Speaker 1: You're listening to episode nine of Atlanta Monster. There's one
Speaker 1: episode left, episode ten. The season finale will come out
Speaker 1: next Friday. Today's episode contains graphic content. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: After writing Sidney Dorsey a letter in prison, he finally
Speaker 1: got back to us.
Speaker 2: All right, Sidney Dorsey letter, Well, at least you know
Speaker 2: what wasn't tampered with because the Georgia State Prison stam interesting.
Speaker 2: This is handwritten, which is why it's hard to read.
Speaker 3: Here's what he said.
Speaker 1: I received your letter, and I truly apologize for my
Speaker 1: delaym responding to you. Please forgive and charge it to
Speaker 1: my head and not my heart. Accordingly, I believe that
Speaker 1: there still remains public interest in the Atlanta child murders,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that the evidence presented during the
Speaker 1: WAYN Williams murder trial proved him guilty or innocent. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I had no hard evidence there, and I have no
Speaker 1: hard evidence now to prove him guilty or innocent. Truly,
Speaker 1: if I knew anything that would help close the case.
Speaker 3: I would provide it, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Finally, if you have specific questions about the case, you
Speaker 1: want answered, provide them to me now. We'll do my
Speaker 1: best to answer them. Best regards Sidney. Contrary to his
Speaker 1: Dateline interview years ago, Dorsey claimed to have no evidence
Speaker 1: to prove Wayne's innocence. But what he did say is
Speaker 1: that he felt the evidence in trial did not prove
Speaker 1: him innocent or guilty. So what exactly happened during the
Speaker 1: trial what convinced a jury that Wayne Williams was a murderer?
Speaker 4: I must say, as kind of a preamble to what
Speaker 4: I would tell you, is that I did not have
Speaker 4: a lot of time for conspiracy theories or aliens with
Speaker 4: pressure guns who were killing kids. I never really believed
Speaker 4: there was one killer. Wayne couldn't kill anybody. Have you
Speaker 4: seen Wayne? These one of those pudgy little guys whose
Speaker 4: mom made him practice of piano every afternoon instead of
Speaker 4: coming out and playing ball. One of those kids, and
Speaker 4: you're telling me he's gonna kill a twenty seven year
Speaker 4: old convict. Give me a break if you believe that
Speaker 4: Wayne Williams killed thirty kids. I mean, I've got a
Speaker 4: little piece of real estate, just a little west of
Speaker 4: West Pismo Beach, California, that you might be interested in.
Speaker 4: Sometimes in murder cases, common sense prevails it walks like
Speaker 4: a duck. It's probably a duck, and it just didn't
Speaker 4: walk like a duck. It was a media frenzy. If
Speaker 4: we were to try the Wayne Williams case today, I
Speaker 4: can't guarantee you I'd.
Speaker 3: Walk that sucker in a heartbeating.
Speaker 4: But hindsight, it's always twenty.
Speaker 3: Twenty and Atlanta. Another body was discovering today the twenty.
Speaker 4: Third the Police Task Force headquarters.
Speaker 5: There are twenty seven faces on the wall, twenty six murdered,
Speaker 5: one missing.
Speaker 6: We do not know the person or persons that are responsible.
Speaker 3: Therefore, we do not have the money.
Speaker 1: From Tenner for TV and howstuff works in Atlanta.
Speaker 7: Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently was
Speaker 7: a Sphexa victory Atlanta.
Speaker 5: It was unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
Speaker 5: on killing.
Speaker 3: This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 4: Apparently I had some sort of reputation among defense investigators.
Speaker 4: In a period of three years, I had worked twenty
Speaker 4: three cases and I lost one, which was Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: This is William north Road, an investigator for will William's
Speaker 1: defense team.
Speaker 4: You're Mary, Welcome called and Mary City. You know we
Speaker 4: shook in Usua, Hell and so I went to Atlanta
Speaker 4: and it was a zoo.
Speaker 5: Most of the preparations for the Wayne Williams trial have
Speaker 5: already been completed in just a few hours. Hundreds of
Speaker 5: reporters and others interested in the case, we'll be trying
Speaker 5: to make their way up to the fourth floor to
Speaker 5: get a glimpse of the first day's proceedings.
Speaker 1: In his eyes, the biggest obstacle was the sensation of
Speaker 1: the trial itself.
Speaker 5: More than eight hundred perspective jurors have been summoned for
Speaker 5: the trial. The unusually lodge number was ordered by Judge
Speaker 5: Cooper to try to ensure that at least twelve impartial
Speaker 5: jurors can be found in this city besieged by publicity
Speaker 5: about the murder case. Already, Network made his cruise who
Speaker 5: reserves based on the street outside the courthouse for their
Speaker 5: motor homes loaded with electronic equipment and media from across
Speaker 5: the country. It made similar plans for coverage of the trial,
Speaker 5: which may last two months.
Speaker 8: It was the crime of the century before OJ it
Speaker 8: was that kind of intense interest. My name is Dale Russell.
Speaker 8: I'm the senior investigative reporter for Fox five News. Here
Speaker 8: at Lane, I began my career as a reporter the
Speaker 8: very same month of the first murders of the missing
Speaker 8: murdered kids, so I have covered this story my entire career.
Speaker 8: There were so many journalists that we could not all
Speaker 8: get in. We were actually all put in a room
Speaker 8: off to the side.
Speaker 5: On full side of the courtroom will be reserved for reporters.
Speaker 5: The overflow. We'll be able to watch the trial from
Speaker 5: a special press room down the hall, and they'll all
Speaker 5: be waiting. A few minutes before nine tomorrow morning, when
Speaker 5: under extremely tighted security, accused murderer Wayne Williams will be
Speaker 5: brought to the Fulden County Courthouse for the first day
Speaker 5: of what may prove to be the most celebrated trial
Speaker 5: in Atlanta history.
Speaker 4: Our entire defense really rested on common sense. There was
Speaker 4: no place for that in that courtroom.
Speaker 9: The state would like to introduce the evidence to show
Speaker 9: the jury a pattern of killings that claims Wayne Williams committed.
Speaker 4: Was there a murder is a turn out. There were
Speaker 4: five out of thirty. The others were not legal medical murders.
