Speaker 1: By the winter of ninety nine, Atlanta's nightly news was
Speaker 1: still with reports of missing and murdered children, but attest
Speaker 1: to some of the names, you hear a disclaimer. Top
Speaker 1: police brass resisted adding his name to the task Force list.
Speaker 1: You don't see her on the official list of murdered
Speaker 1: and missing children, not put on the Special task Force
Speaker 1: list until his body was found. His death never made
Speaker 1: the list either had not been on the missing person's list.
Speaker 1: His disappearance also didn't make the list. What exactly was
Speaker 1: the list, where did it come from, and what did
Speaker 1: it mean? Were the individuals on the list connected? Law
Speaker 1: enforcements seemed to waver on this as late as yesterday.
Speaker 1: Detectives in the Homicide Division at ap D we're saying
Speaker 1: there was no link between the cases. In fact, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't even acknowledge that there have been more kidnappings and
Speaker 1: murders involving children than in the past. Homicide detectives are
Speaker 1: now trying to see whether there may be a connection
Speaker 1: in the cases. Because he is black and fifteen, he
Speaker 1: fits the pattern of the missing and murdered children in
Speaker 1: atlant but that may be the extent of the similarity.
Speaker 1: We are unable to think categorically that there's a relationship
Speaker 1: between one case and the other. The only thing all
Speaker 1: twenty nine cases have in common is that they are
Speaker 1: on the task force list. I think the right thing
Speaker 1: to do is to be able to keep up with
Speaker 1: those cases of bear similarities. Authorities told me they do
Speaker 1: not think at this point that one person is responsible
Speaker 1: for all the disappearances and deaths. There are similarities. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we have to look at the possibility that there may
Speaker 1: be some connection between all the cases. We're not discounting that.
Speaker 1: Investigators think several cases are totally unrelated. Authorities say there
Speaker 1: are similarities with other incidents. At leice do not think
Speaker 1: that this murder is related. There are some similarities in
Speaker 1: some of the days. Police do think there's a possibility
Speaker 1: that this murder is connected to another case that they
Speaker 1: have under investigation, and associated press story quotes an unidentified
Speaker 1: source close to the investigation as saying putting all twenty
Speaker 1: eight murder victims names on one task course list is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest mistakes the police department has ever made.
Speaker 1: Sources putting of the names on one list has created
Speaker 1: the oppression the cases are all related, says many of
Speaker 1: the cases are unrelated, but the public thinks they're all
Speaker 1: the work of one killer because they're on the same list.
Speaker 1: Source says the list is a big mistake and a
Speaker 1: scorecard for police failure to solve the cases. If the
Speaker 1: pattern cannot be agreed upon, that why we're some of
Speaker 1: Atlanta's missing and murdered children excluded. This is the actual list,
Speaker 1: really we used, and you know that the origin of
Speaker 1: the list touch it, but you can't have it. I
Speaker 1: think the list is either in need of correction or incomplete.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure could have been more. I think it
Speaker 1: could have been more. I think maybe instead of a list,
Speaker 1: maybe we need two lists, one involving young, small children,
Speaker 1: the other involving adolescents. You would be hard pressed even
Speaker 1: today been with people who have spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time pouring over these records to find some consistency and
Speaker 1: what folks think represents a pattern of behavior for whoever
Speaker 1: or whoever's committed these crimes. I don't think there should
Speaker 1: have ever been a list. I think each case should
Speaker 1: be investigated individually. This is Kristen Tobin, creator of the
Speaker 1: at Kid website, the database that focuses on the victims
Speaker 1: in this case, it doesn't make sense to have little
Speaker 1: kids seven and eight year olds who were found in
Speaker 1: the woods with different causes of death to be put
Speaker 1: in a less way adults they found in the river.
Speaker 1: I don't see how those things are related. I think
Speaker 1: that may have just been officials panicking. It makes the
Speaker 1: city look bad. And if they put it all together
Speaker 1: and they can just focus their investigation in one place,
Speaker 1: if they make it related so they're all related, then
Speaker 1: it feels like you can get rid of the monster. Um,
Speaker 1: it feels like there can be something done. It was political,
Speaker 1: it was crazy. It became a thing in and of itself,
Speaker 1: and they didn't know what to do with it. They
Speaker 1: didn't know how to get out of it. I don't
Speaker 1: think they ever Nobody ever dreamed what this was going
Speaker 1: to be. This is Dale Russell. I'm the senior investigative
Speaker 1: reporter for Fox five News here in Atlanta. Like many
Speaker 1: we've talked to, Dale has followed this case since the beginning.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, it was really a list of unsolved murders,
Speaker 1: but then the name missing and murdered got attached to it.
Speaker 1: They had no evidence linking anything back then, and then
Speaker 1: it got into this strange thing. Oh, why is my
Speaker 1: child on the list? Why is my child not on
Speaker 1: the list? Is the murder of my child not important
Speaker 1: if it's not on the list. To their defense, they
Speaker 1: didn't really know what they had yet at the time
Speaker 1: the list was first put together. I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: knew what this was. Some private investigators now working on
Speaker 1: the cases don't agree with Lee Brown. They say the
Speaker 1: list of murdered and missing children in Atlanta, which now
Speaker 1: number seventeen, is too limited. The private detectives want to
Speaker 1: know why. They say, any child who has been murdered
Speaker 1: should not be excluded from the intensive search now going on.
Speaker 1: In their words, whether it's one killer or fifteen, they
Speaker 1: should all be caught quickly. Discrepancies in the task Force
Speaker 1: list of names formed the basis of the comprehensive book.
