Speaker 1: This episode of Atlanta Monster contains explicit language. Listener discretion
Speaker 1: is advised.
Speaker 2: I'm in a recording studio and I'm recording a song
Speaker 2: in my phone rings. It's Wayne Williams. Everybody in his
Speaker 2: studio is like everyone with step.
Speaker 3: From that point forward? What transpired?
Speaker 4: What did Wayne and say?
Speaker 3: What was developing after that?
Speaker 4: Welcome to the real world, neo.
Speaker 2: So you know Wayne Williams absolutely describe Wayne to me?
Speaker 4: What's he like?
Speaker 2: Brilliant asshole, very intelligent asshole. That's the best way I
Speaker 2: could put it. And I don't mean it in a
Speaker 2: bad way because I'm an asshole at times, you know.
Speaker 2: But he's the He's the type of person that you
Speaker 2: have to be very strong to deal with him because
Speaker 2: mentally he could just run over the average person.
Speaker 5: And Atlanta another pond.
Speaker 4: It was discovered through the twenty third at the police
Speaker 4: Time Forts headquarters.
Speaker 6: There are twenty seven faces on the wall twenty sixth
Speaker 6: murder one missing.
Speaker 4: We do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore,
Speaker 4: we do not have the money.
Speaker 5: From Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 3: In House too works in Atlanta.
Speaker 7: Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently wasn't sexy.
Speaker 8: Exert Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he
Speaker 8: keeps on killing.
Speaker 5: This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 2: The average person doesn't have the mental acumen to be
Speaker 2: able to hold conversations with this guy. I'll tell you
Speaker 2: about the asshole part. There have been multiple conversations that
Speaker 2: me and him have had that end up in me,
Speaker 2: you know, basically having to curse him out and tell him, Look, dude,
Speaker 2: you gotta shut the fuck up and let me do
Speaker 2: what I know how to do. You've been in prison
Speaker 2: for over thirty years and you don't understand how the
Speaker 2: world is operating. Right now, you understand and you can't
Speaker 2: go under the premise and guys of how things were operating.
Speaker 3: Before you left the real world.
Speaker 2: So shut the fuck up and let me do what
Speaker 2: I do. And absolutely absolutely if you're not strong, he
Speaker 2: will have you doing some shit that maybe you don't
Speaker 2: want to do. It's been a roller coaster ride. It's
Speaker 2: been a roller coaster ride for the simple fact that
Speaker 2: you're dealing with a microcosm of so many different emotions
Speaker 2: and you're dealing with such a extreme personality. You're dealing
Speaker 2: with the guy who was supposed to be la Red.
Speaker 2: You understand, Wayne Williams started a radio station when he
Speaker 2: was fifteen years old and it was successful. His family
Speaker 2: was educators and his dad was a college professor. He
Speaker 2: knew the people in the affluent circles of the city
Speaker 2: of Atlanta. You imagine somebody like myself who has a
Speaker 2: very strong personality. Now I meet this guy thirty five
Speaker 2: years removed from everything that is transpired and all of
Speaker 2: the psychological damage and everything else that he's had to
Speaker 2: and do it. So we bump hes a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: but you have to think it's a guy who had
Speaker 2: all his promise in was the only child, and it's
Speaker 2: been in prison and has had to watch his mom
Speaker 2: with away and die, watch his dad with away and die.
Speaker 1: When you first talked to Wayne, what did he tell
Speaker 1: you in your first conversation?
Speaker 3: What was he saying to you?
Speaker 2: He started doing the background on me. He found out
Speaker 2: what I had already been doing as far as community
Speaker 2: activism and you know, educating people in the black community.
Speaker 4: So when we first.
Speaker 2: Talked, he wanted me to know that he was impressed
Speaker 2: with what he had already.
Speaker 9: Learned about me.
Speaker 2: So, because he learned all of these things about me,
Speaker 2: he said he thought I was the perfect person to
Speaker 2: put together a documentary piece.
Speaker 4: Because I was aware of.
Speaker 2: Things that publicly most Americans just don't think it's possible
Speaker 2: or would never believe to cover up by both the
Speaker 2: GBI and FBI, and how they played such a hand
Speaker 2: in this. Because of course, whenever you get involved with
Speaker 2: something like this, it's always going to be a certain
Speaker 2: level of fear that will always be looming.
Speaker 1: What do you think Wayne cares about most as a person?
Speaker 2: I think from what I know about him now, and
Speaker 2: this is this is a fault of his very selfless
Speaker 2: human being, selfless so much so that he hurts himself.
Speaker 2: He's more concerned with helping this guy who's a good
Speaker 2: This is a good kid.
Speaker 4: He's not supposed to be here, right, Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And the thing of it is is that, dude, if
Speaker 2: you get out of prison and we prove what we
Speaker 2: can potentially prove, you're gonna be able to help a
Speaker 2: lot a lot of people that are in this kid's situation.
Speaker 1: You see, Wayne cares more about other people than he
Speaker 1: does themselves.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm the same way. So I understand it.
Speaker 4: When you live in this.
Speaker 2: World and you meet Morpheus, so to speak, and you
Speaker 2: make a decision to take the red pill, and you
Speaker 2: see the injustices, and you see the things that we
Speaker 2: see in this world that we just.
Speaker 4: Know are not right.
Speaker 2: But then you have an understanding of it from my perspective.
Speaker 2: A Wayne's perspective always has to be a patsy, And
Speaker 2: usually the person who's the patsy, they have some kind
Speaker 2: of connection, just as Lee Harvey Oswald did to the
Speaker 2: CIA or to some sort of governmental agency.
Speaker 1: Right where do you draw the line between conspiracy theories?
Speaker 2: In fact, I don't even consider the concept of what
Speaker 2: people say conspiracy theory is a real thing, because is
Speaker 2: it a conspiracy theory or were the facts or what
Speaker 2: was presented to the public alter to make it seem
Speaker 2: a certain way. I know the truth, You know, Wayne
Speaker 2: knows the truth. The problem is we live in a
Speaker 2: world in which people have been programmed not to ask questions.
Speaker 5: Dwayne maybe right about this.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a lot of lingering doubt when
Speaker 1: it comes to Wayne William's guilt, but it's not exactly
Speaker 1: widely discussed. For example, I'd heard varying opinions of Wayne's
Speaker 1: physical capacity to kill and disposed of Nathaniel Cater, the
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old, was one of the few adult
Speaker 1: victims of the Atlanta child murders.
Speaker 5: I asked Dwayne what he thought about that.
Speaker 2: The murder of Nathaniel Cater and it being blamed on
Speaker 2: Wayne Williams. It's no way it could have happened at all.
Speaker 2: In the court case, Wayne's car never stop on the bridge.
Speaker 2: So a six one, one hundred and eighty pound man
Speaker 2: was thrown from a moving car over a barrier that's
Speaker 2: about five feet high. How he man can't do that?
Speaker 2: This guy six y' one, How is he gonna fit
Speaker 2: out of a window of a car. Nathaniel Cater was
Speaker 2: a badass. Nathaniel Cater was known in the streets of
Speaker 2: Atlanta to be able to beat up two guys at
Speaker 2: one time, three guys at one time. So little five
Speaker 2: to seven Wayne Williams, little fat five to seven Wayne
Speaker 2: Williams killed this guy. No, there's no way. So how
Speaker 2: now does Wayne take a six to one, one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty pound man with one arm.