Speaker 1: As a defense investigator, one of his main points was
Speaker 1: that no one of authority could be one hundred percent
Speaker 1: sure that these murders were actually murders.
Speaker 4: If you start with that premise, how you going to
Speaker 4: try a guy for murder.
Speaker 1: In his investigation, he found that most causes of death
Speaker 1: were unknown, undetermined, or in some other way vague.
Speaker 4: One of the counts that Wayne was convicted of, the
Speaker 4: original death certificate said undetermined, and then when they charged
Speaker 4: Wayne with that murder, the medical examiner went back and
Speaker 4: changed it to homicide.
Speaker 10: It is not known yet whether pain was strangled or suffocated.
Speaker 5: In the absence of the injuries, there are some features
Speaker 5: of us fixing it.
Speaker 8: Any external marks at all around the.
Speaker 5: Neck, no extending locks it on the neck.
Speaker 1: You may remember this story from episode of four. The
Speaker 1: medical examiner changed the cause of death for Jimmy ray Payne.
Speaker 4: Why because he had a problem. It wasn't a legal
Speaker 4: medical murder. And the idea that all these murders quote
Speaker 4: unquote stopped happening after Wayne was arrested is enough crap
Speaker 4: to for the last c minut.
Speaker 1: According to Northrope, there were way too many cooks in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and things were bound to get messy.
Speaker 4: So you got this conglomeration of police from God only
Speaker 4: knows where, State, local, FBI. You know, they were walking
Speaker 4: all over each other. There was no one person out
Speaker 4: there killing everybody. You see, here's the problem. If you
Speaker 4: take non legal medical murders and you call them murders,
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden, you've got a massacre of
Speaker 4: thirty children. These are the murder kids. And of course
Speaker 4: the media did everything in their power to sell the
Speaker 4: idea that somebody was murdering the children of Atlama. There
Speaker 4: were murders five that I know of, but the rest
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 9: Investigators the morning of May twenty second wanted to know
Speaker 9: one thing. Why was Wayne Williams driving over a bridge
Speaker 9: at three o'clock after stakeout officers heard a loud splash. Well,
Speaker 9: according to Williams, he was out looking for the address
Speaker 9: of a singer, Cheryl Johnson, who had called him several
Speaker 9: days earlier about his talent agency.
Speaker 6: It starts off with the bridge.
Speaker 8: The bridge testimony was extremely strong.
Speaker 9: The state today tried to show the jury that Wayne
Speaker 9: Williams frankly lied and that after telling his alibi to investigators,
Speaker 9: he tried to.
Speaker 3: Cover his tracks.
Speaker 9: The defense claims, there's an explanation for everything we heard
Speaker 9: today and that the state didn't explore all the possibilities.
Speaker 4: Wayne would have to pick up Jimmy Ray Payne or
Speaker 4: Cater and throw him over the bridge rail into the water.
Speaker 4: To make that whole scenario come about. Wayne stops on
Speaker 4: the bridge. Place is covered with police. Now, maybe some
Speaker 4: of the cadets are asleep. I don't know.
Speaker 8: It's bushwa I've been on stakeouts and I can tell
Speaker 8: you guys were asleep. I mean, it just happens. But
Speaker 8: we don't know that he was asleep.
Speaker 9: Although prosecutors had most of the pieces that night in May,
Speaker 9: it's still like the essential part of the puzzle. Someone
Speaker 9: actually seen William's car stopped on the bridge, or better yet,
Speaker 9: the suspect throwing a body from the structure. Attorney Welcome
Speaker 9: appeared confident that the evidence against her client didn't amount
Speaker 9: to much.
Speaker 11: The young man who saw the car that had never stopped.
Speaker 11: I think what you'd have to pick here is a
Speaker 11: man driving with one hand, opening a car without stopping,
Speaker 11: and casting one hundred and fifty something pounds over a bridge.
Speaker 4: We ran tests on that bridge.
Speaker 9: That sound, the defense claims, is the key to their proof.
Speaker 9: Police recruit Bob Campbell, part of the stakeout team, says
Speaker 9: William's card did not make that sound, indicating the vehicle
Speaker 9: was traveling.
Speaker 3: At a slow rate of speed.
Speaker 9: So on the stand was this sound expert who conducted
Speaker 9: tests for the defense at the bridge this week.
Speaker 4: The conclusion of the expert was Wayne didn't stop, and
Speaker 4: no one saw Wayne stop.
Speaker 9: Testimony about the clankety clank a metal expansion joint makes
Speaker 9: when a car rolls over it.
Speaker 3: The reason he didn't.
Speaker 9: Hear the car attorney's claim is because the recruit was
Speaker 9: fast asleep.
Speaker 1: Pulling from his notes in his memory, Dale recounted the
Speaker 1: bridge testimony.
Speaker 8: The bridge testimony alone was extremely powerful. I just think
Speaker 8: a Wayne was stopped by the bridge, or you stopped
Speaker 8: near the bridge. But when you go through that testimony
Speaker 8: point by point, it's riveting. This is his testimony.
Speaker 3: Campbell.
Speaker 8: Hears a splash. He grabs his flashlight and a baton
Speaker 8: he grabs for self defense. He puts the flashlight on
Speaker 8: the river and sees big waves coming up on the shore.
Speaker 8: He flashes the light up to the bridge, nothing back
Speaker 8: down to the river, watching the waves subside, flashes it
Speaker 8: up a second time. Now, think of the timing that
Speaker 8: we're talking about here. You hear the splash, you get up,
Speaker 8: you get your flashlight, you're looking. This is what he
Speaker 8: testified to The lights came on and the car began
Speaker 8: to move.
Speaker 9: While looking up at the bridge, he saw lights go
Speaker 9: on after the splash. Then they moved away slowly. That
Speaker 9: testimony supported his partner's claim that the car Williams was
Speaker 9: driving approached the bridge very slowly and without headlights simultaneously.
Speaker 8: I have the words simultaneously written in my trial notes.
Speaker 8: So the lights were off when the splash hit the water.
Speaker 1: The Williams and his defense team refuted this version of
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 9: Williams bluntly stated the police version of the now famous
Speaker 9: bridge incident was wrong, a lie. He claimed he wasn't
Speaker 9: driving slow, that he didn't turn around in a parking
Speaker 9: lot next to the bridge, that he did not throw
Speaker 9: anything into the river.
