Speaker 1: I asked it to get his ID and they said yes,
Speaker 1: he was still sitting in his car. I still had
Speaker 1: my composite sketch and I pulled it out. He had
Speaker 1: these little glasses on and I drew the glasses and
Speaker 1: I held it up and I said, anybody recognized this guy?
Speaker 1: And it was Wayne Williams to the tee, I mean
Speaker 1: it just it was just Wayne. Ironically, we caught Wayne
Speaker 1: Williams at two fifty five am on the last day
Speaker 1: of the surveillance. When we got there, we were immediately
Speaker 1: briefed that this guy was seen on the bridge and
Speaker 1: something hit the water. It hadn't been recovered. Of course,
Speaker 1: nobody could get in that water because a it's two
Speaker 1: fifty five am and the water but current was just outrageous.
Speaker 1: Somebody would have drowned and wouldn't have stood a good
Speaker 1: chance of recovering anything.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I don't think up to him and.
Speaker 1: Identified myself as a special agent with the FBI, and
Speaker 1: I asked him immediately if he knew why he was
Speaker 1: being pulled over, and he said, yes, it's probably because
Speaker 1: about those those kids that are missing, which kind of
Speaker 1: surprised me.
Speaker 2: That was an unusual answer.
Speaker 3: I thought that was his answer.
Speaker 1: Well it was, you know, it's a paraphrase of it.
Speaker 1: That wasn't his verbatim answer, but yeah, it was something
Speaker 1: like that. And the next words out of his mouth
Speaker 1: was he says, you know, he said, Channel five is
Speaker 1: really covering this very well, but Channel eleven I don't
Speaker 1: think covers it enough. So that kind of surprised me.
Speaker 1: I remember that jumped out at me as well.
Speaker 3: And Atlanta, another bonder was discovered today, but twenty third.
Speaker 4: At the Police Task Force headquarters, there are twenty seven
Speaker 4: faces on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
Speaker 2: We do not know the personilar persons that are responsible.
Speaker 5: Therefore, we do not have the money from Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 5: in house to forks in Atlanta.
Speaker 6: Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, rogers are currently
Speaker 6: was asphixiator.
Speaker 4: Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
Speaker 4: on killing.
Speaker 3: This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 1: I asked him if I could talk to him in
Speaker 1: my car. I told him we needed to get out
Speaker 1: of the traffic because the tractor trailers were rolling by
Speaker 1: and you couldn't hear. Plus, I wanted to interview him.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get him in my car and interview him.
Speaker 1: He agreed, real mediable, very friendly guy.
Speaker 2: I mean he was he nervous. No, no, he wasn't nervous.
Speaker 1: It was the first impression of well, I didn't have
Speaker 1: one other than me telling you what he just kind
Speaker 1: of surprised me with the media comment and acknowledging that
Speaker 1: it was about the kids. I really didn't have much
Speaker 1: of an impression.
Speaker 2: I was wanting to.
Speaker 1: Know more about what his story was, and eventually I
Speaker 1: got it. He gets in the car with me, and
Speaker 1: the first thing I asked him to do, and he
Speaker 1: surprised me again. I said, can we have consent to
Speaker 1: search your vehicle? And he said sure.
Speaker 2: So we had.
Speaker 1: A consent for him that I had him sign, and
Speaker 1: he signed it and let us search his vehicle. Now,
Speaker 1: as I had walked by his vehicle, I stuck my
Speaker 1: head in the window and looked around. There was a
Speaker 1: bag of clothes laying on the floor, and there was
Speaker 1: a pair of gloves laying on the seat. And what
Speaker 1: really struck me though, was is that there was a
Speaker 1: nylon cord kind of like a ski rope. It was
Speaker 1: about twenty four inches long and it was knotted on
Speaker 1: each end. That rope really interested me, so I started
Speaker 1: interviewing him and ask him what he was out this
Speaker 1: late at night, because, like I said, it was two
Speaker 1: fifty five am when he got in my car. He
Speaker 1: said that he was a talent scout and that he
Speaker 1: had an eight o'clock appointment I think eight am the
Speaker 1: next morning, but he was out trying to find their
Speaker 1: address so that he wouldn't know where it is the
Speaker 1: next morning and not be late. That just didn't have
Speaker 1: an air of truthfulness to it. Nobody goes out at
Speaker 1: two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning to find
Speaker 1: an address to make sure they're not late at eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: I found out he was an only child. He lived
Speaker 1: with his parents, his mom and dad. His dad was
Speaker 1: a freelance photographer and his mother had been a retired teacher.
Speaker 1: They were quite elderly that he had come along pretty
Speaker 1: late in life. He was a pretty intelligent guy too.
Speaker 1: He had a very high IQ. Word had it that
Speaker 1: he had built an AMFM radio station in his backyard
Speaker 1: when he was about fourteen. In the FCC. It had
Speaker 1: made him tear it down. I asked the guys, I said,
Speaker 1: search of his car over and they said yes, and
Speaker 1: I said okay. So I said, if anybody any reason
Speaker 1: for him to stay here any longer, and they said no,
Speaker 1: So we let him go. There was some things there
Speaker 1: that happened, that transpired that.
Speaker 2: That shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 1: The FBI has always been and remains an institution that
Speaker 1: is very conscious of not falsely arresting people. They've made
Speaker 1: mistakes in the past, everybody does. It's a judgment call.
Speaker 1: But we did not that night want to violate any
Speaker 1: of his civil liberties, his civil rights, and so we
Speaker 1: aired on the side of caution. It was my decision
Speaker 1: and let him go. What wasn't my decision is when
Speaker 1: I asked them, I said, where is these things you
Speaker 1: found in the car? And I went, we didn't keep
Speaker 1: any of it, And I went, what you didn't What
Speaker 1: I said, what about the gloves and the rope, because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that that's probably part of crimes that had
Speaker 1: been committed since the people had been killed from ligature strangulation.
Speaker 1: But somewhere we dropped the ball. I was in charge,
Speaker 1: so I went ahead and took the hit for it.
Speaker 1: I said, Oh, that's just the decision you guys made.
Speaker 1: And I'll back you. I don't agree with it right now,
Speaker 1: but as far as official official word goes, and we
Speaker 1: made that decision, and that's that's the way it goes.
Speaker 5: Did anyone ever see Wayne toss anything over the bridge?
Speaker 1: No, never did. But there wasn't another car on that bridge.
Speaker 1: He was the only car there. They saw the headlights approach,
Speaker 1: they heard the splash, and then they saw what, like
Speaker 1: I described earlier as him appeared to just be starting
Speaker 1: out again at two or three miles an hour.
Speaker 5: Did you guys ask him that night if he tossed
Speaker 5: anything over the bridge?
Speaker 1: Yes, and he I asked him, you know, there'd been
Speaker 1: a splash, And I think I asked him he tossed anything,
Speaker 1: And I don't remember if he said he was throwing
Speaker 1: trash out or something. I can't remember that part. I
Speaker 1: don't remember what his answer was, but he did say
Speaker 1: I think he said he was throwing trash away or something,
Speaker 1: that he had some trash that he needed to get
Speaker 1: rid of and he threw it in the river that night.
Speaker 5: No one ever saw or found what caused the alleged
Speaker 5: splash that was hurt in the water.