Speaker 3: That's the most disgusting lie ever.
Speaker 5: Dwayne says.
Speaker 1: Cater was six to one, one hundred and eighty pounds,
Speaker 1: but according to court documents, he was actually five to eleven,
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty six pounds. Nathaniel Cater was one
Speaker 1: of the two adult victims that Wayne was actually convicted
Speaker 1: of murdering. The other was twenty one year old Jimmy
Speaker 1: Ray Payne. Payne lived on Magnolia Street, about a block
Speaker 1: from the home of Patrick Boltazar.
Speaker 2: Jimmy Ray Payne was a guy who was in the
Speaker 2: streets who supposedly Wayne killed. On the autopsy report on
Speaker 2: Calls of death, initially it said that it was undetermined.
Speaker 2: Then it was changed to say asphyxiation, which basically means
Speaker 2: he was strangled.
Speaker 4: I have the actual picture.
Speaker 5: I checked this out. Dwayne was right.
Speaker 1: Records show that Jimmy Ray Pain's cause of death was
Speaker 1: originally marked as undetermined rather than homicide on the medical
Speaker 1: report on June sixteenth, nineteen eighty one. However, on August sixth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, through a short was redone and Pain's
Speaker 1: cause of death was changed to homicide. News covers of
Speaker 1: Wayne Williams's trial shows that the medical examiner could only
Speaker 1: say with certainty that Paine's death was a result of
Speaker 1: undetermined asphyxia.
Speaker 10: Officials from the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office spent more
Speaker 10: than six hours last night and today examining Jimmy Paine's body.
Speaker 1: There are multiple means of asphyxiation, and the medical examiner
Speaker 1: couldn't be sure of the exact mechanism.
Speaker 11: Any external marks at all around the neck, no extended
Speaker 11: locks out on the neck.
Speaker 10: There is there any evidence of sexual molestation.
Speaker 7: No evidence of sexual molistation.
Speaker 10: Doctor Zaki says there is still a slight chance Pain drowned.
Speaker 10: He estimates the twenty one year old died very soon
Speaker 10: after he disappeared last Wednesday.
Speaker 1: When the medical examiner was questioned by Wayne's attorney, he
Speaker 1: admitted changing the cause of death to homicide. He also
Speaker 1: went on to say that he couldn't totally exclude drowning,
Speaker 1: but there should have been clearer evidence than Pain's lungs.
Speaker 3: So is there any doubt in your mind that Wayne
Speaker 3: Williams did these murders?
Speaker 2: Is no doubt in my mind, unequivocally, he didn't murder anyone, unequivally,
Speaker 2: without a doubt. He didn't murder anymore, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Where does that firm belief come from?
Speaker 2: Well, for one, for me examining you know, the cases
Speaker 2: and learning what I've learned, you know, researching what I
Speaker 2: was going to need to research just to do the documentary.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: And along the way it went from hey man, nobody
Speaker 2: is going to be able to speak up for me
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 3: So does Wayne want to get out of jail.
Speaker 2: He wants to get out of prison, but he also
Speaker 2: wants justice for the families more than anything else. We
Speaker 2: consider him the thirtieth victim.
Speaker 3: Does Wayne consider himself a victim?
Speaker 2: He doesn't, but I do.
Speaker 1: Do you think there is a killer or killers out
Speaker 1: there responsible for some of these murders that have never
Speaker 1: been apprehended.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know that there is. That's a fact, Jack,
Speaker 2: That is an absolute fact.
Speaker 1: Dwayne told me he wasn't the only one who believed
Speaker 1: in Wayne's innocence. In fact, there were two reputable sources
Speaker 1: public figures. One was named Sidney Dorsey and the other
Speaker 1: was Lewis Graham, who worked as detectives on Wayne's case
Speaker 1: back in the early eighties. Graham even tried to reopen
Speaker 1: the case into cab County back in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: So one of the things we hope to be able
Speaker 2: to do is to get the actual notes from Lewis
Speaker 2: Graham and Lewis Graham and Sidney Dorsey were pretty close.
Speaker 2: Both of these guys were detectives for Atlanta Police Department.
Speaker 2: Sidney ended up being the sheriff for the Cab County.
Speaker 2: I think what he was really trying to do is
Speaker 2: he was trying to solve the murders. Initially, he found out,
Speaker 2: for one, that there were multiple people that were doing
Speaker 2: the murders. They were prepared to make arrests.
Speaker 3: Did he find any evidence that would Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely absolutely. I mean Sidney Dorsey is.
Speaker 4: The key to all of this.
Speaker 2: If you get a interview with Sidney Dorsey, he has
Speaker 2: all of the intimate knowledge as far as the police work.
Speaker 3: Where is he now.
Speaker 2: He's in Reesville State Prison.
Speaker 3: During a life sentence.
Speaker 1: Sidney Dorsey was the first African American sheriff of Dekap
Speaker 1: County in Atlanta from nineteen ninety six to two thousand.
Speaker 1: When he ran for reelection in two thousand, he was
Speaker 1: defeated by Derwin Brown. Sidney Dorsey then arranged for the
Speaker 1: assassination of his opponent by a deputy. Derwin Brown was
Speaker 1: then murdered and Sidney Dorsey was sentenced to life without parole.
Speaker 1: Per Dwayne's recommendation, we looked into Sidney Dorsey's involvement in.
Speaker 5: Reopening Wayne's case.
Speaker 1: Over the years, he's been quoted by news sources, including
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Journal Constitution, advocating for Wayne's innocence.
Speaker 5: So we decided to write Sidney Dorsey a letter in prison.
Speaker 5: We haven't heard back yet.
Speaker 1: After meeting Dwayne Hendrix, I started looking for more people
Speaker 1: who knew Wayne Williams before he went to prison, before
Speaker 1: Dwayne even met him.
Speaker 5: It was hard.
Speaker 1: It's been a very long time and Wayne didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have tons of close living friends and family. But
Speaker 1: after weeks of searching, I eventually found someone. His name
Speaker 1: was Tyrone Brooks, a civil rights advocate, a disciple of
Speaker 1: doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and Reverend Joseah Williams. Tyrone
Speaker 1: agreed to meet with me.
Speaker 7: I know Wayne, I met him when he was in
Speaker 7: high school, and he invited me to his home of
Speaker 7: on Penelope off Anderson Avenue in northwest Atlanta to do
Speaker 7: a live radio show. I get a phone call from
Speaker 7: Wayne Williams. He says, my name is Wayne Williams. I'm
Speaker 7: a high school student. I have a radio show. I
Speaker 7: like for you to pay on my show. Said where's
Speaker 7: your show? He said, over here on Penelope Drive off
Speaker 7: of Anderson Avenue. I said, I'm familiar with that area,
Speaker 7: so I went over and sure enough, he's got a
Speaker 7: FCC license and he's broadcasting. He's got a tower down
Speaker 7: the street. He got a radio tower up in there
Speaker 7: down the street. His daddy had helped him build a
Speaker 7: radio station. And how in the world he gets a
Speaker 7: license from the Federal Communications Commission to broadcasts. And I
Speaker 7: was just amazed that, you know, here's a high school
Speaker 7: student with the radio station in the backyard and he's
Speaker 7: already got his FCC license.
Speaker 1: To brock Tyrone Pannawayne Williams as a whiz kid, a normal,
Speaker 1: likable teenage boy.
