Speaker 1: The church was a little United Methodist church on Eastland Road,
Speaker 1: which is right off of Morland. It was an elderly
Speaker 1: white congregation in a neighborhood that had transitioned. It had
Speaker 1: gone on several months when the pastor said, we've got
Speaker 1: to do something to help the kids in this community.
Speaker 1: I was twenty six years old, just finishing up my
Speaker 1: undergraduate studies, and he asked me, if maybe you've got
Speaker 1: some extra time, can you come and help us reach
Speaker 1: these kids. So all I did was put up a
Speaker 1: basketball goal in the church parking lot, bought one basketball
Speaker 1: and went out there just myself and just started bouncing
Speaker 1: the ball in the parking.
Speaker 2: Just bouncing the bump.
Speaker 1: Did it for a couple of hours. Went inside next day,
Speaker 1: same thing, same time, just bouncing the bump.
Speaker 2: I thought, maybe it's if I'm.
Speaker 1: Consistent, and sure enough, a couple of kids showed up
Speaker 1: from the neighborhood. One week, two weeks, three weeks went on,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon before we knew it, we had one
Speaker 1: hundred kids. The tragedy began to gain more and more publicity,
Speaker 1: Our program began to get more attention, but it was
Speaker 1: sad to see the kids and as you know, adolescens,
Speaker 1: they don't want to show their fear. They would joke
Speaker 1: with each other, you know, you're gonna get snatched and
Speaker 1: somebody's coming, you know, to your house, and you know,
Speaker 1: but you could tell, you know, deep down inside they
Speaker 1: were they were really frightened. I got the feeling that
Speaker 1: they knew they were in something together, you know, confronting
Speaker 1: this serious danger. And they kind of came together and
Speaker 1: around the program and saw me as the leader. Made
Speaker 1: them feel good to be a community, you know, to
Speaker 1: be a group. There was safety in our group, and everybody,
Speaker 1: whether they admitted or not, responds to love. I think
Speaker 1: that we've made some progress, with a long way yet
Speaker 1: to go. I can see a tremendous difference in the
Speaker 1: prejudices I grew up with, being born in the mid fifties.
Speaker 1: I remember the assassination of doctor King, and I remember
Speaker 1: the kids in my elementary school saying that they were
Speaker 1: glad that he had been killed or a terrible thing
Speaker 1: for a child to say, but that's what they were,
Speaker 1: that's what they've been taught. Yeah, I remember those things
Speaker 1: and unfortunately still see some of those same prejudices that
Speaker 1: are alive, you know, even today, in our beautiful city.
Speaker 1: Although we've come a long way, there are still bigotries alive,
Speaker 1: not only here in the South, but I imagine throughout this country. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think perhaps we hide them a little better than
Speaker 1: we used to, but they're still there. I found acceptance
Speaker 1: in those kids, in their families, and together we made
Speaker 1: a difference in that one little part of Atlanta. So
Speaker 1: thankful for silver linings.
Speaker 3: That was a man named Bill him as a young
Speaker 3: man in the eighties, he saw how scared these kids were.
Speaker 3: The victims in this case are the children, and that
Speaker 3: should never be forgotten. Because this story is so complex.
Speaker 3: For years, people have argued whether or not they got
Speaker 3: the right guy. From everyone I've talked to, there's been
Speaker 3: a lot of disagreement over whether Wayne Williams is the
Speaker 3: Atlanta Monster. Many people feel that he's guilty. His stories
Speaker 3: just don't really add up. He fit the FBI profile
Speaker 3: to a t, and depending on how you looked at it,
Speaker 3: after he was arrested, the murder stopped. But some people
Speaker 3: seem to think this was a huge conspiracy against Wayne Williams,
Speaker 3: but with very little evidence to back up those claims.
Speaker 3: But the question isn't as simple as did he do it?
Speaker 3: The question is what did he do? Did he kill
Speaker 3: Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy ray Paine, the two adults who
Speaker 3: was convicted for Maybe he did, But what about the kids?
Speaker 3: Did he kill the kids too? Did he kill all
Speaker 3: of them? Even though people are still very divided over
Speaker 3: Wayne Williams himself, there's one common thread that everyone seems
Speaker 3: to agree on. It was time for all this to
Speaker 3: end in the city of Atlanta, and someone had to
Speaker 3: go away for this, and Wayne Williams was that guy.
Speaker 3: Wayne still claims his innocence, and from our very first
Speaker 3: phone call, he promised to provide strong evidence to prove that.
Speaker 3: I want this podcast to be the final debate over
Speaker 3: Wayne Williams and the Atlanta child murders, And now that
Speaker 3: my investigation is in full swing, I'm going to put
Speaker 3: everything out on the table. If Wayne Williams has anything
Speaker 3: credible to say, now's the time to hear it.
Speaker 4: I've been incarcerated since nineteen eighty one in connection with
Speaker 4: the Atlanta murders. It was a situation that few people
Speaker 4: understood then and today even fewer people understand the truth
Speaker 4: about what happened, and probably even more so about what
Speaker 4: didn't happen.
Speaker 5: Due to the political.
Speaker 4: Climate and the fear and all of the uncertainty about
Speaker 4: what happened, the police and authorities were just anxious to
Speaker 4: arrest anybody that they could, and that person just happened
Speaker 4: to be me. Sadly, it has taken all these years
Speaker 4: for me to finally get the case brought back to
Speaker 4: the Four Lights so people can see the truth about
Speaker 4: what happened in fact, and not only am I innocent man,
Speaker 4: but that the people involved in this, the family, it's
Speaker 4: the city, and the nation deserve an answer. One of
Speaker 4: the main objectives for US is to make people aware
Speaker 4: of what really happened during events before the trial as
Speaker 4: well as after the trial, and they continue today. I
Speaker 4: don't think few people realized I was never convicted in
Speaker 4: connection with any of the child murders. I was charged
Speaker 4: for the depths of two adults whose murders were actually unrelated. Furthermore,
Speaker 4: we were prevented from bringing out a lot of evidence
Speaker 4: that could have helped me during the trial. We're talking
Speaker 4: about the existence of other suspects. We're talking about physical evidence,
Speaker 4: including fiber evidence from caucasion suspects and others who we
Speaker 4: know were involved in some of these cases, as well
Speaker 4: as false testimony about the synthetic fibers that the yeah
Speaker 4: I presented during the trial. I refer not only to
Speaker 4: setting the facts were record straight, but telling of the
Speaker 4: story behind the scenes, about the hurt and the emotional
Speaker 4: pain that ling us to this day.
