Speaker 1: What we have is raw news footage from WSBTV. We
Speaker 1: have seventeen thousand hours of raw news footage. So far,
Speaker 1: I've identified six hundred and fourteen clips, but we have
Speaker 1: about another one hundred and fifty taps to scrub through.
Speaker 1: The Whole time I've been working on this collection, I've
Speaker 1: been thinking someone somedays, someone is going to come along
Speaker 1: and do this. It was you, guys.
Speaker 2: Step aboard our tartists bigger on the inside than it
Speaker 2: is on the outside where we're going down to the
Speaker 2: sub basement high density storage vaults.
Speaker 3: It's like a rollercoaster.
Speaker 2: Yes, I can make it go fast if you left.
Speaker 2: It's a thirty thousand square foot facility which we keep
Speaker 2: at fifty degrees fahrenheit with a relative amidity of thirty percent.
Speaker 2: Thirty two feet from floor to the ceiling. Actually the
Speaker 2: top of our ceiling there is the floor of the
Speaker 2: second floor. Prior to us building this building here was
Speaker 2: a Native American settlement of some sort here. If I've
Speaker 2: understand what people have told me over the years, everything
Speaker 2: is shelved down here by size and then by dark.
Speaker 3: How many records do you think you guys have on
Speaker 3: the Atlanta Chalmers in Atlanta. Another bonder wasn't discovered through day,
Speaker 3: but twenty third.
Speaker 4: At Police Task Force headquarters, there are twenty seven faces
Speaker 4: on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
Speaker 3: We do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore,
Speaker 3: we do not have the money from tenderfoot TV in
Speaker 3: house to works in Atlanta.
Speaker 5: Like eleven other recent victrums in Atlanta, rogers are currently
Speaker 5: was as fixiator.
Speaker 4: Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
Speaker 4: on killing.
Speaker 3: This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 6: Sketching back then wasn't what it is today. I mean,
Speaker 6: some of these sketches they come out with better than photographs.
Speaker 6: Back then, you know, you work with what you had,
Speaker 6: and it was a pretty good sketch. We had a
Speaker 6: composite of it of who this guy would be.
Speaker 7: What it looked like to you. Remember well, it was
Speaker 7: a blackmail with bushy hair.
Speaker 6: I remember the composite sketch very well. This is a
Speaker 6: folder of paperwork I kept from my time as deministrative
Speaker 6: coordinated the Atlanta child murder cases. It wasn't animosity between
Speaker 6: the local police and the FBI. One of the main
Speaker 6: things is the mayor maina Jackson. He says, I want
Speaker 6: every living FBI agent. My police department is basically incompetent
Speaker 6: and they can't solve it. We need the FBI to
Speaker 6: solve it. So he threw his department under the bus.
Speaker 6: None of us want to get involved because it looked
Speaker 6: like just a local miss.
Speaker 3: This is Jim Procopio, but he goes by Popcorn. Look,
Speaker 3: he worked for the FBI alongside Mike mccomis during the
Speaker 3: time with the Atlanta child murders. Mike actually introduced me
Speaker 3: to him.
Speaker 8: Probably be interested in talking to Procopio. Yeah, Popcorn is
Speaker 8: a good guy. Now if you can get into his
Speaker 8: treasure trove, he's got boxes and stuff.
Speaker 3: Popcorn dealt with all the records and files in the FBI,
Speaker 3: And just like Mike McComas, he stressed the importance of
Speaker 3: a composite sketch they received early on in their investigation
Speaker 3: from a kid who told police that a man had
Speaker 3: tried to abduct him.
Speaker 6: Well, it was a blackmail with bushy hair. I remember
Speaker 6: the composite sketch very well.
Speaker 3: After interviewing the kid, they were able to form a
Speaker 3: detailed sketch of the suspect. A blackmail with bushy hair.
Speaker 3: After only a few minutes with popcorn, you get the
Speaker 3: impression that this guy doesn't forget a thing.
Speaker 6: And it goes back to another cultural socioeconomic issue. When
Speaker 6: Maynard Jackson became mayor, first black mayor in Atlanta, the
Speaker 6: first thing he said was, I want to make the
Speaker 6: police department more brown. Police department up with that time
Speaker 6: had some black officers, several were majors and above, but
Speaker 6: it was mainly a white police department. Well, when the
Speaker 6: white officers heard that, they saw they saw the handwriting
Speaker 6: on the wall. If you were white, you're not going
Speaker 6: to rise rapidly in this department. It's going to be black.
Speaker 6: A lot of the older ones, they say, we'll see you,
Speaker 6: they retire. So consequently they lost many of their senior officers,
Speaker 6: the best homicide investigator. Then they had a big cheating
Speaker 6: scandal in the police department. They found out that a
Speaker 6: lot of the black recruits in the police academy were
Speaker 6: given the answers to tests. So that was another major scandal.
Speaker 6: So the police department was left in seventy eight seventy
Speaker 6: nine eighty relatively new and inexperienced. So I guess some
Speaker 6: of the homicide detectives were not that experienced and they
Speaker 6: missed the signs that there were commonalities in the eight
Speaker 6: to ten to twelve they had. By time the Bureau
Speaker 6: got in, they were up to fourteen ten found for missing. Further,
Speaker 6: the FBI does not investigate murders. Murder is not a
Speaker 6: federal crime. If it's committed on a government reservation, it
Speaker 6: is off as certain federal authority as it is is
Speaker 6: killed in the commission of a civil rights violation, it is,
Speaker 6: but we don't investigate. Doesn't even investigate murders like you
Speaker 6: have on the street every day.
