True Crime: The Atlanta Child Murders

The episode discusses the Atlanta Child Murders, a series of missing and murdered young black children in the early 1980s. The Atlanta Police Department conducted searches and found bodies in various locations, many of them showing signs of asphyxiation or other violent causes of death. The community formed coalitions to prevent the murders, and the FBI joined the investigation. Wayne Williams, a talent scout, was arrested and convicted of two murders based on fibers found on the victims. Other cases were closed, but doubts remain about Williams' involvement. The cases were reopened in 2019, but there have been no recent updates on the lab results. The episode concludes by asking listeners for their thoughts on whether Williams was responsible for all the murders. This is Shape Up with Keba, and I'm your host and wellness promoter at Keba Evans. The topic for this week's episode is true crime, and focuses on an investigative case made in the early 1980s. The name of the case was famously titled the Atlanta Child Murders. Listener discretion is advised, as this episode contains topics relating to extreme violence, deaths, and murder, which some listeners may find disturbing. Atlanta was once the heart where a string of approximately 29 missing and murdered young black children, mainly boys, occurred in between 1979 and 1981. The Atlanta Police Department was called into action and tried to search for clues in connection to those who had been reported missing. Routine citywide searches through the cooperation of police officers, firefighters, and volunteers were conducted to look in a variety of places, as some bodies were discovered in hidden spaces, while others were found in more conspicuous areas like vacant lots, back alleys, or dumpsters. Many of them also seemed to be found in a similar fashion, deaths by asphyxiation. But some were also reported to have died from stabbing, bludgeoning, or gunshot wounds. According to investigative experts at the time, some bodies were practically liquefied after having not been discovered for weeks, sometimes months, leaving their bodies in such a state of deterioration that it became increasingly challenging for police to identify who they were. This terrified many black communities in Atlanta, and put them in a state of hyper-vigilance. Due to a lack of updates on the investigation, the community began to grow frustrated and started organizing on their own. They formed community coalitions to try and prevent the murders, because they didn't feel like the cases were being taken seriously enough. Parents had even begun imposing curfews on their children, and stressing the importance of not talking to strangers. But despite their efforts, bodies continued to show up, and children would still go missing. Eventually, the FBI had joined the investigation upon the request of Georgia officials. One famous FBI profiler named John Douglas theorized that the culprit of the Atlanta murders had to have been black, and not white. He supposed that in order to have access to black children, that the killer would need access to the black community without arousing suspicion. In late May of 1981, several of the dead bodies that had been linked to the case had been discovered in the same geographic boundaries. They had even began pulling bodies out of the Chattahoochee River, which marked the point when investigators began to stake out the river's bridges. Then, during one late night stakeout on James Jackson Bridge, a policeman reported spotting a station wagon on the bridge at roughly the same time he had heard a large splash on the water. Two days later, the naked body of Nathaniel Cater, who was also a part of the Atlantas missing and murdered, was discovered floating to the surface of the river downstream, indicating that his body may have been thrown over the bridge. When officers pulled over the station wagon, in it was a young 23-year-old man named Wayne Williams, a self-claimed talent scouter. Officers questioned Williams, asking what he was doing on the bridge that night, to which Williams claimed that he'd been trying to confirm the address of a woman he'd planned to meet with later on that morning for talent work. Note that it was roughly three in the morning when this incident had occurred, and Williams' statements seemed unusual. But due to the lack of sufficient evidence in that moment, officers let Williams go, but not without grabbing fibers from Williams' car. Using the fibers from Williams' car and his family's dogs, they had identified matching fibers on the bodies of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, a second body that was found awfully close to Cater's body. About a month later upon this discovery, Wayne Williams was arrested and convicted of the two murders and sentenced to life in prison due to weak alibis, failure of a polygraph test, and the matching fibers. Upon Wayne's arrest, all other 27 missing and murdered cases had been closed. However, this had left many families devastated, not only because many of them knew of Wayne to be a very bright and promising young man who they would have never suspected to commit such crimes, but also because the murders they had evidence for were both adult men. This left many people to ponder, well, what about evidence for the other missing and murdered children? There was no evidence for them, but at the time Wayne seemed to be the most probable cause linked to their murders, so the cases remained closed. That wasn't until 2019 when former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms decided to reopen the cases with the help of advanced technology and better DNA testing facilities with the hopes of offering families who suffered the loss of loved ones closure. Unfortunately, recent updates report that the lab results have yet to be delivered to families and Keisha is no longer the mayor of Atlanta. Some believe that Wayne committed all of the murders, while others believe he may have had accomplices. Some believe that Wayne, who pleaded not guilty to all crimes, was innocent, while others believe that it was actually the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK. These events took place over 40 years ago, and Wayne has remained in prison ever since he was convicted. But what do you think? You think Wayne may have been responsible for all of the murders, or just some? Until more clues present themselves along with the lab results, the 27 cases remain unsolved as the case continues. That concludes this episode of Shape Up with Keba. Don't forget to check out the episode's show notes for more sources of information and to learn more about the case. Thanks for listening, and stay safe.