house in the middle of the
Speaker 4: night and shake him down. They were come in. I
Speaker 4: remember him talking about them coming in all the time
Speaker 4: and trying to shake him down and try to find
Speaker 4: some kind of evidence. And I remember Charles saying that
Speaker 4: he was lucky because his carpet matched Wang Williams carpet
Speaker 4: and as well as the white German shepherd Hares match.
Speaker 4: He owned a white German shepherd. Wang Williams also owned
Speaker 4: a white German shepherd It just so happens that the
Speaker 4: person Wang Williams that they penned all these murders on
Speaker 4: had so many similarities with the Sanders as far as
Speaker 4: the dog and the carpet.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 4: Again, I haven't read the Spin magazine since the eighties,
Speaker 4: but I remember situation Charles told us about. They were
Speaker 4: hanging outside his home and there was a black kid
Speaker 4: on a go cart. He accidentally ran into their car.
Speaker 4: They didn't appreciate that. They were pissed, which get to
Speaker 4: this Cheeter I believe that's his name, and I remember
Speaker 4: him saying, we got him, we took care of him.
Speaker 4: He told me they got him, they got the boy
Speaker 4: for doing that. I don't remember him ever saying that
Speaker 4: KKK was involved with this. I only remember him talking
Speaker 4: about him and his brothers being involved in this, So
Speaker 4: I don't know to what extent the brothers were involved.
Speaker 4: I do you know they had a cash of weapons
Speaker 4: because they were expecting a huge revolution to come out
Speaker 4: of this. And he basically told us that he did
Speaker 4: it and everything that's being magazine was true. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't really know why he decided to come out
Speaker 4: to us and tell us that he trusted us, I guess,
Speaker 4: but it certainly blew us away. But he really never
Speaker 4: went into any details of any of the other killings
Speaker 4: besides the fact that there were other killings that him
Speaker 4: and his brothers did. And what kind victims were they
Speaker 4: They were black children, they were children, they were of adults,
Speaker 4: they were children. I don't know what was on their mind,
Speaker 4: if they were going to commit genocide in Atlanta and
Speaker 4: try to do away with you, or if he was
Speaker 4: trying to cause a race a race riot of some sort.
Speaker 4: I know that's why they had that cash weapons, was
Speaker 4: because they expected some type of a race riot.
Speaker 5: Who do you think is responsible for the Alanche Homers?
Speaker 4: Well, I know who's responsible for some of them, you know,
Speaker 4: and Wayne Williams may be responsible for some as well.
Speaker 4: He let it be known that it was Spin Magazine
Speaker 4: was right on that they took care of those boys.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 4: Everybody then was hoping it wasn't a white guy or
Speaker 4: the KKK because they didn't want a race riot to
Speaker 4: take place in Atlanta. And I believe they geared their
Speaker 4: investigation towards Gwyn Williams, and once they found out he
Speaker 4: had possibly killed some of the adults, it was easy
Speaker 4: pickings to throw all the other children on him too.
Speaker 4: Did you ever consider going to the police with this
Speaker 4: information back then? No, No, I was too scared. No,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have gone to the.
Speaker 15: Police back then.
Speaker 4: Can you tell me about why you were scared? Scared
Speaker 4: from alife? I mean, I scared for my life, and
Speaker 4: at that time I had had a wife. Didn't have
Speaker 4: a daughter then, but I had a wife. And you know,
Speaker 4: I saw that look in his eyes when he was crazy.
Speaker 4: I believe he could have done anything anything. I did.
Speaker 4: Go god By m a rural black guy that used
Speaker 4: to do TV connotations and in Atlanta. He did a
Speaker 4: gig on the missing and murdered children of Atlanta one time,
Speaker 4: and I called in and told him what I knew,
Speaker 4: and he knew about the Sanders brothers. But my my
Speaker 4: name was brought up, and that scared me. I never
Speaker 4: spoke to anybody after that. And that was in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety four. So once I found out that my name
Speaker 4: had brought up, we moved into a hotel for a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks. Stay clear of you know of anything.
Speaker 4: I believe. Not only was my name brought up, my
Speaker 4: town was brought up who did you fear? In particular
Speaker 4: Sanders brothers, And I don't know how many of them
Speaker 4: there are, there's like four or five.
Speaker 15: You them.
