Speaker 1: Previously on Atlanta Monster.
Speaker 2: The one thing I remember most about the missing and
Speaker 2: murdered children is Maynard Jackson sitting there with piles of cash,
Speaker 2: offering a reward for any information on who was committing
Speaker 2: these crimes.
Speaker 3: We called Wayne Williams at two fifty five am on
Speaker 3: the last day of the surveillance.
Speaker 4: I've been incarcerated since nineteen eighty one. A few people
Speaker 4: realized I was never convicted in connection with any of
Speaker 4: the child murders, but.
Speaker 5: Once it was stand on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled.
Speaker 5: That was their way out.
Speaker 2: Some people in the black community thought it was the
Speaker 2: Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys.
Speaker 3: The Klan wanted to take credit for it.
Speaker 6: They weren't bright enough to commit this crime.
Speaker 7: They have a letter they called Sanders, the Klansmen, the
Speaker 7: prime suspect, and the murders.
Speaker 8: For months before Wayne Williams was arrested and charged with
Speaker 8: two of the murderers.
Speaker 5: Anybody out there he thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do
Speaker 5: all this by himself, was correct. I only know that
Speaker 5: from the mouth of the Double King song.
Speaker 9: I did some television in my early career. I learned
Speaker 9: on sixteen millimeter film and sixteen millimeter mag stripe film,
Speaker 9: and was a TV reporter in the transition to videotape
Speaker 9: three thousand hours of it in a helicopter Captain Dave
Speaker 9: and the WSB skycopter. There was a nickname that was
Speaker 9: laid on me, might even make that one up. Started
Speaker 9: in broadcasting in nineteen sixty nine, so I'm an og.
Speaker 9: A couple of years in they started finding the bodies
Speaker 9: of young black males, and we had a big newsroom.
Speaker 9: I had a lot of reporters. We would all ask
Speaker 9: the police are these related? Are these things connected? Could
Speaker 9: there be a connection between these? And the answer was no,
Speaker 9: until the bodies started adding up. I don't know whether
Speaker 9: the police admitted to themselves or they already knew but
Speaker 9: didn't say, but then they had to say something. It
Speaker 9: was too obvious that there was a pattern of this
Speaker 9: in some way, and they started talking about it in
Speaker 9: that manner. And I was at many of the scenes,
Speaker 9: many of the scenes where the bodies had been found
Speaker 9: up until that point at a homicide, police knew me,
Speaker 9: knew of me, and there was a level of trust
Speaker 9: that you could walk up almost to the body and
Speaker 9: talk with them and they would know that you would
Speaker 9: be judicious about what you reported. But when they started
Speaker 9: finding these bodies, there was none of that kept far
Speaker 9: away for the most part, away from where you could
Speaker 9: take any pictures or see anything about it, and that
Speaker 9: has left many questions for me. I knew Wayne Williams.
Speaker 9: I knew Wayne Williams from his days as a freelance
Speaker 9: television news photographer. He had a nice camera. That's the
Speaker 9: first thing I noticed. He had a Fresolini camera, and
Speaker 9: not everybody has one of those on their shoulders. At
Speaker 9: that time. Wayne would be out in the city scanner
Speaker 9: chasing and he would find a shooting or a fire
Speaker 9: or some such going on at night. And we would
Speaker 9: come in in the morning and the radio and Wayne
Speaker 9: would be there and he would ask us, do you
Speaker 9: have a story about, for instance, a fire fourteenth Street.
Speaker 9: If we said we did, he would ask the photocopy
Speaker 9: the script. He would take that photocopy and tape it
Speaker 9: to his film can and leave it for Channel two.
Speaker 9: The one thing that I noticed about Wayne was car
Speaker 9: he drove. It was a bloom Plymouth satellite and it
Speaker 9: was just like a detective police car in Atlanta and Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Another body was discovered today the twenty third.
Speaker 8: At Police Task Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces
Speaker 8: on the wall. Twenty six murdered was missing. We do
Speaker 8: not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore,
Speaker 8: we do not have the money.
Speaker 1: From Tenerfo TV and houstill forks in Atlanta.
Speaker 10: Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently was asphyxiated.
Speaker 8: Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
Speaker 8: on killing.
Speaker 1: This is Atlanta Monster.
Speaker 9: Wayne Williams drove a blue Plymouth satellite. It looked just
Speaker 9: like an unmarked Atlanta police car. I'm pretty good at
Speaker 9: spotting undercover cars because the way I drive, and that
Speaker 9: one stood out.
Speaker 11: The main car in this case has always been that
Speaker 11: white station Wagon, the one Wayne was driving that night
Speaker 11: on the bridge. But during my research I was hearing
Speaker 11: more accounts about blue cars.
Speaker 1: The first blue car I heard about was a Nova.
Speaker 10: I know there was talk about a blue Nova, which
Speaker 10: Wayne didn't drive a blue Nova.
Speaker 11: Vincent Hill also mentioned this victim. Jeffrey Mathis was seen
Speaker 11: getting into a blue Nova, and according to Rodney's story,
Speaker 11: he was picked up in a blue Nova too. But
Speaker 11: Wayne didn't drive a blue Nova. Then I thought, what
Speaker 11: do these cars look like? How similar is a blue
Speaker 11: Plymouth to a blue Nova? Would a child know the difference?