Speaker 3: But, according to Northrope.
Speaker 4: Wrong place, wrong time, he was convenient, a cynical establishment
Speaker 4: just scooped him right up and said you're our boy.
Speaker 4: It all came down to fibers.
Speaker 12: These are called fiber scopes. Criminologists at the State Crime
Speaker 12: Lab use them to compare and match fibers, rope or fabric,
Speaker 12: for instance, from different sources. Now workers there have matched
Speaker 12: fibers from task force evidence to make the first official
Speaker 12: correlation between the murders of at least two of Atlanta's
Speaker 12: fifteen murdered children.
Speaker 4: To tell you the truth, it scared me. I didn't
Speaker 4: have any experience with fibers. I was afraid of it.
Speaker 4: I was afraid of the evidence.
Speaker 13: We've come up with some physical evidence that's common to
Speaker 13: at least two with the bodies, and it falls into
Speaker 13: the fiber category.
Speaker 14: People in the world need to know where somebody has
Speaker 14: been from the dust on their clothes, of the soil
Speaker 14: on their shoe, and the geological mapp will have a regional,
Speaker 14: say unconsolidated sediment, but we can point to one spot
Speaker 14: and say this is what the soil was like at
Speaker 14: that point. So, for example, back there is the entire Punjab,
Speaker 14: for example in Pakistan.
Speaker 3: How'd y'all collect all that?
Speaker 13: How long?
Speaker 11: This day?
Speaker 14: My lifetime? This is a lifetime's work. This is sand
Speaker 14: and soil from all over the world.
Speaker 1: We visited palin It at his lab micro Trace outside
Speaker 1: of Chicago. The walls were covered with small shelves home
Speaker 1: to hundreds of bottles holding sand, dirt and fibers from
Speaker 1: all over the world, because.
Speaker 14: There are all fibers from their manufacture and the world. Practically,
Speaker 14: I was eight years old and at my first microscope,
Speaker 14: I had my own lamb. So I've been doing it
Speaker 14: for sixty four years looking through microscopes, senior research microscopist,
Speaker 14: I guess president of the company, Like, yeah, lawyers can't
Speaker 14: say that, but it's microscopist and it comes from microscopy, chemistry, physics, biology,
Speaker 14: those things are all fundamental. There would be no forensic
Speaker 14: science if you didn't have those sciences. So forensic science
Speaker 14: one of the basics of forensic science. One of our
Speaker 14: laws that we can call our own is called Lekard's
Speaker 14: exchange principle. Edwin Lecard was a French scientist. He formulated
Speaker 14: a principle based on the analysis of dusk. He promulgated
Speaker 14: this theory briefly, It states that whenever two objects come
Speaker 14: in contact, there's always a transfer of material.
Speaker 3: Always.
Speaker 14: So let's say, for example, all of a sudden, for
Speaker 14: some reason, you make me mad and I jump on
Speaker 14: you and start attacking you, and we're never in contact again.
Speaker 14: But we were you file charges against me for attacking you,
Speaker 14: and you've sai your sweater, so we get your sweater
Speaker 14: and we get my sweer. So well, are both black
Speaker 14: sweaters a big deal? Well, if you look at the
Speaker 14: fibers from your sweater and my swear, they're going to
Speaker 14: turn out to be different. Almost certainly. Almost every day
Speaker 14: of my life I looked through microscope for one reason
Speaker 14: or another. Every time I go somewhere, or friends of
Speaker 14: mine go somewhere, colleagues or people I've had from places
Speaker 14: in other parts of the world, I ask them where
Speaker 14: they are, where they live, if they've gone there to
Speaker 14: come back, that they vacuum their clothing for us. And
Speaker 14: so there's one of those cabinets you saw on the lab.
Speaker 14: It's just filled with these little vacuum cassettes with dust.
Speaker 14: But those are mixtures of things for us to analyze
Speaker 14: and do research on it. We have pure materials, so
Speaker 14: we have almost all the known synthetic fibers from different manufacturers,
Speaker 14: so we have reference material to work from. If your
Speaker 14: business is like ours, is identifying unknown substances. Ultimate goal
Speaker 14: or the ultimate proof of an identification is to compare
Speaker 14: it to authentic material.
Speaker 1: Skip explained the role of fiber analyst in legal cases.
Speaker 14: The police who are there to investigate materials. They feel
Speaker 14: they've got enough evidence that somebody should be brought upon charges.
Speaker 14: Someone's accused, you've got a defense attorney who's higher than
Speaker 14: under the belief that his client is innocent in fact
Speaker 14: under our system here, and the defense attorney should do
Speaker 14: everything they can to help prove his case. So their
Speaker 14: advocates to their clients, the district attorney as the state
Speaker 14: as their client. They're an advocate for their position, the
Speaker 14: position of the police. There is a jury in most trials.
Speaker 14: Their job is to listen objectively to the evidence. That's
Speaker 14: why a jury is selected carefully. In all this, the
Speaker 14: forensic scientist comes that our job is supposed to be
Speaker 14: to help get to the truth. We can, certainly in
Speaker 14: most cases provide facts. If somebody thinks it's not a fact,
Speaker 14: they can try and prove that wrong. We go to
Speaker 14: great lengths to make sure that something we present as
Speaker 14: a fact is though, so it can't be proven wrong
Speaker 14: because we don't have an axe to grind. We're just
Speaker 14: there trying to make sure that the jury hears us
Speaker 14: and what the likely explanations are, and if it's not
Speaker 14: like the explanation, there's something else, then we can comment
Speaker 14: on it, you know, we will. You know, I don't
Speaker 14: think much about the human players in these cases. It
Speaker 14: probably sounds odd to people because if you watch detective
Speaker 14: shows and things, they're always analyzing motives, and they're analyzing,
Speaker 14: you know, going back in the person's past and so forth. Honestly,
Speaker 14: I would be more interested in looking at the dust
Speaker 14: vacuum from his clothing than I would be, you know,
Speaker 14: and never talking to him. We're questioning him. If you
Speaker 14: were to bring me here and ask me a look
Speaker 14: and tell you everything I could, I would be able
Speaker 14: to tell you some things. Then you might actually be
Speaker 14: amazed about what you see. The Lanchell murders are a
Speaker 14: great example of microscopic trace evidents.