Speaker 1: The list, the lists, and the viewpoint of its authors
Speaker 1: have always been controversial. Ship debt Leader had a treasure
Speaker 1: crotal information. If you really want to contrast in what
Speaker 1: I just told you, read Chet debt Linger's book. Debt Linger,
Speaker 1: he interviewed me in the office. I'm on page one
Speaker 1: twenty three that book. I love chat. He would probably
Speaker 1: be shocked to hear me say that. I have so
Speaker 1: much respect for him. He feels that it wasn't handled correctly.
Speaker 1: That's something I agree with. It's funny I've I've talked
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who well kind of whisper
Speaker 1: that they read it, but don't want to say out
Speaker 1: loud that they read or whisper that it's guided them.
Speaker 1: We didn't always see eye to eye. He's been critical
Speaker 1: of some of the reporting I've done. He had a
Speaker 1: voluminous knowledge of this case because he was in early.
Speaker 1: I thought he was smart about how he got in
Speaker 1: and how he saw it. I think he's dead on
Speaker 1: and some of his depictions of the problems with the
Speaker 1: police department. Chet always liked to portray it as he
Speaker 1: knew better than anybody else. But you know, I thought
Speaker 1: his criticisms about the politics of the list and some
Speaker 1: of the other things early on in the police department
Speaker 1: were fair and valid. I think it's full of what
Speaker 1: Chet wanted people to believe. I think Chet just didn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't privileged to all the facts. I started reading
Speaker 1: and put it down and went in there. I don't like.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to didn't want to read the more.
Speaker 1: His theory was way out in left field, and he
Speaker 1: eventually convinced enough people that he was right and they
Speaker 1: used him as their their expert. And he talks about
Speaker 1: the politics within the force. I guess I would call
Speaker 1: him the ultimate skeptic. The police were going to psychics,
Speaker 1: and Chet's like, this is ridiculous. He seems like the
Speaker 1: voice of reason to me in a lot of it.
Speaker 1: I basically agree with everything he says in the book.
Speaker 1: It feels in a certain way like a case file.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if people want to use it as
Speaker 1: a treasure map, you know what I mean, Like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily adhere to everything that it's promoting, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to use this as a launch pad as
Speaker 1: a springboard to do further research. Unfortunately, Chet det Linger
Speaker 1: and co author Jeff Prue had both passed away. In
Speaker 1: lieu of an interview opportunity, We've asked our producer Matt
Speaker 1: to quote directly from the book. As Atlanta's mystery deepened,
Speaker 1: I learned that it was far worse than our public
Speaker 1: officials were telling us. More victims were not part of
Speaker 1: the official investigation and body count than were on it.
Speaker 1: The list, which consisted only of cases assigned to a
Speaker 1: special police task force that had been formed amid community
Speaker 1: pressure in July of nineteen eighty, ended with twenty eight
Speaker 1: slain victims, plus ten year old Darren Glass missing since
Speaker 1: September of nineteen eighty. But that excludes at least sixty
Speaker 1: three more unsolved Atlanta area killings of blacks who fit
Speaker 1: the arbitrary age, sex, race, and cause of death parameters
Speaker 1: that the authorities used for the list. It's important to
Speaker 1: keep in mind that all those cases which were not
Speaker 1: put on the list, an alarming number to be sure,
Speaker 1: don't come close to adding up to all unsolved murders
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area. They merely fit the fluid parameters
Speaker 1: of the list, parameters that the authorities themselves established and
Speaker 1: changed with no logic. In the early morning hours of June,
Speaker 1: the body of ten year old Aaron White was found
Speaker 1: underneath this railroad dressle on Moreland Avenue. While Aaron Wish
Speaker 1: may seem to fit the pattern, his name was not
Speaker 1: initially added to the list. The Cab County investigated, concluding
Speaker 1: that the boy's death was accidental. The medical examiner wrote
Speaker 1: the boy died from asphyxiation caused by trauma to the
Speaker 1: neck area, either from falling or in striking the ground.
Speaker 1: Even before the deaths of the young black children were
Speaker 1: being connected, the family of Aaron Wish did not believe
Speaker 1: that his death was an accident. They say that he
Speaker 1: was always afraid of heights, and as you can see
Speaker 1: by this rail, a young boy would have to physically
Speaker 1: climb on top of the rail to accidentally fall off.
Speaker 1: Did you tell place that you didn't think was an accident?
Speaker 1: When they came and they took me at the had
Speaker 1: told him about it, they saying from what they fo
Speaker 1: they noted, he just got open and just slipped off.
Speaker 1: What would you like to he's done? Now? Well, what
Speaker 1: I would like to see done? It didn't put in
Speaker 1: and find out who do you do it? Because I
Speaker 1: know my baby didn't do that on his own. The
Speaker 1: official ruling of Aaron's death didn't sit well with chet Detlinger,
Speaker 1: and he pursued to investigate. I returned to the intersection
Speaker 1: of Moreland and Constitution to find the damned railroad trestle.
Speaker 1: Lo and behold. We soon found that there was no
Speaker 1: railroad trestle for Aaron Wish to fall off. Instead, he
Speaker 1: had been found at the base of a highway bridge
Speaker 1: which passes over two railroad tracks. The bridge is six
Speaker 1: lanes wide. It blends so well into the surrounding terrain
Speaker 1: that were it not for the guard rails, which are
Speaker 1: almost as high as Aaron Weish was tall, most people
Speaker 1: wouldn't notice that they were on a bridge when passing
Speaker 1: over it. The bridge has sidewalks and it's perfectly safe
Speaker 1: to walk across. There is no way Aaron Wish could
Speaker 1: have fallen off that bridge. Jumped or been thrown maybe,
Speaker 1: but fall off no way. Private investigators agree that the
Speaker 1: case should be reopened. They say the body fits into
Speaker 1: a geographic col pattern established with other deaths and disappearances.