Speaker 11: So I looked them up, and to me, these cars
Speaker 11: looked very similar in some ways, almost identical.
Speaker 9: It was medium metallic blue. He had a built in scanner,
Speaker 9: not a magnetic mount, but a real scanner, and it
Speaker 9: looked for all the world like a cop car. Wayne
Speaker 9: Williams a quiet didn't say much, and he got his
Speaker 9: job done and left at the station. Here's a question
Speaker 9: I have about Wayne Williams. He was kind of pudgy.
Speaker 9: How does a guy like that? How do we reckon
Speaker 9: that he abducted fairly old, street smart kids who probably
Speaker 9: knew how to fight without getting hurt himself. How did
Speaker 9: that happen? How did these kids allegedly go with him
Speaker 9: with no fight, with no signs of a struggle on
Speaker 9: Wayne's part. They would have mashed his face, surely bruised
Speaker 9: him in some way or injured him in some way,
Speaker 9: but that was never talked about. When I heard that
Speaker 9: he was arrested, the one thing that came in my
Speaker 9: mind first was why didn't they think of him first?
Speaker 9: Because they told us that they were looking for someone
Speaker 9: who maybe had a visage of authority that presented themselves
Speaker 9: like an authority figure like a police or maybe a
Speaker 9: male man or whatever. They were looking for somebody like that. Well,
Speaker 9: look at this guy's driving a what looks like a
Speaker 9: police car.
Speaker 1: David makes a pretty good point.
Speaker 11: Wayne did fit the FBI profile, in particular the desire
Speaker 11: to impersonate a police officer. But David still had his
Speaker 11: doubts about Wayne's guilt. He remember as many suspects before
Speaker 11: Wayne Williams too.
Speaker 9: There were some bizarre things that happened while they were looking.
Speaker 9: There was one suspect who came into mind and was
Speaker 9: being actively watched, as we understood, and that person got
Speaker 9: angry and came to the radio station wanted to do
Speaker 9: an interview. The police chief came to the station with
Speaker 9: the general manager, albo Ellis, and me and some other people,
Speaker 9: and they were kind of explaining to us. The police
Speaker 9: were kind of explaining to us that how dangerous it
Speaker 9: was to put.
Speaker 1: On the air.
Speaker 9: Well, we knew that, we knew that the general manager's
Speaker 9: station was the recipient of a Peabody award. I mean,
Speaker 9: we weren't slapshot at it, and this man came to
Speaker 9: us and we did the interview, and the man said,
Speaker 9: you know, you could get killed investigating a story like this.
Speaker 9: We call police. And for a time she slept with
Speaker 9: a radio station walkie talkie beside the bed, and I
Speaker 9: had one beside mine in case she had trouble, and
Speaker 9: the police had ordered protection for her. When you're investigating
Speaker 9: a murder and serial murder and somebody says that that
Speaker 9: will send a chill in your spine, they really will.
Speaker 9: I can't remember the name of the person, but I
Speaker 9: remember it was medium bill, black male, and that's that's
Speaker 9: all I can remember. But the police knew who he
Speaker 9: was and they were watching.
Speaker 11: Even David himself was investigated at one point.
Speaker 9: They tell me that they looked at me because there
Speaker 9: were reports witness accounts that a white man with a
Speaker 9: mustache wearing a flat sport cap was trying to pick
Speaker 9: up kids along Stuart Avenue. Well, I lived on the
Speaker 9: South Side, I had a mustache, no wore flat caps,
Speaker 9: So there you go, and they checked me out. Years later,
Speaker 9: I was coaching my son's soccer team and one of
Speaker 9: the other coaches came up and put his arm on
Speaker 9: my shoulder and said, buddy, we know more at you
Speaker 9: than you think we do. And I said, how's that?
Speaker 9: He said, GBI agent, we had younger surveillance. Head of
Speaker 9: the GBI, Phil Peterson told me because I had developed
Speaker 9: a relationship with him and talked to him, and he
Speaker 9: knew me and I knew him, and he knew if
Speaker 9: he told me something not to get out that I
Speaker 9: could hold it in confidence. He said, Dave, someday, I'll
Speaker 9: sit down with you when this is over, and I'll
Speaker 9: tell you everything I know. And philed out of kidney
Speaker 9: cancer before I could talk to him. This whole thing
Speaker 9: sounds like it's unreal, like it's out of a TV show.
Speaker 9: And it always had that kind of vibe to it,
Speaker 9: what's next, what are they going to find next? And
Speaker 9: it was a vice president, it was a mayor with
Speaker 9: a pile of cash, and it was the mayor pointing
Speaker 9: his finger at the camera. I'm coming. You've seen the film.
Speaker 1: Here's one hundred thousand dollars and it's all yours. This
Speaker 1: got me thinking about that reward money.
Speaker 12: Ticket sales alone for the show brought in one hundred
Speaker 12: and forty five thousand dollars. Then there were a few
Speaker 12: big donations from Warner Brothers, Coca Cola and the like,
Speaker 12: and some sizable ones from individuals too. The after party
Speaker 12: auction brought in another eighteen grand all in all a
Speaker 12: big haul, easily over two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: At this point, I'd heard so much about it, But
Speaker 1: where'd it go?