Speaker 1: Skip was involved in the Atlanta Chilo murders case. One
Speaker 1: of his former students, Larry Peterson, was working on the
Speaker 1: case and he called him up for assistance.
Speaker 14: I remember I got the first call from Larry asked
Speaker 14: me if I could come down to Atlanta. He was
Speaker 14: as enthusiastic, as intelligent as scientists, as a young man
Speaker 14: as you would want to meet. She's He's also a
Speaker 14: good person. Sometimes you meet people who are talented and
Speaker 14: you know they're not nice people, and Larry's just one
Speaker 14: of these easy going guys who's innate kindness. We could
Speaker 14: lead people to believe that he's not as bright.
Speaker 6: As he is.
Speaker 1: Larry Peterson was the key Micross Capis on the Wayne
Speaker 1: Williams case, so we met him in person.
Speaker 7: When I graduated from college in December of seventy seven,
Speaker 7: started with the GBI Crime Lab in January of seventy eight,
Speaker 7: so in mid seventy nine I had a year and
Speaker 7: a half experience. There were over two hundred something investigators
Speaker 7: assigned full time to the task Force, Fullton County to
Speaker 7: cab County, the City of Atlanta, East Point PD. You
Speaker 7: had Comb County, Rockdale County Sheriff's Department. You had a
Speaker 7: lot of agencies, all contributing people that let's just say,
Speaker 7: have varied degrees of cooperativeness with one another. They were
Speaker 7: collecting tips at the task Force. They were constantly being
Speaker 7: barraged with tips and adding information about sightings and vehicles
Speaker 7: and people and all kinds of things. Some of that
Speaker 7: led to searches and collectives that they would send in
Speaker 7: evidence for or that we were going to do crime
Speaker 7: scenes are So I can't tell you how many homes
Speaker 7: and cars and suspect residences and whatever during this whole
Speaker 7: thing that I literally went to much less that investigators
Speaker 7: went to and did collectives and sent in. So it
Speaker 7: was a task Force crime Scene collective unit between myself
Speaker 7: and then zerologists and a latent print and that was
Speaker 7: the Task Force crime Scene Unit. So if there's something
Speaker 7: they thought of significance, this group went there and did
Speaker 7: the processing. Through the investigation. There were hundreds of fiber
Speaker 7: samples being sent in. For a comparison, I don't have
Speaker 7: the exact number, but there was a number of dog
Speaker 7: hares being sent in.
Speaker 6: Also.
Speaker 7: They started putting together this conference and they were going
Speaker 7: to bring in fiber or analysts from the Southeast, from
Speaker 7: the State Labs and some other notable microscubis. So Walter
Speaker 7: mccrolan and Skip Paynic were two.
Speaker 1: After working multiple crime scenes in the Atlanta child murders case,
Speaker 1: Larry discovered a particular trend in the fiber evidence found
Speaker 1: on the victims, most significantly an oddly shaped green carpet fiber.
Speaker 7: There's three principal things that I was looking for. There
Speaker 7: was the green carpet, there was the violet acetate, and
Speaker 7: the dog hare. Fifteen victims had the green fibers matching
Speaker 7: the green carpet. Some of them only had one, some
Speaker 7: of them had more than one, five six seven green
Speaker 7: carpet fibers. One of the things I knew about the
Speaker 7: green fiber was, as the others had pointed out also,
Speaker 7: is that it was highly unique in its shape. I
Speaker 7: certainly had never seen it. So when all of those,
Speaker 7: including people in industry, had indicated they had never seen
Speaker 7: a fiber like that, then that just made it more
Speaker 7: intriguing as to how distinctive or where did the fiber
Speaker 7: come from. When this gentleman from DuPont sketched the cross
Speaker 7: sexual shape on this napkin at lunch, the woman who
Speaker 7: categorizes these cross sections said she thought she had remembered
Speaker 7: a fiber like that.
Speaker 1: It was a very rare fiber, one that all the
Speaker 1: experts had never seen before, but they eventually identified it.
Speaker 7: This is the woman won a one B fiber. The
Speaker 7: two very large lobes in this one short leg lob
Speaker 7: on top. Wellman was a small company in Johnsonville, South Carolina,
Speaker 7: and made very little fiber. That made that one fiber
Speaker 7: just by its shape, highly unusual and rare. But they
Speaker 7: didn't make carpet. They just made fibers. So they sold
Speaker 7: fibers to several companies who then tufted it in the carpet.
Speaker 7: So now we need to figure out who was making it.
Speaker 7: So we had their distribution, and there were five or
Speaker 7: six companies that Wellman was settling to. FBI field agents
Speaker 7: went and collected green carpet samples from all of these
Speaker 7: companies and sent them into the laboratory.
Speaker 1: So just how rare was this green carpet fiber? Larry
Speaker 1: pinpointed that exactly.
Speaker 7: So there was like six hundred and eighty thousand square
Speaker 7: yards total of that carpet made. If you kind of
Speaker 7: looked at an average room twelve point fifteen or about
Speaker 7: twenty square yards, and you roughly have six hundred and
Speaker 7: eighty rooms total production of that carpet. And they distributed
Speaker 7: that carpet in ten southeastern states. Now they didn't have
Speaker 7: records of how much went where or who it was
Speaker 7: sold to, but if it was an equal distribution, that's
Speaker 7: eighty two rooms of that carpet for the whole State
Speaker 7: of Georgia.
Speaker 3: Eighty two rooms.
Speaker 7: This is not just distinctive, it's actually very rare. The
Speaker 7: FBI had dug out there was six hundred something thousand
Speaker 7: occupied housing units in Metro Atlanta, so even if all
Speaker 7: eighty two rooms of that carpet was in the Metro
Speaker 7: Atlanta area, still it would be highly unusual to find it.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Larry developed a simple analogy to help
Speaker 1: people understand the rarity of this fiber.