Speaker 1: His death was from asphyxiation, and he fit the description
Speaker 1: of other blackmails who were on the official list, but
Speaker 1: Wish never made it. His death was ruled an accident.
Speaker 1: The trust aware this happened. Is the boundary line between
Speaker 1: the cab County and Atlanta. If Aaron Witch's body had
Speaker 1: been found on the other side, just fifty feet away,
Speaker 1: Atlanta's task force may have been working on number twelve.
Speaker 1: She asserts that this mischaracterization of the bridge on the
Speaker 1: official police report had a devastating impact by itself. The
Speaker 1: discrepancy in the Eronwisch case was tragic only for his family,
Speaker 1: but in the overall panoply of Atlanta's murders, it was catastrophic.
Speaker 1: It meant that the police were dealing with an accident,
Speaker 1: not a murder. Consequently, there was nothing to investigate. It
Speaker 1: means that Aaron Wish was not plugged into the authorities
Speaker 1: thinking about the case. What happened in the eron Wisch case,
Speaker 1: a medical examiner received the word trestle to mean what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to mean, a span without railings and with
Speaker 1: open spaces between the railroad ties. As a result, he
Speaker 1: ruled a murder an accident. A police officer who didn't
Speaker 1: know what a railroad trestle was became the Achilles heel
Speaker 1: of a murder investigation that cost more than nine million dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: the capolice officials have changed their minds, They think it
Speaker 1: was murder and they have reopened the case. The origins
Speaker 1: of the list go back to nine to a grassroots
Speaker 1: coalition of concerned Atlanta mothers. Mothers in US history have
Speaker 1: been at the forefront of a number of movements trained
Speaker 1: around protecting children communities the nation. There's a long heritage
Speaker 1: of this right of people taking the symbol of motherhood
Speaker 1: and attaching that to the kind of activism that everybody
Speaker 1: can relate to right, and everybody can get behind, and
Speaker 1: everybody can understand in terms of people who will self
Speaker 1: asleep put themselves forward to take any risk to protect
Speaker 1: their communities. When the mothers organize themselves to come together
Speaker 1: and say we've got to do something to stop this,
Speaker 1: the first thing that they're actually asking for is just
Speaker 1: take it seriously and investigate it. We want our children found,
Speaker 1: We want justice for our children that have already been lost. Well,
Speaker 1: police check out the similarities in all of these crimes.
Speaker 1: The mothers of three of the dead children are warning
Speaker 1: other parents to be careful. They have set up the
Speaker 1: Committee to Stop Children's Murders. The group is planning a
Speaker 1: seminar at the end of the month to teach parents
Speaker 1: how to keep their children from becoming the next statistic.
Speaker 1: I am so sorry that what happened to my child,
Speaker 1: what happened to these other ladies, children happen up. What
Speaker 1: I want you to do is to hang in there
Speaker 1: and try your best to see to it that it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen to yours. Thank you so much. And almost
Speaker 1: immediately these mothers come under scrutiny. Are they unwed mothers?
Speaker 1: Why is it just mothers and not mothers and fathers.
Speaker 1: What does this mean about the dysfunction of their families?
Speaker 1: That mothers are stepping forward and all of this kind
Speaker 1: of sense that you know, urban women, particularly black urban women,
Speaker 1: are matriarchal and represent kind of something that is wrong
Speaker 1: and dysfunctional and creeping into the mainstream in terms of
Speaker 1: American familihood and American womanhood. Like all of that got
Speaker 1: played up. The Muslims will be on the streets keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on the children, but they know they can't
Speaker 1: do it alone. Tonight, they urged the men in one
Speaker 1: housing project at McDaniel and Fulton to start caring about
Speaker 1: kids their own and other our people's instead of doing
Speaker 1: their own thing. What doesn't say for man to get
Speaker 1: out our rusty dusties and come together and begin to
Speaker 1: five the problems that affect That's all Some men listened,
Speaker 1: most were too busy doing other things. Those who listened
Speaker 1: said they hoped more people would get involved, but they're
Speaker 1: not confident. I don't know if there's going to do
Speaker 1: any good. As a man, I will tell you honestly,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of mothers out here. They don't what's
Speaker 1: there to be a lot of tune around, and the
Speaker 1: people where the mama don't be knowing where they are.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I see him take them back up on the
Speaker 1: only here. You know what the stake to take them
Speaker 1: to their mama, try to find out who. The America
Speaker 1: has demonstrated over and over again that the caring for
Speaker 1: our children that we profess may not be there. I
Speaker 1: contend that it is, but that we're feeling helpless to
Speaker 1: make change. We're not helpless, and we will make change,
Speaker 1: and a miracle will become a child conscious society. Rather
Speaker 1: than being universally kind of seen as these people who
Speaker 1: have suffered the greatest loss having to to bury a
Speaker 1: child or going to bed each night not knowing where
Speaker 1: your child is, they are almost immediately kind of seized
Speaker 1: upon by many folks as a symbol of what's wrong
Speaker 1: with the American familihood and therefore potentially responsible for whatever
Speaker 1: has happened to their children. Last night, members of the
Speaker 1: Committee to Stop Children's Murders held a closed door meeting
Speaker 1: to decide on a formal reaction to FBI allegations of
Speaker 1: some parents responsibility in the murders. Today, victim Curtis Walker's
Speaker 1: mother told me such talk was nothing new. She says
Speaker 1: police repeatedly accused her of killing her son. Of what
Speaker 1: they was trying to say that I had something to
Speaker 1: do with. I told there was a damn lapin key
Speaker 1: of my child, and they kept saying they're gonna try
Speaker 1: to make me say that my child was a three kid,
Speaker 1: a hustler, runaway. I told him, get the hell out
Speaker 1: of my house and don't come back. Camille Bell, making
Speaker 1: the formal statement for We're Committee to Stop Children's Murders,
Speaker 1: said the group has sent a letter to FBI Director
Speaker 1: Webster saying his remarks were untrue and demanding an apology.