Speaker 9: I've wondered about a lot of money things, So what
Speaker 9: happened to that money? I don't know. After all, the
Speaker 9: large of the reward, the more likely it will be
Speaker 9: that police will eventually get the information they need to
Speaker 9: solve these horrifying murders.
Speaker 7: When Muhammad Ali announced he would add to the reward fund,
Speaker 7: making it five hundred thousand dollars, even city officials were surprised.
Speaker 7: In thanking Ali. Mayor Jackson said this was the largest
Speaker 7: single donation in the history of the cases.
Speaker 11: All those private donations and the benefit concerts, tons of
Speaker 11: money raised it catch the killer.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to it?
Speaker 11: It's a question I asked everybody, Captain.
Speaker 1: Dave, Now, I don't know where the money man, Monica Pierson, you.
Speaker 2: Know that's one of the things you need to ask.
Speaker 2: What happened to all of that reward money. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 2: one person who could probably answer that for sure it
Speaker 2: has passed on the former mayor, Maynard Jackson, because Maynard
Speaker 2: was very hands on. I was the city hall reporter
Speaker 2: in those days, so he was responsible to the community
Speaker 2: and he would know where that went.
Speaker 1: Doctor Blackwelter, that's a good question, may be something good
Speaker 1: for you looking to the APD.
Speaker 5: I don't have any idea.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that that two million dollars is missing?
Speaker 5: No one got the reward? I know, I didn't. I
Speaker 5: don't know. I never even heard that there was, but
Speaker 5: I don't doubt that it's missing.
Speaker 13: It had to be kept somewhere, and whether it was
Speaker 13: real cash or not, or just just set up for
Speaker 13: that particular shot. You know, it may have been promised money.
Speaker 13: It could have been Coca Cola or Georgia Power or
Speaker 13: somebody would have said, Okay, y'all catch him and then
Speaker 13: we're going to put in a million dollars. I seem
Speaker 13: like I heard that it was going to be divided
Speaker 13: between the victims' families, but I don't think we ever
Speaker 13: really figured out. But all the true victims, you know
Speaker 13: that FBI.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure that it went to anybody. You know,
Speaker 3: the usually the conditions of reward money as as based
Speaker 3: on as you provide information that leads to the arrest
Speaker 3: and conviction thereof. Well, the information that led to the
Speaker 3: conviction thereof was FBI and police information. It wasn't any
Speaker 3: one particular person. Now, had you know, had somebody called
Speaker 3: me and said, this is Payne Wayne Williams did this
Speaker 3: and here's why, and then we went we found out
Speaker 3: then you would be subject to qualify to get the
Speaker 3: reward money.
Speaker 6: Word got out. If you got on the list, you
Speaker 6: got money. They raised a quarter of a million dollars,
Speaker 6: which is a lot of money at that time, and
Speaker 6: that went into the fund for the parents of the
Speaker 6: murdered and missing kids. So if you made the list,
Speaker 6: you got money.
Speaker 5: I wasn't involved in it.
Speaker 3: There was decisions to give so much money to the victims'
Speaker 3: families to help them out because they were a lot
Speaker 3: of them were on the lower end of the socioeconomical scale.
Speaker 2: If the families are saying they didn't receive it, and
Speaker 2: the FBI really doesn't know where it went, then is
Speaker 2: it sitting in a bank account somewhere drawing interest?
Speaker 9: What happened to that money. I don't know. I really
Speaker 9: wish it had shaken loose more people to talk. Somebody
Speaker 9: knows something. They might be dead now, they might be dead.
Speaker 9: Somebody knows something.
Speaker 1: You know what I talked to, had any idea where
Speaker 1: it went?
Speaker 14: What were what money? I don't remember. I know of
Speaker 14: anyone mentioning to us money's being raised for the family.
Speaker 14: I don't know if it was being and whatever happened
Speaker 14: to it. If it did, of course my dad it
Speaker 14: was never mentioned to me by him or either one
Speaker 14: of my brothers or sisters that any money was involved
Speaker 14: in it. My brother being killed like that, I don't
Speaker 14: think none of was thinking about any money in the
Speaker 14: first place. If someone said money being raised, and it's
Speaker 14: been that money is given to somebody said, well, come
Speaker 14: tell me exactly who killed your brother, I'm going to
Speaker 14: give him that reward. That's the way I would have
Speaker 14: looked at the money. I think that is maybe something
Speaker 14: needs to be looked into.
Speaker 9: When I listened to the tape of his interview on
Speaker 9: your podcast, No Wonder, his attorney didn't want him to talk.
Speaker 9: He was wacky. He was wacky. He talked in a
Speaker 9: scattershot manner about stuff that had nothing to do with
Speaker 9: anything like trying to enterprise a rap singer out of prison.
Speaker 9: And he's connection with the CIA. I just didn't I
Speaker 9: don't see that.
Speaker 11: When I started my research on Wayne Williams and the
Speaker 11: Atlanta child murders, a certain storyline kept popping up. Wayne
Speaker 11: Williams alleged CIA background. It sounds crazy, I know. In
Speaker 11: my first call with Wayne, he briefly mentioned it.