Speaker 7: He's very friendly, very affable, humorous, funny, funny, smart, he's
Speaker 7: a smart guy's intelligent, very intelligent. But he was kind
Speaker 7: of like, yeah, you civil rights guys, you guys are
Speaker 7: my heroes. You all really made it possible for me
Speaker 7: to be where I am. I got my own radio
Speaker 7: station and I'm working here at Channel two or eleven,
Speaker 7: one of them. He worked for both of them at
Speaker 7: for a period of time.
Speaker 1: Wa ain't looked up to Tyrone because at the time,
Speaker 1: Tyrone was one of the youngest members of the SCLC,
Speaker 1: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded by civil rights leaders,
Speaker 1: primarily doctor Martin Luther King.
Speaker 7: From reconstruction up until nineteen forty six, black people could
Speaker 7: not vote in the democratic primaries. Nineteen forty six. The
Speaker 7: whole goal was cheap black people from voting. We don't
Speaker 7: want them in our democratic primary because pretty soon they're
Speaker 7: going to start wanting to hold public offices themselves. They're
Speaker 7: going to change the whole dynamic of the white segregationist
Speaker 7: whole on the South. But on April second, nineteen forty six,
Speaker 7: the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously George is all
Speaker 7: white Dixiecrat Party primary was illegal and unconstitutional. So on
Speaker 7: April second, it was a huge celebration across the South
Speaker 7: of African Americans and supporters who said we can find
Speaker 7: a vote in the democratic primaries. My parents went to
Speaker 7: vote in my hometown of Warranton. Many of them were
Speaker 7: met by mobs a kookut klansman, and the klan said,
Speaker 7: ain't no niggas coming in here to vote. And my
Speaker 7: daddy and some of my relatives got guns and they
Speaker 7: went back to the courthouse and they said, we're either
Speaker 7: going to vote, we're gonna die. Five people died, two
Speaker 7: couples that an unborn infant, George Darcy May, Mary Dorsey,
Speaker 7: Roger Malcolm, Darthur Malcolm, and the baby. We named the baby.
Speaker 7: In two thousand and eight, we named the baby Justice.
Speaker 1: It captured national attention and President Truman tried to pass
Speaker 1: an anti lynching legislation.
Speaker 7: This is a case that remains unsolved. It was doctor
Speaker 7: King's project. He had two things on his agenda when
Speaker 7: he was assassinated in nineteen sixty eight. The Poor per
Speaker 7: Campaign March on Washington, which we did complete, and the
Speaker 7: Moors for a bridge lynchings.
Speaker 1: Though tons of names and suspects are tied of this event,
Speaker 1: cooperation was limited. No one confessed, and to this day
Speaker 1: the case remains unsolved.
Speaker 7: So here comes the Missing and Murdered Children crisis in
Speaker 7: the late seventies and early eighties. Okay, here it comes,
Speaker 7: you know, here it comes, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: Wayne is back in our lives again.
Speaker 1: Tyrone told me he actually went to sea Wayne the
Speaker 1: day he became a suspect.
Speaker 7: He calls me up and he says, I need you
Speaker 7: and Reverend jose Williams to come up to our home.
Speaker 7: My daddy his father's name Homer. Mister Homer was a
Speaker 7: photographer for the Atlanta Daily World. We need to go
Speaker 7: talk to Wayne. He's called me. I know he's called you.
Speaker 7: He told me he called you, Tyroe. We need to go,
Speaker 7: seem So jose In I drove up to the home
Speaker 7: and so we went up to the house. Now, when
Speaker 7: we got there, the whole front yard was covered with
Speaker 7: TV cameras. I mean it was like the present in
Speaker 7: the United States holding a news conference. I mean the
Speaker 7: whole front the whole the driveways, the little streets and
Speaker 7: narrow streets were just cluttered with cars. So the authorities
Speaker 7: had made a decision that they were going to hone
Speaker 7: in on Wayne's and they were going to get him,
Speaker 7: and they had notified the media.
Speaker 5: So we go up to the house. So we go in.
Speaker 7: They let us in and Josea said to Wayne in
Speaker 7: front of his parents, jose said, Wayne, I'm talking to
Speaker 7: you as your second father. Tyrone met you when you
Speaker 7: were in high school. We're here, we respect you. We've
Speaker 7: been on your radio show You've been following us around
Speaker 7: in the movement. You've covered us in the movement, he said,
Speaker 7: But if you've been involved in any of this, you
Speaker 7: gotta tell us because we want to help you get
Speaker 7: the best legal counsel possible. And Wayne looked us in
Speaker 7: the eye and he said, Reverend Williams. Tyrone, I have
Speaker 7: not been involved in any of these killings. I've only
Speaker 7: tried to cover the killings. I've only been following the authorities.
Speaker 7: I've been getting leads and tips, and people on the
Speaker 7: inside of the police departments have been calling me and
Speaker 7: telling me, you know, they found the body here, and
Speaker 7: he would go to that spot and he'd be set
Speaker 7: up there with his camera. Yeah, people on the inside
Speaker 7: of the police department. He had connections, and I think
Speaker 7: he stepped on toes and he rubbed people the wrong way.
Speaker 7: But he told us that night, and he convinced me
Speaker 7: that he was not involved in any killings. He said,
Speaker 7: they have to find a scapegoat to close this case out.
Speaker 7: I believe he did. I believe he was telling the truth.
Speaker 7: I think he told us the truth that night, and
Speaker 7: I believe he has maintained all alone. I think Wayne
Speaker 7: is prepared to die standing on his conviction of telling
Speaker 7: the truth. I think it's a tragedy for Atlanta. I
Speaker 7: think it's a tragedy for the American criminal justice system
Speaker 7: to have an innocent person incarcerated for something they did
Speaker 7: not do. And the sad fact is the real killers
Speaker 7: were never captured, the real killers have never been punished.
Speaker 7: We believe the Ku Kluk Klan is connected to this,
Speaker 7: and we believe that some of these white officers who
Speaker 7: are klansmen, closet klansmen, they are out here picking up
Speaker 7: these young black kids. I believe that was a similus
Speaker 7: of truth to it. I really believe that was a
Speaker 7: clan connection. I'm convinced that Wayne Williams is innocent of
Speaker 7: any murder. I think Wayne Williams probably just got a
Speaker 7: little too close to the investigators. They were frustrated. And
Speaker 7: the thing that really really is important to me is
Speaker 7: the fact that the two lead detectives who worked the case,
Speaker 7: Lewis Graham, who was chief of homicide for the City
Speaker 7: of Atlanta for many years, any went over to Fulton
Speaker 7: County became chief, then he went to the Cab County
Speaker 7: became chief. Before Lewis and Graham died Lewis would always
Speaker 7: see me in passing and he would say, man, you
Speaker 7: are someone that we'll always respect. You had the courage
Speaker 7: to speak the truth to power. We were convinced that
Speaker 7: Wayne Williams did not commit those crimes. And his partner
Speaker 7: was Sidney Dorsey. Detective Sydney Dorsy who later became chef
Speaker 7: of the cab count Who's you know, famous for another reason.
Speaker 7: But they both said to me, there should have been
Speaker 7: more people in Atlanta standing up and speaking out and
Speaker 7: telling the truth about Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: I asked Mike McCombs about his thoughts on the racial
Speaker 1: tensions around the Atlanta child murders.