Speaker 1: We let him go and at six am we packed
Speaker 1: up and I went ahead and went home. And home
Speaker 1: was down south of Atlanta, lived in marl Georgia. I
Speaker 1: drove up to East Tennessee because it was Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 1: It was a long weekend to see my mother and
Speaker 1: basically crashed. I was totally exhausted. I slept for I
Speaker 1: think I got there. It's about a three hour drive,
Speaker 1: and I got there about noon on Friday, went to sleep,
Speaker 1: woke up at noon on Saturday eight went back to sleep.
Speaker 5: Though police had a strange encounter with the man on
Speaker 5: the bridge, they decided to let him go.
Speaker 3: They had no reason to hold him in custody. The
Speaker 3: bridge steak.
Speaker 5: Out operation was now officially over, and Mike Macombus went
Speaker 5: home to rest for the weekend.
Speaker 3: But meanwhile, investigators.
Speaker 5: Were still hard at work, suspicious of the man they
Speaker 5: top from the bridge, and by the time the combas
Speaker 5: woke up again, big things were happening.
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, I got a call from Bill McGrath. He
Speaker 1: was one of the administrative supervisors on the case.
Speaker 2: And Bill called me in.
Speaker 1: He said, did you interview Wayne Williams. I said yes.
Speaker 1: He said, well, do you have any notes? I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of notes. Well, we just found
Speaker 1: a body about five hundred meters down stream. You need
Speaker 1: to call in and do your report right now. And
Speaker 1: he said, and get yourself back to Atlanta.
Speaker 7: We think we got him.
Speaker 5: A few days later, a body washed up in the river,
Speaker 5: just a few miles downstream from the bridge.
Speaker 8: The body was found around eleven this morning in the
Speaker 8: Chattahoochee River, just south of the I two eighty five bridge,
Speaker 8: where the river forms the border between Cobb and Fulton Counties.
Speaker 8: The body was nude, and medical examiners estimated it had
Speaker 8: been in the water a couple of days. It was
Speaker 8: found by a fisherman. The body was on the Fulton
Speaker 8: County side of the river, but it was difficult for
Speaker 8: police to get to that part of the river. Boats
Speaker 8: were launched from the Cobb County side. Members of the
Speaker 8: Special Task Force poured in. About two hours later the
Speaker 8: body was brought out. A medical examiner said it was
Speaker 8: a young black man in his early twenties.
Speaker 5: The body was of twenty seven year old Nathaniel Cater.
Speaker 5: The FBI now had their first real suspect the man
Speaker 5: they had stopped on the bridge.
Speaker 3: That man was Wayne Williams.
Speaker 9: The man who has been questioned, was stopped late at
Speaker 9: night on May twenty first, after arousing the curiosity of
Speaker 9: police on a river's stakeout. The investigators heard a splash
Speaker 9: in the water underneath the Jackson Parkway Bridge.
Speaker 10: No arrest was made then, and no one inspected two
Speaker 10: bags of clothes, the pair of men's shoes, or the
Speaker 10: gloves seen inside the station wagon. For two days, the
Speaker 10: task force quietly dragged the river, not finding anything. Three
Speaker 10: days later, two people in a canoe did the nude
Speaker 10: body of Nathaniel Cater a mile downstream from the South
Speaker 10: Cobb Bridge.
Speaker 5: Within a matter of minutes, news stations formed the rigs
Speaker 5: where Nathaniel Cater's body was found, and it wasn't long
Speaker 5: after that the media discovered the name Wayne Williams. Though
Speaker 5: no arrests have been made, news stations released his name anyways.
Speaker 11: To anyone who's been anywhere even close to the non
Speaker 11: suspect's home, it's obvious he doesn't have any privacy anymore.
Speaker 11: In spite of his pleas to remain anonymous, and in
Speaker 11: spite of the police begging the media to use restraint,
Speaker 11: most have released his name anyway.
Speaker 5: Reporters and camera crews from all around the nation lined
Speaker 5: up outside the home of Wayne Williams, anxiously awaiting for
Speaker 5: something to happen.
Speaker 10: A horde of police, news reporters and photographers smothered this
Speaker 10: quiet neighborhood. The media didn't want to miss any arrests
Speaker 10: that so far hasn't happened.
Speaker 5: And with this man now under the national spotlight, the
Speaker 5: FBI's investigation was sent in the overdrive.
Speaker 12: Two FBI agents and two detectives with the Atlanta Police
Speaker 12: Department sat perched on their cars, guns visible, never taking
Speaker 12: their eyes off the modest home in northwest Atlanta. The mother, father,
Speaker 12: and son inside became a family under siege in their
Speaker 12: own home. In around ten this morning, the man's father
Speaker 12: came out of the house, pushed the cameras away with
Speaker 12: his commanding presence, and silently walked toward the police. Without
Speaker 12: saying a word, He signaled them to follow him into
Speaker 12: the house.
Speaker 13: Have they asked you to leave?
Speaker 3: Do they have anything of a confession?
Speaker 5: The nation was glued to their TVs as reporters scrambled
Speaker 5: to find more information on the manning question for the
Speaker 5: murder of Atlanta's children.
Speaker 3: Everyone wanted to know who was Wayne Williams.
Speaker 9: Wayne Williams is an Atlanta born and bred twenty three
Speaker 9: years old. A product of the city's public school system.
Speaker 9: He went to Anderson Park Elementary School and graduated from
Speaker 9: Frederick Douglas High School on High Tower Road, Northwest. People
Speaker 9: who know Williams say he is a highly intelligent young man,
Speaker 9: a good student when he was in school. That opinion
Speaker 9: is echoed by William's seventh grade teacher, Archie Wilson, who
Speaker 9: Williams continues to list as a personal reference on his resume.
Speaker 3: Those who knew Wayne Williams were completely shocked.
Speaker 14: As a student, he was extremely bright, fair, intelligent young man, quiet, respectful,
Speaker 14: honest student, very dependable, just an idea student.
Speaker 9: Williams's resume lists a number of clubs and organizations he
Speaker 9: says he belonged to in high school National Honor Society
Speaker 9: ROTC rifle team, but his high school class yearbook does
Speaker 9: not show him in any of the organization pictures. Williams's
Speaker 9: acquaintances say he is one who tends to exaggerate his
Speaker 9: accomplishments and his contacts. His resumes list of professional references
Speaker 9: includes many familiar names in the local media. Most of
Speaker 9: those references say they knew Williams only briefly and not
Speaker 9: very well, but it is clear Wayne Williams is a
Speaker 9: bright and ambitious person. He started a radio station in
Speaker 9: his parents' home when he was only twelve. In his teens,
Speaker 9: he spent time hanging around many of the city's radio stations,
Speaker 9: doing odd jobs, mostly as an unpaid volunteer, and talking
Speaker 9: to the people he met about broadcasting.
Speaker 2: He was a bit old for his age, so to speak.
Speaker 13: I'm saying that to talk to a kid at that
Speaker 13: age about something that you're doing as an adult and
Speaker 13: he's talking on your level.
Speaker 2: It's really amazing.
Speaker 13: And as I said before, he was a likable type
Speaker 13: of individual, maybe because of the knowledge of the industry
Speaker 13: as far.
Speaker 2: As I'm concerned.
Speaker 9: Several years ago, he was arrested for impersonating a police
Speaker 9: officer and for using police emergency lights on his car.