Speaker 15: The only conspiracy that came in was once my name
Speaker 15: hit the Steprioc computers and it got to Washington. That's
Speaker 15: when they pattied because they had a ran country going
Speaker 15: and because to the government who on my background working
Speaker 15: for the agency and they were a friend, would expose it.
Speaker 10: If I remember correctly. In talking to Wayne, he said
Speaker 10: when he was seventeen when he got approached.
Speaker 11: Vincent spoke to Wayne on several occasions and he told
Speaker 11: him about it too.
Speaker 10: This agency that UH fronted as the Junior ORLTC program.
Speaker 10: But what they would do is they would recruit young
Speaker 10: individuals to train for the CIA, and in that training
Speaker 10: he learned to kill people with choke hold. I don't
Speaker 10: know why he told that story again. It goes back
Speaker 10: to Wayne, loving to embellish stuff that ended up getting
Speaker 10: him in trouble. Here some of the victims were supposedly strangled,
Speaker 10: and here's this guy saying, yeah, I'm trained to put
Speaker 10: people in choke holds. Wayne, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Do I believe it happened?
Speaker 10: No, not at all. A there would be some kind
Speaker 10: of declassified the record by now, thirty plus years ago
Speaker 10: that said, yes, we recruited Wayne B. Williams for this program, right,
Speaker 10: I mean, now you can get the declassified Kennedy files.
Speaker 10: Thirty plus years later, no one's ever came forward and said, Yep,
Speaker 10: Wayne's telling the truth about that. If it happened by now,
Speaker 10: we would know about it.
Speaker 1: Dwayne Hendrix also mentioned it to me.
Speaker 16: Wayne told me the first in depth conversation that we
Speaker 16: had that when he was a part of the CIA
Speaker 16: Junior Officers program, he went on two missions to Africa
Speaker 16: and he saw two villages of men, women, and children
Speaker 16: that were completely and totally wiped out.
Speaker 1: Dead bodies stacked.
Speaker 5: Who showed him this?
Speaker 16: Dude, he was a part of the CIA Junior's Officers program.
Speaker 11: Do you think this somehow plays into him being convicted
Speaker 11: as the killer.
Speaker 5: Because of what he saw.
Speaker 11: In doing some more digging, I found an old documentary
Speaker 11: called Reclamation. Wayne talks about it there too.
Speaker 4: When I was going through school, when I started in college,
Speaker 4: I was reports to work for something called a JLT program,
Speaker 4: a Junior Office and Training program, which is a minority
Speaker 4: recruiting program for the Central Intelligence Agency. I asked him,
Speaker 4: went so far as to take two trips to camp Peria,
Speaker 4: Virginia nineteen seventy seven in nineteen seventy eight, and these
Speaker 4: people wanted me to work with them because I already
Speaker 4: had an electronics background of new photography, and they were
Speaker 4: having some problems at the time in Africa. Apparently the
Speaker 4: United States, what we were told, was involved in some
Speaker 4: action in Africa, going against the government in Angola and all,
Speaker 4: and they needed some blacks to work for them at
Speaker 4: the time. So in the process of considering me for that,
Speaker 4: my name was already on the government's computer role. And
Speaker 4: I think after the bridge stopped, when you put one
Speaker 4: plus one equals two together, people jumped, and I think
Speaker 4: that's exactly what happened to Panic during the radio station era.
Speaker 4: We came to find out that while we were operating
Speaker 4: the radio station, I was also under surveillance by the
Speaker 4: FBI's Corn and Tail program. The NSA had a program
Speaker 4: which was also called mineration in Shamrock, Minerate and Shamrock.
Speaker 4: If you get those files that came out of the
Speaker 4: Frank Church here Ins of nineteen seventy five and seventy six,
Speaker 4: I am the young black reporter that's mentioned in those
Speaker 4: files where we were under observation because of our association
Speaker 4: with SCLC. They knew me for a long time.
Speaker 9: If you listen to that interview and he talks about
Speaker 9: being with the CIA and all this stuff, he could
Speaker 9: have been duped into thinking it was CIA work or
Speaker 9: super secret agency stuff. I don't know. I've often wondered
Speaker 9: that if there were others the way that they just
Speaker 9: took all of the cases after those convictions and shoved
Speaker 9: me into a band and close the door and lock it.
Speaker 9: I still am not sure that Wayne Williams was the
Speaker 9: only guy responsible. I think he deserves to be in prison.
Speaker 11: David Volk told me that he didn't believe Wayne was
Speaker 11: the Atlanta Chel murder, but he also admitted that Wayne
Speaker 11: was an unusual guy with some pretty out there stories
Speaker 11: larger than life.
Speaker 9: They got him dead to rights at the Jackson Bridge.
Speaker 9: I mean, he had no explanation for that, but it
Speaker 9: is possible. I think it's extremely possible that there were
Speaker 9: other people involved. I think he was a conspirator.
Speaker 11: Doctor Blackwelder, who is close to Wayne's family and also
Speaker 11: currently owns his old white station wagon, has his own
Speaker 11: story of Wayne's CIA involvement.
Speaker 17: Somebody that would take him out to some place in
Speaker 17: Georgia that had a firing range and let him shoot
Speaker 17: all kinds of machine guns and all. And he said
Speaker 17: that he was an undercover agent for the somebody. Hey, Shirley,
Speaker 17: let me get my wife. Shirley, okay, can you stick
Speaker 17: your head tell her to come in here.