Speaker 12: It always comes back to racial tensions. Of course, there
Speaker 12: was a lot of racial tensions. You know, people were
Speaker 12: afraid of each other. I mean, I don't think it's
Speaker 12: any worse than it is now, but when you have
Speaker 12: a pacific crime, that adds fuel to the fire. And
Speaker 12: like I said, the blacks wanted to be white and
Speaker 12: the whites wanted it to be a black And I
Speaker 12: didn't care who it was as long as we caught them.
Speaker 4: I could have cared less.
Speaker 12: But I don't think the racial tensions then were any
Speaker 12: worse than they are now. I mean, people treated me
Speaker 12: with respect and I treated them with respect, and so
Speaker 12: I don't think it's any different than what it is now.
Speaker 4: It was just a high.
Speaker 12: It was a very tense time.
Speaker 4: It was very tense.
Speaker 12: There's always been, you know, discrimination, always has been. I'm
Speaker 12: fearful to say that there always will be. There's just
Speaker 12: always going to be somebody that's going to discriminate, and
Speaker 12: there's blacks that discriminate against whites and whites that discriminate
Speaker 12: against blacks. It doesn't mean that either one of them's right.
Speaker 12: As a matter of fact, it means both of them
Speaker 12: are really really wrong. You know, I didn't know whether
Speaker 12: you were black or white when you called me, and
Speaker 12: didn't care, could care less. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 12: not the way I was raised. You know, you're going
Speaker 12: to have agitators to this day. You always have agitators
Speaker 12: that get involved, that take things to the extreme, and
Speaker 12: that's that hurts.
Speaker 4: I mean, it hurts a lot, worse hurts the situation.
Speaker 4: So we had them then.
Speaker 12: You know, we had agitators that said that you know,
Speaker 12: it was we were that someone was trying to you know,
Speaker 12: commit genocide of the Blacks and this.
Speaker 4: That and the other.
Speaker 12: I mean, you have to keep in mind, And I
Speaker 12: used to tell people this all the time, The FBI
Speaker 12: wanted to know what the truth is. We didn't want
Speaker 12: to convict Wayne Williams. We wanted to know what the
Speaker 12: truth was. So when you're doing this and you're poking holes,
Speaker 12: try to see what the individual's motives are. But yeah,
Speaker 12: there's going to be those folks out there that doesn't
Speaker 12: think that, for whatever their motives are, that he didn't
Speaker 12: do it. But you know, people, that's the reason now
Speaker 12: that I'm not in the FBI, I'm not real quick
Speaker 12: to render an assessment on things because I know that
Speaker 12: I don't have all the facts. I'm not in that
Speaker 12: circle anymore, and I know that what goes on in
Speaker 12: the middle of that circle, there's a lot of things
Speaker 12: that John Doe public they just don't know, and they're
Speaker 12: not going to know, and so they don't have enough
Speaker 12: information to make a good intelligent assessment. That's my thoughts
Speaker 12: on it.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, he did it.
Speaker 5: Why do you think Wayne liam still says he didn't
Speaker 5: do it?
Speaker 12: Well, I'm not really sure that there would be any
Speaker 12: advantage to him admitting it. For the first thing. But
Speaker 12: I think Wayne has some mental issues, some disorders that
Speaker 12: would cause someone to be a compulsive liar. I don't
Speaker 12: think he'll ever admit it. I don't think he has
Speaker 12: the ability to admit it. Shoot, he's been in there now.
Speaker 12: We convicted him in eighty two, so I mean he's
Speaker 12: he's got thirty five years in prison now.
Speaker 1: Just like mccombis, Popcorn also thinks Wayne Williams is guilty
Speaker 1: and that Wayne is the Atlanta child murderer. But he
Speaker 1: acknowledges people's disbelief. He didn't necessarily look like a cold
Speaker 1: blooded murderer.
Speaker 13: He was not a threatening character. The first time I
Speaker 13: looked one him, I almost laughed. I said, this guy,
Speaker 13: but he was not threatening. And that's why he got
Speaker 13: away with it, because people said, no, this guy murdered
Speaker 13: that many kids.
Speaker 3: They refuse to believe it.
Speaker 13: You know, if somebody has a better suspect out there,
Speaker 13: please let us know. But there's no one has ever
Speaker 13: come forward with anyone else.
Speaker 1: But after Wayne Williams was apprehended, did the murders actually stop?
Speaker 13: The best evidence of will was last body that fell
Speaker 13: off the bridge. We arrested Willie Williams, They ain't been
Speaker 13: a murder since what do you mean, no murder since
Speaker 13: after we arrested him, they were no more victims.
Speaker 1: So since eighty one, there's been no murdered African American.
Speaker 13: First has been don't you read the papers, but none
Speaker 13: with a similar, dissimilar mo There have been no similar
Speaker 13: murders since that last body fell off the bridge, strangling, strangling,
Speaker 13: taking off the street, young black male taken off the street,
Speaker 13: strangled and dumped. Now the people who don't believe, would
Speaker 13: have you believe that the murders still continue. The newspapers
Speaker 13: are just covering up with the police. I mean I've
Speaker 13: heard that that said, the murders have continued all this time,
Speaker 13: just the police and the media not reporting them. Do
Speaker 13: you think I'm an idiot? You work for the media,
Speaker 13: do you do you think it's true? No, but this
Speaker 13: is the stupid shit they come up with. But Wayne,
Speaker 13: that was the best evidence, the every ten day pattern
Speaker 13: of a kid stripped, dumping or stopped, and we didn't
Speaker 13: have any more.
Speaker 5: Why do you think Wayne Williams still claims he's innocent.
Speaker 13: Because that's Wayne Williams. One of the things Wayne Williams
Speaker 13: thought he was smarter than us, And I said, his
Speaker 13: biggest mistake was overestimating his intelligence and underestimating oz and
Speaker 13: he thought he can commit for a crime. He wanted
Speaker 13: to show the world that he was smarter than everyone else.
Speaker 13: So this was this was an ego.
Speaker 4: Trip for him.
Speaker 13: I tell people in my bureau career, I put five
Speaker 13: men in prison who murdered a total of thirty five people,
Speaker 13: and twenty five of them were done by one man.
Speaker 13: How many people can say that good old fashioned police work,
Speaker 13: you know, nothing fancy just sitting under a bridge waiting
Speaker 13: for something to happen. If you come up with a
Speaker 13: better suspect, please let us know. But right now, this
Speaker 13: is the best thing, the best suspect we got going.
Speaker 14: Like now, when you look back on it, I felt
Speaker 14: like they just they need to put it on somebody,
Speaker 14: and he kind of like fell into place, and then
Speaker 14: it hadn't helped it. After they got him, it stopped.
Speaker 14: So you know that just say, oh, we got the
Speaker 14: right man. That doesn't necessarily me he's the right man,
Speaker 14: but you know, it stopped. I mean, I think he
Speaker 14: could have did some stuff, but I definitely don't think
Speaker 14: he did all of it, even if he did any
Speaker 14: of them, you know, but the only thing hearing him
Speaker 14: is they stopped once they got him, they stopped.
Speaker 4: So it was like, well, even if we ain't got
Speaker 4: the man, they stopped. The problems are with.
Speaker 15: Wayne Williams under arrest. Everyone thinks they can relax and
Speaker 15: the string of murders has stopped. But it just may
Speaker 15: be that whoever's really doing it, if it's not Wayne Williams,
Speaker 15: they decide, well, now it's a good time to stop
Speaker 15: because this other guy's in jail for it.