Speaker 9: The charges were reduced and handled in traffic court. In
Speaker 9: nineteen seventy seven, Williams began offering his photographic services to
Speaker 9: the Atlantic TV stations. Williams would drive the city streets
Speaker 9: through the night, listening to police monitors in his car,
Speaker 9: racing to the scene of accidents, fires and homicides, then
Speaker 9: peddling film of what had happened to the news departments.
Speaker 9: But the freelance photography business was never very successful, and
Speaker 9: most recently, william says he has acted as a talent scout,
Speaker 9: helping young people get ahead in the entertainment industry. Williams
Speaker 9: has always lived with his parents in this house on
Speaker 9: Penelope Road, Northwest, the quiet neighborhood that has suddenly become
Speaker 9: a constant subject of interest for the police and news media.
Speaker 9: Neighbors say they never knew the family very well, the
Speaker 9: typical wave as you go by type of thing.
Speaker 15: He've been such a good boar for it.
Speaker 16: I know, I haven't seen nothing to make me suspicious
Speaker 16: of him.
Speaker 2: If he has really surprised me, really shocks me.
Speaker 12: Why would you think it would be a shock to you?
Speaker 13: So close and I got son and that sons, one
Speaker 13: of them used to go in and wait with him
Speaker 13: in his radio station.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 9: Intelligent, not terribly close to a lot of people, A
Speaker 9: news and police groupie of sorts. That is how Wayne
Speaker 9: Williams is described by those who know him, and as
Speaker 9: his neighbors said, there is shocked that this quiet and
Speaker 9: promising kid is now a major suspect in the Atlanta
Speaker 9: child murders.
Speaker 5: He was described repeatedly as someone who was intelligent and docile,
Speaker 5: the last person you would suspect in a murder, but
Speaker 5: the FBI was convinced otherwise. They continued their investigation in
Speaker 5: searched Wayne williams house.
Speaker 17: On Wednesday night, June third, Action News learned that FBI
Speaker 17: agents and a representative of the Special Task Force had
Speaker 17: executed a search warrant and had collected potential evidence from
Speaker 17: Williams's home and car.
Speaker 1: They found an eight by ten sheet of paper that
Speaker 1: basically was a flyer that said, if you're between the
Speaker 1: ages of six and ten and you think you can
Speaker 1: sing or dance, I'm a talent scout.
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams called himself a talent scout, and he had
Speaker 5: passed out flyers throughout the city in search of young
Speaker 5: kids to form a music group. I recently found a
Speaker 5: copy of that flyer, the same one the FBI had
Speaker 5: found in his home.
Speaker 3: The flyer reads, in bold letters.
Speaker 5: Can you sing or play an instrument if you were
Speaker 5: between eleven and twenty one, male or female and would
Speaker 5: like to become a professional entertainer. All interviews private and free,
Speaker 5: no experience necessary. The FBI found this very interesting. The
Speaker 5: flyer suggests that Wayne was putting contact with young kids,
Speaker 5: probably more than one.
Speaker 1: So he put himself out there as a talent scout.
Speaker 1: And that's that's how we surmised that he was getting
Speaker 1: the kids into the car, Because when you're having that
Speaker 1: many kids and getting that much worldwide publicity, you would
Speaker 1: think somebody would have enough brains to not get in
Speaker 1: the car with somebody.
Speaker 2: But he was pretty good at what he did.
Speaker 5: It could be a huge coincidence, a line of work
Speaker 5: with the best intentions, or it was the perfect way
Speaker 5: to get children alone. Investigators were now more certain than
Speaker 5: ever that they'd found their man, and it was time
Speaker 5: they spoke to Wayne Williams again, so they brought him
Speaker 5: in for questioning.
Speaker 15: They went out, picked him up and brought him into
Speaker 15: the FBI office, take him into the back and as
Speaker 15: a massive scene of city of dignitarian and state and
Speaker 15: everybody in the world wanted to get involved in it.
Speaker 2: They in and gather.
Speaker 15: He agreed to take a potograph test, and we talked
Speaker 15: for him, and they went downstairs and I did the
Speaker 15: testing downstairs in my office.
Speaker 7: Just you two, just the two of us.
Speaker 15: The full task force, and everybody was on the tenth floor,
Speaker 15: press and news all around the entire building, and we
Speaker 15: were kind of on the ninth floor, just the two
Speaker 15: of us.
Speaker 5: This is Richard Ratcliffe, former special agent with the FBI.
Speaker 5: He sat down alone in a room with Wayne Williams
Speaker 5: to conduct a polygraph test.
Speaker 15: We had this very interesting interview for about two hours.
Speaker 15: I said, you're very intelligent, so what's your IQ And
Speaker 15: he said, I don't believe in that case the potograph.
Speaker 15: You have to have confidence in it. I think he
Speaker 15: was totally confident he could beat it. He said that
Speaker 15: he was just totally calm that he could beat it.
Speaker 2: And what you do?
Speaker 15: You ask us series of comparative questions? This series of
Speaker 15: about ten questions or some of them are very simple.
Speaker 15: It's everything we've discussed, all yes and no answers. It's
Speaker 15: not really confusing, is really clear, very pretty simple and
Speaker 15: no surprises. And at that time I ran what's considered
Speaker 15: to be the most valid format in the potograph research,
Speaker 15: and that was the zone comparison test, A former set
Speaker 15: of questions about ten questions. I'll go through that and
Speaker 15: record the physiology, and then I'll ask him, was any
Speaker 15: problem to anything, anything need to explain or correct or know.
Speaker 15: Then you run a second time, you ask the same
Speaker 15: set of questions, and I record a second chart. You
Speaker 15: run the same set of questions the third time, and
Speaker 15: after the third time, then you score each one of
Speaker 15: those and compare the responses to the other responses, and
Speaker 15: then you add those scores up, and it would show
Speaker 15: either either deception or no deception. And this human nature
Speaker 15: to want to believe people, So I'm assuming he's going
Speaker 15: to pass the test. He stayed pretty much composed the
Speaker 15: whole time. He was composed, and he's not really fair
Speaker 15: to say relaxed, because the whole situation is not one
Speaker 15: where you're relaxed. He was very engaged, and he was
Speaker 15: very much operative and in participated willingly. We had this
Speaker 15: very interesting conversation and then about what happened, why he's
Speaker 15: on the bridge, and one of his things that made
Speaker 15: him suspect was every time he was asking about the bridge,
Speaker 15: he gave a different story, so he'd already given two
Speaker 15: or three different versions by the time I talked to
Speaker 15: him about where he was going, what he was doing,
Speaker 15: didn't stop on the bridge, just stopping the bridge through
Speaker 15: the boxes in the river, didn't throw anything in the river. So,
Speaker 15: I mean he had variations of his story. He's a
Speaker 15: talent scout, and he had this girl's name, Cheryl, whoever
Speaker 15: her name was, and he's supposed to meet her the
Speaker 15: next morning at seven am. And so he went to
Speaker 15: see if he'd find the apartment. And I said, are
Speaker 15: you interviewing young girls at seven in the morning in
Speaker 15: their apartments? And that puts you in an awkward position.
Speaker 15: I said, I wouldn't do that. He said, I'm not homosexual.