Speaker 11: Blackwater asked me to get his wife from the kitchen
Speaker 11: because she remembered the story better.
Speaker 1: I got to meet his dog too, tell him what.
Speaker 17: The deal was on Homer and then and Wayne was
Speaker 17: supposed to be an undercover agent for somebody or this
Speaker 17: guy pulled up in this black car and came in into
Speaker 17: the radio station somewhere in the line and took him
Speaker 17: out way off somewhere and let him shooting machine guns
Speaker 17: and all.
Speaker 18: That.
Speaker 19: That was when Wayne was fourteen.
Speaker 9: It was CIA.
Speaker 1: This is a real thing.
Speaker 11: Why would the CIA have any business recruiting Wayne Williams.
Speaker 5: As a kid as his father did.
Speaker 11: He said the took interest in Wayne because of Homer,
Speaker 11: his father, and apparently Homer had contact with them too.
Speaker 17: He worked on the Manhattan Project. When these CIA agents
Speaker 17: or whatever they were, old Wayne, if you'll work for us,
Speaker 17: should help us, we'll kick you out at least you
Speaker 17: fly on an airplane and shooting machine guns and everything.
Speaker 17: And they took him somewhere that looked like a horse ranch.
Speaker 17: But when you went down the niots they had these
Speaker 17: targets shut up in all these kind of actions.
Speaker 11: They told me about a collection of files. Hommer had
Speaker 11: one they had seen with their own eyes.
Speaker 20: Homer had four file cabinets full of files pictures be
Speaker 20: on up the Manhattan Project, and he told Eddie and
Speaker 20: myself that we could have it when he passed away.
Speaker 20: And he passed away, and we went up there and
Speaker 20: they were in a storage building lot. We were the
Speaker 20: only ones that had to keep and.
Speaker 17: Had all the Wayne High School textbooks and everything in it.
Speaker 17: And we went in there and it was full of stuff,
Speaker 17: and here was this file cabin Because I remember I
Speaker 17: found one of these little metal file boxes that had
Speaker 17: pictures of them grading off for the Atlanta Airports when
Speaker 17: they were building the Atlanta Airports. And then there were
Speaker 17: three or four file cabinets that were so full that
Speaker 17: you couldn't have gotten another file folded if you had to,
Speaker 17: and it had a lot of stuff in there that
Speaker 17: Homeward you had when he was at the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 17: After Homer died, Wayne said, any of that kind of
Speaker 17: stuff you want, get it, And so we looked in
Speaker 17: there the day that we went to get the car,
Speaker 17: but we didn't have any way of bringing that stuff back,
Speaker 17: so Sir and I said we'll come back and get it,
Speaker 17: and then went back the next time to get it,
Speaker 17: and somebody cleaned the place out. Somebody broke in, but
Speaker 17: the padlock was locked. Miss Graystell had the key, and
Speaker 17: we went out there and came back. He said, Miss Granted,
Speaker 17: there's nothing in that house and who got the stuff?
Speaker 17: She said, had anybody been in it? Or somebody did?
Speaker 20: So we scared. She know that anybody been out there,
Speaker 20: and it was wrapped there at her back.
Speaker 17: Door, but everything in there was gone that was worth
Speaker 17: any day, and the file cabage were there, but they
Speaker 17: were empty.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the only unsettling experience for the Blackwaters.
Speaker 17: I was doing a church service up in rolling Out
Speaker 17: in the country, and so after church that was Sunday morning,
Speaker 17: we wouldn't come back home. We didn't go back again
Speaker 17: that night. We just stay up there. We went shopping
Speaker 17: one day at a mall and I was sitting in
Speaker 17: the car relation in the radio, and she went in
Speaker 17: the belt shopping and I got a telephone call and
Speaker 17: it was from Secret Service to FBI said we've got
Speaker 17: a threat on your life. That seemed serious, and he said,
Speaker 17: our closest agent is in Summrblee and he's only his
Speaker 17: way down there right now. And I said, well, let
Speaker 17: me tell you what kind of car I'm driving. And
Speaker 17: I told him Matt the tag numbered all And he said,
Speaker 17: where are you going to go tonight? I said, we're
Speaker 17: going back to the church. And he said, we'll have
Speaker 17: somebody sitting outside the.
Speaker 1: Church watching the door.
Speaker 17: Do you know who comes to church at that it's
Speaker 17: a small country church. It's always the same fable say yes.
Speaker 17: He said, if anybody comes in that you don't know,
Speaker 17: just fall down behind the puttle bit and we'll be
Speaker 17: in their own.
Speaker 11: Is Wayne making all this up? Is black bull making
Speaker 11: this up? And for what reason? Wayne had mentioned Iron
Speaker 11: Contra to me.
Speaker 15: That's when they've panised because they had a Red Contra going.
Speaker 11: I wanted some more background, sorry, reached out to Ben
Speaker 11: Bowling again from stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 18: The Iran Contra affair as it's known today, occurs in
Speaker 18: the nineteen eighties, with the final federal government conclusion coming
Speaker 18: in nineteen ninety three. Here's what happened. The Reagan administration
Speaker 18: was very anti communist, unsurprisingly, and they wanted to fund
Speaker 18: the operations of Contras anti Sandinista anti communist fighters in Nicaragua,
Speaker 18: but they needed to get the money from some other source.