Speaker 7: So we had no jurisdiction.
Speaker 6: We went to the Atlanta Police Department and says here,
Speaker 6: we're here to help you. You know, we're greeted by yeah, right,
Speaker 6: we won all your files. So it went to roller cases.
Speaker 6: We assigned. There were two agents who are one agent
Speaker 6: per victim, and we had fourteen of the victims at
Speaker 6: the time. So we said go out.
Speaker 7: And redo the case, look through it, give it a.
Speaker 6: Fresh look, come back and tell us what you're fine about.
Speaker 6: Ten or twelve of them come back and said, he's
Speaker 6: looked like local crimes. We were pretty much convinced that
Speaker 6: they were all local homicides that the APD had bungled.
Speaker 6: We didn't see any pattern. We didn't see anything.
Speaker 3: The FBI, along with local police, were not convinced they
Speaker 3: were dealing with a serial killer, but as the death
Speaker 3: toll of black children was growing, they began to recognize
Speaker 3: similarities in the murders. It would start with the child
Speaker 3: going missing for days, weeks, and sometimes even months. The
Speaker 3: FBI became involved in many of the searches. Popcorn recalled
Speaker 3: the first big search he was a part of.
Speaker 6: There were one thousand searches all over the city. One
Speaker 6: place was red Wine Road in South Fulton County. If
Speaker 6: you go there today, it's right off two eighty five.
Speaker 6: There's a huge shopping center with a Tarja and old
Speaker 6: bunch of stores. Back then it was woods. About three o'clock,
Speaker 6: the team down on red Wine Road says we found
Speaker 6: skeletal remains. So everybody hauled ask and it was like
Speaker 6: being in Vietnam again. There were the news choppers overhead.
Speaker 6: They got window.
Speaker 7: Where we were.
Speaker 6: All the news choppers were overhead. So I got there
Speaker 6: there about five o'clock and I'm walking and I'd park
Speaker 6: my car on red Wine Road and I walk in
Speaker 6: the woods and something catches my eye at eleven o'clock
Speaker 6: and I walk over and there was a skull and.
Speaker 7: More human remains.
Speaker 6: So we had two human remains within one hundred feet
Speaker 6: at one another, and this led to.
Speaker 7: One of the most bizarre episodes.
Speaker 6: About one hundred feet below both bodies, we found a
Speaker 6: Playboy magazine. It was that week's Playboy magazine. It came
Speaker 6: out that Wednesday.
Speaker 7: This was Friday.
Speaker 6: So we found the Playboy magazine and there was a
Speaker 6: sticky substance between the pages. I'll let you decide what
Speaker 6: that was. So he immediately fantasized the investigators. The killer
Speaker 6: came back, came down here to the side of the murders, masturbated,
Speaker 6: then took off.
Speaker 7: This is key evidence.
Speaker 6: We packaged it up, raced it out to the airport,
Speaker 6: gave it to the captain of a Delta jet heading
Speaker 6: for Washington, DC.
Speaker 7: An agent picked it up as.
Speaker 6: Soon as the plane landed, rushed with the FBI laboratory.
Speaker 6: They gave it to a ladder lab. They developed prints
Speaker 6: and identified the sticky substance. We didn't have any of
Speaker 6: the prints on file, so they sent it to the
Speaker 6: APD to look up through their files. Within an hour
Speaker 6: they identified the print.
Speaker 7: So we went in. We arrested the guy, We searched us.
Speaker 6: He brought him to the Bureau. We polygraphed him. He
Speaker 6: passed the PolyGram. What the hell were you doing down there?
Speaker 6: He says, well, my wife just had a baby. I
Speaker 6: went down there that afternoon. Now, during that time we
Speaker 6: were part of the Vice President of George Bush's task
Speaker 6: for us. Everything I wrote went to a UNI chief
Speaker 6: of the Bureau, went to the director, to the Attorney General,
Speaker 6: to George Bush. George Bush read it. So the one
Speaker 6: thing he asked us was please don't tell my wife.
Speaker 7: We said, you goddamn idiot.
Speaker 6: Do you know the Vice President of the United States
Speaker 6: knows what you did when you went into the woods,
Speaker 6: and you know where your wife's going to find out.
Speaker 7: By the way, we code named that. It was known
Speaker 7: as the Woodwhacker.
Speaker 3: Popcorn's first big lead went nowhere. Popcorn had found the
Speaker 3: bodies of eleven year old Christopher Richardson and eleven year
Speaker 3: old Earl Terrell. Christopher had been missing for eight months,
Speaker 3: an Earl had been missing for six months. To me,
Speaker 3: on the surface, these cases seemed open and shut. A
Speaker 3: Playboy magazine with semen on It was found near the
Speaker 3: bodies with the suspect's fingerprints on it. But after an
Speaker 3: extensive interrogation, the suspect passed a polygraph test, and despite
Speaker 3: all the bizarre circumstances, the FBI was convinced that this
Speaker 3: man was not involved in the murders, so they moved on.
Speaker 3: Both Popcorn and Mike Macombis told me that when the
Speaker 3: FBI got involved in these cases, there was an extreme
Speaker 3: tension brewing in the city of Atlanta.
Speaker 8: Of course, the blacks wanted it to be somebody white
Speaker 8: and the whites wanted it to be somebody black. And
Speaker 8: I can't speak for the rest of the bureau, but
Speaker 8: my partner and I are Larry Ellington. We talked about
Speaker 8: it a lot. First off, our profilers said that serial
Speaker 8: killers rarely cross races. They'll kill in their own race,
Speaker 8: and all these kids were black.