Speaker 16: Many people think, well, maybe these murders didn't stalk. With
Speaker 16: Wayne Williams arrest, there's a lot of contention around the
Speaker 16: distinction between the murder of children and the murders of
Speaker 16: these adults who Wayne Williams was directly convicted of killing,
Speaker 16: and whether those are necessarily a part of the same
Speaker 16: pattern crimes. They see my valid questions to ask. In
Speaker 16: my opinion, every single child that was identified as part
Speaker 16: of the pattern cases of the Atlanta child murders wasn't strangled,
Speaker 16: and they all were in the same place or found
Speaker 16: in the same place or from the same place. More
Speaker 16: or less generally, when you have that volume, but not
Speaker 16: all of them. There's always this sense that what evidence
Speaker 16: was collected, what evidence was lost?
Speaker 17: How many children black males from poverty areas disappeared after
Speaker 17: Wayne Williams went to jail, the list existed. After he
Speaker 17: was convicted, the list disappeared. But I've always wanted to
Speaker 17: know how many black boys in that same age group
Speaker 17: from those neighborhoods disappeared after that.
Speaker 1: Looking at the numbers, fewer kids died from asphyxiation in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two versus nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 5: But to say that all the murder stopped just isn't true.
Speaker 1: Dozens of young black kids were abducted and murdered in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties after Wayne williams imprisonment. However, maybe a
Speaker 1: more accurate statement is that the volume of pattern crimes decreased,
Speaker 1: in particular young black males who died from asphyxiation rather
Speaker 1: than stab wounds or gun violence, and whose bodies were
Speaker 1: later found seemingly scattered throughout metro Atlanta. So do serial
Speaker 1: killers just stop killing? Well, sometimes they do. For example,
Speaker 1: the infamous BTK killer stopped killing after seventeen years, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't apprehended until nearly fourteen years after the last
Speaker 1: murder he committed. I sat down with Meredith, one of
Speaker 1: our producers, and a man named Kerrie Middlebrooks, the brother
Speaker 1: of victim Eric Middlebrooks. He wanted to hear his perspective
Speaker 1: as a family member. Who was his brother Eric, and
Speaker 1: what to Kerry think of Wayne Williams.
Speaker 8: My foster dad called me and he woke me up.
Speaker 8: He said, we'll come over here. I want to talk
Speaker 8: to you about something. He said, well, I don't know
Speaker 8: how to tell you this, but Eric was killed last night.
Speaker 8: I guess I just didn't know what to say at
Speaker 8: that point, so finally I said, well what happened? And
Speaker 8: he said, well, they found him behind the with Johnson
Speaker 8: Hotel buying some dumpsters. So what happened? Did somebody shoot
Speaker 8: him or what? And they said, well, no, he was
Speaker 8: seriously injured. He had been hitting the head with something
Speaker 8: and on his bicycle. They cut his tires and stabbed
Speaker 8: them in their arm.
Speaker 11: The body of fourteen year old Eric middlebrook was found
Speaker 11: about seven this morning behind a bar and the two
Speaker 11: hundred block of Flat Shoals Road near Memorial. He was
Speaker 11: hit on the back of the head with some kind
Speaker 11: of blood instrument his pockets had been gone through. The
Speaker 11: bike he was riding was next to his body.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was an earth shattering I guess you know.
Speaker 8: I still have not gotten over that because he was fourteen.
Speaker 8: Body can do something like that to a kid. This
Speaker 8: was just straight up violence, you know, holding his head
Speaker 8: stabbed in an arm. I mean, I try and sit
Speaker 8: up and imagine what was going on in his mind
Speaker 8: at the time. All of this stuff was going on,
Speaker 8: and it's rough, But I actually became an Atlanta police
Speaker 8: officer because my brother had been killed.
Speaker 4: I had just got out a Marine Corps.
Speaker 8: I was working as a security officer at the P
Speaker 8: Street Plaza Hotel. One of my supervisors said, you know,
Speaker 8: the city of Atlanta is hiring, why don't you become.
Speaker 4: A police officer. There was no way, in.
Speaker 8: My opinion, my brother died by mechanisms of Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: Carrie Middlebrooks then told me his own theory about Eric's murder.
Speaker 1: He saw some thing the day his brother was found
Speaker 1: dead and it stuck with him to this day. He
Speaker 1: mentioned a woman named Lisa, one of Eric's neighbors.
Speaker 8: Apparently, Lisa called my foster dad's house to ask if
Speaker 8: Eric could go to the store to get some cigarettes
Speaker 8: around nine o'clock ish that night. All I know is
Speaker 8: he said they got a phone call at nine o'clock
Speaker 8: the night before about the store trip.
Speaker 4: He didn't come back home.
Speaker 8: Where my foster dad lived and where Lisa lived was
Speaker 8: approximately one hundred feet They all lived in the same
Speaker 8: apartment complex. I guess i'd been there a couple hours
Speaker 8: and Lisa said, why don't you come down to my
Speaker 8: house and we'll talk. When I went to her house,
Speaker 8: I can just say I didn't see it happened, but
Speaker 8: I just have to say something brought me to that
Speaker 8: apartment for me to observe that something that takes place.
Speaker 8: Whether it was God or you know, fake O don't,
Speaker 8: I don't know, but based on what I saw, something
Speaker 8: related to my brother had to have happened there.
Speaker 4: When I got down to her apartment, I noticed.
Speaker 8: There was a lot of blood on the floor, table,
Speaker 8: various places, you know. I started having all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 4: Running through my head.
Speaker 8: She explained to me that her finger had been cut,
Speaker 8: and I don't know how all of that blood could
Speaker 8: have come through that basically or scratch. It wasn't just
Speaker 8: in one spot.
Speaker 4: It was in.
Speaker 8: Several spots about a pint of blood. My thing is,
Speaker 8: I don't think Wayne Williams killed my brother. I think
Speaker 8: it occurred about a hundred feet from where my brother
Speaker 8: actually lived.
Speaker 4: I did tell the policeys, I did tell the FBI this. Now.
Speaker 8: What I should have done, which is what I was
Speaker 8: thinking about doing, was scoop up some of the blood
Speaker 8: and put it on something.
Speaker 4: Didn't do that.
Speaker 8: I guess I was sort of gullible, but I'm saying
Speaker 8: that he died in that apartment. I clearly told the
Speaker 8: FBI what I thought about what took place with my brother.
Speaker 8: Apparently they didn't do anything because Wayne Williams seemed to
Speaker 8: remain the primary subject they were focusing on. And so
Speaker 8: I just don't feel that man could have killed my brother,
Speaker 8: you know. I mean, like I said, Eric was fourteen,
Speaker 8: so he was really kind of like a young lion,
Speaker 8: you know. I mean, Wayne Williams was not much bigger
Speaker 8: than my brother, not that my brother was a big guy.
Speaker 8: To me, Eric would have had to have been killed
Speaker 8: sort of like in an enclosed area or confined area.
Speaker 8: I don't feel that they have the right person for
Speaker 8: my brother's murder. I think they were kind of reaching
Speaker 8: for Straws. I mean at one point they called them
Speaker 8: a psychic. We're talking professional police investigators. You call it
Speaker 8: a psychic to help you do what?
Speaker 1: Kerry brought with him a framed document titled a resolution.
Speaker 1: It was sent to his family in twenty thirteen by
Speaker 1: the Georgia House of Representatives.