Speaker 18: So at the time, Iran and Iraq are in a war,
Speaker 18: and the Reagan administration decides to violate an arms embargo
Speaker 18: and sell weapons illegally to Iran in this war against Iraq,
Speaker 18: and then take some of the money from that sale
Speaker 18: and funnel it again illegally, super illegally to the Contras
Speaker 18: in their fight against the Communists. This was in violation
Speaker 18: of something called the Boland Agreement that came from the
Speaker 18: US Congress, So it was a situation where one hand
Speaker 18: of the government is saying something to the public and
Speaker 18: the left hand is doing exactly the opposite. It was
Speaker 18: a real life conspiracy.
Speaker 11: What do we think Wayne is suggesting here the connection?
Speaker 11: What does this have to do with the possibility of.
Speaker 1: Him being innocent? Right?
Speaker 21: Yes?
Speaker 18: So what does this person, whether or not they're committing
Speaker 18: a string of murders in Atlanta at the time, What
Speaker 18: did they have to do with events in the Iran
Speaker 18: Iraq War? What do they have to do with communist
Speaker 18: conflicts in Nicaragua. And that's a question that's very difficult
Speaker 18: to answer because Wayne has mentioned the Iran contra affair,
Speaker 18: but has not, to our knowledge at least specified how
Speaker 18: he would be functioning in relation to that. That makes
Speaker 18: it very difficult to entirely accept.
Speaker 11: Nearly every time I talked to Wayne, I asked for
Speaker 11: important people I should interview, and the name that came up.
Speaker 1: The most was Sidney Dorsey.
Speaker 11: According to Wayne, Dorsey, a detective on Wayne's case, later
Speaker 11: admitted to the corruption he was involved in that got
Speaker 11: Wayne convicted.
Speaker 1: In the first place, You're.
Speaker 15: Gonna get to hear from Sidney Dorsey, who was an
Speaker 15: ex He was the person while the person responsible putting
Speaker 15: me in prison. Now he wants to tell the story
Speaker 15: about the witnesses he paid and why he.
Speaker 19: Did what he did.
Speaker 1: But again I didn't have the details.
Speaker 15: You're going to find out what Lewis Graham took to
Speaker 15: the grand jury and all tried to get Insie.
Speaker 22: And why.
Speaker 15: Sidney Dorsey is probably going to agree to talk to you.
Speaker 15: He's willing to complete. I am back down on communication
Speaker 15: Graham as we speak. These are things that you're going
Speaker 15: to learn as we talk. That's what I'm trying to
Speaker 15: get to this.
Speaker 1: If you remember from episode four, Dorsey became sheriff of
Speaker 1: the Cab County but later went to jail for conspiracy
Speaker 1: to commit murder.
Speaker 16: Sydney ended up being the sheriff for the Cab County.
Speaker 16: I think what he was really trying to do is
Speaker 16: he was trying to solve the murders initially found out
Speaker 16: for one, and there were multiple people that were doing
Speaker 16: the murders.
Speaker 1: They were prepared to make.
Speaker 11: A risks to find any evidence that would Oh absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 16: I mean Sidney Dorsey is.
Speaker 14: The keita all this.
Speaker 11: If he was the key to all this, then I
Speaker 11: had to talk to him. So I wrote him a
Speaker 11: letter in prison, and in the meantime, my team looked
Speaker 11: around for any way to coroborate his story. That's when
Speaker 11: we came across an old dateline interview with Sidney Dorsey
Speaker 11: regarding the Atlanta child murders.
Speaker 23: I frankly don't think that Wayne Williams has killed anyone.
Speaker 24: That's former Atlanta homicide detective sid Dorsey, who was with
Speaker 24: the task for us that put Williams behind bars. He's
Speaker 24: one of an unlikely group of people in the criminal
Speaker 24: justice system now coming forward to say Wayne Williams did
Speaker 24: not commit the Atlanta child murders.
Speaker 23: Never thought that Wayne Williams was guilty of any murder
Speaker 23: that has.
Speaker 24: Not one of those dozens of killings, not one.
Speaker 11: It's pretty hard to misinterpret his answers without a doubt.
Speaker 11: His statement was in favor of Wayne's innocence.
Speaker 23: People ask me often, did Wayne Williams do it? And
Speaker 23: I says no.
Speaker 11: Dorsey brings up Clifford Jones's case. Jones's body was found
Speaker 11: by a dumpster outside a laundrymat.
Speaker 24: Jones disappeared in August nineteen eighty close to this inner
Speaker 24: city strip mall. Hours later, he was found near a dumpster.
Speaker 24: Behind the mall, strangled wrapped.
Speaker 23: In plaster, there was a young man who claims to
Speaker 23: have witnessed the murder of Clifford Jones.
Speaker 24: Dorsey says an alleged eye witness described the strangling of
Speaker 24: Jones and identified the strangler not Wayne Williams, but a
Speaker 24: man named Jamie Brooks.
Speaker 23: I've always lived with the notion that Jamie Brooks murdered
Speaker 23: the child.