Speaker 3: Popcorn and Macomis both mentioned FBI profilers the people who
Speaker 3: formulate an idea of who the killer is, who the
Speaker 3: FBI should be looking for, and there was one characteristic
Speaker 3: that stood out to me immediately.
Speaker 7: It had to be a black guy.
Speaker 6: A white man could not go into a black neighborhood,
Speaker 6: pick up a ca we had put them in his
Speaker 6: car and drive off without anybody seeing.
Speaker 8: If there's a crime scene. Then the media was just unbelievable.
Speaker 8: And with all of the attention this case was getting,
Speaker 8: it was almost impossible to get into a predominantly black
Speaker 8: neighborhood and not be challenged or approached or whatever. If
Speaker 8: you were white.
Speaker 6: It just doesn't happen. In fact, when we went into
Speaker 6: black neighborhoods during the investigation, everybody on a street was
Speaker 6: out on their front porch as soon as we appeared
Speaker 6: in the neighborhood.
Speaker 8: There was one place that I think is gone now.
Speaker 8: It was a housing project. They had what they call
Speaker 8: the bat patrol, and these were adults that walked around
Speaker 8: with baseball bats and looking for suspicious characters or protecting
Speaker 8: the community whatever they call them. The bat patrol. We
Speaker 8: were over in this housing area. We had two young
Speaker 8: black kids that had supposedly seen something we thought, so
Speaker 8: Larry and I were tasked to go over and pick
Speaker 8: up these two children and their mother. So here we
Speaker 8: are in the Brown Ford again. He's driving, I'm in
Speaker 8: the passenger side, and we have the mother sitting in
Speaker 8: the middle and the two black kids in the back
Speaker 8: seat and near the windows, and two young boys, and
Speaker 8: I think they were like ten or something, eight, ten, twelve,
Speaker 8: I don't know, somewhere around that. And we didn't get
Speaker 8: two blocks before we were boxed in by about four
Speaker 8: three or four different police cars. And we weren't proned
Speaker 8: out that it was coming to that before we finally
Speaker 8: got them to look at our identification. Hey, we're FBI agents.
Speaker 8: And because somebody had called in, there's two white guys
Speaker 8: with some black kids in the car. So it was
Speaker 8: tough getting in and out of certain areas, and so
Speaker 8: we were kind of convinced this guy had to be black.
Speaker 8: He had to be black. We just couldn't figure out
Speaker 8: how he was getting them in a car.
Speaker 3: Was this a skewed opinion coming from only white males.
Speaker 3: Was it that impossible for a white person to walk
Speaker 3: around the inner city of Atlanta in the early eighties,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I asked Eric and Jasper Cameron, they
Speaker 3: grew up in Atlanta during that time, if anything they
Speaker 3: would know person.
Speaker 9: I felt like it had to be somebody that could
Speaker 9: move around in the community. So therefore I felt like
Speaker 9: to be somebody black or somebody who wouldn't draw suspicion
Speaker 9: because you know, over there we live a white person
Speaker 9: walking around over there, they are gonna be you know,
Speaker 9: it's gonna draw attention because that wasn't happening then. Now
Speaker 9: now you go over there, it's like.
Speaker 3: You know everybody.
Speaker 9: But back then, nah, you know, it would have drew
Speaker 9: too much attention. So I always felt like, probably with
Speaker 9: somebody who could move around pretty easy, you know, undetected,
Speaker 9: without really causing a lot of suspicion.
Speaker 3: But not everyone agreed on that. This is Bernard Parks.
Speaker 3: He grew up in Atlanta too, and was also a
Speaker 3: child at the time of the murders.
Speaker 5: There are certain guys that you know that they were around.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, it's like it wasn't a lot
Speaker 5: of white guys, right, but but.
Speaker 3: There were some.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, like you grew up, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. It's like, you know, one or two white
Speaker 5: guys that went to my school, right, But that's just
Speaker 5: because their family didn't have no money, right, So they
Speaker 5: were just around and so you kind of accepted them.
Speaker 5: But you know, I always say, you know, they got cousins,
Speaker 5: they got friends, they got people that hung around and
Speaker 5: we accepted.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't have.
Speaker 5: Normal, though, for in that time, for a black guy
Speaker 5: just to walk up and be accepting of a white
Speaker 5: guy without somebody understanding what's happening, right, I mean, that
Speaker 5: just wasn't normal. I mean you just questioned, period, because
Speaker 5: you're in my community and it's ain't your community.
Speaker 3: I asked Monica Pearson, the former news anchor in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Her memory was crystal clear.
Speaker 10: They weren't looking for a murderer. They were profiling. They
Speaker 10: decided that that's what it was. And you have to
Speaker 10: keep all options open. I think anytime you don't open
Speaker 10: up and cast a wide net, you lose the opportunity
Speaker 10: of finding someone else who might be involved. It's as
Speaker 10: simple as that. You have to look at all the possibilities.
Speaker 10: And if you start out by saying it has to
Speaker 10: be a black person who did it, because these were
Speaker 10: black children, then that's the reason why so many people
Speaker 10: in the black community thought it was the Klan. I
Speaker 10: think that's short sighted on their part, because you could
Speaker 10: easily have a white man in that community dressed as
Speaker 10: black people dressed and no one would notice him because
Speaker 10: he just looks like a black person. He's in this community.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 10: Most white people would not go into that community because
Speaker 10: they would stand out like a sore thumb. But if
Speaker 10: you assimilate from the walk, to the clothing, to the attitude,
Speaker 10: to the speech, and don't say it can't be done,
Speaker 10: I'm just throwing it out there. I think that's shortsighted
Speaker 10: to say a white person couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: A white person could.