Speaker 7: Imagine that you're a witness of a getaway car to
Speaker 7: bank robbery. The getaway car is a lime green Rolls
Speaker 7: Royce with a purple racing stripe. So you're a gonna think, wow,
Speaker 7: that is really a distinctive car. If I ever see
Speaker 7: that car again, I'm going to recognize that car. And
Speaker 7: if you describe it to others and they have a
Speaker 7: recognition of generally what cars look like, they will also
Speaker 7: recognize that that's a highly unusual car. And if I
Speaker 7: ever see it again, I'll say that's the car. The
Speaker 7: odds of another car being like that have to be
Speaker 7: astronomically low, if at all. So this green carpet fiber
Speaker 7: was something like that, except that you couldn't recognize it.
Speaker 7: At first, it became over time align green rolls Royce
Speaker 7: with a purple stripe in the guise of a fiber
Speaker 7: that unique.
Speaker 1: In the trial Wayne's the fence investigator, William Northrop was
Speaker 1: busy doing some testing of his own.
Speaker 4: I call Lee Bailey's office. They gave me they swore
Speaker 4: up him down. He was the best fiber expert in
Speaker 4: the world. Yeah, and how that goes. He came out
Speaker 4: of Kansas, believe it or not. When I picked him
Speaker 4: up the airport, took me out and he said, listen,
Speaker 4: stop by a department store. So we went over to
Speaker 4: Lenox Square and there was the riches over there in
Speaker 4: those days. We bought two new pillowcases and we went
Speaker 4: down to the river to actually the bridge where Wayne
Speaker 4: was spotted that night. We put the pillowcases in the
Speaker 4: water and let the water flow through it. Pulled them
Speaker 4: out there with thousands of fibers in the pillow cases.
Speaker 4: So so much for fiber evidence.
Speaker 3: We asked Larry about this.
Speaker 6: So here's what really happened.
Speaker 7: He had gone down to the river with a pillow
Speaker 7: case and allowed riverwater to flow through it for some
Speaker 7: period of time. I don't know how long and then
Speaker 7: he had collected fibers from the pillar case and was
Speaker 7: indicating that the river was full of fibers, with the
Speaker 7: notion then that there are some many fibers in the river.
Speaker 7: That's the logical source for where the fibers came from,
Speaker 7: as opposed to the Williams home. Through discovery we able
Speaker 7: to get the samples that random Berze actually looked at
Speaker 7: the actual fiber samples from the pell case he collected.
Speaker 1: Larry was able to test the fibers Wyne's defence found
Speaker 1: in their pillowcase experiment and according to him.
Speaker 7: So there were not thousands of fibers, there was like
Speaker 7: thirty fibers total. None of thirty fibers was any of
Speaker 7: the fibers remotely close to any of the connecting fibers
Speaker 7: that we had in the trial.
Speaker 1: Northolk claimed that fibers could not be found on the
Speaker 1: body submerged in water for days because the skin.
Speaker 4: Dissolves within five days. If you're submerged in water, your
Speaker 4: skin dissolved, peels all you have what they call skin slippage,
Speaker 4: and what does that tell you about your fiber evidence.
Speaker 4: No fibers who were picked up anywhere they washed away
Speaker 4: if there were.
Speaker 1: We asked Larry about this too, so he opened his
Speaker 1: laptop and pulled up a power point with graphic pictures
Speaker 1: of Nathaniel Cater's body.
Speaker 7: That's Nathaniel Cater's body. Oh my, I mean you put
Speaker 7: this presentation.
Speaker 6: Let's see it here.
Speaker 7: I am collecting fibers out of his hair, and you're
Speaker 7: being placed into a ziploc bag.
Speaker 6: Of the decomposition and his skin slippage whatever.
Speaker 7: Now that you're right, you know you're not going to
Speaker 7: find anything on the skin or whatever of the body.
Speaker 6: Most of the fibers probably did get lost.
Speaker 7: But next to the scalp below the hair, there was
Speaker 7: a layer of silt like out of the river, like
Speaker 7: like clay silt. So his hair was acting as a
Speaker 7: filter and silt was depositing, you know, next to the
Speaker 7: scalp under the hair.
Speaker 6: Because of this silt kind of in casing the fibers.
Speaker 7: Whatever was there was gonna So I'm actually going digging
Speaker 7: through the silt next to the scalp and finding fibers
Speaker 7: and putting.
Speaker 6: Him in that Zubblont bag.
Speaker 7: So there and fibers that I found were collected there.
Speaker 7: Because it's the movement of the water fibers would have
Speaker 7: been protected because the silk had get incased them.
Speaker 1: Larry had collected countless fibers from the bodies of victims,
Speaker 1: but they still hadn't made a match. But all of
Speaker 1: that was about to change. He recalled the knight that
Speaker 1: sent their investigation in a whole new direction.
Speaker 7: I was at a trial in Douglas County and I
Speaker 7: got a call out there, Hey, when you get done,
Speaker 7: you need to go to the FBI headquarters building. You know,
Speaker 7: there's something going on there. So myself and a coworker
Speaker 7: who had helped me, he and I went down to
Speaker 7: the headquarters building and we're waiting and there's a lot
Speaker 7: of hush talking and not getting a lot of information,
Speaker 7: you know, So what are we doing? And then he
Speaker 7: and I see the FBI crime scene team that they
Speaker 7: had flown down on several occasions. And then we were
Speaker 7: told that there was a car. There was a car
Speaker 7: to be processed down at the base by the FBI building,
Speaker 7: And so we go down there, he and I, and
Speaker 7: there as a serologist from the FBI team down there
Speaker 7: as well to process the car.
Speaker 3: It was Wayne William's car, and.
Speaker 7: I'm asking where did the others go and they said, well,
Speaker 7: there's something about a house. It was like the house.
Speaker 7: So I actually called the head of the task force.
Speaker 7: I said, what's going on. FBI folks are here and
Speaker 7: we got a cars being processed about a house. Well,
Speaker 7: he had the address of the house. So I drove
Speaker 7: to the house. The FBI team was already in processing
Speaker 7: the house. I knew what I was looking for. I
Speaker 7: was looking for green carpet, violet acetate, and dogcare. I
Speaker 7: go in the house and there's wald of wall, green carpet,
Speaker 7: and there's a bed spread in the suspects bedroom and
Speaker 7: it's violet but also has green in it as well
Speaker 7: the average German shepherd dog. And so I principally collected
Speaker 7: those things. I went back to the FBI building and
Speaker 7: I said, I'm going to the lab. And I got
Speaker 7: these samples. I want to see what they look like.