Speaker 1: If no arrests are made in the next twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: usually after they get a chance to work through that
Speaker 1: and find out whether the parents are in fact people
Speaker 1: that could have done it or didn't do it, then
Speaker 1: either an arrest is made immediately or they go on
Speaker 1: to find other suspects. Basically, the general feeling is if
Speaker 1: they think I kill my child, tell him to come
Speaker 1: get me. Mrs Bell says she has no idea why
Speaker 1: the FBI made the statements in the first place, or
Speaker 1: why Commissioner Lee Brown did not deny they were true.
Speaker 1: I think that it makes them, um, in some ways,
Speaker 1: that much more brave to have come out in the
Speaker 1: way that they did and insisted, even in the face
Speaker 1: of this, over and over and over again, that their
Speaker 1: cases were going to get the attention that they deserved,
Speaker 1: and that they were going to in some ways kind
Speaker 1: of stand at the gates right of their communities and
Speaker 1: make sure that people knew that this happened to them,
Speaker 1: and people knew that there was still a danger, and
Speaker 1: that people did whatever they could to protect themselves even
Speaker 1: if they weren't getting all of the official help that
Speaker 1: they needed. I think in many ways they could speak
Speaker 1: to what was at stake better than anyone, because the
Speaker 1: fact that mothers came out in the ways that they
Speaker 1: did constantly forced the media and public officials to have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that these victims are children, and so over
Speaker 1: and over and over again saying, um, you know, my
Speaker 1: child was innocent, and being very specific about that, and
Speaker 1: pulling out photographs of their children and person analizing these stories,
Speaker 1: talking about the things that their children liked to do,
Speaker 1: talking about the ways that their children, even when they
Speaker 1: were out and about, you know, weren't quote street hustlers,
Speaker 1: but we're kids who were trying to make extra money,
Speaker 1: bagging groceries so that they could help their families, or
Speaker 1: trying to run errands for neighbors, UM, to be helpful
Speaker 1: in the community. Well loved UM and and even if
Speaker 1: not well loved UM children in their schools where they
Speaker 1: were just in the third grade, just in the fourth grade,
Speaker 1: just in the fifth grade. It's some mothers who keep
Speaker 1: that front and center and try really hard not to
Speaker 1: allow folks to depersonalize this. And so I think that
Speaker 1: the mothers have to be credited with keeping the memories
Speaker 1: of their children alive in that way. Interestingly and ironically,
Speaker 1: I think that as a consequence, possibly um of the
Speaker 1: ways in which they revealified, in the ways in which
Speaker 1: the case was so sensationalized, a lot of the mothers
Speaker 1: also chose at a certain point to retreat and and
Speaker 1: really became fairly adamant that they didn't want to be harassed,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to be bothered, not bothered about their memories,
Speaker 1: but that it was continually traumatic. I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to recognize that because a lot of folks were
Speaker 1: earning their livings on the backs of these children and
Speaker 1: on their families trauma. In the last year, eight Atlanta
Speaker 1: youngsters have been reported missing. The parents of some of
Speaker 1: these children have complained that police aren't doing enough, partly
Speaker 1: because of these complaints, but mostly just to try and
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of all this, the special Task
Speaker 1: Force was created one sergeant and four investigators. As far
Speaker 1: as our investigations are concerned, it will allow us the
Speaker 1: time to go back and type any loose ends that
Speaker 1: needs to be tied up in the course of all
Speaker 1: of the investigations. But most of all, it would benefit
Speaker 1: us by allowing him full time without interruption. So now
Speaker 1: we have two groups of investigators looking into these cases,
Speaker 1: one from inside Atlanta Police headquarters and another made up
Speaker 1: of former ap D officers who are now private detectives.
Speaker 1: Commissioner Brown says he welcomes any help he can get
Speaker 1: in this matter as long as the private detectives remember
Speaker 1: where their authority stops. The ten murders and kidnappings involving
Speaker 1: missing children have become priority number one at a p D.
Speaker 1: The task force assigned to investigate the cases has been
Speaker 1: doubled in size to ten. The FBI has been asked
Speaker 1: to assign two of its agents to assist in the investigation.
Speaker 1: Governor Busby will be asked to loan Atlanta Police four
Speaker 1: agents from the GBI. The state will also be asked
Speaker 1: to provide money to pay for extra police over time
Speaker 1: and other expenses. The Atlanta Office of the FBI has
Speaker 1: pitched into help in a peripheral way. They've already made
Speaker 1: available their laboratory resources, their behavioral sciences unit at Chronical
Speaker 1: Virginia Technical Assistance. They've flown in people to be of
Speaker 1: assistance to us, So we appreciative that who would also
Speaker 1: Our request right now is that they assign agents to
Speaker 1: be a part of the task force. And that's where
Speaker 1: the problem comes in. The FBI says, this is a
Speaker 1: local case, and no matter how horrible it is, Congress
Speaker 1: doesn't allow the FBI to get involved in local cases.