Speaker 4: It said, honoring the victims and the Atlanta Missing a
Speaker 4: Murdered Children.
Speaker 18: Case, It's a resolution to commit to continuing work until
Speaker 18: adequate laws or passed to protect our children in Atlanta
Speaker 18: by the House of Representatives. Here is this consolation. Do
Speaker 18: you feel Did you feel good about receiving this?
Speaker 8: I mean, it's just the plaque or some acknowledgement that
Speaker 8: something occurred with a bunch of names on it.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't resolve anything.
Speaker 8: But yeah, hopefully y'all can do something with this man.
Speaker 8: I mean, Wayne Williams has been saying that he's innocent.
Speaker 8: How innocent I don't know, but I don't think he
Speaker 8: killed my brother.
Speaker 1: Carrie Middlebrooks was now the second relative of a victim
Speaker 1: to tell me he did not believe Wayne Williams was guilty,
Speaker 1: at least for any crime against his family. Back in
Speaker 1: my very first meeting with Dwayne Hendrix, he mentioned a
Speaker 1: man that knew Wayne Williams very well back in the day.
Speaker 5: His name was Jimmy Howard.
Speaker 2: Jimmy would be what you would say is was Wayne's protege.
Speaker 2: He was the lead singer for the group that Wayne
Speaker 2: was managing at the time, and he was the guy
Speaker 2: who was with Wayne every day, and he.
Speaker 1: Was part of the band that Wayne was putting together
Speaker 1: right before he was arrested. The same one Wayne mentioned
Speaker 1: in his press conference. Jimmy knew Wayne back at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, when Wayne was in his early twenties trying
Speaker 1: to start the next Jackson five.
Speaker 19: Tell me mentioning in murder kids kids, think y'all Wayne
Speaker 19: Trevor killing them kid? They got the Wayne Trither two grown,
Speaker 19: the ducks man. Put all the all the kids that
Speaker 19: are done, look at them. See the number one thing
Speaker 19: here to me. Number one. You got the parents out
Speaker 19: here who kids has been murdered. They number one that
Speaker 19: never been closed, that wounds still open. But the place
Speaker 19: keep moving on. Wayne will Number two a man that
Speaker 19: y'all use for an escapegoat. Lock this man up, forget
Speaker 19: about it. Then y'all think y'all on the side of
Speaker 19: the case.
Speaker 5: Ask Jimmy how he met Wayne in the first place.
Speaker 19: Man, I met Wayne in a talent show. Who's doing
Speaker 19: the talent show? I was in a band. We was performing.
Speaker 19: You know, after all the accident did their thing, they'll
Speaker 19: come out and said who won is who placed this
Speaker 19: and that? But when at the time was when we
Speaker 19: hit the stage. The crowd, you know, they had a
Speaker 19: big spotlights now shout. I was playing drums and they
Speaker 19: shine that light back there on me. In the crowd
Speaker 19: just went crazy cause I was singing and playing the
Speaker 19: drums at the same time. So when it was over with,
Speaker 19: as soon as we got ready to exit the stage
Speaker 19: to go out to the back and was greeting people
Speaker 19: and talking to people, that's when I met Wayne and
Speaker 19: he came in and duced. He said, Man, that was great, man.
Speaker 19: What's your name?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 9: That was hot. Man.
Speaker 19: Listen, man, you you don't need to be on the drums,
Speaker 19: you need to be out here in the front. So
Speaker 19: I'm looking at him like, yeah, he said, what's your name?
Speaker 19: I told him he said, Man, hey, take my car,
Speaker 19: get in touch with me.
Speaker 13: Man.
Speaker 9: You gotta know I can call it man. I got
Speaker 9: some things I'm putting together.
Speaker 19: That's exactly how how it went, so I didn't never
Speaker 19: call him. I ended up seeing Wayne again at about
Speaker 19: two other shows and then my brother said said, what
Speaker 19: do you see? What are you talking about when? And
Speaker 19: that's that's why I went. And he told me what
Speaker 19: he was doing.
Speaker 3: How old were you?
Speaker 9: Fifteen? Sixteen? And he said, I'm putting the group together.
Speaker 19: So one one weekend and he asked me to come
Speaker 19: to the studio recording section, rang my mom and everybody.
Speaker 19: He said, I want to build this group around you.
Speaker 19: I met the guys, we talked. We all locked in
Speaker 19: pretty good.
Speaker 9: At the time.
Speaker 19: It was just them two guys I met, and then
Speaker 19: three of y'all yeah, and then the other two came,
Speaker 19: so it was five at that point. We went on
Speaker 19: and started doing songs man, and just doing things, meeting
Speaker 19: every other weekend, mean through the weekdays on rehearsing on
Speaker 19: these songs that he had picked that Wayne had chous,
Speaker 19: some songs and remixes that each old for us to
Speaker 19: do well. The plans were to be the next, the
Speaker 19: next famous group behind the Jackson.
Speaker 9: It was just crazy the time. But I can say
Speaker 9: this though I know we ain't even do no killing?
Speaker 3: What is The group called.
Speaker 20: Gemini guards at the Fulton County Jail were authorized to
Speaker 20: allow Williams three calls per week. The guards were to
Speaker 20: dial the numbers from outside Williams's maximum security selle and
Speaker 20: had him the receiver.
Speaker 5: But that is not what happened.
Speaker 20: The calls made by Williams include calls to members of
Speaker 20: this group of singers who Williams claims to manage. In fact,
Speaker 20: Wayne Williams from his sale set up this rehearsal and
Speaker 20: invited the Action News team into videotape it.
Speaker 1: Then Jimmy told me an incredible story. He was actually
Speaker 1: with Wayne the night he was picked up by the
Speaker 1: FBI and taking in for questioning. That night, Wayne had
Speaker 1: taken Jimmy and his fellow bandmates to Wendy's after practice.
Speaker 5: That's when it happened.
Speaker 19: We went to Wendy's on food in the dust. I
Speaker 19: was sitting in the wonder Man. You can see the cops.
Speaker 19: You can see the cars. They were just sitting there,
Speaker 19: the ones that we would recognize. Okay, we're sitting there.
Speaker 19: When I said, man, thin' gonna lot me? If I
Speaker 19: will say, just gonnun lock me up and stop harassing me.
Speaker 9: You know everybody at home.
Speaker 19: We got on bank aage they Brian home and as
Speaker 19: we was going down that street over our bank head,
Speaker 19: we went past bread house and turned around. Two mark
Speaker 19: cars was following up behind cars that I never seen
Speaker 19: that was at the windows day was behind us. We
Speaker 19: turned around, came back, dropped them off some once. I'm
Speaker 19: tired of this s As we was getting to the
Speaker 19: edge of the street, stopped trying on bank here Wain
Speaker 19: so I'm been and call him mayor tell him that
Speaker 19: they gonna lock me up, Lock me up now. He
Speaker 19: pulled a splitt across the street into the JR. It
Speaker 19: used to be a jar Creek store. It was a
Speaker 19: big star. That was a phone book now and he
Speaker 19: got out the car. Man toyot was sitting in the car. Man,
Speaker 19: I think he got on that phone book. No more
Speaker 19: than about two minutes. Cars just come from everywhere swarmed
Speaker 19: the car.
Speaker 9: Helicopters. Man, it was crazy. Me and two was looking
Speaker 9: at each other.
Speaker 19: Man We was like, what that, what's going on here?