Speaker 1: But the first time Larry's fiber evidence seemed to be
Speaker 1: going somewhere, but it would all come down to what
Speaker 1: the samples look like under a microscope.
Speaker 7: So when I get to the lab, so it's like
Speaker 7: ten o'clock at night, and so I mount the samples
Speaker 7: up first, the green carpet and put it on the
Speaker 7: microscope and.
Speaker 6: It's like, there it is.
Speaker 7: I threw the purple fibers under their next and here's
Speaker 7: the bolt acetate. It's like unbelievable. And at that point
Speaker 7: I've been looking for them for months and months, no matches,
Speaker 7: and then here's two matches from one source. Right then
Speaker 7: I knew it was highly significant.
Speaker 1: Again, Larry and Northrop differed on this.
Speaker 7: I actually was expecting it not to match. Now I'm
Speaker 7: feeling this needs to be a deep dive search. This
Speaker 7: is not another place where I've gone to where there's
Speaker 7: no green carpet and there's nothing purple, and they don't
Speaker 7: have a dog, or they've got a dog, but it's
Speaker 7: a different breed dog. And you know, there was nothing
Speaker 7: even on the surface of it that made it seem
Speaker 7: like maybe this was a maybe. And keep in mind
Speaker 7: that just because you find a fiber that's not of
Speaker 7: the clothing doesn't mean it's important. Because you're picking up
Speaker 7: fibers from your home, your car, a lot of places
Speaker 7: that you would normally go to, so there's nothing going
Speaker 7: to jump out and go, hey, I'm a fiber from
Speaker 7: a killer. These comparisons happened before Wayne Williams's home was
Speaker 7: ever searched, before we ever had a piece of green carpet.
Speaker 7: These were individual cases examined over, you know, on an
Speaker 7: almost two year period of time.
Speaker 4: I liked Wayne. He was nerdish.
Speaker 8: Pretty much everybody in the media knewing it's some level.
Speaker 8: He worked at the radio station I worked at right
Speaker 8: before I was hired. I knew kind of from a distance.
Speaker 8: So when he was arrested, we were all talking about it.
Speaker 8: Everybody's going, that's Wayne. He's cocky. He's a little nerdy,
Speaker 8: very kind of unassuming, unassuming in cocky.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I called doctor Brad Bayless and
Speaker 4: I asked him if he would come over and hang
Speaker 4: out and interview Wayne, let me know whether or not
Speaker 4: he was crazy.
Speaker 3: This is popcorn with the FBI.
Speaker 13: I was a bureau sex crimes instructor, and I should
Speaker 13: have seen this right away. He's a sexual sadist. He
Speaker 13: gets arousal from the act of murdering the act of killing.
Speaker 13: He's the most dangerous of all sexual predatice. They will
Speaker 13: plan their murders, they will carry them out meticulously, and
Speaker 13: he is a sexual sadist. He's the most dangerous of
Speaker 13: all sexual predators and.
Speaker 3: Mike mccombas with the FBI.
Speaker 15: I think Wayne has some mental issues, some disorders that
Speaker 15: would cause someone to be a compulsive liar. In my
Speaker 15: layman's terms, I think is a sociopath. I think he
Speaker 15: exhibits all the characteristics the compulsive liar, the inability to
Speaker 15: love or know that you're hurting somebody, the illusions of grandeur.
Speaker 6: I was a hostage negotiator in the.
Speaker 15: FBI, and of course we had to know when we
Speaker 15: were dealing with people that had mental issues. If you
Speaker 15: don't believe me, look up sociopath and look at what
Speaker 15: the five characteristics, the five biggies. The hair will pop
Speaker 15: up on your arm. You'll go wow.
Speaker 16: The term sociopath is used very loosely and there's no
Speaker 16: one meaning of it. It has five or six different
Speaker 16: meanings in the literature, and we don't use it because
Speaker 16: it's kind of a coloquial term.
Speaker 1: This is doctor Scott Lillienfeld, an author and psychology professor
Speaker 1: at EMRI University. One of his fields of study is psychopathy.
Speaker 16: Most of the classic work on psychopathy goes back to
Speaker 16: the work of a man named Hervey Cleckley actually was
Speaker 16: from Georgia, wrote a classic book in nineteen forty one
Speaker 16: that went through several editions called The Mask of Sanity.
Speaker 6: The Mask of.
Speaker 16: Sanity called psychopathy because he thought that they presented with
Speaker 16: a kind of convincing facade of being quite normal and
Speaker 16: quite healthy. So they often seem healthy, actually in some
Speaker 16: cases even healthier than us, but deep down there was
Speaker 16: something very wrong with them. Likely delineated sixteen criteria that
Speaker 16: he thought were central to psychopathy. Psychopathic people tend to
Speaker 16: be charming on the outside. They make a good first
Speaker 16: depression of other people. They often see poised normal, often
Speaker 16: seem to be largely immune to anxiety and kind of
Speaker 16: neurotic quirks. They also seem to show a number of
Speaker 16: interpersonal deficits. They often are very self centered, They often
Speaker 16: are manipulative, and they also show a lot of affective
Speaker 16: emotional deficits. They're often callous, they seem to lack empathy,
Speaker 16: they don't seem to form very close emotional attachments to people,
Speaker 16: they don't seem to fall in love very deeply with people.
Speaker 16: Then you see a lot of behavioral abnormalities, a lot
Speaker 16: of things that they do that's different for the rest
Speaker 16: of us. They tend to lie a lot, they cheat
Speaker 16: a lot, They're often sexually promiscuous, and they often see
Speaker 16: themselves as the victims. They often see their problems as
Speaker 16: everybody else's fault, but theirs. They seem to like insight
Speaker 16: into the nature and extent of their problems, And my
Speaker 16: take on it, in part is that they just have
Speaker 16: very little capacity for introspection. I'm having all of these problems,
Speaker 16: I keep getting caught, I'm doing all these things, and
Speaker 16: so well, it's it's got to be my upbring or
Speaker 16: the way that people have treated me, or the fact
Speaker 16: I've had many bad breaks in life, or blah blah
Speaker 16: blah blah blah blah blah. Rarely is it acknowledge that
Speaker 16: it's their fault. They will often exhibit poor impulse control,
Speaker 16: often explode unpredictably, though often have a short fuse. When
Speaker 16: someone insults them or threatens them, they may explode very quickly.