Speaker 10: If you know the community you had. A white graduated
Speaker 10: a couple of years ago from Morehouse College as a valedictorian.
Speaker 10: White folks go into the black community all the time
Speaker 10: to buy drugs, and they don't have a problem fitting in.
Speaker 10: If you look like the people who live there, and
Speaker 10: your skin is just a little lighter than somebody else's,
Speaker 10: it's not going to stand out.
Speaker 3: I think they're wrong on that. From her perspective, the
Speaker 3: possibility of a white killer was ruled out way too quickly.
Speaker 3: I couldn't help but think she made a great point.
Speaker 10: The one thing I remember most about the missing and
Speaker 10: murdered children. I still see that visual every day is
Speaker 10: Maynard Jackson sitting there with piles of cash, offering a
Speaker 10: reward for any information on who was committing these crimes.
Speaker 12: Here's one hundred thousand dollars and it's all you.
Speaker 5: Most gangster picture ever him sitting with that money on
Speaker 5: the desk.
Speaker 3: I think that's where they got this shot from for
Speaker 3: uh Ransom.
Speaker 5: Remember when Ransom they came in and put the male
Speaker 5: gifts and he put all that money on the table
Speaker 5: and he was like, now I'm putting his bounty on you.
Speaker 5: That was Maina's line.
Speaker 3: I read about this over and over in my research.
Speaker 3: The reward money. It started with one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: from the city, but private donations, including one from Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 3: brought it to over five hundred thousand. Today that would
Speaker 3: be around one point five million. As Atlanta struggled to
Speaker 3: find the killer, the city needed more and more money.
Speaker 3: One solution was a benefit concert.
Speaker 13: Come Fly with Me, Let's Fine, Let's Fine.
Speaker 14: Frank Sinatra will be joining Sammy Davis Junior on stage
Speaker 14: at the Atlanta Civic Center. The two figure to draw
Speaker 14: a standing room only crowd for the March ten benefit
Speaker 14: concert to help the investigation into the crimes against Atlanta's children.
Speaker 3: The city held a huge benefit concert to raise money
Speaker 3: for the investigation at the Atlanta Civic Center, but the
Speaker 3: FBI was a high alert for the killer.
Speaker 6: I was convinced that that night he would respond to that,
Speaker 6: and I was convinced in my mind that he would
Speaker 6: drop a body in the fountain right there.
Speaker 12: Frank Sinatra arrived here at Charlie Brown Airport just a
Speaker 12: few minutes before six o'clock.
Speaker 3: He's not on his.
Speaker 12: Way to the Atlanta Civic centerwhere he'll join Sammy Davis
Speaker 12: Junior for tonight's benefit concert.
Speaker 6: Sammy Davis Junior picked up a phone and volunteered.
Speaker 3: To help Atlanta today. The superstar arrived here on his
Speaker 3: private jet.
Speaker 15: Such a horrendous tragedy as this effects, as I said,
Speaker 15: it certainly affects all of America.
Speaker 6: I was there that night, and we had cops and helicopters.
Speaker 6: There were cars everywhere police because there is no one
Speaker 6: could have gotten there with the body.
Speaker 16: It started with police dogs sniffing the entire Civic Center
Speaker 16: looking for explosives. The Mayor's office called this routine.
Speaker 3: Will you guys are here to catch somebody?
Speaker 17: Oh?
Speaker 7: Hell yeah, that's why we're roll out.
Speaker 18: Officials have been preparing for weeks for this night. Extra
Speaker 18: security guards have been hired and extra police officers have
Speaker 18: been put on patrol here with just one objective to
Speaker 18: keep an eye on children.
Speaker 6: It was overwhelming. The Atlanta Police Department out in full force.
Speaker 6: Who had a GBI? I know, the FBI was there,
Speaker 6: the Task Force, everybody was there. There's no way anyone
Speaker 6: could have gotten in there and done anything.
Speaker 16: There are so many news people here, coming from all
Speaker 16: over the world, Chicago, New York, Hamburg, London, so many
Speaker 16: they had to be regulated to a room in the basement. Meanwhile,
Speaker 16: upstairs Atlanta's finance It started to arrive, but the high
Speaker 16: points of the show weren't outside. They were in here.
Speaker 5: I've got the world of the.
Speaker 6: I've got this didn't respond and to got a lot
Speaker 6: of publicity. I thought he was response to how he didn't.
Speaker 16: And while Sinatra was entertaining as he sang, he was
Speaker 16: most touching when he spoke.
Speaker 13: More of my tears are shed for the brothers and
Speaker 13: sisters and playmates of the victims to whom terror has
Speaker 13: become an unwelcome companion, and to all of the fine,
Speaker 13: decent people in Atlanta who are frightened by day and
Speaker 13: doubly frightened by night.
Speaker 3: You have my prayers that.
Speaker 13: Is, and that it should pass without further bloodshed.
Speaker 3: The city as a whole was banding together to catch
Speaker 3: this killer, and every single law enforcement agency was working
Speaker 3: around the clock. All the murders were of black children
Speaker 3: from the inner city of Atlanta, and they were disappearing
Speaker 3: from their own neighborhoods in their own local hangouts. One
Speaker 3: popular place in the city at that time time for
Speaker 3: kids to hang out was called the Omni, an arcade
Speaker 3: room with food in a movie theater. But the Omni
Speaker 3: was also becoming a place where some kids were last seen.