Speaker 1: What Atlanta really wanted was money to spend the way
Speaker 1: of thought necessary on the investigation, but Ronald Reagan didn't
Speaker 1: go quite that far. Instead of a blank check, he
Speaker 1: has offered other assistance technical help through three agencies, the FBI,
Speaker 1: the Justice Department, and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Already,
Speaker 1: the FBI has more than twenty six agents working on
Speaker 1: the cases. Some days all are used, while on other
Speaker 1: days some agents said idle. Bureau officials in Washington now
Speaker 1: say it is very unlikely any more agents or equipment
Speaker 1: will be sent to a line of for the investigation.
Speaker 1: Commissioner Brown things that Lanta's little Black children's rights have
Speaker 1: been violated, and he thinks they deserve help from the
Speaker 1: federal government. When I look at the media coverage, particularly
Speaker 1: when I look at it as a researcher, I am
Speaker 1: immediately struck by the lack of empathy that seems to
Speaker 1: be extended towards these children's survivors, people who have lost
Speaker 1: a lot um more than we can't imagine. It seems
Speaker 1: like folks are looking for an opening for a story
Speaker 1: to be like, well, this kid, you know, was in
Speaker 1: foster care and that was probably because the mother blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, like real tangents that don't really have
Speaker 1: much of anything, if anything at all, to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that the child is missing or murder and
Speaker 1: what's interesting is you don't see a balance in that,
Speaker 1: So you don't see a lot of conversation like this
Speaker 1: kid comes from this home and these parents are really
Speaker 1: grieving and the parents told them to be really careful.
Speaker 1: There seems like there's this hyper interest and focusing on
Speaker 1: kind of parental lapses, and it's really unclear to me why,
Speaker 1: except for the fact that it's scintillating. It's kind of stintillating.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to serve any kind of investigative purpose.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't clarify anything um in most instances about
Speaker 1: what happened to these children. There's so much to be
Speaker 1: dismayed by when you're thinking about this, But there's anything
Speaker 1: that upsets me more than anything else. It for me
Speaker 1: is a sense of injustice about the ways that these
Speaker 1: children are characterized in their death and their tragic, tragic deaths.
Speaker 1: I mean, the worst imaginable kind of victimization. When a
Speaker 1: person's life is taken from them and they are characterized
Speaker 1: in these ways that would suggest, even for adults, that
Speaker 1: they are unworthy of attention and sympathy and care and
Speaker 1: any further effort. So these kids are, you know, often
Speaker 1: referred to as street kids and hustlers. Rather than talking
Speaker 1: about a child who has run away from home. Several
Speaker 1: times they talk about them as a runaway. There is
Speaker 1: so much codified language that suggests that these kids are
Speaker 1: throwaways anyway. That is deeply troubling, and that enables people
Speaker 1: to distance themselves from the reality of them as innocence.
Speaker 1: The question is is Patrick Rogers a runaway or has
Speaker 1: he been harmed? His family thinks the worst, claiming he
Speaker 1: would never lee without telling his mother. But Rogers has
Speaker 1: been in trouble with the law before, and some investigators
Speaker 1: think the teenager has run away this time and because
Speaker 1: of news reports, is afraid to come home. The Missing
Speaker 1: Person's Bureau is checking that, and until the report is
Speaker 1: either confirmed are proven false, the case will remain with
Speaker 1: that department and not be transferred to the task force.
Speaker 1: Patrick Rogers, the authorities said, was a runaway, so what
Speaker 1: they had said the same about other victims before, and
Speaker 1: they would say it again. I always thought runaways were
Speaker 1: missing children, But then I always thought that a murdered
Speaker 1: child was a murdered child. Not so if you follow
Speaker 1: the nonsensical media reports. In Atlanta, we were told again
Speaker 1: that Sixteen year old Patrick Rogers, who had been missing
Speaker 1: for three days short of one month and found murdered,
Speaker 1: is not one of Atlanta's missing or murdered children. Sixteen
Speaker 1: year old Patrick Rogers was last seen alive on November tenth,
Speaker 1: when he left his apartment at the Henry Thomas Housing
Speaker 1: Project to walk his little brother to the bus stop.
Speaker 1: Police did not believe Roger's disappearance had anything to do
Speaker 1: with the fifteen Atlanta missing and murdered children. Then, on Sunday,
Speaker 1: December seven, the body of a black teenager was dragged
Speaker 1: out of the Chattahoochee River near Pacis Ferry Road in
Speaker 1: Cobb County. Company still aren't sure how Patrick died or
Speaker 1: who may have killed him, but considering his burglary record,
Speaker 1: they are investigating to see if there were any burglaries
Speaker 1: in the Pacis Ferry area around the time Patrick disappeared.
Speaker 1: Patrick's brother thinks that's ridiculous, just faith to that note
Speaker 1: that he was killed. Ain't nobody no, ain't nobody gones
Speaker 1: go away out and called counts bishop down, know their way,
Speaker 1: no way, not to be burglized, burglize. Mrs Rogers beliefs
Speaker 1: her son was murdered by someone he knew. She's always
Speaker 1: thought that I told him even when he was How
Speaker 1: did you know he was doing because I know he
Speaker 1: had him in Did he'd got in touch with me?