Speaker 19: And we looking cop opened up the door and and
Speaker 19: put one over to and say hey, come on, come
Speaker 19: on over with us. We're gonna take Wing with us.
Speaker 19: Tweyn said, why you gonna do that?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 19: It is do y'all think really, way ain't killed them kids?
Speaker 19: I said, nah, I ain't did that, man, I don't
Speaker 19: believe that. He said, well, he said, come on, we're
Speaker 19: gonna we don't want the media you see your guys.
Speaker 19: Come on, he covers up. We're gonna carr y'all home.
Speaker 19: We're gonna take Wayne with us for some question. At
Speaker 19: that point, At that point, right there, that's when I
Speaker 19: really started feeling some kind of way.
Speaker 9: Right there. It was a scary moment. I was like, man,
Speaker 9: what the what is they doing?
Speaker 19: Look at who they convicted Wayne or killing and they
Speaker 19: didn't even have the evidence to convict him of that.
Speaker 9: What's evidence?
Speaker 5: This is?
Speaker 19: This is big, man, This is huge. This case is huge.
Speaker 19: And I'm gonna say this here. I been knowing Wayne
Speaker 19: in a long time, long time, But I know you
Speaker 19: got some bitterness in him, because think about it, if
Speaker 19: you was, if you was in his situation, in his shoes,
Speaker 19: you would want someone to stand for you knowing that
Speaker 19: you hadn't done this.
Speaker 9: When you man, this thing.
Speaker 19: It's deep, man, It's deepen than a lot of people,
Speaker 19: let me tell you, So, that was the name that
Speaker 19: the media giving Wayne Way. They wouldn't use his name.
Speaker 19: They gave him this name, Atlanta Monster. We're gonna show
Speaker 19: this man and it's a good thing. So you know,
Speaker 19: we can put this puzza together and everybody gonna be shocked.
Speaker 5: I currently live in Atlanta now.
Speaker 1: I work downtown off Poncetan Leon Avenue in the Old
Speaker 1: Fourth Ward. I wanted to explore the city through the
Speaker 1: lens of the Atlanta Child Murders. Living here, I'd heard
Speaker 1: of many places in this case, but a lot's changed
Speaker 1: in Atlanta since then. Jason from Hellstuff Works went through
Speaker 1: the process of mapping out all the major sites in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta child murders, including the homes of victims, places
Speaker 1: they were last seen, and where each victim was found.
Speaker 1: One day, we hopped in the car and drove around
Speaker 1: the city to get a feel for where these tragedies
Speaker 1: took place thirty five years ago.
Speaker 4: Where'd you get this?
Speaker 21: Well, the only place you can give them at these
Speaker 21: days Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 5: So we are here, Yuseph Bell can.
Speaker 4: Hear the traffics from I twenty right behind us.
Speaker 5: So This definitely used to be a building, and they
Speaker 5: found Bell's body when it was abandoned. Yusuf was last
Speaker 5: seen three days ago. He was running an errand for
Speaker 5: a woman who lived in the apartment complex.
Speaker 8: He came to this little store at the corner of
Speaker 8: McDaniel and Georgia Avenue.
Speaker 17: Ibody out there like that that has and I just
Speaker 17: wish they knew that somebody here loves him, that a
Speaker 17: whole lot of people love him, that this whole community
Speaker 17: loves him, and they want him back too.
Speaker 22: Yusuf's body was found Thursday in an abandoned schoolhouse at
Speaker 22: Fulton and Martin Streets, near the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.
Speaker 22: Police believe the boy, who had been missing for eighteen days,
Speaker 22: was strangled.
Speaker 5: We're probably five minutes from the office right now.
Speaker 1: If you were just dropped me here and blindfolded, I'd
Speaker 1: have no idea where I was.
Speaker 8: There's like a new kid I disappearing every three or
Speaker 8: four weeks.
Speaker 1: The last place we went that day in your neighbor
Speaker 1: was Wayne William's old home off Penelope Road in Atlanta.
Speaker 4: Left here, go.
Speaker 5: Straight then should be next.
Speaker 17: Just cross this bridge, then your destination will be on
Speaker 17: the right.
Speaker 23: Your destination is on the right.
Speaker 1: We turned down the street and I went by myself
Speaker 1: to the door. There was no one there, so I
Speaker 1: walked down to one of the neighbor's houses. Someone came
Speaker 1: to the door. He didn't live here in the eighties,
Speaker 1: but he had an interesting take.
Speaker 21: Nonetheless, it's so funny though, because like every time I
Speaker 21: take the left, and every time a left driver.
Speaker 9: Come over, they say, that's the way william house.
Speaker 21: And then like then we heard of it, and then
Speaker 21: we googled in and everything.
Speaker 24: It was somebody at the gas station told me because
Speaker 24: he needed a ride home or whatever, and they told him, oh,
Speaker 24: you live over there by where and he said it
Speaker 24: and he didn't think really anything about it. And then
Speaker 24: a second person told him in the same.
Speaker 4: Weeks, different mix.
Speaker 5: You know, what's the general consensus you're getting from people.
Speaker 21: That he has something to do in it or whatever.
Speaker 21: But it was like, it's probably because clann alre they
Speaker 21: bringing kids for them or whatever. I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 21: what did you hear about whatway Williams? I google No,
Speaker 21: But I believe that it's a lot of people in
Speaker 21: pressing for stuff that they didn't do. Trust me, you know,
Speaker 21: and they get scared and taking deals, you know, and
Speaker 21: especially in place like Georgia, like where it's not even
Speaker 21: safe to go outside of Fourteenth County. Like you know,
Speaker 21: if you're African American, you know, the South is still
Speaker 21: the South is all black on the outside and white
Speaker 21: in the middle. That's not a racist statement, it's it's
Speaker 21: a true statement. Because you have black people out here
Speaker 21: still that fear of white people. They don't want to,
Speaker 21: you know, they don't want to cross that line. A
Speaker 21: lot of people are still stuck in the past out here.
Speaker 1: I'd seen Wayne's house in his old neighborhood. But what
Speaker 1: about his car, the car that he was driving on
Speaker 1: the bridge that night, the same one Jimmy Howard was
Speaker 1: writing in.
Speaker 5: When the FBI picked him up.
Speaker 1: The car that would have been a key piece of
Speaker 1: evidence in this case, if Wayne was in fact the
Speaker 1: Atlanta schold murderer.
Speaker 5: I searched the internet, but I wasn't hopeful.
Speaker 1: But believe it or not, I found a two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine article suggesting that I was completely intact. The
Speaker 1: car was in possession of a man named doctor Blackwelder
Speaker 1: in northeastern Alabama, or at.
Speaker 5: Least that's where it was eight years ago. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Who this man was, and I couldn't find a single
Speaker 1: phone number for him, but I drove down there anyways.
Speaker 5: And gave it a shot. Maybe the car was still
Speaker 5: around and it was.
Speaker 1: Doctor Blackwelder was willing to give me his perspective. He
Speaker 1: was actually a good family friend of Wayne Williams and
Speaker 1: had been there through the whole thing, including the trial.
Speaker 6: Trot was in eighty two, and as the hand of
Speaker 6: the law enforcement and criminalistic program in a community college,
Speaker 6: he would want to know if I'd come up some evidence.
Speaker 6: She just give him an opinion about what I thought
Speaker 6: about the evidence, if it was any good or not.