Speaker 9: That's what we did. It was a game room in
Speaker 9: the Omni, and we literally would go to that game
Speaker 9: room and go to the arcades and all that. So
Speaker 9: that's like video games and stuff like that. That's what
Speaker 9: we did. Went to the Omni, hung Omni.
Speaker 10: Friday night, date night, get out of the house night,
Speaker 10: and the Omnie is packed with youngsters.
Speaker 12: The Omni Complex, a mixture of fine stores, sporting events, movies,
Speaker 12: and game rooms, a popular place for the inner city
Speaker 12: kid to hang out. That's why the Special Task Force
Speaker 12: became interested in the complex as a meeting place. Investigators
Speaker 12: first started looking for some type of connection back in February.
Speaker 11: This sign went up today at Electronic America. The manager
Speaker 11: doesn't want anyone seventeen or under in here. Wont seven
Speaker 11: o'clock hits. The owners realized such strict rules hurt their business,
Speaker 11: especially when their business attracts mainly teenagers.
Speaker 3: The nineteen eighties saw the rise in arcades and video games.
Speaker 3: But another trend, and one I didn't know about, was
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties fascination with psychics. In fact, psychics even
Speaker 3: played a role in the Atlanta child murders. I heard
Speaker 3: a lot of weird stories surrounding this case, but so
Speaker 3: far this seemed the most bizarre, a true example of
Speaker 3: law enforcement grasping its straws.
Speaker 19: Police are now working with more than one psychic to
Speaker 19: solve the cases of six murdered and six missing children.
Speaker 19: This is how the nationally known psychics spent their Friday
Speaker 19: the thirteenth. They are visiting Atlanta courtesy of the National Inquirer. Yes,
Speaker 19: the same National Inquirer with those sensational headlines that can
Speaker 19: be seen at most supermarket counters. As the psychics scrambled
Speaker 19: through the woods where four of the twenty murdered children
Speaker 19: were found, psychic Mickey Dane of Miami, kicked off her shoes.
Speaker 19: She asked reporters to feel how hot her feet were,
Speaker 19: and then declared that two more bodies might be found nearby.
Speaker 20: There is something here, some child out there is trying
Speaker 20: to tell us to go further into this.
Speaker 19: Jonathan Bell, whose brother Joseph is among the victims, also
Speaker 19: served as a guide. A freelance artist was there too,
Speaker 19: sketching psychic's descriptions of suspects.
Speaker 20: I do not care at this point what they think
Speaker 20: of me. I'm here to get a killer off the street.
Speaker 20: If it takes one person of five thousand. My big
Speaker 20: thing is that if I have to do it alone,
Speaker 20: I will I feel that they are afraid that if
Speaker 20: one person does it, how will they feel? And I
Speaker 20: can understand that. But I'm here more so for the children.
Speaker 20: And I do not want the reward money that I
Speaker 20: put in writing. I do not want the money. I'm
Speaker 20: not here for the publicity. I'm just like them. I
Speaker 20: want to kill off the street.
Speaker 3: One side gave police and news stations a detailed description
Speaker 3: of who the Atlantic shold murderer was.
Speaker 21: He knows in the daytime what he's dealing with, but
Speaker 21: at night, he's not really sure, so he kind of
Speaker 21: stays to himself in his apartment. Here's a television set.
Speaker 21: There's no guns up there, no nothing. He's very smooth
Speaker 21: talking when he does talk, which is very seldom. Oh yes,
Speaker 21: there's no doubt in my mind that he's walked side
Speaker 21: beside probably some of the parents of these children. He's shrewd,
Speaker 21: he's methodical. You're not dealing with a guy with the one
Speaker 21: hundred and sixty four IQ. He's clean, he's neat, he's
Speaker 21: above suspicion. You're dealing with a methodical, a man that's
Speaker 21: some systematic what angry now getting more frustrated. I cannot
Speaker 21: stop him. I don't have the authority or the power.
Speaker 3: At the University of Georgia in Athens is the Walter J.
Speaker 3: Brown Media Archives, a huge, multi story facility that holds
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of archive documents. In the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: this was arguably the biggest news story, especially in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: I made a call to Mary Miller, one of the archivists,
Speaker 3: to see if we can access their news archives related
Speaker 3: to the case, and as it turns out, they have
Speaker 3: thousands of hours of raw news footage from WSBTV, the
Speaker 3: local Atlanta station. Material that hasn't been viewed by the
Speaker 3: public since the early nineteen eighties. In that time, nothing
Speaker 3: was digital. It was all on film or tape. But
Speaker 3: the team at the University of Georgia worked tirelessly to
Speaker 3: gather and digitize as much material as possible, and then
Speaker 3: they gave us a personal tour of their vault.
Speaker 2: Everything is shelved down here by size and then by
Speaker 2: bark code, so thing that you'll notice here, each item
Speaker 2: has a barcode on it, and each shelf has a
Speaker 2: bar code, and the items are linked together, so it
Speaker 2: gives us a barcode and we work by that.
Speaker 7: What we do with videotapes.
Speaker 2: Is a little bit different from what we do with
Speaker 2: train materials. The videotapes will have to go into coolers
Speaker 2: because they need to be acclimated from the cold, dry environment.
Speaker 2: When they move upstairs, it's a little warmer and a
Speaker 2: lot more humid, so they have to go in the
Speaker 2: cooler so the temperature can come up slowly they can acclimate.
Speaker 2: January twenty twelve, when we opened to the public, we've
Speaker 2: probably pulled about one hundred and fifty to one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty thousand items, and we've yet not been able
Speaker 2: to find everything that's been requested. And I said, he's
Speaker 2: going to start coming this way, so we're gonna need
Speaker 2: to start walking back this way.