Speaker 1: I know he would. Ever since Patrick vanished that November day,
Speaker 1: his family believed their boy was in trouble. A black
Speaker 1: fifteen year old male who lived in the same area
Speaker 1: where three other children had disappeared. They were later found
Speaker 1: murdered and added to the task Force list, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't not for two months. Even though he did fit
Speaker 1: into the pattern well. The theory that he was a
Speaker 1: runaway disappeared as quickly as Rogers did when his body
Speaker 1: was found a month later. His case is very similar
Speaker 1: to Aaron Weisch's, who remained off the list for nine
Speaker 1: months until last week. His death was ruled accidental. In
Speaker 1: that case, however, the CAB officials now say new evidence
Speaker 1: could point to foul play. Pat Man's case obviously was
Speaker 1: a turning point in the Atlanta murders, but police missed
Speaker 1: the turn and went off on a tangent. The Task
Speaker 1: Force wouldn't investigate Patrick's death because Public Safety Commissioner Lee
Speaker 1: Brown steadfastly refused to add him to the list. Authorities
Speaker 1: said that pat Man was too old. The list at
Speaker 1: the time embraced victims aged seven to fifteen. But I
Speaker 1: don't like the Wish case in the Camp County. Cobb
Speaker 1: County officials admit they don't have enough evidence to like
Speaker 1: the Rogers case. Would the others? Nor do they have
Speaker 1: enough evidence so we even say that Rogers was murdered.
Speaker 1: All they do have are a bunch of dead ends.
Speaker 1: Patrick Rogers, like Aaron Weish, was eventually added to the list,
Speaker 1: But what if he had been added earlier. At Patrick
Speaker 1: Rogers home today, his family took his addition to the
Speaker 1: list without much emotion. Stevie Rogers, Patrick's older sister, had
Speaker 1: just heard the news. Her mother, she said, was at
Speaker 1: the Task Force offices, but she knew what Mrs Rogers
Speaker 1: would say. I want added to the test was because
Speaker 1: of the Fountain Cobb County. Indeed, they was working on
Speaker 1: it case. That's why they had add him to the
Speaker 1: test book. The only reason why, the only thing he
Speaker 1: had to come with other kids was his way and
Speaker 1: his race and where he comes from and all that
Speaker 1: he from a low income family. Say this you no
Speaker 1: reason for them and to test when you heard that,
Speaker 1: what did you and your mom think? Same? Thankful front
Speaker 1: of cool Stevie told me Patrick had been friends with
Speaker 1: several other of the murdered children, and pointed out that
Speaker 1: Aaron White, victim number seven, only lived three hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: So one of the complexities of talking about the neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that the kids were from is that it brings us
Speaker 1: right back to this question of the list. You have
Speaker 1: to think about the children who were counted, and potentially
Speaker 1: the fact that their children who were not counted. I
Speaker 1: think that when you look at the character of the
Speaker 1: name borhoods that the kids are from, then you can
Speaker 1: see how other neighborhoods might fit, even though they weren't
Speaker 1: named on the officialist. Because you're talking about neighborhoods where
Speaker 1: people don't necessarily have a lot of economic resources. You're
Speaker 1: often talking about neighborhoods that, as a consequence of that,
Speaker 1: have a number of abandoned, neglected homes, places where you
Speaker 1: might have like single realm occupancy in homes or what
Speaker 1: we call boarding houses, like all of these things, right,
Speaker 1: so that you have these close knit communities, but you
Speaker 1: also have a lot of people coming and going and
Speaker 1: not a lot of sense of control over people coming
Speaker 1: and going. And then you also have a lot of
Speaker 1: kids who are coming from housing projects and subsidize housing.
Speaker 1: The easy thing to see in that is that people
Speaker 1: do have a lot of economic resources, right, that a
Speaker 1: lot of these kids were coming from homes that were impoverished.
Speaker 1: What that also can mean is that these kids, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are coming from homes that have a
Speaker 1: lot of state intervention already, and sometimes a lot of
Speaker 1: particularly fraught state intervention. Right, So you might have more
Speaker 1: police patrols and you have more crime generally speaking in
Speaker 1: a sense of vulnerability around that. Generally you have a
Speaker 1: lot more people who have relationships with state apparatus, like
Speaker 1: you've got a social worker, um because you're receiving assistance,
Speaker 1: or because a person is in foster care. So all
Speaker 1: of that stuff is already in place. So you have
Speaker 1: these relationships sometimes between mothers who became activists, sometimes with
Speaker 1: other people who are still close in but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not in the nuclear family system where you've just
Speaker 1: got all kinds of difficult fraud relationships and also vulnerability, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you come out and protest against this, or
Speaker 1: you make a big stink about they're gonna lose their benefits,
Speaker 1: You're gonna lose your housing. What does all of that mean?
Speaker 1: You also, though, have a space where you can be
Speaker 1: subject to state intervention and mandates much more so. For example,
Speaker 1: when a curfew was ultimately instituted, you had a lot
Speaker 1: of patrol around city housing projects to ensure that people
Speaker 1: were in by the curfew, whereas you didn't have the
Speaker 1: same level of patrol around that in other neighborhoods that
Speaker 1: were more affluent. And while it could be interpreted that
Speaker 1: they were getting extra protection, what often happened, and the
Speaker 1: way that it was even framed was that it was
Speaker 1: punitive for parents. Right, So these kids get picked up. First,
Speaker 1: they're taking home, and then if nobody's home for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: maybe people are working the late shift because people who
Speaker 1: have hourly jobs off and art working at bankers hours.
Speaker 1: Then you get taken to a place I can feel
Speaker 1: very much like a detention center, and people get cited
Speaker 1: and people get fined, and so there's all of this
Speaker 1: stuff that's happened in as a consequence to some extent
Speaker 1: of where people live, you also have these really high
Speaker 1: concentrations of poverty in certain pockets at that time and
Speaker 1: to this day, and you also have a lot fewer
Speaker 1: options for safe and supervised recreation, or you find kids
Speaker 1: going pretty significant distances to get to safe and supervised recreation.