Speaker 16: They may have a very short fuse. So it's a
Speaker 16: very complex picture. I think when you put all that together,
Speaker 16: it's like, what is that beast? It's really hard to
Speaker 16: sort of summarize it. But would colickily argue as again,
Speaker 16: it's this mascul sanity. See this wolf in chef's clothing.
Speaker 16: You see someone who superficially seems very healthy, well adjusted, charismatic, poised,
Speaker 16: but then deep down there was something very wrong with him.
Speaker 1: Even for the defense team, it was important to decide
Speaker 1: whether or not Wayne was stable.
Speaker 4: I wanted to know if Wayne was sane, which he was.
Speaker 1: He arranged an interview between Wayne and a specialist. According
Speaker 1: to their expert, Wayne was saying, but there was still
Speaker 1: one major problem with their case.
Speaker 3: Wayne fit the profile.
Speaker 4: Wayne fit the profile that the FBI had, but he
Speaker 4: had a different take on that. Profiling to me is
Speaker 4: an inexact science. Now people will argue with me, but
Speaker 4: I'm not going to be dependent on profiling. He wanted
Speaker 4: to make a breakthrough. He wanted to find his place,
Speaker 4: and the closest he had was his connections to the media.
Speaker 4: Wayne would call and tell me, you know, we need
Speaker 4: to do this, We need to do that. Okay, fine, Wayne,
Speaker 4: write me a check. You know we don't have any money. Wayne.
Speaker 8: It was two days of testimony.
Speaker 10: When the sun's first light at the County Courthouse, the
Speaker 10: crowd was already here. They started gathering at four am.
Speaker 10: Even though the doors didn't open till eight some four
Speaker 10: hundred showed up hoping to watch Wayne Williams testify. And
Speaker 10: when you get a crowd this size competing for about
Speaker 10: fifty court room seats, you've got trouble.
Speaker 8: So he did. We fell a pretty good job in
Speaker 8: the first day of testimony, kept his composure, answered the
Speaker 8: questions that they had to break in. They had to
Speaker 8: show the jury a different side of Wayne Williams. They
Speaker 8: had to let the jury see that this unassuming guy
Speaker 8: sitting in front of them had this other side to
Speaker 8: his personality, and they got it.
Speaker 9: Wayne Williams was not the mild mannered witness we saw
Speaker 9: the last two days.
Speaker 3: He was irritable, arrogant.
Speaker 9: Assistant Da Jack Mallard had him right where he wanted him.
Speaker 8: He finally broke and he snapped at the prosecutor.
Speaker 9: He called FBI agent's goons, didn't answer some of the
Speaker 9: prosecutor's questions and said his own defense attorney Mary Welcome,
Speaker 9: forced him to give an interview for money.
Speaker 8: You want the real Wayne Williams, Well, you got him
Speaker 8: right here is an observer.
Speaker 15: He was electric.
Speaker 9: Mallard, Mister Williams, you've been eating up all this worldwide publicity,
Speaker 9: haven't you, Williams, No, I haven't. I'm tired of sitting here,
Speaker 9: you telling these folks I fit the profile. Mallard Wasn't
Speaker 9: these murders your center stage? Williams, you must be a fool.
Speaker 8: I distinctly remember writing down I've got it here for you,
Speaker 8: looking up at somebody I don't remember who, making eye
Speaker 8: contact and looking at each other like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 8: here we go. Wayne became combative and testing, calling the
Speaker 8: prosecutor names. He was very, very combative.
Speaker 3: As an observer.
Speaker 8: As a juror, you saw a different sign to Wayne Williams.
Speaker 8: They did what they set out to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they got Wayne's goat. Mary advised Wayne not to testify,
Speaker 4: I mean, what are you going to do? But Wayne
Speaker 4: viewed it as I'm just overwhelmed. Anyway, I want to
Speaker 4: tell my story. They got his goat, they triggered him,
Speaker 4: and he exploded. He was going to explain it.
Speaker 9: The defense may have recouped a little after Williams fought
Speaker 9: back tears, later telling the jury he was just sick
Speaker 9: and tired of jail, the murder charges, and the harassment
Speaker 9: from police and the media. This was the star witness
Speaker 9: for the state, Larry Peterson, who for months has slumped
Speaker 9: over microscopes looking at fibers and hair taken from the
Speaker 9: two bodies. In court, he showed the jury photographs for
Speaker 9: the first time, pictures of fibers that he claims are
Speaker 9: similar and in his words, they matchine every basic property.
Speaker 8: Nine weeks of testimony, the jury came back in what
Speaker 8: was under ten hours, as I recall, which is a
Speaker 8: very short period of time. They had an early verdict.
Speaker 8: All in all, having watched what the jury watched, having
Speaker 8: heard everything the jury heard, having talked to the drawers afterwards,
Speaker 8: I'm not surprised by their verdict at all. I was
Speaker 8: a very young reporter when this was going on. This
Speaker 8: was was burned into my brain. It was so impressionable
Speaker 8: for me as a young person. I mean, I can
Speaker 8: recall the you know, wellman one eighty one b nylon
Speaker 8: trilobal fiber made by West Point Pepperel that, according to
Speaker 8: the testimony, was found in only I think it was
Speaker 8: eighty two helms. This resonated in my head in a
Speaker 8: way that a lot of other stories I've covered didn't.
Speaker 8: The problem this case as it's complex, and it's lengthy,
Speaker 8: and there are many moving parts and many pieces of
Speaker 8: the puzzle, and no one piece blows you away. You
Speaker 8: can't talk about the bridge and say, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 8: You can't talk about the fibers and say that does
Speaker 8: it for me. It was this long, slow unfolding of
Speaker 8: circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 17: When the Williams trial is finally history, it will be
Speaker 17: distinguished not only by the sheer bulk of scientific evidence
Speaker 17: presented to the jury, but also in the methods that
Speaker 17: scientific evidence was collected. Sophisticated new microscopes were brought in,
Speaker 17: and controversial testing techniques like neutron activity analysis were used
Speaker 17: to compare the fibers and dog here found on some
Speaker 17: of the trial victims with those found in William's home.