Speaker 15: He just made a point, I'm not homosexual. He argued
Speaker 15: that that he wasn't homosexual. I was asking about being
Speaker 15: alone with this girl in her apartment seven in the morning,
Speaker 15: and I was asking him why he would do that.
Speaker 15: Why he would just set up interview at seven in
Speaker 15: the morning in the girl's apartment. That would make him heterosexual,
Speaker 15: making mineral sexual, right, Yeah, And that's why I was asking.
Speaker 15: But his argument was that he wasn't homosexual. People I
Speaker 15: guess were suspicious of him being homosexual. I said, well,
Speaker 15: I'm not accusing you of being homosexual. Well, but we
Speaker 15: had that discussion. So I said, what do you have
Speaker 15: a girlfriend?
Speaker 18: Iza?
Speaker 2: Can you? He said not right now?
Speaker 15: So I said have you ever had a girlfriend? And
Speaker 15: he couldn't name one.
Speaker 5: After a long conversation, Racliffe asked the big question that
Speaker 5: had brought him there in the first place.
Speaker 15: Did you cause the death in Nathaniel Cater? Did you
Speaker 15: throw Cater's body into the cheers the river that night?
Speaker 2: What do you say? He said, no, he's denied it.
Speaker 15: I don't know the Kaniell Cater. I didn't have any
Speaker 15: conduct Nathaniel Cater, didn't know him, had never been on
Speaker 15: he didn't have a body, he didn't throw anything in
Speaker 15: the river.
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams denied any involvement in the murder of Nathaniel Cater,
Speaker 5: claiming that he never even knew him.
Speaker 3: But the results of the polygraph told a different story.
Speaker 15: The test to his deceptive and that's a first indication
Speaker 15: in two years on who did it? Wow, So you're
Speaker 15: the guy we were looking for me And that's how
Speaker 15: kind of how I reacted when I got through and
Speaker 15: great it all out when I got through and said,
Speaker 15: this show's deception. I'll been learning you're the guy that
Speaker 15: we've been looking for you, you're the one killing these kids.
Speaker 15: He said, that's not me, So let me see that.
Speaker 15: So then he spread up the charts. Well, the charts,
Speaker 15: you wouldn't know from what I just saw. Would you
Speaker 15: look at that and tell me that somebody's liner that
Speaker 15: killed the guests? So he spread the charts, look at
Speaker 15: all the tracings. So he points on he says, what's
Speaker 15: that question right there? I said, that's pretty good. Did
Speaker 15: you cause the death Nathaniel Cater? So he picked out
Speaker 15: that question, which is where his reaction was, you know,
Speaker 15: and then I make my call. I go out and
Speaker 15: tell the whole world you know that he's deceptive and
Speaker 15: indicates that he's the one that killed in the can
Speaker 15: of Cater.
Speaker 5: Though Wayne appeared to show deception in his polygraph test,
Speaker 5: investigators let him go and now arrest was made.
Speaker 17: After twelve hours of interrogation. Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown
Speaker 17: told waiting reporters that the man had been released and
Speaker 17: no arrest made.
Speaker 19: In terms of our efforts tonight, we have not ended
Speaker 19: up with the information that would resolved in an arrest.
Speaker 5: A late night press conference was held outside the building,
Speaker 5: kilding questions from reporters that is correct, But as it
Speaker 5: turned out, this was a distraction.
Speaker 17: What the reporters on hand did not know was that
Speaker 17: Brown was creating a diversion for the man and his
Speaker 17: father to leave the building.
Speaker 5: Soon after, the media rushed to way Williams home in
Speaker 5: hopes of a statement from the man, and what happened
Speaker 5: next shocked everyone. Wayne invited all the reporters into his
Speaker 5: living room and held his own press conference for the
Speaker 5: nation to see.
Speaker 17: At seven am, three and a half hours after returning home,
Speaker 17: the young man conducted a news conference, setting the condition
Speaker 17: that he would not be shown and that his name
Speaker 17: not be used. You will hear him, but you will
Speaker 17: see reporters and photographers. He contended that he was being
Speaker 17: harassed prior to his detainment, intimidated during his custody, and
Speaker 17: pressured to confess to crimes he says he did not commit.
Speaker 6: They openly said, you kill Nathaniel Cater and you know it,
Speaker 6: and you line to us. They said that, and they
Speaker 6: said it a number of occasions.
Speaker 16: They said it.
Speaker 6: On that night, one of the task force captains on
Speaker 6: the scene pointed his finger at me and said it,
Speaker 6: and said he was tired of the bs about working
Speaker 6: the long hours working the steakouts, and that he was
Speaker 6: ready to pull the thing to an end. Done, they
Speaker 6: put a tail on me starting last week. I made
Speaker 6: him probably in the first hour or two, and in
Speaker 6: the process of telling me, a couple of the guys
Speaker 6: apparently weren't very good drivers, and I caused them to
Speaker 6: have a minor accident, and I think they were just pissed.
Speaker 5: After claiming his innocence and expressing frustration with law enforcement,
Speaker 5: he began to elaborate on his role as a talent scout,
Speaker 5: detailing his involvement in music groups.
Speaker 6: It's our job to take some entertainer, say, basically from
Speaker 6: the street, polishing them up, get them professional, and try
Speaker 6: and shop a record deal for them. And we had
Speaker 6: a young group that we have been putting together since
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy seven, a group called Gemini. When we're trying
Speaker 6: to do is just capture the marketplace basically that Jackson
Speaker 6: five had.
Speaker 5: He mentioned recruiting kids to form music, nay one in
Speaker 5: particular that he was currently working on that he called Gemini.
Speaker 17: Williams himself did not exactly go into hiding. He did,
Speaker 17: on several occasions call local reporters. He led police surveillance
Speaker 17: on some wild goose chases passing by Commissioner Browns and
Speaker 17: Mayor Jackson's houses.
Speaker 5: Was this the man who was killing Atlanta's children or
Speaker 5: just a local talent scout who was simply at the
Speaker 5: wrong place at the wrong time. The FBI had gone
Speaker 5: through countless leads over the past two years, but in
Speaker 5: their eyes, the one that made the most sense was
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: When you work a case that long with that many people,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of theories, a lot
Speaker 1: of names, a lot of people that you have to
Speaker 1: check and wash out. I mean, it's quite an ordeal.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of theories out there, but
Speaker 1: none of them had the substance of Wayne Williams.
Speaker 5: What they had on Williams was almost entirely circumstantial.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that we had a gigantic case when
Speaker 1: it comes to physical evidence, but we had an overwhelming
Speaker 1: wave of circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 3: Except for one key piece of physical evidence.
Speaker 10: They do have numerous fibers from the man's house that
Speaker 10: match those found on several victims the fibers. The fibers
Speaker 10: are of different colors and texture. Some think that's good
Speaker 10: enough others, including prosecutors, disagree.
Speaker 5: But even the fibers they found weren't convincing enough for
Speaker 5: the district attorney to press charges.
Speaker 8: Public Safety Commissioner Brown, FBI had John Glover and Task
Speaker 8: Force had Morris Redding met with District Attorney Lewis Slayton
Speaker 8: for an hour this morning. Slayton's office took out the
Speaker 8: search warrants to search the house of the man police question,
Speaker 8: and Slayton decided last night there was not enough evidence
Speaker 8: to charge the man, so he didn't press charges. No
Speaker 8: charges filed. You might have missed that fact if you
Speaker 8: read the New York Post. It's headlined this morning was sensational.