Speaker 6: And as it ended up, I staved through the whole
Speaker 6: trial and got to know Wayne's mom and dad real well,
Speaker 6: and then after it was over, I just stayed with
Speaker 6: him and I kept going to see Wayne's mother had
Speaker 6: catch her and she sometime during our conversation she made
Speaker 6: me promise that I'd never turned my back on her baby,
Speaker 6: and I told her, I said, well, I'll promise you
Speaker 6: that I'll ever turn my back holding But I said
Speaker 6: I might go promise him.
Speaker 4: Well, all I should.
Speaker 6: Agree with him, because he was hard to you know,
Speaker 6: sometimes she'd I did exactly agree on things.
Speaker 5: I asked Blackwold, why you even had the car.
Speaker 1: He explained that the car being part of the house
Speaker 1: of Wayne's father, Homer Williams, for years just sitting there and.
Speaker 6: He just pretty much parked in the backyard and just
Speaker 6: left it. So and I went to the prison several
Speaker 6: times to see Wayne until I got to where I
Speaker 6: just had a heart attack and cancer and all that.
Speaker 6: And then Homer died and Wayne called and he said,
Speaker 6: you can have that scean wagon if you want it.
Speaker 4: So my wife and I went over.
Speaker 6: There with a roll bag and got the car and
Speaker 6: brought it back over here.
Speaker 3: That's pretty much is.
Speaker 6: Most people just want to look at it and take pictures,
Speaker 6: but we have people about two or three times and
Speaker 6: boks that want to buy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you carefully look at it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wow, everything is it?
Speaker 6: It was in there when when I got it. Nobody's
Speaker 6: earing thing.
Speaker 4: So we don't want to worry.
Speaker 1: Abrom all the stories i'd heard the station wagon was white,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't white anymore.
Speaker 6: The car there's been white in the plays. When when
Speaker 6: Wayne headed it was this color, and Homer painted the
Speaker 6: blue collar after he got after Wayne was in prison.
Speaker 5: It's now a light blue color and covered with brown rust.
Speaker 1: Also full of dirt and junk fishing that papers men's
Speaker 1: athletic shoes. Blackwater said he believes that most of this
Speaker 1: stuff belonged to Wayne's father, Homer. Blackwaters seemed pretty close
Speaker 1: to Wayne Liams and his family, so I asked him
Speaker 1: what was Wayne like.
Speaker 6: He had an old police car that had he had
Speaker 6: a scanner in it, and he would go out and
Speaker 6: take pictures of fires and crime sines and things like
Speaker 6: that and sell the pictures sing and bodies that warned you.
Speaker 6: And he had a job of some type with WSB Television.
Speaker 6: He would make you think that he was the star
Speaker 6: of the show, but I think really he was just
Speaker 6: a runner or so it was really when it came
Speaker 6: out down to it, you know, he had a pretty
Speaker 6: normal life. He was he was an only child, only
Speaker 6: was spoiled, and I think his mom and dad he
Speaker 6: had a need to be in the limelight. Have you
Speaker 6: ever been in that house up there?
Speaker 3: Not inside of it.
Speaker 6: We walked outside, okay, and on very back was where
Speaker 6: his radio station was, and he had some kind of
Speaker 6: small transmitter that would cover the neighborhood.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was the DJ and the news director, but
Speaker 6: he wanted to open his radio station up and then
Speaker 6: he wanted to be a promoter or something. That's what
Speaker 6: he was doing out when they caught him on the bridge.
Speaker 6: He was trying to find the address of a girl
Speaker 6: that he had an interview with the next day to
Speaker 6: do singing or whatever.
Speaker 1: Blackwater had sat through the entire trial, so he actually
Speaker 1: owned all the defense documents. He even played a role
Speaker 1: in the trial actively working with wings attorneys.
Speaker 6: My agreement was with him that I would get a
Speaker 6: copy of all of the documents that they used, and
Speaker 6: I got copies of all. I've got a basement with
Speaker 6: eight or ten bucars full of documents, all the reports
Speaker 6: and all the documentaries that the defense got under discovery,
Speaker 6: the federal documents, FBI documents, and practically all of the
Speaker 6: state documents, FBI reports, all the autopsy reports had scribble
Speaker 6: notes that the attorneys took dinner, a meeting at night.
Speaker 6: His mother gave me several photographs that of their family
Speaker 6: album of Wayne. It was just a little bit fellow
Speaker 6: growing up. You see how my filing system.
Speaker 4: Is right here.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it seems like it's kind of my folly system.
Speaker 6: Yeah, after I retired, I brought everything into the house.
Speaker 6: It's all just so I'll have to get somebody to
Speaker 6: get somebody to go through and dig it out.
Speaker 4: But I've got it. It's all. It's sealed up.
Speaker 6: I don't think he got a fair trial because I
Speaker 6: know that Maynard Jackson and all of them needed somebody
Speaker 6: to call it because it was affecting convention in trade
Speaker 6: and so forth. And when I would go up there
Speaker 6: on the weekends and go out and eat, a lot
Speaker 6: of the resturants will be just about empty. And the
Speaker 6: people said the business had really fallen off since that happened,
Speaker 6: and it it hadn't picked up, you know. But once
Speaker 6: they called him, then everybody took a shower or leave
Speaker 6: and thought, well, you know, we can go back to
Speaker 6: live in our normal lives. And of course they called him,
Speaker 6: which means people will assume that if they catch somebody,
Speaker 6: he's guilty, and then during the trial it would have
Speaker 6: been hard, I think for Jerry to find him not
Speaker 6: guilty and then go back into their neighborhoods and live.
Speaker 4: And I don't know how much to a what degree.
Speaker 6: They just didn't want to have to put up with
Speaker 6: what they would catch from the people of school, to
Speaker 6: work at church or whatever if they had found him
Speaker 6: not guilty. So I think that plays a part in it,
Speaker 6: but I don't know how much.
Speaker 1: After several months of researching the Atlanta child murders and
Speaker 1: Wayne Williams himself, I found the case perplexing and nobody
Speaker 1: seemed to agree on anything. After meeting in person with
Speaker 1: Tween Hendricks in Texas, he called me out of the
Speaker 1: blue one day and was about to send this projects
Speaker 1: in a whole new direction.
Speaker 2: It was going all day and I just wanted to
Speaker 2: reach out to you.
Speaker 23: I actually spoke.
Speaker 8: With Wayne WI about the podcast.
Speaker 2: He basically gave his blessings, gave me ain't light, and he's.
Speaker 12: Willing to talk.
Speaker 11: Give me a call you get.
Speaker 4: Out the tummy tree.
Speaker 5: Next time on Atlanta Monster.
Speaker 2: This conference is recorded.
Speaker 6: My bed.
Speaker 1: Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast wholl 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. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film
Speaker 1: and Videotape Collection Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries.
Speaker 5: For the latest updates, please visit.
Speaker 1: Atlantamonster dot com or follow us on social media.
Speaker 4: Alexa, watch the temperature.
Speaker 23: Right now in Piedmont. It's forty nine degrees with clear
Speaker 23: skies throughout the night. You can expect more of the
Speaker 23: same with a low of thirty six degrees.
Speaker 3: Alexa, thank you very much.
Speaker 6: You're welcome, Alexa.
Speaker 24: Will you marry me?
Speaker 23: I don't want to be tied down. In fact, I
Speaker 23: can't be. I'm amorphosed by nature.
Speaker 3: Are you drinking her prisoner here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 12: I am really