Speaker 5: I've done several.
Speaker 4: Interviews over the years, but none have addressed the full
Speaker 4: context of what this story is about.
Speaker 6: And Atlanta and another BONDI was discovered today but twenty third.
Speaker 7: At Police Task Force headquarters, there are twenty seven faces
Speaker 7: on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
Speaker 5: We do not know the person or persons that are responsible.
Speaker 2: Therefore, we do not have the money.
Speaker 3: From Tenderfoo TV in Housetiff Works in Atlanta.
Speaker 8: Like eleven other recent victrums in Atlanta, rogers are currently.
Speaker 9: Was a spectator.
Speaker 7: Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
Speaker 7: on killing.
Speaker 3: This is Atlanta Monster. According to Wayne Williams, the story
Speaker 3: begins with that infamous night on the James Jackson Parkway Bridge.
Speaker 3: Wayne first described a rather convoluted story about the timing
Speaker 3: sequence of the bridge that night.
Speaker 10: Fia stillman, Yeah, I got it. He's coming towards him stopped.
Speaker 10: That's the time in SeaQuest they testified to the New Court.
Speaker 10: That's the contradiction during that sequest. There's no way any
Speaker 10: car could have been born south on the piege, turn
Speaker 10: into the gravel park lot and turn back north. That's
Speaker 10: absolute possibility.
Speaker 3: He's saying that according to police testimony, the timing doesn't
Speaker 3: make sense. In what he described as a matter of seconds,
Speaker 3: the police recruit below the bridge heard the splash, shine
Speaker 3: his light on the water, didn't see a body and
Speaker 3: only saw ripples. Then radio to the other officers, who
Speaker 3: then saw Wayne in his car turn around in a
Speaker 3: gravel parking lot just moments later, heading the opposite way
Speaker 3: on the bridge.
Speaker 10: That car had to have been traveling the entire time
Speaker 10: of the sequence. Bottom line is there was no splash.
Speaker 8: If you take the bridge out of the equation, Wayne
Speaker 8: Williams is not.
Speaker 5: In prison right.
Speaker 3: This is Vincent Hill, a law enforcement analyst and former
Speaker 3: police officer. But more significantly, Vincent is an expert of
Speaker 3: sorts on Wayne's case.
Speaker 8: If Wayne was not on that bridge, either the case
Speaker 8: would have been solved a different way, or it would
Speaker 8: still be unsolved. Take that bridge out of the equation,
Speaker 8: and what do you have. I guess you can argue
Speaker 8: that that had put Wayne next to the body, right,
Speaker 8: I mean, he's on the bridge.
Speaker 5: They hear splash.
Speaker 8: Two days later, there's a body found.
Speaker 11: That morning, while four officers sat quietly under the South
Speaker 11: cop Drive bridge, one of them and Atlanta recruit, heard
Speaker 11: a splash.
Speaker 3: Why do you think they stopped your car that night?
Speaker 10: You gotta remember that was the last night of the steakhout,
Speaker 10: that was the last day they so I'm sure they
Speaker 10: were probably, you know, anxious to stop something. Just make
Speaker 10: an account for the time.
Speaker 3: The police recruit Bob Campbell was stationed below the bridge,
Speaker 3: and he's the only one who heard the splash that night.
Speaker 10: And Campbell probably something probably poundering him, and he probably
Speaker 10: made up the story just to justify the existence of
Speaker 10: being on a stake. The point is that if the
Speaker 10: stamus they said about the stop of what happened in
Speaker 10: the bridge, cockrrect the only one that does not corrected.
Speaker 10: That is what Campbell and Jacob said.
Speaker 3: He claimed that most of the FBI statements about the
Speaker 3: bridge were in fact true, except for two major points,
Speaker 3: the first being recruit Bob Campbell's account of the splash
Speaker 3: and the recruit Jacob's accounts of the timing. The second
Speaker 3: major point was over Wayne's strange story about a girl
Speaker 3: named Cheryl Johnson.
Speaker 10: The only confusion in the statements was all of the
Speaker 10: thing on the telephone nob in Cheryl Johnson.
Speaker 11: He tried to persuade the Jerry he really was out
Speaker 11: near a bridge that night looking for a Cheryl Johnson,
Speaker 11: who still remains a mystery to this trial.
Speaker 3: The Satan played he fabricated the.
Speaker 12: Story, but Williams didn't much from it, claiming the woman
Speaker 12: simply gave him a wrong number and wrong address.
Speaker 3: When the FBI asked what he was doing out there,
Speaker 3: Wayne said he was looking for a woman named Cheryl
Speaker 3: Johnson who had scheduled an in person interview with him
Speaker 3: that morning. He told the police he was out checking
Speaker 3: the address that night. Wayne gave police an alleged phone
Speaker 3: number for Cheryl Johnson, but later when they tried to
Speaker 3: call the number, it didn't work. It didn't belong to anyone,
Speaker 3: But Wayne says the FBI called the wrong number and
Speaker 3: the reason was his handwriting.
Speaker 10: The number wasn't that four. You will see when you
Speaker 10: get my riding up on the series was it was
Speaker 10: four to three, four boys and my naves look alike
Speaker 10: because I closed Luke top of them.
Speaker 3: The FBI claimed Cheryl Johnson wasn't real, but Wayne Williams agrees.
Speaker 3: So Cheryl Johnson, when did she originally call you? And
Speaker 3: what did she say?