Speaker 5: But the New York Post had already run their morning
Speaker 5: paper with a very conflicting headline that read Atlanta monster ceased.
Speaker 8: But investigators here are worried about sensationalism, only to the
Speaker 8: extended effect their investigation.
Speaker 20: He was a freelance photographer for WSBTV, so that was
Speaker 20: the shocker for our newsroom.
Speaker 5: As the media dove deeper into Wayne Williams's background, his
Speaker 5: story became even more interesting. In addition to being a
Speaker 5: talent scout, he had also worked as a freelance photographer
Speaker 5: for the local news station in Atlanta, WSBTV. Monica Pearson,
Speaker 5: who worked at WSBTV was also anchor at that time,
Speaker 5: recalls us very well, I was.
Speaker 20: Just an anchor, but I can tell you from our viewpoint,
Speaker 20: it was what, you know, this is somebody we all
Speaker 20: worked with who was a photographer, but a freelance photographer,
Speaker 20: not on staff, and I did not know him, but
Speaker 20: because he worked mainly on weekends, but other people did,
Speaker 20: and it was kind of a matter of not Wayne.
Speaker 20: He is so mild mannered and you know, what do
Speaker 20: you mean he couldn't hurt fly. But then there were
Speaker 20: others who said, well maybe.
Speaker 5: In the weeks following the bridge incident, America was gripped
Speaker 5: by the ups and downs of the FBI's investigation into
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams. But on June twenty first, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 5: everything would change.
Speaker 8: Suddenly. Late in the afternoon, authorities arrested Williams.
Speaker 19: As you know, we meet on this on a day
Speaker 19: to day basis. As a result of the meetings we've
Speaker 19: had today, the decision was made to issue the arrest warrned,
Speaker 19: which was done and he was taken into custy As
Speaker 19: a result.
Speaker 8: Of that, Williams was taken to the Fulton County Jail.
Speaker 8: He was booked on a charge of murder the murder
Speaker 8: of twenty eight year old Nathaniel Cater.
Speaker 5: Despite his initial hesitation, the district attorney suddenly changed his
Speaker 5: mind and Wayne Williams was charged with the murder of
Speaker 5: Nathaniel Cater.
Speaker 10: An indictment for the was almost predictable, but the surprise
Speaker 10: came when District Attorney Lewis Slayton made the announcement.
Speaker 21: The grand jury had returned an indictment in two counts,
Speaker 21: charging Wayne Bertram Bertram Williams with the murder of Jimmy
Speaker 21: ray Payne and one count and Theathaniel Kata and the
Speaker 21: second count.
Speaker 5: Wayne was also charged with the second murder. On April
Speaker 5: twenty seventh, nineteen eighty one, the body of twenty one
Speaker 5: year old Jimmy ray Payne was also found in the
Speaker 5: Chattahoochee River.
Speaker 3: The cause of death was asphyxiation.
Speaker 10: That announcement came as a very big surprise late this afternoon.
Speaker 3: Not only did the.
Speaker 10: Attorneys for Wayne Williams think any indictment wouldn't come until
Speaker 10: next Tuesday, they never thought their client would be indicted
Speaker 10: for the murder of twenty one year old Jimmy Ray Payne.
Speaker 20: The police have arrested and charged him, but he still
Speaker 20: has to be judged by his peers and in a
Speaker 20: court of law. So until he is found guilty, we
Speaker 20: have to say all let there was still the question
Speaker 20: is is he guilty or is he not?
Speaker 10: In a brief statement, william stood in front of Judge
Speaker 10: Clarence Cooper and said, I plead not guilty to both counts.
Speaker 5: The trial was under way and Wayne William's defense attorney,
Speaker 5: Mary Welcome was ready to fight back.
Speaker 18: There has been a serious effort on the part of
Speaker 18: the government, the law enforcement agencies of various and agencies
Speaker 18: to convince the country, even the world, that Wayne is
Speaker 18: implicated in all of the murders. So on reflection, I
Speaker 18: shouldn't be too surprised that they would trying to tie
Speaker 18: at least.
Speaker 5: One more in to She implied that law enforcement was
Speaker 5: ganging up against Wayne in an effort to close the case,
Speaker 5: and felt very strongly about her client's innocence.
Speaker 10: From the beginning, many people thought the state's case against
Speaker 10: Wayne Williams was as suspect as the suspect himself. Prosecutors
Speaker 10: had no eyewitness to the crimes, no confession, but on
Speaker 10: December twenty, the eighth of last year, the state went
Speaker 10: ahead with its case. Its main ingredients fibers and animal
Speaker 10: hair that allegedly matched.
Speaker 5: Larry Peterson of the Georgia State Crime Lab began analyzing
Speaker 5: fibers found in the bodies of victims. The fibers collected
Speaker 5: were dog hairs and green, violet, yellow, and red material fibers.
Speaker 5: In particular, some of the green fibers reportedly came from
Speaker 5: unique carpeting that was found inside Willie William's family home.
Speaker 1: We came up with three types of fiber, some of
Speaker 1: it was microscopically found. The green fiber I have personal
Speaker 1: knowledge of because my partner and I tracked that down.
Speaker 1: They used to have an old green carpet. It was
Speaker 1: a shag carpet. Did you guys ever see any.
Speaker 2: Of that will check?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's quite it's quite old, very dated, and it
Speaker 1: was a green collar. And when Harold Dedman told us
Speaker 1: when he finished with his he took a microscopic fiber
Speaker 1: and found out that this was manified actually in South
Speaker 1: Carolina and it was transported by West Point Pepperrell to Dalton, Georgia.
Speaker 1: At Dalton there was like two hundred thousand square yards
Speaker 1: of it. It went to ten or twelve different distributors
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and then we came down from Dalton and
Speaker 1: we contacted those ten or twelve and we found the
Speaker 1: paperwork where Wayne Williams's parents had purchased that carpet like
Speaker 1: fifteen years before. So we traced a microscopic fiber from
Speaker 1: its very beginning all the way to Wayne's house, and
Speaker 1: it was the same fiber that we were pulling off
Speaker 1: of the bodies. Now that my friend is a piece
Speaker 1: of investigation.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: The second major part of the prosecution's case was the
Speaker 5: bridge incident, but the prosecution had no eyewitnesses.
Speaker 10: The bridge incident was the closest investigators could put their
Speaker 10: suspect to a dead body, a legal necessity called corpus delecti.
Speaker 10: Although prosecutors had most of the pieces that night in
Speaker 10: May a splash, an alleged slow moving car a body
Speaker 10: downstream just two days later, it's still lacked the essential
Speaker 10: part of the puzzle, someone actually seeing William's car stopped
Speaker 10: on the bridge, or better yet, the suspect throwing a
Speaker 10: body from the structure.
Speaker 5: No one who actually saw what allegedly happened on the
Speaker 5: bridge that night. The defense argued in the courtroom that
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams was five foot seven and Nathaniel Cater was
Speaker 5: six foot one, claiming that it was impossible for a
Speaker 5: man of Wayne's size to pick up his body and
Speaker 5: throw it over a bridge.