Speaker 1: You have the sense that there's a curfew and that
Speaker 1: people should be in but some of those things are
Speaker 1: assuming that people have resources that they don't have. What
Speaker 1: it seems like is happening is that you know, families
Speaker 1: are actually encouraging their kids to go somewhere safe, but
Speaker 1: the senses that that somewhere safe to go might not
Speaker 1: be inside your home. So it's not as simple as
Speaker 1: just thinking, oh, we'll just go home and close the
Speaker 1: door and then you'll be safe. But maybe I need
Speaker 1: to try to figure out how to get my kid
Speaker 1: someplace it's a couple of miles away to be inside
Speaker 1: and safe and also have me be compliant with the
Speaker 1: law at this point in time. So this is a
Speaker 1: lot more complicated than it seems. There was one place
Speaker 1: that I think is gone now as a housing project,
Speaker 1: that what they called the back patrol, and these were
Speaker 1: adults that walked around with baseball bats and looking for
Speaker 1: suspicious characters or protecting the community whatever they call them.
Speaker 1: The back patrol today. Residents of the project said they
Speaker 1: will police their own community. You've got to drop out
Speaker 1: keys here in community that can be their own patrol
Speaker 1: and can't get nothing out of the city Council of
Speaker 1: all the bills, men who were fit to all the
Speaker 1: large communs and the people who but unlike the Guardian
Speaker 1: Angels who do not carry weapons, the tech Wood group
Speaker 1: will be armed. Teenagers over sixteen were carried baseball bats
Speaker 1: and adults over twenty one will carry guns. The Tenants
Speaker 1: Association is taking the law into its own hands. They
Speaker 1: claimed police patrols in the neighborhood are not enough. They
Speaker 1: say budget cuts by the Atlanta Housing Authority have closed
Speaker 1: down recreation centers for children at a time when you're
Speaker 1: needed most. They don't want to spend the summer keeping
Speaker 1: their children indoors. So beginning next weekend, the patrols planned
Speaker 1: to be on the street. And they say anyone who
Speaker 1: looks like a stranger is fair game in the outside.
Speaker 1: It comes in here to try melissa, kids or anything.
Speaker 1: They are being known. They go weapon out and all
Speaker 1: the comma do the same thing. One organizer was asked
Speaker 1: what would be done to prevent volunteers from shooting an
Speaker 1: innocent person by mistake. His answer, no force of arms
Speaker 1: is too large when it comes to protecting our children.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of press attention Checkood Homes about
Speaker 1: the bat patrol. They're all gonna arm ourselves with bats.
Speaker 1: Nobody's coming into Tech with homes and they walked around
Speaker 1: with the baseball bats to protect the kids. I guess
Speaker 1: where Bubba Duncan lived, the next murder victim. After the
Speaker 1: bat patrol hit the press Tech with Holmes, things are
Speaker 1: tense tonight in Tech with Homes. People are angry. Earlier
Speaker 1: it had been reported that Bubba Duncan was a member
Speaker 1: of the Tech What bat Patrol. He was not, And
Speaker 1: now that he's been taken and killed, some people in
Speaker 1: Tech what are saying The bat patrol was just a
Speaker 1: challenge to the killer. You can build a fence, one
Speaker 1: man said, and this maniac will just climb over it
Speaker 1: and get you. The bat patrol is not getting a
Speaker 1: lot of support in Techwood tonight. I be they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have said no bad patrol. You know that that man
Speaker 1: was whoever it is. You know they're showing us that
Speaker 1: down him came in about no bats and Nathan else,
Speaker 1: you know. I also talked with Eddie Duncan Senor. He
Speaker 1: said his son was strong and could not have been
Speaker 1: taken by a killer without a struggle. He said it
Speaker 1: had to be someone he knew, I could trusted. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening. All I know is they call
Speaker 1: him Tom and they were found him, which she did.
Speaker 1: Attended Abou two weeks ago that he was missing and
Speaker 1: she couldn't get no, no help from the police department.
Speaker 1: Bubba was older, he was twenty one, and it threw
Speaker 1: everybody through us in the press. If you go back
Speaker 1: and look at the articles, you'll see they were asked.
Speaker 1: They're asking questions, Well, he's he's twenty one, he's an adult.
Speaker 1: These are child murders. These are kid murders. How do
Speaker 1: you have an adult? And so that the police responded, well,
Speaker 1: he was slow mentally, he was childlike. I remember that
Speaker 1: quote from Lee P. Brown. He was childlike. So it's
Speaker 1: like the police had to explain to everyone how you
Speaker 1: could have a twenty one year old in this string
Speaker 1: of child murders, child and teenagers, young adults. And from
Speaker 1: that point on, this when they started getting older and
Speaker 1: the child murders I believe morphed at the Bubba Duncan
Speaker 1: case into older twenty year old victims. Remember called where
Speaker 1: we seeing a typically Lee Brown was vague and rambling
Speaker 1: when questioned by reporters on April eighth about the finding
Speaker 1: of one Sleen adult Bubba Duncan, aged one, and about
Speaker 1: a second adult still missing, Larry Rogers, aged twenty. We
Speaker 1: know that the two young men in question are in
Speaker 1: context of age small in stature, Brown said at a
Speaker 1: news conference. Age is not a determining factor how he
Speaker 1: changed his tune since pat Man had been found. There
Speaker 1: is some speculation that one of the reasons the killer
Speaker 1: or killers has or have gone to the young adults,
Speaker 1: who by the way physically still resemble teenagers, is that
Speaker 1: the net is so tight on children, with families now
Speaker 1: being far more involved than before, far closer watch on
Speaker 1: our children, and obviously is more difficult now to steal
Speaker 1: away With a youngster like victim Eddie Duncan, Rogers looks
Speaker 1: much younger and is moderately mentally handicapped. Officials say Larry
Speaker 1: looks and behaves like an adolescent. Rogers looks younger and
Speaker 1: with a mental handicap acts younger he fits the pattern.