Speaker 10: Well, well, she she originally did not call me. She
Speaker 10: called my mother and my mother left for no I
Speaker 10: talked to her that they there poor and I and
Speaker 10: I figured she was a frank call tange. We were
Speaker 10: doing public auditions of my music company over Entertainment. For
Speaker 10: some of the accidents are because to ask you learned
Speaker 10: on the radio and television stations in the newspapers club,
Speaker 10: you know, in nineteen eighty, you know, the audists were
Speaker 10: all over there your TV. And that's how she found out.
Speaker 10: I got the poon them, and like I said, we
Speaker 10: did probably we took maybe about eight hundred and nine
Speaker 10: hundred calls and probably did we screened those downs here
Speaker 10: my two assistants, and we probably did about one hundred
Speaker 10: and fifty actual interviews or auditions out of that. I
Speaker 10: even tell the police, I said, the only reason I
Speaker 10: went out to check the address group because I felt
Speaker 10: there was a big address. That's why I went out
Speaker 10: to check it in the first place.
Speaker 3: He said, as a talent scout, you received hundreds of
Speaker 3: calls during that time, and that every so often he
Speaker 3: would get a fake caller, and Cheryl Johnson was likely
Speaker 3: one of them.
Speaker 10: And this is the fun to think about, how why
Speaker 10: in the world, if somebody was dealing killing people, why
Speaker 10: would they be doing public cordise.
Speaker 3: That that makes sense, But why was Wayne out checking
Speaker 3: this address at two in the morning when you was
Speaker 3: scheduled to meet with her just a few hours later.
Speaker 5: That never made sense to me.
Speaker 8: I mean me being a forty five year old man.
Speaker 8: If I'm out at two in the morning, if I'm
Speaker 8: not working and I'm looking for someone's house, Let's be honest,
Speaker 8: I know what I'm going to do at two in
Speaker 8: the morning, and it's not the talk record contracts.
Speaker 3: Did the FBI or the police ever find her in
Speaker 3: real life?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 10: And I told him it's probably place had because I'm
Speaker 10: not even sure that's her name. That was just the
Speaker 10: name as she gave. We were doing public budlice, a
Speaker 10: lot of people gave fake names and fake address. That
Speaker 10: was why what I screaming, So I think all the
Speaker 10: hoopla over Cheryl toss his peak. You know, I was
Speaker 10: gonna playing coffee.
Speaker 8: So maybe Wayne was out getting ready to meet someone
Speaker 8: and got lost. I don't know. Wayne likes to embellish things.
Speaker 8: I don't know why. But again, I think that was
Speaker 8: part of Wayne's downfall. Regardless if he told the truth
Speaker 8: or not, I don't think the outcome would have been
Speaker 8: different simply because he was on the bridge.
Speaker 3: Do you regret being on the bridge that night? If
Speaker 3: you could go back and change it, would you not
Speaker 3: go that way?
Speaker 10: Well, paranalymic to you like this, I'm the type of person. Okay,
Speaker 10: I'm liable to change my mind.
Speaker 14: He didn't.
Speaker 10: Given time. Everybody said, well do you think it was
Speaker 10: a conspiracy, but they ought to get you ahead of that. No,
Speaker 10: that was a conspiracy only after I became a suspect
Speaker 10: and they have forgotten it involved. Nobody knew I was
Speaker 10: going to take that route home, not even met that night.
Speaker 10: That was a spur of the minute. The only thing
Speaker 10: I regret was going out period that night. You know
Speaker 10: I should have just took my butt to be it,
Speaker 10: agreed to it.
Speaker 3: The more do you think that if you didn't go
Speaker 3: out that night that you would not be.
Speaker 10: In jail right now, absolutely no question. They had to
Speaker 10: ask the same questions that you're asking me right now.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't be bottom line, living in Fort Hood, Texas.
Speaker 8: My dad was military, you know. Even then that story
Speaker 8: was national news about these black kids being murdered in Atlanta.
Speaker 8: I remember my mom to this day telling me not
Speaker 8: to go outside, you know, past dark, even in Fort Hood,
Speaker 8: Texas and Colleen, because they were killing these little kids.
Speaker 8: Wayne Williams got arrested and got convicted, and that was
Speaker 8: pretty much it, and.
Speaker 5: Supposedly the murder stopped. And that's what I took it for.
Speaker 8: You know, as a small child, you know, it's just
Speaker 8: you trust what the police say, you trust what the
Speaker 8: courts say, and that that was pretty much it, you know.
Speaker 8: But as I got older, especially when I became a
Speaker 8: police officer and a private investigator, and I realized this
Speaker 8: keyword called evidence, then my mindset started changing about the
Speaker 8: entire case. First, we can't say that the child murders
Speaker 8: were solved because Wayne was convicted of killing Nathaniel Cater
Speaker 8: and Jimmy ray Payne, which were adults. So we still
Speaker 8: have all of these child murders basically unsolved because you
Speaker 8: can't say it solved if you only convicted him of
Speaker 8: killing two people. Wayne's a very intelligent guy. I think
Speaker 8: Wayne's downfall back then was he embellished a lot.
Speaker 5: Wayne wanted to be the center of attention.
Speaker 8: He was calling his own press conferences, which just made
Speaker 8: him a bigger target than the media.
Speaker 15: Right.
Speaker 8: You know a lot of people that were innocent at
Speaker 8: this would have just said I had nothing to do
Speaker 8: with it, and that's it. But I'm convinced it was
Speaker 8: something totally different that happened.
Speaker 12: Williams bluntly stated the police version of the now famous
Speaker 12: bridge incident was wrong, a lie. He claimed he wasn't
Speaker 12: driving slow, that he didn't turn around in a parking
Speaker 12: lot next to the bridge, that he did not throw
Speaker 12: anything into the river. The state contends that louds splash
Speaker 12: was the body of Nathaniel Cater heading the water. Although
Speaker 12: prosecutors had most of the pieces that night in May,
Speaker 12: it's still lacked.
Speaker 3: The essential part of the puzzle.
Speaker 12: Someone actually seen William's car stopped on the bridge, or
Speaker 12: better yet, the suspect throwing a body from the structure.