Speaker 3: While searching the archives, I came across several news stories
Speaker 3: involving strange leads. This one in particular caught my attention.
Speaker 3: According to FBI documents, on January eighth, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 3: an anonymous white male called the Rochdale County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 3: claiming that he placed the body of Luby Jeter out
Speaker 3: on Sigmund Road. Then he threatened to leave the body
Speaker 3: of another child, but this time the child would be white.
Speaker 12: An unidentified man who has been calling the Rochdale County
Speaker 12: Sheriff's Department for the last few weeks.
Speaker 3: That man has told deputies.
Speaker 12: They could find Atlanta's missing children on Sigmund Road, and
Speaker 12: we've learned that recently he's also called and said he
Speaker 12: was going to harm some of the children in this neighborhood.
Speaker 12: When the Rockdale County Sheriff's Department arrived at the scene
Speaker 12: this morning, all they knew was they had something already
Speaker 12: very familiar to Atlanta investigators, the body of a black
Speaker 12: mail around fourteen years old line just off Sigmund Road.
Speaker 12: There was no apparent sign of a strug. Sheriff Vic
Speaker 12: Davis would only say today his department and the others
Speaker 12: involved are again very interested in tape conversations with an
Speaker 12: unidentified male caller, the most recent call coming the day
Speaker 12: before the body was found. The man told Rochdale deputies
Speaker 12: victims could be found along Sigmund Road.
Speaker 3: Someone was calling the local sheriff's department claiming to be
Speaker 3: the killer, even declaring where the next body would be found,
Speaker 3: but it seemed at that time the police didn't give
Speaker 3: this much merit.
Speaker 17: Some detectives say, since this latest body was found so
Speaker 17: far from Atlanta, they may be dealing with the copycat murderer,
Speaker 17: or they say the killer or killers may have known
Speaker 17: that the Rochdale sheriff was receiving crank calls about the
Speaker 17: missing and murdered children and so just decided to dump
Speaker 17: a body here to taunt police.
Speaker 22: We're taking a closer look at the calls at this time,
Speaker 22: but we still feel that maybe just the publicity drew
Speaker 22: the actual killer to this area to dump a.
Speaker 12: Body Sheriff Vic Davis hopes today's discovery and the calls
Speaker 12: are just coincidental.
Speaker 3: Then I found another story. The video was of a
Speaker 3: live newscast featuring a church minister in Atlanta named Earl Polk.
Speaker 3: He voluntarily called into a local news station to present
Speaker 3: this story, and he was making some very eerie claims
Speaker 3: his alleged interaction with the Atlanta child murderer.
Speaker 23: I have received several calls from a person identifying himself
Speaker 23: as the one responsible for these crimes.
Speaker 15: I did notify the authorities, but I should like.
Speaker 23: To remind you that I stand readed a minister to you,
Speaker 23: and we are protected and covered by the Constitution of
Speaker 23: the United States of America. I stand ready to be
Speaker 23: directed by you as to a place of meeting. I
Speaker 23: will minister to your needs, and you will be protected,
Speaker 23: and you will be covered.
Speaker 18: For one thing, the voice on the phone was not
Speaker 18: the same one that has called before, so Polk says
Speaker 18: his first step was to determine how much.
Speaker 15: The man knew many of the children are crimes are
Speaker 15: you involved in? He said, well, let's put it this way.
Speaker 15: The first three somebody helped me with them. I said, well,
Speaker 15: is he not helping any longer.
Speaker 8: He said no.
Speaker 15: I said why did he quit? He said, well he
Speaker 15: got afraid, I mean his wife got afraid, and he
Speaker 15: left town.
Speaker 18: Paulk says the man told him he could prove he
Speaker 18: was the killer because he could show Paulk a piece
Speaker 18: of clothing belonging to Curtis Walker. Walker's body was found
Speaker 18: just two weeks ago in a river about a quarter
Speaker 18: mile from Paulk's church.
Speaker 15: So I said, tell me how you got the kids
Speaker 15: to get in your car. He said, well, I've got
Speaker 15: a van, and he says, I tell him I've got
Speaker 15: paint jobs to do, and they get into in the
Speaker 15: van to go to paint.
Speaker 18: Paulk then questioned the man about his motives.
Speaker 15: I said, well, what makes you do this? What what
Speaker 15: caused you to do these crimes? Could you tell me that?
Speaker 15: He said, well, I'm I'm impelled or I'm controlled or
Speaker 15: forced by voices to do it. I said, well, why
Speaker 15: are you calling me now? Are the voices really to
Speaker 15: so you could call me? He says, well, I don't
Speaker 15: hear the voices right now. I said, why are you
Speaker 15: turning yourself in or why are you wanting to come
Speaker 15: see me now? He said, well, I'm tired of running,
Speaker 15: I'm out of money, and my wife is afraid.
Speaker 18: The man told Paulk he was speaking from or near
Speaker 18: a pub on Ponsta Leon Avenue. Paulk then asked him
Speaker 18: if they could meet at his church on Flat Shoals Road,
Speaker 18: and the man agreed. About a half hour later, a
Speaker 18: van pulled into the parking lot across the street, but
Speaker 18: immediately sped off. Paulk says he thinks the man spotted
Speaker 18: some police cars at a nearby shopping center and may
Speaker 18: have thought he was walking into a trap.
Speaker 15: My purpose of even telling the story was hopefully that
Speaker 15: he would know that there was no trap set up,
Speaker 15: and that per chance he may yet try to make contact.