Speaker 1: The list grew to include thirty victims between the ages
Speaker 1: of seven and twenty eight. The final and oldest victim
Speaker 1: was added not by the Task Force, but by the
Speaker 1: prosecution during trial, Even before a jury ruled, Rumors alluded
Speaker 1: to the disbanding of the task force. Privately, many police
Speaker 1: officers think it's time to disband the task Force, but
Speaker 1: they say the top grass hesitates for two reasons. It
Speaker 1: simply wouldn't look good to the public, and especially to
Speaker 1: the victims mother's Curtis Walker's Mothers cases. Public Safety Commissioner
Speaker 1: Lee Brown feels that pressure from many of the families.
Speaker 1: He always reminds the news media that there are still
Speaker 1: twenty six open cases. We shall continue that ongoing investigation
Speaker 1: until we're able to charge someone for the cases for
Speaker 1: which we have not charged someone at this time. Do
Speaker 1: you mean that the task force will stay intact until
Speaker 1: you have somebody charged in all twenty six cases. That
Speaker 1: is absolutely correct. Brown then instantly realized the bond he
Speaker 1: had put himself in. It's common knowledge that many of
Speaker 1: the cases may never be solved, so Brown quickly backtracked
Speaker 1: and in essence retracted his statement itself. We will assess
Speaker 1: what we do on a daily basis, and if any
Speaker 1: point in time we need to increase our decrease, will
Speaker 1: do what the situation dictates. High ranking officials inside the
Speaker 1: police department tell me the Task Force has become a
Speaker 1: political issue, so no more office. This will be removed
Speaker 1: at least before the mayor's election, and after that well,
Speaker 1: sources inside the task force tell me that will depend
Speaker 1: on whether Wayne Williams is convicted. If he is not,
Speaker 1: this could go on indefinitely. Two days after Wayne Williams
Speaker 1: was found guilty of two of Atlanta's murders, the special
Speaker 1: task Force created to solve the string of young black
Speaker 1: killings is about to be closed, according to reports here.
Speaker 1: I can understand that alloying the public's fees about such
Speaker 1: a horrible situation as good when everyone wants to get
Speaker 1: all the life. District Attorney Louis Layton was asked whether
Speaker 1: investigators were closing the books on twenty four more Task
Speaker 1: Force cases because of links to Wayne Williams. I believe not.
Speaker 1: There would be some meetings in the next few days
Speaker 1: about certain cases, but I don't believe they would be
Speaker 1: that figure. With twenty three of the Atlanta murders blamed
Speaker 1: on Wayne Williams leave. Brown announced Monday the Missing and
Speaker 1: Murdered Children's task Force was closing for good next Monday,
Speaker 1: but then church leaders complained to Mary Young that the
Speaker 1: closing was premature and the heat was on Brown. Today,
Speaker 1: he came back to the media to announce the old
Speaker 1: task force that investigated child murders was still officially closed,
Speaker 1: and he still maintains Wayne Williams killed twenty three of
Speaker 1: those victims. But Brown says a new task force has
Speaker 1: been created to take its place. It will be made
Speaker 1: up of twenty five Atlanta policemen no other jurisdictions. They
Speaker 1: will team with remnants of the old task force to
Speaker 1: investigate all Atlanta homicides. It will be called the Homicide
Speaker 1: Task Force. One of the things that was brought to
Speaker 1: our attention by the the ministers had met with us
Speaker 1: people who represent even just through their congregation, if not
Speaker 1: through the fact that they're leaders in our community, is
Speaker 1: the fact that community has an attachment to the task force,
Speaker 1: and we had seven cases which were not closed, and
Speaker 1: as a result, we want to continue the effort and
Speaker 1: be responsive to the community. Commissioner, haven't you just renamed
Speaker 1: the homicide Department to appease the parents. Well, the answer
Speaker 1: to that is no, we have never made any decisions
Speaker 1: for purposes of appeasement. But as the commissioner was continually
Speaker 1: drilled about the name change, even he found some humor
Speaker 1: in it. Do you understand, of course it occurred to us.
Speaker 1: They closed the cases, which was horrible for the families.
Speaker 1: There was no closure. The list existed. After he was convicted.
Speaker 1: The list disappeared. There's thirty victims, two of them got
Speaker 1: a trial, whether or not you agree with the conclusion
Speaker 1: of the trial. There's twenty eight then left who had
Speaker 1: no trial, and they were just closed after the conviction.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't seem right to me. That doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like any real ending. It feels very incomplete, just pitiful.
Speaker 1: That's a bad thing to do if it was one
Speaker 1: of my kids that died. I don't want to know
Speaker 1: what they all happen and who. They need to know
Speaker 1: an answer, They need to know why, or they need
Speaker 1: to know what some answer m After Williams is arrested,
Speaker 1: the mothers are still very focused often and saying I
Speaker 1: want justice for my child. My child matters more than
Speaker 1: closing this case matters more than the implications of this
Speaker 1: open case for the city matter. Remember them my child
Speaker 1: was somebody who deserved to live a full life or
Speaker 1: archive clips or courtesy of WSBTV. Be sure to tune
Speaker 1: in next Friday for episode nine. There's two episodes left.
Speaker 1: See you then? Why do you do it? Yeah? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it's like anything else. You
Speaker 1: get involved, you can't let it go. And the more
Speaker 1: involved I get, the more involved I want to get
Speaker 1: want to catch the guy. Uh. Primarily I want to
Speaker 1: stop the killing. I want to see that. I want
Speaker 1: to see the kids killing. Stop h