Speaker 8: Could be something could be, nothing could have been a
Speaker 8: bird taking off. It could have been a beaver, could
Speaker 8: have been anything. You got police down there with flashlights immediately,
Speaker 8: and they see nothing. So that would suggest that Daniel
Speaker 8: Cator's body as soon as it hit the water, just
Speaker 8: floated out of sight like a speedboat splash. You shine
Speaker 8: your lights, now I don't see anything. Why not if
Speaker 8: it floated down the river and you found it two
Speaker 8: days later, why wouldn't you see it as it's floating
Speaker 8: down the river right after its splashed. If you heard
Speaker 8: the splash and you thought it was a body, why
Speaker 8: didn't you send divers down there immediately.
Speaker 3: Doctor Blackwelder was there during the trial, so I asked him.
Speaker 3: He knew about the splash, and.
Speaker 16: The cadet that was under the bridge heard a splash,
Speaker 16: and it had flashlights and all that shine around, but
Speaker 16: they never saw anything, so they don't They said it
Speaker 16: could have been a beaver because there were beavers in
Speaker 16: that river.
Speaker 5: It could have been a beaver.
Speaker 16: Slapping its tail on the water, or it could have
Speaker 16: been a body that was throwing off the bridge into
Speaker 16: the water.
Speaker 2: But he heard a splash.
Speaker 3: I asked Popcorn with the FBI, what was his take?
Speaker 13: Two cadets under the bridge, two regular offices, and chase counts.
Speaker 13: They were intense underneath the bridge. And the guy that
Speaker 13: heard the splash had been a high school swimmer and
Speaker 13: he knew what the sound of a body hitting the water,
Speaker 13: and he said, that's a body hitting the water. There
Speaker 13: was a splat, because you know, if you jump up
Speaker 13: the diving board and you spread eagle and hit the water,
Speaker 13: you splat. And that's what he heard.
Speaker 16: And he looked, you don't say what was in the water,
Speaker 16: and did never could see anything.
Speaker 5: Floating in the water.
Speaker 16: And they brought a hydrologist in from the corp of Engineers,
Speaker 16: and somebody testified that there were a lot of There
Speaker 16: were a lot of beavers in the river. Hipopsis said,
Speaker 16: or water ill make a splash, So a.
Speaker 3: Body hating the water sounds like it would be much
Speaker 3: louder than beaver.
Speaker 2: We've done that.
Speaker 17: I did.
Speaker 2: We did that when I was astrade.
Speaker 16: We would throw bodies they would be dummies, but wouldn't
Speaker 16: make sure they didn't wade to shine them out by
Speaker 16: using sand and things like that, because the beaver's saddle
Speaker 16: is flat, and were just like hit it with a
Speaker 16: boat paddle and the body wouldn't.
Speaker 8: If it was that the inucator at his stature, wouldn't
Speaker 8: someone else have heard that.
Speaker 5: It's like going to a.
Speaker 9: Pool, right.
Speaker 8: You may be twenty yards away, but you can hear
Speaker 8: people diving off the diving board. So this one guy
Speaker 8: is the only one that hurt us. It's not even logical.
Speaker 8: Wasn't he like one fifty one sixty? It's a loud splash. Man,
Speaker 8: If they're spread out the way they say were, there's
Speaker 8: just no way only one person heard it.
Speaker 1: That was a warning signal to say that danger was around.
Speaker 5: That's the same me.
Speaker 1: Weave a state refuge here whenever they are alarmed.
Speaker 3: I can't help but think a splash from a beaver's tail,
Speaker 3: which found a whole lot different from a splash from
Speaker 3: a fully grown human body. So I decided to test
Speaker 3: it out. The team at house Stuff Works helped me
Speaker 3: put together the whole experiment. The best option we had
Speaker 3: was rescue Randy. Randy is an adult sized mannequin used
Speaker 3: for simulations and training for emergency person though, so when dropped,
Speaker 3: Randy would fall like a human body. Accurate weight distribution
Speaker 3: and everything. How do we try to recreate this sound?
Speaker 18: So what we want to do is drop something off
Speaker 18: the James Jackson Parkway Bridge, something that is roughly the
Speaker 18: same size and shape of a human body, to see
Speaker 18: what kind of sound it makes, how loud it is,
Speaker 18: if we can hear it. If what we're trying to
Speaker 18: do is find something that we can drop off the bridge.
Speaker 18: And we've been kind of racking our brains trying to
Speaker 18: figure out how to approximate a human body. It's not
Speaker 18: something you can just go to the hardware store and find.
Speaker 19: And we've actually gone through many iterations of this. Like
Speaker 19: originally we were thinking we might want to try to
Speaker 19: actually build a body out of like wooden dowels and
Speaker 19: duct tape and like packing material, and we got kind
Speaker 19: of far down that path, but then decided, you know,
Speaker 19: it was just it was not going to really be
Speaker 19: as flexible as a body the way we wanted it.
Speaker 19: You know, we were thinking, well, maybe you know, like
Speaker 19: something like an emergency rescue might have some dummies and
Speaker 19: things like that, And so we did actually find a
Speaker 19: fireman's dummy, and they use these in training and like
Speaker 19: competitions for firemen.
Speaker 5: It just so.
Speaker 19: Happens that the dummy that they make has very similar
Speaker 19: proportions both height and weight to the deceased within cator.
Speaker 10: Here he is.
Speaker 5: Yeah that's without legs.
Speaker 18: Wow, chunky arms your bat be careful lift with your legs.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, man.
Speaker 3: It's it's doable.
Speaker 15: List.
Speaker 19: Brandy's a very large gentleman. He you know, he does
Speaker 19: weigh one hundred and forty five pounds, and you know,
Speaker 19: hearing that, it seems like that's doable. But it's dead weight.
Speaker 19: You know, the arms flail and the legs flail, and
Speaker 19: so trying to pick up that mass is actually harder
Speaker 19: than you would expects.
Speaker 2: Which, oh wow, that is yeah, very correct.
Speaker 19: Wait, ways, you know, if you're adrenaline is up, you're
Speaker 19: gonna be able to lift more than you know exactly.
Speaker 5: Can't return it if.
Speaker 2: It's a way, So this is ours.