Speaker 4: I feared them more than anything else. I feared them,
Speaker 4: you know. For some reason, I'm thinking that these acts
Speaker 4: of murder were perpetrated by the Sanders brothers, not necessarily
Speaker 4: by the KKKA. To my knowledge, there was no other members.
Speaker 4: There was no other people involved with the murders except
Speaker 4: of Sanders brothers and in them alone. I never heard
Speaker 4: him talking about the KKK being necessarily involved with the murders.
Speaker 4: It was always him and his brothers.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Uh, the wrong's been done that needs to be righted.
Speaker 4: But I'm still the aera of of anybody who was
Speaker 4: involved with the Sanders. Obviously, I know what they can do.
Speaker 4: Once it was panned on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled.
Speaker 4: That was their way out. He it was being pinned
Speaker 4: on him, and that was their way out.
Speaker 5: What do you think should happen now?
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, I really don't know. I
Speaker 4: don't know. I don't know where it should go from here.
Speaker 4: I know that there were some wrongs that should probably
Speaker 4: be righted. Charles is dead, he's gone. There's family still suffering,
Speaker 4: you know, and there's families that I think Wayne Williams
Speaker 4: did it, and there's others that think he didn't do
Speaker 4: it all. And I can't tell you he didn't do
Speaker 4: it all. I know who killed those kids, and I'm
Speaker 4: sorry that I did not come come forth sooner, but
Speaker 4: I felt my life was in danger as well. But
Speaker 4: justice has not been served. If it would have been
Speaker 4: my daughter, I would want the truth reveal. Can't change
Speaker 4: the past, but at least it would answer questions. You
Speaker 4: had children that were brutally murdered for no reason, completely
Speaker 4: innocent children. And if indeed you think it was somebody
Speaker 4: other than Wane Williams, you're most definitely correct. You know,
Speaker 4: anybody out there he thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do
Speaker 4: all this by himself is correct. This wasn't all on him.
Speaker 4: And I only know that from the mouth of the
Speaker 4: devil himself.
Speaker 5: Next time on Atlanta Monster, The Clayton.
Speaker 11: County woman and her husband were driving on this narrow
Speaker 11: cemetery road when they saw a green car coming straight
Speaker 11: at them at a high rate of speed.
Speaker 23: The driver was tall, and he's light colored, A light
Speaker 23: colored black man and he had on a wig. I
Speaker 23: know it was a wig because he was losing it
Speaker 23: because it was a child in the front struggling. He
Speaker 23: was struggling with that child.
Speaker 4: You're sure you saw a child.
Speaker 23: In the criss Yes, I saw it because it was
Speaker 23: just back and forth like that and like that was
Speaker 23: trying to hold hang on to that child. It was
Speaker 23: a boy between ages of the bat ten and twelve,
Speaker 23: and he had a short haircut.
Speaker 8: You think you could identify these two and the one
Speaker 8: with the.
Speaker 23: Week handle glasses, I could identify.
Speaker 5: The Atlanta Child murders is one of the largest and
Speaker 5: most complex cases in US history. As a team, we've
Speaker 5: spent months digging through police records, court documents, and media archives.
Speaker 5: Through all this research, we've uncovered stories you've never heard before,
Speaker 5: and next week we're going to dig deeper into some
Speaker 5: of these stories. Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told
Speaker 5: week by week, with new episodes every Friday. A joint
Speaker 5: production between How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music
Speaker 5: is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of
Speaker 5: WSB News Film and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University
Speaker 5: of Georgia Libraries For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster
Speaker 5: dot com or follow us on social media. One last thing,
Speaker 5: We've set up an Atlanta Monster tip line. Anyone with information, leads,
Speaker 5: or personal accounts pertaining to the Atlanta child murders can
Speaker 5: call us and leave a message. The number is one
Speaker 5: eight three three two eight five six sixty sixty seven. Again,
Speaker 5: that's one eight three three two eight five six six
Speaker 5: sixty seven. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 22: Let's bring it to a human level here in the
Speaker 22: United States. The first conspiracy that many people encounter occurs
Speaker 22: when they're kids. It's the story of Santa Claus. And
Speaker 22: you can't really blame people for being distrustful of authority
Speaker 22: after that. I mean, it's a conspiracy that everyone participates in.
Speaker 22: Oh and I should have put a warning in there
Speaker 22: for parents, But Santa is real.