Speaker 24: Brooks later died after serving time in prison for rape, sodomy,
Speaker 24: and kidnapping. And despite all that evidence, the task force
Speaker 24: blamed Clifford jones murder not on Jamie Brooks, but on
Speaker 24: Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: The owner of the laundromat.
Speaker 11: Jamie Brooks wasn't deemed guilty, even though eye witnesses testified
Speaker 11: as seeing him place Jones's body there. Years later, Jamie
Speaker 11: Brooks went to prison for raping and killing a young boy.
Speaker 11: By now, I had talked to Wayne Williams off and
Speaker 11: on for months, countless late night phone calls and digging
Speaker 11: through old stories that he says proves his innocence, and
Speaker 11: to be honest, it seemed like some of it checked out,
Speaker 11: but not everything. I felt it was time to meet
Speaker 11: Wayne in person, and he thought so too.
Speaker 15: It's a lot easy to get on the regular visitation
Speaker 15: least instead of a special visit. Me anytime, it's get a
Speaker 15: special visit. I can have two people of one time
Speaker 15: to get I really want to get you and Dwayne
Speaker 15: together down here at the same time, so I'll get
Speaker 15: deforms to you. You have to fill it out and
Speaker 15: return it ahead of time, and then all you've got
Speaker 15: to do is sit whatever date you want to come
Speaker 15: on the weekends of the holiday.
Speaker 1: Sounded simple, so I pulled out performs and sent them
Speaker 1: in for this weekend.
Speaker 25: That's when you were trying to do it.
Speaker 26: Okay, if we get it tomorrow, I.
Speaker 25: Can go ahead and run the background checking everything on
Speaker 25: you check May women tomorrow afternoon.
Speaker 1: Then a few days later, my warden has.
Speaker 25: Left at your significant other form. There's no problems as
Speaker 25: far as that. But we're not going to approve the
Speaker 25: visit for tomorrow because we have knowledge that you are
Speaker 25: doing a documentary on mister Williams, and we have to
Speaker 25: put do that through our public affairs department before you
Speaker 25: can enter the facility. You know, we probably would have
Speaker 25: gone ahead and approved it, but he said, well, let
Speaker 25: we just need to run it by just in case,
Speaker 25: you know, he said, he thought we would need to
Speaker 25: talk with public affairs that just make them aware of it,
Speaker 25: and then we would get back with you. But I
Speaker 25: will get in touch with them the first of the week,
Speaker 25: make sure that there's no issues as far as they're concerned,
Speaker 25: which I don't anticipate. But it's just procedure, you know,
Speaker 25: it's just procedure. And I'll call you back just as
Speaker 25: soon as I mess up.
Speaker 1: A small roadblock, but still promising, He a why n
Speaker 1: e first moon?
Speaker 9: Okay, well, they just got in yesterday.
Speaker 26: They want to be processed yet, and I don't see
Speaker 26: your name.
Speaker 25: I gave her your number, your call back.
Speaker 27: I think she said she just waiting, you know, the lady.
Speaker 25: You need to talk to her.
Speaker 27: I think she's still a look.
Speaker 26: Your last thing is limbsy.
Speaker 27: Thinking a longer.
Speaker 26: I think I'm good. I got them, I got them
Speaker 26: on my desk.
Speaker 9: I to process it.
Speaker 25: Right now, so we don't have you an answer sometime
Speaker 25: this afternoons hopefully.
Speaker 1: And finally, yes, sir, it was a proof of this happening.
Speaker 11: It was happening, and in just a few days. But
Speaker 11: I've never been to a prison before.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's it's you know, it's I've seen I've
Speaker 8: seen every type.
Speaker 11: This is Mark Smirling, creator of the podcast Crime Town
Speaker 11: and the docuseries The Jinx.
Speaker 1: This was nothing new to him. Most of the time
Speaker 1: you're in a public area.
Speaker 28: I'd been in one prison visit where I was alone with.
Speaker 1: A with an officer with a guard.
Speaker 28: Usually there's some guard sitting right in the very cos,
Speaker 28: you know, listening.
Speaker 21: To everything which is going.
Speaker 8: But I found that those people are usually pretty good about,
Speaker 8: you know, money, talk about whatever you want as long.
Speaker 29: As you're not talking about escaping. Have you ever done
Speaker 29: a prison visit before?
Speaker 1: Nope, I never have.
Speaker 29: Excusing love, you cannot bring anything but quarterse don't bring
Speaker 29: anything that much drivers life and this supporter I'm gonna
Speaker 29: get you, so we'll we'll be able to change everything.
Speaker 29: So we'll we'll like to spit as early as you can.
Speaker 29: The reason why is because they have account that happens
Speaker 29: like a level o'clock after you level's gonna be one
Speaker 29: o'clock before you get in. You got to get there
Speaker 29: like that a nine thirty, you know, So we.
Speaker 27: Can make this and we're meant to happen, it be
Speaker 27: worth to talk.
Speaker 22: You gotta go through metal detective and all that stuff.
Speaker 19: They're gonna make you take your shoes.
Speaker 22: You know, you just want to have maybe like a
Speaker 22: roll of corners.
Speaker 15: You can get a cup home for.
Speaker 19: Something like that out of the machine.
Speaker 14: And you want to be dressed in minimum It's possible.
Speaker 13: Just like one I did say, I.