Speaker 3: I asked Mike mccombis about this.
Speaker 1: Wayne wasn't a great big guy, but he was round
Speaker 1: and he was pudgy. I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: had a real rush of adrenaline. People do amazing things
Speaker 1: when they've got a rush out of adrenaline. And when
Speaker 1: you're not trying to be careful and hurt somebody, you
Speaker 1: can drag them, pick them up.
Speaker 2: It's no problem.
Speaker 5: Another point the prosecution argued was the sound that a
Speaker 5: car would make when driving across the bridge.
Speaker 3: What was interesting.
Speaker 22: There was an expansion played on the bridge, and if
Speaker 22: a car goes over the way. Later determined if a
Speaker 22: cargoes over the bridge faster than five miles an hour,
Speaker 22: the expansion plate will make a loud clank. Under five
Speaker 22: miles an hour, there's no sound.
Speaker 10: That sound, the defense claims, is the key to their proof.
Speaker 10: Police recruit Bob Campbell, part of the stakeout team, says
Speaker 10: Williams card did not make that sound, indicating the vehicle
Speaker 10: was traveling at a slow rate of speed, But a
Speaker 10: sound expert hired by the defense as that's impossible that
Speaker 10: even at four miles an hour, the family station wagon
Speaker 10: makes the joint rattle loud enough for someone underneath the
Speaker 10: bridge to hear it, suggestion that recruit Campbell was fast
Speaker 10: asleep on the job the night Williams was stopped, and
Speaker 10: the prosecution surprisingly went along with a theory. Asking Mark
Speaker 10: Oviot if a loud splash would wake the recruit up,
Speaker 10: the expert said yes. The state contends that loud splash
Speaker 10: was the body of Nathaniel Cater heading the water. Williams
Speaker 10: bluntly stated the police version of the now famous bridge
Speaker 10: incident was wrong, a lie. He claimed he wasn't driving
Speaker 10: slowp that he didn't turn around in a parking lot
Speaker 10: next to the bridge, that he did not throw anything
Speaker 10: into the river. He tried to persuade the jury he
Speaker 10: really was out near a bridge that night looking for
Speaker 10: a Cheryl Johnson, who still remains a mystery to this trial.
Speaker 5: According to Wayne Williams, the night he was stopping the bridge,
Speaker 5: he was going to find a young woman named Cheryl
Speaker 5: Johnson who wanted to do an audition for him. Earlier
Speaker 5: that day, Cheryl Johnson had called his home and Wayne's
Speaker 5: mother answered and wrote down her name, phone number, and address.
Speaker 5: According to Wayne, that night he was going to verify
Speaker 5: her home address so he would know where to go
Speaker 5: for the morning appointment. But the major problem was investigators
Speaker 5: never found a Cheryl Johnson When they went to the
Speaker 5: address on the piece of paper. There was no Cheryl
Speaker 5: Johnson who lived there, and the phone number didn't work.
Speaker 5: So who was Cheryl Johnson and where was she? The
Speaker 5: prosecution claimed that she wasn't real, but Wayne stuck by
Speaker 5: a story.
Speaker 10: The state implied he fabricated the story, but Williams didn't
Speaker 10: budge from it, claiming the woman simply gave him a
Speaker 10: wrong number and wrong address.
Speaker 3: After a grueling two month trial, it was time for
Speaker 3: a verdict.
Speaker 10: After several days of testimony, three experts summed it up
Speaker 10: in two sentences. Fiber and hair from William's home and
Speaker 10: car matted fibers and hair taken from the bodies of
Speaker 10: cater and pain. They also painted him as a possible
Speaker 10: homosexual who hated poor, young blacks. The defense, steered by
Speaker 10: a Mississippi lawyer, fought back better than many had predicted.
Speaker 10: Their goal placed out in these people's minds. As Binder
Speaker 10: said throughout the trial, Wayne Williams is not a killer.
Speaker 10: He countered with former police recruits who charged members of
Speaker 10: the stakeout team that night in May were drinking and asleep.
Speaker 10: A loose fitting fiber expert from Kansas came in and
Speaker 10: showed that fibers may not be as unique as the
Speaker 10: state had claimed.
Speaker 5: For twelve hours, the jury deliberated you. On February twenty seventh,
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty two, the jury returned their verdict.
Speaker 3: Guilty.
Speaker 10: When the verdicts were read, William's father stood before the
Speaker 10: court and said, I feel this is very unjust. I
Speaker 10: don't see how anyone could find my son guilty of anything.
Speaker 10: I just don't see it. William's mother called the judge
Speaker 10: and uncle Tom, the twenty three year old freelance photographer,
Speaker 10: this morning only a suspect, was optimistic. Tonight as he
Speaker 10: left the courthouse, his mood had changed. He is now
Speaker 10: painted as the mass murderer.
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams was found guilty for the murder of Nathaniel
Speaker 5: Cater and Jimmy ray Payne, but in addition, the FBI
Speaker 5: essentially closed all other cases of Atlanta's murdered children, attributing
Speaker 5: them to Wayne Williams.
Speaker 10: The question of race popped up a lot tonight. Missus
Speaker 10: Williams remarks about Uncle Tom Binder even said a white
Speaker 10: man would have been treated differently, and the mother of
Speaker 10: victim Joseph Bell, a woman who prodded police into forming
Speaker 10: a task force several years ago, was very disappointed.
Speaker 3: With the outcome.
Speaker 5: Camille Bell, mother to victim Yusef, Bell, acted as a
Speaker 5: voice for the appearance of the missing her children, and
Speaker 5: she wasn't very happy with the verdict.
Speaker 23: If I believe that Wayne Williams killed the other twelve
Speaker 23: that they claimed the same fibers that were found on
Speaker 23: those bodies were also found on Usef's body, then I
Speaker 23: must believe that Wayne Williams killed my son. But since
Speaker 23: I don't believe that Wayne Williams killed anybody, I can't
Speaker 23: believe that Wayne Williams therefore killed my son. What it
Speaker 23: all boils down to is now we have Williams twenty three,
Speaker 23: the thirtieth victim of the Atlanta Slaves.
Speaker 5: From that day forward, Wayne Williams was in history books
Speaker 5: as the Atlanta child murderer.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think he's innocent, believe it or not.
Speaker 24: You know, I think they view him as someone who
Speaker 24: who got caught up in it and ended up getting
Speaker 24: bland for it.
Speaker 25: I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you. I you know,
Speaker 25: I never spent a lot of time paying attention. I
Speaker 25: was happy when they was like, we off cold Red.
Speaker 25: Now everybody can go out and play again.
Speaker 3: So is Wayne Williams the Atlanta child murderer.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, without a shadow of doubt, Wayne Williams was the
Speaker 1: child murderer. I'm not saying he did all of them.
Speaker 1: He was convicted on two because we didn't have enough
Speaker 1: evidence to take him on the rest of them. We
Speaker 1: contributed the lion's share of him to him.
Speaker 2: I mean, he.
Speaker 1: Definitely did more than just two, but that was the
Speaker 1: only two that we had enough to take him to
Speaker 1: court and.
Speaker 2: Convict him on.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any problem with the way it was concluded,
Speaker 1: you know. You know, it's like if you catch a
Speaker 1: guy with one hundred bank robberies, he's not going to
Speaker 1: get any more. I mean, you can only sentence a
Speaker 1: guy so many times, so much so two life sentences
Speaker 1: is the same as ten life sentences.