Speaker 3: After hearing the many stories from the FBI and looking
Speaker 3: back on the news archives, I started to get a
Speaker 3: sense of how the general public must have felt in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty, completely confused an incriminating Playboy magazine, psychic involvement,
Speaker 3: bizarre phone calls, in that mysterious composite sketch of a
Speaker 3: black guy with bushy hair, but none of it was
Speaker 3: amounting to anything. The media coverage of Atlanta's hunt for
Speaker 3: a serial killer was gripping the entire nation. But things
Speaker 3: were about to change when a local Atlanta policeman found
Speaker 3: what appeared to be the first signs of physical evidence.
Speaker 24: We had a body, a young young boy, on the
Speaker 24: behind a building, and we found a fiber on him,
Speaker 24: just a one fiber.
Speaker 3: You guys.
Speaker 8: Yes, And.
Speaker 24: I removed it off of his shirt, and I think
Speaker 24: it was blue, maybe a quarter of inch long. It
Speaker 24: looked like a maybe a sweater or a blanket or something,
Speaker 24: just a piece of lent. Took the fiber to the
Speaker 24: crime lab. That information leaked out through high ranking people
Speaker 24: to the media and lo and behold, it wasn't me,
Speaker 24: you know, and they were putting anything they can grasp.
Speaker 24: The media were at that time, you're talking about vultures.
Speaker 24: I mean, everybody wanted to be the one to know
Speaker 24: the little tidbit that nobody else knew.
Speaker 6: The Atlanta Journal came out in early February with a
Speaker 6: story the police are finding hairs and fibers on the victim.
Speaker 7: Well guess where the next victim wound up? Stripped it
Speaker 7: in the river.
Speaker 6: And we were getting victims every ten days.
Speaker 8: We're starting to see bodies in several different counties. We
Speaker 8: probably need to come up with a method, or come
Speaker 8: up with an idea or a thought to where we
Speaker 8: can at least direct this guy, you know, keep him
Speaker 8: from spreading bodies everywhere in hopes of course he's catching him.
Speaker 6: What I thought was the dumbest idea I ever heard
Speaker 6: when Mike Mcombs and his partner Larry Ellington came to
Speaker 6: me and says, we got an idea. And I said, Okay,
Speaker 6: what's your idea? And they said, we want to cover
Speaker 6: the bridge. Its because it's obvious he's throwing a body
Speaker 6: off bridge. And I said, why is that obvious? I
Speaker 6: didn't know at the time. Macomas grew up in a
Speaker 6: small town in Tennessee on a river, and I grew
Speaker 6: up in New York City.
Speaker 7: We didn't know what rivers were.
Speaker 8: The reason is I don't think he would drive down
Speaker 8: to the river because the chances are getting caught. And
Speaker 8: besides that, I was raised on a river in East Tennessee,
Speaker 8: and I know that gets something to float down the river,
Speaker 8: you've got to get it out in the middle of
Speaker 8: the water or you stand a good chance it say
Speaker 8: it's going to come right back to this, to the bank.
Speaker 6: He knew that if you threw something from the shore,
Speaker 6: it eventually floats back to land. But if you throw
Speaker 6: something off of a bridge in the middle of the river,
Speaker 6: it'll float down the river. And I says, how do
Speaker 6: you know which bridge? He said, well, we're going.
Speaker 7: To pick fourteen. I said, hey, you know you're going
Speaker 7: to pick the right, right one.
Speaker 6: And he looked at me and said, you got a
Speaker 6: better idea, dumb shit, And I said not. At the moment, there.
Speaker 8: Was two rivers, and there was the South River and
Speaker 8: the Chattahoochee River, and I recommended that we stake those
Speaker 8: out the bridges because I felt that that was how
Speaker 8: he was getting the bodies into the water, was throwing
Speaker 8: them off river bridges, because it would be quick, it'd
Speaker 8: be fast, he would get them in the water, and
Speaker 8: there was a good chance they would float down stream
Speaker 8: quite aways from my idea. I got rewarded of kind
Speaker 8: of supervising the detail. It was started every night around
Speaker 8: six pm, and we quit every morning at about six.
Speaker 6: It started toward the end of April, first of May,
Speaker 6: and we gave them thirty days, and we actually about
Speaker 6: one hundred and forty people totally because we had a
Speaker 6: cover all night, and we had a cover of weekends,
Speaker 6: so we had one hundred and forty people assigned.
Speaker 8: And we were burning one hundred and forty bodies a
Speaker 8: night too, because we had so many bridges on the
Speaker 8: South River and so many bridges on the Chattahoochee River.
Speaker 8: And what we did was is we had to people
Speaker 8: on the ground under one side of the bridge, two
Speaker 8: people on the other, and then we had two chase
Speaker 8: cars per bridge, so if anybody dropped something in the
Speaker 8: people underneath would notify the chase cars. And that's the
Speaker 8: way it happened. It was quite taxing. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 8: you're going seven days a week, twelve hours a day.
Speaker 8: It's tough. I was single. The married guys, I don't
Speaker 8: know how with families, I don't know how they did it.
Speaker 8: But I was single at the time, so it didn't
Speaker 8: really have that much of an effect on my home life.
Speaker 8: Of course, social life, yeah, but not the home life.