Speaker 4: I remembered closing arguments basically where they use this deal,
Speaker 4: you know, there have been no more murders since Wayne
Speaker 4: was arrested. Its blooney.
Speaker 7: The fence and closing arguments placed a thimble on the
Speaker 7: stand in front of the jury and had mentioned that
Speaker 7: that all the evidence that literally there's just a thimble
Speaker 7: full of evidence, that's all there is, you know, obviously
Speaker 7: trying to infer that because it's so small, it has
Speaker 7: minimal significance. But you know, I think that if you
Speaker 7: take a jury today and you tell them that this
Speaker 7: thimble is full of the Black plague and you set
Speaker 7: it on the on the Banisher, I think people are
Speaker 7: going to immediately recognize that this is not a place
Speaker 7: I want to be in. That's something that small. You
Speaker 7: think of microbes and viruses and things that are kind
Speaker 7: of common today that people fear things that are small
Speaker 7: can be very powerful. So really the only explanation is
Speaker 7: that either you can say all of this is just
Speaker 7: made up. And so we went to a great deal
Speaker 7: during the trial to explain how the finders have significance
Speaker 7: and why did these particular ones have significant it's.
Speaker 6: Government conspiracy.
Speaker 7: Well, if there's a government conspiracy, then I guess I'm
Speaker 7: part of the government conspiracy because I worked for the
Speaker 7: GBL in the crime lab and as a young forensic scientist,
Speaker 7: you know, went to these crime scenes. Did these collections
Speaker 7: be these comparisons? I think it would be extremely difficult
Speaker 7: for anybody to come in and replace all of that
Speaker 7: with some kind of contaminated evidence to make it all
Speaker 7: match the Williams Home environment.
Speaker 6: There's just no way.
Speaker 7: So I haven't heard another viable explanation to how it
Speaker 7: could be other than that. But I understand it's technical
Speaker 7: in a lot of ways, and people who don't want
Speaker 7: to believe things are just not going to believe.
Speaker 4: It had to be a black judge, had to be
Speaker 4: had to be a black killer. All of racism, all
Speaker 4: of our prejudices, all of them just came to the
Speaker 4: surface in the middle of that, and it was just
Speaker 4: a shame.
Speaker 7: You know, some people are just they're going to believe
Speaker 7: what they want to believe, and nothing you can say
Speaker 7: or do is going to dissuade them or convince them
Speaker 7: that it's something different than that. But I know what
Speaker 7: I know, and I think that if people are being
Speaker 7: reasonable and were being level headed and are not being
Speaker 7: biased about a preconceived notion of in route, when you
Speaker 7: lay it out, you can see it.
Speaker 4: Among those kids had died. Could have been a great poet,
Speaker 4: could have been a cured cancer, could have been a
Speaker 4: Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 3: Who knows, but.
Speaker 4: They never had the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Even though Wayne was in the hole and couldn't talk,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to stop gathering stories. By this point
Speaker 1: in time, I talked to so many people with all
Speaker 1: different opinions. I felt that some things were finally cleared
Speaker 1: up for me. What really happened to trial? What truly
Speaker 1: were the lynch pins of William's case? And how exactly
Speaker 1: trace evidence in fiber? And now aalysis stood up in
Speaker 1: a court of law. After talking to Larry, the fiber
Speaker 1: evidence seems stronger than ever. And right when things seem
Speaker 1: to be making sense, I got a phone call.
Speaker 18: You may start the conversation. Now what here is a
Speaker 18: womb killed all straighters. I'm finally onto all of everything.
Speaker 18: I'm doing great. They let me out yesterday. You know
Speaker 18: it was the craziest favorite book. How yesterday it happen?
Speaker 18: Will be a separate podcast except but you would never believe.
Speaker 18: Maybe it's a good thing that went down because a
Speaker 18: lot of role blocks got out on the way and
Speaker 18: a lot of wolves got overpay you never believe.
Speaker 1: Next time when Atlanta Monster, I talked to Wayne Williams again,
Speaker 1: but this time I have a whole new set of
Speaker 1: questions for him. Next time on the season finale of
Speaker 1: Atlanta Monster, that was the.
Speaker 7: Only hole that was ever knocked into the fiber evidence.
Speaker 7: We have these records that clearly indicate the seventy nine
Speaker 7: LGD was not available to the family. But yet we
Speaker 7: have trunkliner fibers that match that trunkliner that had bugged
Speaker 7: me through post trial.
Speaker 6: It always had bugged me.
Speaker 8: It was physical evidence, some of the strongest evidence that
Speaker 8: was presented in the trial. And I would tell you
Speaker 8: that ninety nine point nine percent of your audience has
Speaker 8: never heard of it.
Speaker 3: Blood Saints.
Speaker 19: And when he said I was looking at the car,
Speaker 19: and I was looking at the person in the car,
Speaker 19: and I was looking at the sketch. I was looking
Speaker 19: at the sketch in the back of my man.
Speaker 4: They'll be on TV.
Speaker 19: I'm gonna get rid of going, he said, I get
Speaker 19: you a rad I said, I don't eat no rat.
Speaker 19: I heard some car tag, so I can get backed up.
Speaker 19: And look, he whooped the car around in the middle
Speaker 19: of the street.
Speaker 1: Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week,
Speaker 1: with new episodes every Friday, A joint production between How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup
Speaker 1: and Vanity Set.
Speaker 3: Audio archives courtesy.
Speaker 1: Of WSB News Film and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives,
Speaker 1: University of Georgia Libraries For the latest updates, please visit
Speaker 1: atlantamonster dot com or follow us on social media. One
Speaker 1: last thing we've set up in Atlanta Monster tip line.
Speaker 1: Anyone with information, leads, or personal accounts pertaining to the
Speaker 1: Atlanta child murders can call.
Speaker 3: Us and leave a message.
Speaker 1: The number is one eight three three two eight five
Speaker 1: six six sixty seven. Again, that's one eight three three
Speaker 1: two eight five six six sixty seven.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 7: A Line Green Rules voice with a purple stripe in
Speaker 7: the guise of a fiber that unique. Not knowing how
Speaker 7: many Line Green Rolls voices might be out there with
Speaker 7: a purple Rations tric, imagine you've seen one