Speaker 19: So we all kind of took turns trying to pick
Speaker 19: Randy up in to varying degrees of success. But yeah,
Speaker 19: it was a bit of a hassle.
Speaker 18: Yeah, it's it's not easy. I mean, I Tyler, you
Speaker 18: could you were able to pick him up? I really wasn't.
Speaker 18: But yeah, it's way more difficult than you might expect.
Speaker 5: How close is he in height and weight? To Nathaniel Cater.
Speaker 19: So the Corners report and some of the other reporting
Speaker 19: had Nathaniel Cater's height at five to eleven and weighed
Speaker 19: at one hundred and forty six pounds, And the Rescue
Speaker 19: Randy dummy that we ordered has a height of six
Speaker 19: feet and weighs one hundred and forty five pounds, So
Speaker 19: we're really in that range of where we want to be.
Speaker 19: It actually fits quite well.
Speaker 18: The bridge actually straddles two county lines, Fulham County on
Speaker 18: the south side and Cobb County on the north side,
Speaker 18: so we have to close the bridge down. We have
Speaker 18: to get permits from both counties, and.
Speaker 19: On that we found out that we also have to
Speaker 19: coordinate with the state Department of Transportation. They have to
Speaker 19: approve it as well. You know, closing a road down
Speaker 19: is one thing, but dropping a body into the Chatthoochee
Speaker 19: River is a whole different thing. So we've been coordinating
Speaker 19: with Army, Corps of Engineers, the Department of National Resources,
Speaker 19: all these different groups to try to, you know, figure
Speaker 19: out who we need to essentially get permission from.
Speaker 3: Wayne spoke of a child sex ring that was operating
Speaker 3: out of a house on Gray Street in Atlanta. He
Speaker 3: told me that he believed many of these child murders
Speaker 3: were related to this sex ring.
Speaker 10: We know that another six cases were involved in a
Speaker 10: homosexual ring going on in Atlanta, Black homosexual ring.
Speaker 3: Vincent Hill has spent the last several years looking into
Speaker 3: this theory too, and he believes it has some serious
Speaker 3: merit if.
Speaker 8: You look at old records and old police reports. Uncle
Speaker 8: Tom Terrell, his friend Jerry Thornton, Larry Marshall. Jerry Thornton
Speaker 8: told investigators ten of the victims used to hang out
Speaker 8: at that house, that they would have sex with little boys,
Speaker 8: and mid would come to that house to pay for
Speaker 8: sex with these little boys.
Speaker 5: So how do you put that on, Wayne?
Speaker 11: It's been learned that investigators have now found this man
Speaker 11: Tom Terrell and questioned him today about his role in
Speaker 11: some type of homosexual ring operated out of this home
Speaker 11: in northwest Atlanta. That ring apparently involved the latest child victim,
Speaker 11: Timothy Hill, and through recent findings, may have linked together
Speaker 11: several other children.
Speaker 3: On the task Force list.
Speaker 11: Terrell knows this man, Larry Marshall, now in a Connecticut
Speaker 11: jail on armed robbery charges. Investigators also want to question Marshall,
Speaker 11: but so far he is fighting extradition back to Georgia.
Speaker 11: The next best thing is this man sitting in a
Speaker 11: detective's car this morning.
Speaker 20: How many of the murdered children have you seen around here?
Speaker 9: I'm not ten out, I told.
Speaker 20: Jerry Thornton, Larry Marshall's former roommate, identified of the murder
Speaker 20: victims from pictures shown him by a police investigator. Children
Speaker 20: he's seen in the neighborhood, among them thirteen year old
Speaker 20: Timothy Hill, eleven year old Patrick Baltazar, and fifteen year
Speaker 20: old Joseph Bell.
Speaker 12: This morning, Terrell's house on Gray Street was empty, unlike
Speaker 12: recent weeks, when neighbors said at any given time several
Speaker 12: boys would be hanging out here. Terrell is an admitted homosexual,
Speaker 12: who says one of the victims, Timothy Hill, spent the
Speaker 12: night at this house a day before he disappeared, and.
Speaker 7: He was here on twelve grades.
Speaker 9: Fool to come back on the thirteenth, and that was
Speaker 9: my bush.
Speaker 21: Geyahdd. I didn't see him, and I haven't seen him since.
Speaker 8: Back in the eighties, no one was saying, oh, I'm
Speaker 8: openly gay, and you definitely didn't want to be known
Speaker 8: as a city that's trading boys for sex. But if
Speaker 8: you have ten people that have been identified at one
Speaker 8: house where guys were coming in paying these boys for sex,
Speaker 8: they were giving them drugs, they were doing all these
Speaker 8: other types of things. You have all of these people
Speaker 8: coming to this house trading for sex. How do you
Speaker 8: put those ten bodies on Wayne Williams? So you tie
Speaker 8: all these victims to Wayne, but you can't.
Speaker 22: Thirty four year old Larry Marshall, now behind bars in Connecticut,
Speaker 22: is a known homosexual. He used to hang around this
Speaker 22: neighborhood on Gray Street. Tom Terrell, who was also a homosexual,
Speaker 22: said thirteen year old Timothy Hill also used to hang
Speaker 22: out here, and Larry and Timothy knew each other.
Speaker 3: Larry told you.
Speaker 22: He had Timmy over to his house.
Speaker 9: Oh he's a game there.
Speaker 3: What did they do over there?
Speaker 2: I don't know. They don't be doing them with drinking
Speaker 2: and talking.
Speaker 22: But you do know for a fact that Larry knew Timmy,
Speaker 22: he knowed him.
Speaker 8: Patrick Baltazar went missing after being seen at the Omney Hotel.
Speaker 8: Patrick Baltazar from the Omni to his house to Larry
Speaker 8: Marshall's house was about one point eight miles. Baltazar would
Speaker 8: have had to pass Larry Marshall's house on his way home.
Speaker 8: He's walking home right past Larry Marshall's house. Whose associate
Speaker 8: it with this pedophile who's selling these boys for sex.