Speaker 2: Life is life.
Speaker 7: It really wasn't over. It really wasn't over.
Speaker 20: Today it's not over. Wayne Williams says he did do it.
Speaker 20: The families don't believe he did it. Law enforcement says
Speaker 20: he did it, the court said he did the adults,
Speaker 20: but no one has ever convicted him on killing the children,
Speaker 20: the boys who were found suffocated. I still think it's
Speaker 20: a story that needs to be investigated.
Speaker 7: I would love and I'm glad you're.
Speaker 20: Doing this to open up the case again and see
Speaker 20: what you can find.
Speaker 3: All these years later.
Speaker 5: Remember Russell Boltazor, whose brother Patrick was found brutally murdered.
Speaker 3: I asked him about this.
Speaker 24: I think he got taken as an escape goat to
Speaker 24: shut down the problems we had. I don't believe that
Speaker 24: he was tried with all evidence and said you are
Speaker 24: guilty for killing all of those kids. I think it
Speaker 24: was a way for them to slow it down. Somebody
Speaker 24: better find somebody to put into jailhouse, so make a
Speaker 24: lot of the these people start being quiet.
Speaker 10: Jerry find the defendant, Wayne Bertram Williams, guilty on count
Speaker 10: number one.
Speaker 4: The arrest of Wayne Williams appeared to solve one of
Speaker 4: the biggest multiple murder mysteries in American history.
Speaker 26: The closing of the cases effectively branded Wayne Williams the
Speaker 26: Atlanta child murderer.
Speaker 5: On nearly every list of American serial killers, you'll find
Speaker 5: the name Wayne Williams.
Speaker 27: Wayne Williams remains in jail and may well be there
Speaker 27: for the rest of his life.
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty five, they made a movie about it,
Speaker 5: Starry Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 10: Was this the man who choked the life out of shocked, bludgeoned,
Speaker 10: and drowned twenty eight human beings?
Speaker 26: Becuse You're by sentences? The defender Dwayne Bertram Williams to
Speaker 26: the custody of the State Board of Corrections, where he
Speaker 26: is to serve two life sentences, and.
Speaker 5: Over the next three decades, they continue to make its
Speaker 5: way into pop culture, especially in the hip hop community,
Speaker 5: being so closely linked to Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Y'all, when we was kids, I was there to.
Speaker 28: Chris Kisses and then they imposed the troupe.
Speaker 7: Atlanta Kids Missing.
Speaker 28: Oh, we with them kids, and now we grow hip
Speaker 28: to every evil plots.
Speaker 2: You want to put on.
Speaker 5: Andre three thousand from Outcasts even has a verse on
Speaker 5: Travis Scott's twenty sixteen albums.
Speaker 7: In the town they with.
Speaker 29: Murdering kids and dumped them in the creek up from
Speaker 29: where it is by the Spider Spider sprint cooader around.
Speaker 29: We run in through the sprint around. We'll show what
Speaker 29: with boxes pieces. It said he had unlabel on my
Speaker 29: grandma and airth My homie said he told him his
Speaker 29: name was Wayne.
Speaker 5: But a lot of people think he didn't do it.
Speaker 5: Russell bultasor doesn't and he has his own story to
Speaker 5: back that up. Russell heard about his strange incident involving
Speaker 5: his brother Patrick, and it made him doubt that Wayne
Speaker 5: Williams was the killer.
Speaker 24: Spoke to several people out there, and one of the
Speaker 24: police officers the story was told to me that they
Speaker 24: had him on tape that he was running him and
Speaker 24: two kids from individuals in more than one person and
Speaker 24: they ran into a phone booth. He picks up the
Speaker 24: phone and dial I guess nine one one to call
Speaker 24: the police department, and they supposedly had it on recording
Speaker 24: that he said that someone was chasing.
Speaker 3: Him did he describe the person?
Speaker 24: He said, it was two white people that was chasing him,
Speaker 24: and that's all I've ever heard about that story. I
Speaker 24: did try to call the police department and talk to
Speaker 24: someone about that tape, and all of a sudden, no
Speaker 24: one knew what I was talking about, so pretty much
Speaker 24: just left that alone up until now you mentioned to me,
Speaker 24: I'm telling you the story about it. I think most
Speaker 24: of us, like myself, if I knew in my heart
Speaker 24: that they proved that he killed those kids, then that
Speaker 24: would be a lot of relief for us. But I
Speaker 24: don't think they did.
Speaker 5: I realized that Russell Boltazar was probably not the only
Speaker 5: person related to a victim that doesn't believe it was
Speaker 5: Wayne Williams. I started scouring the internet for other stories
Speaker 5: like this, and one day I found a YouTube video
Speaker 5: from twenty fifteen under the user name in just Us.
Speaker 5: It's a video of a guy named Emmanuel, brother of
Speaker 5: Clifford Jones, one of the victims.
Speaker 7: Okay, and your brother's name was Clifford Jones.
Speaker 30: Basically, it was one early morning all of the twenty
Speaker 30: nineteen eighty My brother and I basically walked up to
Speaker 30: a grocery store for my grandmother. People had kidnapped my brother,
Speaker 30: man named Jamie Brooks, Horrace.
Speaker 7: Hopgood, Freddy Costy.
Speaker 15: These guys.
Speaker 30: Helped my brother captive in a lundromat right on the
Speaker 30: corner Hollywood Road. They raped him and beat him.
Speaker 16: All day long.
Speaker 30: One of the people stood in the doorway watching my
Speaker 30: brother get raped, crying, screaming, saying he wanted to go home,
Speaker 30: and saying that he was going to tell his grandmother
Speaker 30: and said that the dude Jamie Brooks put a rope
Speaker 30: around his neck and pulled on the rope and made
Speaker 30: the man told the police did and the police had
Speaker 30: all this information, and they still they still blame someone
Speaker 30: else for clifford murder and knowing why William didn't kill Clifford.
Speaker 3: So who made this? Who was in just us? Who
Speaker 3: is the man behind the camera? Whoever it was.
Speaker 5: They had been doing their own research on this case
Speaker 5: decades later, someone I definitely wanted to talk to. After
Speaker 5: a little digging, I found him. The man who made
Speaker 5: the video was a guy named Dwayne Hendrix. I tracked
Speaker 5: him down and I gave him a call, and within
Speaker 5: the first thirty seconds it was already getting interesting.
Speaker 16: With this said, you know it's gonna be how do
Speaker 16: you want to go to get to the bottom of
Speaker 16: this would literally change American history. I mean it would
Speaker 16: through so many things. When when you just get into this,
Speaker 16: then you get into, like all the layers of it,
Speaker 16: the corruption, you deal with, the cover up, the actual
Speaker 16: murders themselves. Who is responsible for a lot of this.
Speaker 16: There are people in high places that want this shit
Speaker 16: to come out, and then there are some people that
Speaker 16: wanted to come out, but they're afraid of how it's
Speaker 16: gonna come out. And then there are some people that
Speaker 16: don't want it to come out at all because there's
Speaker 16: gonna be some other buckers that's gonna have to lay
Speaker 16: on the sword. It depends on how deep you want
Speaker 16: to go. So this rabbit hole is very.