Speaker 8: But like I said, we were using one hundred and
Speaker 8: forty bodies a night. As a matter of fact, there
Speaker 8: were so many bodies that we had to go to
Speaker 8: the police Academy and they gave us several recruit classes
Speaker 8: that hadn't graduated yet, so the only thing they were
Speaker 8: allowed to carry was batons and flashlights because they weren't
Speaker 8: qualified on firearms. So, I mean, that's how many bodies
Speaker 8: we were burning, and that's why they decided that it
Speaker 8: was going to have to come to an end, because
Speaker 8: we were just really wearing out man hours and nothing
Speaker 8: came of it.
Speaker 3: As an officer with the APD at that time, Mike
Speaker 3: Tovey remembers this bridge steakout, and.
Speaker 25: We had just about every bridge, I think every bridge
Speaker 25: in Atlanta area covered. They canceled our off days and
Speaker 25: we worked ungodly hours like five to five in the morning,
Speaker 25: no off days, and we had people under the bridge,
Speaker 25: we had people on the water posed as fishermen, and
Speaker 25: just about every bridge in Atlanta and even Fulton County
Speaker 25: we patrolled it in rafts. We had our guns in
Speaker 25: the boat with us, and really we were just grasping
Speaker 25: that straws. But it was apparent these bodies were coming
Speaker 25: over the bridge.
Speaker 3: On the very last night of the bridge steakout, something
Speaker 3: happened that would change the course of their investigation forever.
Speaker 7: Last night, last bridge.
Speaker 8: That night we set up knowing this this would be
Speaker 8: the last day, I had about six or eight bridges.
Speaker 8: I can't remember that. I kind of kept an eye
Speaker 8: on and if anybody had any problems, or if somebody
Speaker 8: didn't show up, or you know, logistical problems, whatever happened,
Speaker 8: and I was to be notified regardless. I was at
Speaker 8: a small bridge south and I heard some radio traffic,
Speaker 8: and at the time, our radios weren't as good as
Speaker 8: they are today. And I remember getting on the radio
Speaker 8: and asking, you know, what's what's going on? And all
Speaker 8: I heard was something about is splash. I had a
Speaker 8: seventy seven Forward LTD with a four hundred big block
Speaker 8: in it, and I can tell you I scorched tires
Speaker 8: getting up there because I said something's happening and I
Speaker 8: just felt it. We went racing to the James Jackson
Speaker 8: Bridge and as I was heading that way, the traffic
Speaker 8: started coming in a little clear because I was getting closer.
Speaker 8: The gist of the story was is that the splash
Speaker 8: was heard by the police cadets, the guys that had
Speaker 8: to leave the academy early to work with us. We
Speaker 8: had two people under both sides of the bridge, and
Speaker 8: of course we kept them hidden out so that they
Speaker 8: brought everything they needed for the night because they weren't
Speaker 8: going anywhere. And then in close proximity, we had a
Speaker 8: chase car on each side of the bridge, and they
Speaker 8: too blended in so that they couldn't be seen. When
Speaker 8: they looked up on the bridge from under it to
Speaker 8: see what caused the splash. The car appeared to be
Speaker 8: just starting up again like it had been stopped, and
Speaker 8: it was going two or three miles an hour. Then
Speaker 8: crossed the bridge, circled around I think a convenience store.
Speaker 8: Then as he came back and that's when our cars
Speaker 8: tagged him. We went up the Excerpt ramp, went across
Speaker 8: the bridge and then went down, saw the cars sitting
Speaker 8: on the other side. They were on the south bound
Speaker 8: side and we were heading north and I saw that
Speaker 8: there was several blue lights over there with a white
Speaker 8: station wagon that was pulled over. Since I was supervising
Speaker 8: it and I had the ranking Atlanta police officer on
Speaker 8: scene with me, when we got there, we were immediately briefed.
Speaker 8: I asked, did to get his ID? And they said yes.
Speaker 8: He was still sitting in his car and I still
Speaker 8: had my composite sketch and I pulled it out had
Speaker 8: these little glasses on, and I drew the glasses and
Speaker 8: I held it up and I said, anybody recognized this guy?
Speaker 8: And that was Wayne Williams to the tea. I mean
Speaker 8: it just it was just Wayne.
Speaker 3: Next time on Atlanta Monster, it was the pre dawn
Speaker 3: hours of May twenty second.
Speaker 12: The Atlanta Police Bureau and the FBI had been staking
Speaker 12: up bridges along the Chattahoochee River for the last two
Speaker 12: months and Atlanta recruit heard a splash. Several radio messages
Speaker 12: and a flurry of activities soon had a car stopped
Speaker 12: and it was twenty three year old Wayne Williams. People
Speaker 12: who know Williams say he is a highly intelligent young man,
Speaker 12: a good student when he was in school.
Speaker 8: I went up to him and identified myself as special
Speaker 8: Agent the FBI, and I asked him immediately if he
Speaker 8: knew why he was being pulled over, and he said, yes,
Speaker 8: it's probably because about those kids that are missing. Kind
Speaker 8: of surprised me. That was an unusual answer.
Speaker 26: I thought, it's like, idep, you want to go to
Speaker 26: this you rabbit hole is very, very very deep.
Speaker 3: 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. Why do they call you popcorn?
Speaker 7: Ah?
Speaker 6: When I was in Memphis a first office agent, brand
Speaker 6: new out of the FBI Academy, Andy was my training agent.
Speaker 6: Andy was about seven or eight years older than me,
Speaker 6: a little more experience than the bureau. And Andy had
Speaker 6: a three year old daughter, Karen, who's.
Speaker 7: Now in the fifties. And she couldn't say the last
Speaker 7: name Procopio. What came out was popcorn. She called me popcorn,
Speaker 7: mister popcorn, and it stuck.
Speaker 3: Do you like popcorn?
Speaker 7: Sure,