Speaker 12: Marshall is believed to have known at least three of
Speaker 12: the victims, Patrick Baltazzar, Timothy Hill, and Joseph Bell, who
Speaker 12: was still missing.
Speaker 8: If you're ten eleven years old, you say, yeah, I'm
Speaker 8: gonna go tell my mom what you're doing. The heck
Speaker 8: you are because I don't want to go to jail
Speaker 8: for rape of a child, so I'll just kill you.
Speaker 8: When Patrick Baltazar was found, one of the witnesses that
Speaker 8: morning she said she saw a male white and a
Speaker 8: green station wagon, you know, just lurking around like towards
Speaker 8: the wooded area where Patrick was found. Who was a
Speaker 8: white guy in the green station wagon.
Speaker 6: Baltazar was with a ten year old friend playing near
Speaker 6: these railroad tracks near the Baltasar home on Foundry Street.
Speaker 6: Baltasar's friend told Jack Perry a big man in a
Speaker 6: car started following them and tried to get them to
Speaker 6: come get in the car with him. Perry taped part
Speaker 6: of the conversation with the young friend of Patrick Baltazar.
Speaker 21: He take come here, you two.
Speaker 23: Lod and Patrick started to in the car. I grabbed
Speaker 23: him from my hand. I say, you don't know who
Speaker 23: that man is. And then when you've gone underhill he
Speaker 23: said I'd be back. Then me and Patrick ran out
Speaker 23: and tried to get his tag number, but we couldn't
Speaker 23: get it.
Speaker 6: They called the Task Force from this phone near the
Speaker 6: key shop on North Side Drive, according to the young
Speaker 6: man who was with Patrick Baltazzar. But after Patrick and
Speaker 6: his friend made the call to the Task Force, they
Speaker 6: didn't hang around waiting for police. They split up and
Speaker 6: Patrick was not seen again. We don't know if police
Speaker 6: sent a squad car to this area, but Jack Perry
Speaker 6: says he has learned the Task Force talked with Patrick
Speaker 6: Baltazar's friend just two days ago.
Speaker 17: I'm sure that the Task Force has the same information,
Speaker 17: so I hope it's beneficial to it.
Speaker 6: I asked Jack why it would take more than a
Speaker 6: month to follow up on talking to someone who had
Speaker 6: phoned asking for help, particularly when one of the two
Speaker 6: children who had called turns up dead.
Speaker 17: It's surprising that they would let this thing go this long.
Speaker 17: You know, you want to follow up, Avery lead that
Speaker 17: you had, and I think it's just a break down
Speaker 17: on communications.
Speaker 6: Jack Perry also has learned that Patrick Baltasar may have
Speaker 6: intentionally gone back to the area where the man tried
Speaker 6: to pick him up because Patrick was a street hustler
Speaker 6: and believed he could get the license number and maybe
Speaker 6: he could collect the reward.
Speaker 8: There's no coincidence that the FBI had Tom Terrell's house,
Speaker 8: Larry Marshall's house under surveillance for weeks because of this
Speaker 8: alleged sex ring. If you follow the trail, you can't
Speaker 8: call the coincidence that Patrick Baltizard lives here, Larry Marshall
Speaker 8: lives here, the house where all this sexual activity was here,
Speaker 8: which also tied to ten other victims, and you can't say, well,
Speaker 8: it had nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 5: It's impossible.
Speaker 3: In the many years of Vincent's research, he's found a
Speaker 3: recurring story in the FBI files, a story about a
Speaker 3: vehicle that didn't belong to Wayne Williams, a blue Nova.
Speaker 8: I know there was talk about a blue Nova, which
Speaker 8: Wayne didn't drive a Blue Nova. Why didn't police do
Speaker 8: a motor vehicle record search to tie this blue Nova
Speaker 8: to somebody other than Wayne? The case about the Blue Nova.
Speaker 8: The guy had an afro with no glasses. Have you
Speaker 8: ever seen Wayne without glasses other than his booking photo?
Speaker 8: Have you ever seen Wayne Williams without glasses? Wayne can't see.
Speaker 8: So who's this guy with the afro with no glasses?
Speaker 8: Couldn't have been Wayne? You know, back then, a lot
Speaker 8: of people said every black person looked like we're talking
Speaker 8: nineteen seventy nine. I had an afro in nineteen seventy nine, right,
Speaker 8: my dad had an afro in nineteen seventy nine. And
Speaker 8: who didn't have an afro that was black in nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy nine?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 8: That was pre the Jerry Curl when Michael Jackson made
Speaker 8: that famous. People were walking around with afros. So it
Speaker 8: very well could have been someone that resembled Wayne because
Speaker 8: he looked just like that he had an afro. The
Speaker 8: description wasn't a white guy with red hair.
Speaker 5: He was a black guy with an afro.
Speaker 8: That was probably ninety percent of the black population of
Speaker 8: Atlanta in nineteen seventy nine nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: This whole time, I've been wondering if there were any
Speaker 3: kids that got away that were almost abducted, and if so,
Speaker 3: were they still around. That's when I met Rodney. He's
Speaker 3: an Atlanta native, a child living here during the time
Speaker 3: with the murders. Rodney firmly believes that when he was sixteen,
Speaker 3: he was almost a victim of the Atlanta child murderer.
Speaker 3: He shared with me his chilling first hand account.
Speaker 24: I was fifteen, not old enough to work, but six
Speaker 24: Flags accepted a fake idea which you could get downtown
Speaker 24: at the time, and put me to work. So I
Speaker 24: rode the bus from my neighborhood in Southeast Atlanta to downtown.
Speaker 5: There was at the time a Marta.
Speaker 24: Direct shuttle from downtown to six Flags, and all it
Speaker 24: did was go back and forth from this stop downtown
Speaker 24: to six Flags, no other stops in between. I would
Speaker 24: change buses, get on the six Flag shuttle, go to work,
Speaker 24: get on that shuttle to come back to downtown to
Speaker 24: go home, and get on my bus, which was the
Speaker 24: thirty four Cresham that particular day. For whatever reason, by
Speaker 24: the time I'd gotten off thirty four, aggression walked across
Speaker 24: from the end of the line and to the six
Speaker 24: Flags shuttle. I had missed it, and as I'm standing there,
Speaker 24: this guy approaches me. He was not tall about five
Speaker 24: to six ish. He was in his mid twenties. He
Speaker 24: was clean shaven, which was unusual for a black male
Speaker 24: in the seventies, and he had a short afrow, had
Speaker 24: a fairly soft voice, so he didn't come across very masculine.