Speaker 5: Dwayne Hendrix told me that he wanted to meet in person,
Speaker 5: but he lived in Texas and I was in Atlanta.
Speaker 5: So the next weekend it hopped on a flight. I
Speaker 5: wanted to hear his whole story. He was so invested,
Speaker 5: so personally involved.
Speaker 7: It popped up in the news.
Speaker 27: I just knew it wasn't right, and I remember saying
Speaker 27: out loud, they lying on that man. When I grow
Speaker 27: up I'm gonna help him get out of jail.
Speaker 7: Those are my exact words. And my grandmama goes, if
Speaker 7: you don't sit your little narrow ass down, the racist
Speaker 7: ass white boys will kill you.
Speaker 27: And I told her, I said, well, they have to
Speaker 27: kill me then, because that man didn't do it. That's
Speaker 27: one of the memories from my.
Speaker 7: Childhood that was just always etched in my psyche.
Speaker 27: This case, it was just something so long it needed
Speaker 27: in my soul that it's something wrong about this.
Speaker 5: Dwayne remembers seeing the arrest of Wayne Williams in the
Speaker 5: news as a child, and it was something that stuck
Speaker 5: with him.
Speaker 2: We were real close.
Speaker 27: She had me when she was getting ready to go
Speaker 27: for her freshman year in college. We basically grew up together.
Speaker 27: We had this bond and it was almost like if
Speaker 27: anything was ever wrong with my mom, she didn't have
Speaker 27: to say something. I could just look at her and
Speaker 27: I knew. And she's a tough woman. So to see
Speaker 27: her crying uncontrollably to the point to where you know,
Speaker 27: it's like snot all over the place, it was real tough.
Speaker 27: My mom was crying like every day, NonStop for like
Speaker 27: four days in a row, and she basically didn't want
Speaker 27: to tell us in my pop.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: He pulled me to the side and he sat me
Speaker 7: down and he said, you know, son, this was about
Speaker 7: to happen. I'm gonna have to turn myself in.
Speaker 5: Dwayne told me that he was all too familiar with
Speaker 5: injustice from a very young age. He talked about his
Speaker 5: stepdad's wrongful conviction, which happened during a pivotal point in
Speaker 5: his childhood.
Speaker 27: It was very difficult because those years of your life,
Speaker 27: you're basically becoming a young man. I ended up becoming,
Speaker 27: like so many things in life based on the example
Speaker 27: that he said, this was my first respectable man that
Speaker 27: I was around all the time, and I could ask
Speaker 27: for advice and talk to and he would teach me
Speaker 27: stuff like doing this is what a man does.
Speaker 7: That type of thing.
Speaker 18: You know.
Speaker 27: It was tough, man, It was real tough because you
Speaker 27: go from just trying to figure out your body and
Speaker 27: the changes you're going through as a young man and
Speaker 27: everything else, and you have all that wound up in
Speaker 27: your head and now you got to figure out how
Speaker 27: you're going to lie to your homeboys.
Speaker 7: About where's your step pops.
Speaker 27: It really psychologically, it does something to you, it makes
Speaker 27: you very angry.
Speaker 7: For me, it made me hate any.
Speaker 27: Authoritative figure at that particular time in my life. I
Speaker 27: didn't realize it, but I would just disrespect teachers in class.
Speaker 18: You know.
Speaker 7: I would go in class and I would just go
Speaker 7: to sleep in class, you.
Speaker 27: Know, because I just really psychologically didn't understand what I
Speaker 27: was going through.
Speaker 7: But it made me very rebellious.
Speaker 5: All this together inspired Dwayne to research Wayne William's story.
Speaker 5: I asked him about the YouTube video of one of
Speaker 5: the victim's brothers, Clifford Jones.
Speaker 28: When we initially spoke with one another, I cried in
Speaker 28: the meeting that we were having.
Speaker 2: I had to walk out of the meeting.
Speaker 7: A couple of times.
Speaker 27: His brother was inside being beaten and raped all day
Speaker 27: before they actually killed him in disposed of his body.
Speaker 28: He said he knew that Wayne Williams didn't kill his brother.
Speaker 28: He knew that. It made me even more wanna try
Speaker 28: to do everything in my power.
Speaker 5: After talking to Cliffer's brother, Dwaine reached out to more
Speaker 5: families and was slowly piecing together a documentary with one
Speaker 5: goal in mind.
Speaker 28: The actual goal was to to make sure that we
Speaker 28: put together a piece that was.
Speaker 27: Going to actually highlight everything that needed to be highlighted
Speaker 27: to give the public the facts that they would need
Speaker 27: to know to make an informed decision as to whether
Speaker 27: or not they believe Wayne Williams is the Atlanta child
Speaker 27: murder or not. That was the whole goal, whether or
Speaker 27: not Wayne was a murderer at all. He was never
Speaker 27: formally charged or indicted for killing any children. So again
Speaker 27: that's another big misconception, right that comes with the cases
Speaker 27: that you know, he's been dubbed the Atlanta child murderer.
Speaker 3: Dwayne had one main point that I really couldn't argue with.
Speaker 27: He was only charged with the murder of Nathaniel cater
Speaker 27: In Jimmy ray Payne. These are anomalies because these was
Speaker 27: two adults. This thing is like something that has always
Speaker 27: been talked about, and it won't go away until something
Speaker 27: is done about it. It will always be the elephant
Speaker 27: in the room in the city of Atlanta.
Speaker 5: A few months into making this documentary, you got a
Speaker 5: random phone call late one night in the studio.
Speaker 27: I'm in a recording studio and I'm recording a song
Speaker 27: in my phone rings. It's Wayne Williams, and everybody in
Speaker 27: his studio is like everyone was stuck.
Speaker 3: From that point forward. What transpired? What it Wayne said?
Speaker 3: What was developing after that?
Speaker 2: Welcome to the real world, Neo.
Speaker 3: H next time on Atlanta Monster.
Speaker 28: So you know Wayne Williams absolutely.
Speaker 3: Describe Wayne to me, what's he like?
Speaker 31: Brilliant asshole, very intelligent asshole. That that's the best way
Speaker 31: I could put it.
Speaker 27: And I don't mean it in a bad way because
Speaker 27: I'm an asshole at times.
Speaker 2: This thing is huge.
Speaker 28: It's huge, and blame me.
Speaker 7: It was more hands than this shit to me. Stay eye.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna bring That was the name that the
Speaker 2: media giving way with you.
Speaker 14: They wouldn't use his name, They gave him this name,
Speaker 14: Atlanta Monster.
Speaker 5: Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week,
Speaker 5: with new episodes every Friday, A joint production between How
Speaker 5: Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup
Speaker 5: and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film
Speaker 5: and videotape collection Brown Meat at Archives, University of Georgia Libraries.
Speaker 3: For the latest updates, please visit.
Speaker 5: Atlantamonster dot com or follow us on social media. Do
Speaker 5: you keep your hands on this the whole time? You
Speaker 5: stay like that, and where are you at? Are you
Speaker 5: behind me?
Speaker 2: You know what that does?
Speaker 3: No, it picks up muscle boo less.
Speaker 2: We didn't have that back then.
Speaker 15: So now you want to squeeze your tail or put
Speaker 15: it back in your ear.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, it's pretty stiff. It's not that bad.