Speaker 27: Need y'all to give you this close to nine. It
Speaker 27: is topble. You gotta have many times to talk.
Speaker 19: Just send you to talk.
Speaker 27: Yeah, I'm doing this project. But for all those people
Speaker 27: in Atlanta, you never got dressed. That's talking about the
Speaker 27: Mealman of Jongs, of parents, lost family members, and you know,
Speaker 27: the police all the language didn't give the ball because
Speaker 27: they were like, I got a problem. The same thing
Speaker 27: that was happening in Atlanta nineteen eighty one, that happened
Speaker 27: in the day. The only difference is you got the
Speaker 27: face of it is trade all mark and all these things.
Speaker 27: This is why I'm doing is to open up with
Speaker 27: high socials so it's any good because of Doug and
Speaker 27: make the way to change it. That's what I'm about.
Speaker 27: Let's take it happen.
Speaker 1: Time Wayne was anxious to me and so was I.
Speaker 11: Just as things seem to be going smoothly, I got
Speaker 11: a phone call from the prison Missillians.
Speaker 26: See this is Michelle coming home tail from Sake Prisons.
Speaker 26: I'm speaking with him about your visit. Was Innate Williams
Speaker 26: that visit for Saturday, Hans the council. Sir, when you
Speaker 26: get this smssage, please give my call at two to
Speaker 26: nine eight.
Speaker 1: Just like that. It wasn't happening.
Speaker 27: While he's in the lockdown.
Speaker 26: You under investigation.
Speaker 12: You will not be allowed to do.
Speaker 11: I'm not really that familiar with what that means exactly.
Speaker 11: So does something happen all of a sudden like this
Speaker 11: morning or something?
Speaker 26: Just something happened here, So he's on investigation now, so
Speaker 26: therefore you won't.
Speaker 1: Be allowed to well, no, one won't be.
Speaker 15: Allowed to in to him.
Speaker 1: Do you think that it might be weeks before he
Speaker 1: can talk or what?
Speaker 19: I'm not sure, sir. I'm not sure how long it
Speaker 19: would be before you can talk about the way, sir,
Speaker 19: there's nothing you could.
Speaker 11: According to Dwayne Hendricks, Wayne was in the hole. Now
Speaker 11: I think that meant isolation. He was under some sort
Speaker 11: of investigation.
Speaker 19: Yeah, so they came and got him.
Speaker 21: Uh, last night.
Speaker 1: But Dwayne said, this was nothing new.
Speaker 19: Last time, and shit happened.
Speaker 21: He was in.
Speaker 22: He was in the hole from maybe like a a
Speaker 22: month of.
Speaker 19: Maybe even more than that.
Speaker 22: When I first got involved with this initially, I went
Speaker 22: and visited Wayne. I went and I met some of
Speaker 22: the people that he told me I needed to meet,
Speaker 22: and I said, well, fuck it, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 22: and do what I needed to do to get started
Speaker 22: and start working with Sidney Dorsey. I wrote Sidney Dorsey,
Speaker 22: I told him who I was. I was exchanging letters
Speaker 22: with Sidney Dorsey. The next step was to go through
Speaker 22: the public relations officer for Georgia Department of Correction and
Speaker 22: I got the form that I needed. I submitted the form.
Speaker 19: When I made the phone call to see if they
Speaker 19: received the form, it was a complete total lockdown for
Speaker 19: all inmate in the Georgia Department of Corrections that no one.
Speaker 21: Would be able to interview anyone. That's the extent these
Speaker 21: people are willing to try to go to make sure
Speaker 21: this ship don't get out. There's multiple people that will
Speaker 21: end up going to prison, maybe for the rest of
Speaker 21: their lives because.
Speaker 19: Of this taint.
Speaker 1: Next time on Atlanta Monster.
Speaker 28: Sim Jersey letters. Well, let's you know it wasn't Tamper
Speaker 28: West because the Georgia State President. Interesting. This is handwritten,
Speaker 28: which is why it's hard to read. I received your
Speaker 28: letter dated December fourth, twenty seventeen, and I truly apologize
Speaker 28: for my delay in responding to you. Please forgive and
Speaker 28: charge it to my head and not my heart. Best regards, Sydney.
Speaker 11: Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week,
Speaker 11: with new episodes every Friday. A joint production between How
Speaker 11: Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup
Speaker 11: and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film
Speaker 11: and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries.
Speaker 1: For the latest updates, please visit.
Speaker 11: Atlantamonster dot com or follow us on social media. One
Speaker 11: last thing, We've set up an Atlanta Monster tip line.
Speaker 11: Anyone with information, leads, or personal accounts pertaining to the
Speaker 11: Atlanta child murders can call us and leave a message.
Speaker 11: The number is one eight three three two eight five
Speaker 11: six sixty sixty seven. Again, that's one eight three three
Speaker 11: two eight five six six sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 9: I don't think the whole truth will come down, not
Speaker 9: unless somebody who knows something here's this and opens up.
Speaker 9: I could be absolutely wrong this whole podcast. The information
Speaker 9: could be upside down. But if it is, there has
Speaker 9: to be somebody who knows it is and it will
Speaker 9: come forward. And it's like a promo, stay tuned, will
Speaker 9: stay tuned for what.
Speaker 3: That's also the promo for the next episode me