Speaker 24: He just came off as, you know, a nice guy.
Speaker 24: He approaches me and he's he's just basically chatting with me,
Speaker 24: asking if I'm okay, Yeah, I missed my bus. You know,
Speaker 24: I've got to get to work. And you know, my
Speaker 24: recollection is that he almost immediately offers.
Speaker 21: Me a ride.
Speaker 24: I'm going that way, There's no problem, you want to ride,
Speaker 24: drove a Blue Nover. The Blue Nover was was parked
Speaker 24: on that same street, just down the block. It wasn't far,
Speaker 24: It was just walking down the sidewalk. I got in
Speaker 24: his car and off we went to go to six Flags.
Speaker 24: From downtown. One would go directly to I twenty, which is,
Speaker 24: you know, maybe a mile or so from that spot.
Speaker 24: What he did was drove on surface streets heading north
Speaker 24: away from my twenty. On that ride, as he was
Speaker 24: talking to me, he offered me a joint. I had
Speaker 24: never done drugs, and to this day, I don't know
Speaker 24: if there was anything in it, or I was just
Speaker 24: new to that and just had gotten really really high.
Speaker 24: I mean, frankly, I smoked marijuana years after that and
Speaker 24: very familiar with it. But there was something about that
Speaker 24: high that was it wasn't just marijuana, that was something
Speaker 24: else in it. During the course of that ride, he
Speaker 24: started to fondle me as he was driving over my pants,
Speaker 24: and I recalled just kind of staring down at what
Speaker 24: he was doing, just not knowing what was going on,
Speaker 24: not really communicating with him.
Speaker 5: You know, at fifteen I I had no idea what
Speaker 5: was going on.
Speaker 24: As we continued down Fulton Industrial, I knew that he
Speaker 24: would get onto I twenty because we were one exit
Speaker 24: away from six Flags. Either he'd get onto I twenty,
Speaker 24: go over into Cobb County, drop me off for six Flags,
Speaker 24: or he would continue downfalls An Industrial, which if he
Speaker 24: passed under our twenty heading south, it was no man's land, industrial, warehouses, nothing.
Speaker 24: And as we were at a traffic light, maybe two
Speaker 24: blocks from the.
Speaker 5: Entrance to I twenty, it was like a do or
Speaker 5: die moment.
Speaker 24: And as we were sitting at that traffic light, just
Speaker 24: out of nowhere, I decided, I'm going to jump out,
Speaker 24: and I grabbed the door, unlashed the door and opened
Speaker 24: it and tried to bolt out of the car. Now
Speaker 24: I didn't have on a seatbelt, but he had the
Speaker 24: seat cover over his vinyl seats. It had a hole
Speaker 24: in it, and my Afro pick that was in my
Speaker 24: back pocket, which was the way we carried him. Then
Speaker 24: got hung up in his seat cover. And I'm struggling
Speaker 24: at this light to undo myself from this seat cover
Speaker 24: as the door is open, trying to escape, and he
Speaker 24: didn't try to stop me. He just said to me,
Speaker 24: as I'm struggling, and it was the most eerie, sort.
Speaker 5: Of calm thing by Rodney.
Speaker 24: And I got out of a car and started heading
Speaker 24: back in the opposite direction, back up the hill toward
Speaker 24: a bank that I knew was the sort of the
Speaker 24: last stop for a Marta bus line. I was really
Speaker 24: out of it, really disoriented, looking out for him to
Speaker 24: see if he had turned around to come back in
Speaker 24: that direction.
Speaker 5: He didn't. He continued on.
Speaker 24: And I basically just laid on the grass in front
Speaker 24: of this bank, waiting on a Martina to come, and
Speaker 24: finally one did, got on it, went back downtown, got
Speaker 24: on another bus to go to a relative's house, to
Speaker 24: my aunt's house, and kind of slept it off during
Speaker 24: the afternoon, just kind of slept, never told anyone about it.
Speaker 24: I am convinced that had I stayed in the car,
Speaker 24: we would not have gone onto I twenty. We would
Speaker 24: have continued straight south on Fulton Industrial, which you know,
Speaker 24: would have led into that no man's land outside of
Speaker 24: southwest Atlanta. And I'm convinced that the way that that
Speaker 24: happened at that time, that this guy.
Speaker 5: Has some responsibility for some of these murders, if not on.
Speaker 21: Them, you think that you would have been a victim.
Speaker 5: I'm sure of it. It was.
Speaker 24: It was an odd, disturbing thing that happened, but it
Speaker 24: didn't heard of me until I was an adult and
Speaker 24: and and had knowledge of the you know, the child
Speaker 24: murders in general. It didn't dawn on me that, hey,
Speaker 24: that situation was more than what it seemed to be.
Speaker 24: And I started connecting the dogs to other things that
Speaker 24: had happened as the years went by, understanding what went on,
Speaker 24: you know, what that whole thing about the Atlanta Chilnel
Speaker 24: murders was about, and the details of the investigation, and
Speaker 24: you know, it became clear to me that my experience
Speaker 24: was related to it. You know, by the time I
Speaker 24: had that realization, now the investigation was over. You know
Speaker 24: we're talking about you know, being in to late eighties,
Speaker 24: and so you know, what's the point. What's the way
Speaker 24: I thought about it? In my mind, the authorities had
Speaker 24: found their man, the person they intended to put it
Speaker 24: all on. And you know, what's the point of me
Speaker 24: seeking out someone who cared in law enforcement to tell
Speaker 24: my story? What's the point of that? So when I
Speaker 24: came across this podcast, and you know, you guys were
Speaker 24: were looking for information, yeah, I decided to offer. It's like, okay,
Speaker 24: I've got something offer here. I I still don't think
Speaker 24: law enforcement is interested. I in my mind, I think
Speaker 24: they consider this a close case. I could be wrong,
Speaker 24: but that was the way I always looked at it.
Speaker 24: They were looking to close it and end it then.
Speaker 24: And I you know, I know of no one in
Speaker 24: law enforcement who would be interested in reopening or re
Speaker 24: examining any evidence around this. So you know, why why
Speaker 24: spend time seeking out someone who would wanna hear what
Speaker 24: I would have to say.
Speaker 2: Do you think the man who beat you up that
Speaker 2: day was Wayne Williams.
Speaker 5: No, absolutely not positive of that.
Speaker 3: He sounds similar in description, Yes, similar, similar height, same.
Speaker 5: Hair, clean shaven.
Speaker 24: The photos I've seen of Wayne Williams from that time,
Speaker 24: he had blemishes on his face that this guy didn't have.
Speaker 24: So j in the shape of his face was different.
Speaker 24: This guy was had a slimmer build, more of an
Speaker 24: oval shaped face. Different in more ways than he was
Speaker 24: the same, I'll put it that way.
Speaker 3: The night of our bridge experiment had arrived at around midnight.
Speaker 3: We all headed out to the James Jackson Parkway Bridge
Speaker 3: and planned to drop rescue Randy right at two am,
Speaker 3: the same time they heard the splash. Ah, do you
Speaker 3: hear my voice?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 25: So you have to go to the opposite side of
Speaker 25: the bridge.
Speaker 10: Hey, hey, there you are, This.
Speaker 19: Is Tyler over. Do you want me to stay down
Speaker 19: here or come back up over?
Speaker 21: All?
Speaker 12: Right?
Speaker 14: So, and Alex gonna come down to you to follow
Speaker 14: Pain with the camera.
Speaker 19: Okay, I'll stay down here to get him safely to
Speaker 19: the spot.
Speaker 14: Yeah, that sounds good. So we want to get a
Speaker 14: camera on Pain as quick as possible. Then Candler will
Speaker 14: have his camera up here and at one o'clock now,
Speaker 14: and I'm hoping we can do the drop right.
Speaker 21: Into its.
Speaker 19: Okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 9: Careful, don't it.
Speaker 15: Okay, that's right here.
Speaker 18: You could pull your truck down where that Georgia power
Speaker 18: sign is and then we could at least walk him
Speaker 18: up there and get the dumb onto the back of
Speaker 18: your truck just to get.
Speaker 21: It back here.
Speaker 5: Quicker. Does that makes sense?
Speaker 18: Yeah, yeah, we're kind of approaching things as if we
Speaker 18: might not get a chance to do it again.
Speaker 24: Sketch.
Speaker 19: It's I mean, it wobbles a bit, but it's it's
Speaker 19: in the play of the joints. I don't think it's
Speaker 19: like the bass feels stable.
Speaker 21: M h kayak body, I'm go moor with Okay, you guys,
Speaker 21: get up there up here, back your.
Speaker 3: Action, okay. Atlanta Monster will be a ten episode podcast,
Speaker 3: So there's four episodes left. Here's a preview of what's
Speaker 3: to come.
Speaker 26: One of my attorneys, Lynn Watley, received a package on
Speaker 26: his doorstep US anonymous package that it contained hundreds of
Speaker 26: GBI fials about a classified investigation into White supremacit involvement
Speaker 26: in the Atlantic killings. It also contains several tape recorded confessionals,
Speaker 26: some of the lands they admitted and they were involved
Speaker 26: in the murder of some of the missing and murdered pieces.
Speaker 15: I don't want to tell anything because my wife right
Speaker 15: now is you're nervous. We've been through this before my
Speaker 15: name was put out there and it was a scurry ordeal.
Speaker 15: Family spent a few weeks in a hotel, just had
Speaker 15: of being scarce. And I don't know you from Adam.
Speaker 15: It's a story that I've held on to for a
Speaker 15: long time that I've known about. I don't know how
Speaker 15: you want to go about this, Dame.
Speaker 3: You can always come here to the office that we
Speaker 3: have at pont I'd rather not.
Speaker 9: You wouldn't think here in this little sleepy town that
Speaker 9: he was any kind of monster, or he certainly didn't
Speaker 9: act like it until he drank and then he got
Speaker 9: the eyes of Charles Manson. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 9: know where it should go from here. I know that
Speaker 9: there were some wrongs that should probably be righted there
Speaker 9: his family still suffering. Anybody out there he thinks that
Speaker 9: Wayne Williams didn't do all this by himself, is correct?
Speaker 9: If I only know that from the mouth of the devil.
Speaker 9: I'm sorry that I did not come come forth.
Speaker 3: Sooner Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week,
Speaker 3: with new episodes every Friday. A joint production between How
Speaker 3: Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup
Speaker 3: and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News, Film
Speaker 3: and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries.
Speaker 3: For the latest updates, please visit Atlantamonster dot com or
Speaker 3: follow us on social media. One last thing, We've set
Speaker 3: up an Atlanta Monster tipline. Anyone with information, leads, or
Speaker 3: personal accounts pertaining to the Atlanta Child Murder can call
Speaker 3: us and leave a message. The number is one eight
Speaker 3: three three two eight five six six six seven. Again,
Speaker 3: that's one eight three three two eight five six six
Speaker 3: sixty seven.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, Goss Rason.
Speaker 27: Yeah real well no now this uh yeah, that metal
Speaker 27: card okay, this metal car.
Speaker 5: That was not that was not there.
Speaker 16: No, it wasn't there. Huh Now that that was just
Speaker 16: a concrete up about this high. Probably, Yeah, you wouldn't
Speaker 16: think that it sounded like a I would think that
Speaker 16: if I was out there listening, that I could tell
Speaker 16: the difference between a beaver and a body. But I've
Speaker 16: never heard of beaver hit it, so I don't know
Speaker 16: what they sound like. But a beaver's tail wasn't there
Speaker 16: as be near as big as the body of a man,
Speaker 16: and you would think it could probably tell