Wayne Bertram Williams (born May 27, 1958) was
identified as the key suspect in the
Atlanta Child Murders that occurred in
1979 through 1981. In January 1982, Williams was found guilty of
the
murder of two adult men.
After his conviction,
the Atlanta
police
declared that an additional 23 of the 29 child murders were solved,
with Williams shown to be the murderer.
Early life
Williams was born and raised in Atlanta's Dixie Hills neighborhood,
from which many of the Atlanta Child Murderer's victims would later
disappear. An aspiring radio disc jockey, he ran an amateur radio
station from his parents' house. He was well-known in the area for
scouting local musicians, particularly teenagers. Williams's own
personal beliefs made him a suspect in the murders. It was believed
that Williams resented and even hated other African-Americans. He
also had a reputation in his community as a liar who invented
impressive stories about himself, the details of which were too
outlandish to be true. His only encounter with the law prior to
becoming a murder suspect was in 1976, when he was arrested (but
never convicted) for impersonating a police officer.
Investigation
He first became a suspect in the child murder case in May 1981. His
car was spotted directly above the sound of a loud splash heard in
the river by a stake out team. He was stopped by police and
questioned, and claimed that he was going out of town to audition a
young singer. This alibi fell apart after police found that the
address and phone number he gave them didn't exist.
Three days later, the nude body of 27 year-old Nathaniel Cater, who
had been missing for days, turned up in the river. The medical
examiner on the case ruled he had died of "probable"
asphyxia, but never authoritatively said he had
been strangled. Police theorized that Williams had killed Cater and
had thrown him off the bridge the night they had pulled him over.
Their suspicions about Williams increased after he failed a
polygraph test, and hairs and fibers on
one of the victims' bodies were found consistent with those from
Williams's home, car, and dog. Throughout the course of the
investigation, police staked out Williams's home for several weeks
while he taunted them with insults and jokes. During this time,
people working in Williams's studio also told police they had seen
him with scratches on his face and arms around the time of the
murders, which the police thought could have been inflicted by
victims during a struggle.
Williams held a press conference outside his parents' home,
proclaiming his innocence. He was nevertheless arrested on June 21,
1981, for the murders of Cater and 29-year-old Jimmy Payne.
Trial and conviction
Williams's trial began on January 6, 1982. The prosecution's case
relied on an abundance of circumstantial evidence. During the
two-month trial, prosecutors matched 19 different sources of fibers
from Williams's home and car environment: his bedspread, bathroom,
gloves, clothes, carpets, his dog, and an unusual tri-lobal carpet
fiber to a number of victims. There was also eyewitness testimony
placing Williams with different victims, blood stains from victims
matching blood in Williams's car, and testimony that he was a
pedophile attracted to young black boys.
Williams himself took the stand, but he seemingly alienated the
jury by becoming angry and combative. Williams never recovered from
that outburst, and on February 27, the jury deliberated for 12
hours before finding him guilty of murdering Cater and Payne.
Williams was then sentenced by the Court to two consecutive terms
of
life imprisonment.
Controversy
Williams's guilt has been disputed by some. Some people in his
community, and several of the victims' parents, did not believe
that Williams, the son of two profesional teachers, could have
killed so many children and adults.
On May 6, 2005, the DeKalb
County
Police Chief Louis Graham ordered the reopening of
the murder cases of four boys killed in that county between
February and May 1981 which had been attributed to Williams.
However,
the legal authorities in the neighboring Fulton
County
, where the majority of the murders occurred, have
not moved to reopen any of the cases under their
jurisdictions. Williams has always vehemently denied the
charges. Dekalb County finally closed its case after finding no new
evidence.
On August 6, 2005, it was revealed that Charles T. Sanders, a
white supremacist affiliated with
the
Ku Klux Klan, who had been
investigated for a role in the Atlanta child killings, once praised
the crimes in secretly recorded conversations. Although Sanders did
not claim responsibility for any of the deaths, Williams's lawyers
believe the evidence will help their bid for a new trial. Sanders
told an informant for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the
1981 recording that the killer had "wiped out a thousand future
generations of
niggers." Police dropped the
probe into the KKK's possible involvement after seven weeks, when
Sanders and two of his brothers passed lie detector tests. The case
was once again closed on July 21, 2006.
The former FBI
profiler,
John E. Douglas, wrote in his book
Mindhunter that, while he believes that Williams committed
many of the murders, he doesn't think that he committed all of
them. Douglas added that he believes that law enforcement
authorities have some idea of who the other killers are, and that,
"It isn't a single offender and the truth isn't pleasant." However,
these are just one man's unsubstantiated opinions.
Trivia
- In Prince's 1981 album
Controversy, the song "Annie Christian" referes to the
murders in Atlanta.
- In 1985, James Baldwin wrote a
book about the Atlanta child murders titles The Evidence of Things Not
Seen.
- Chris Rock referred to Williams
during a comedy routine called "Blacks Aren't Crazy" featured on
his 1991 comedy album, Born Suspect.
- On Goodie Mob's 1995 album Soul
Food, Andre 3000 raps about playing
games as a child and says "the only thing we feared was Williams,
Wayne" on the song "Thought Process".
- On Ludacris's 2001 album Word Of Mouf, the song "Growing Pains"
refers to Wayne Williams.
- In 2000, Toni Cade Bambara published These Bones Are Not My
Child, a novel from the point of view of a mother whose son
went missing during the murders.
- In 2002, Tayari Jones published Leaving Atlanta, a
novel from the point of view of three children growing up in
Atlanta during these murders.
- In the 2002 song "Keep You Chullin out the Street" off Lil
Jon's album Crunk Juice, Big Gipp refers to Wayne Williams as a
part of his verse.
- In 2005, Deep Purple recorded a song
called "Wrong Man", which was sung from Williams's perspective - a
protest of innocence. It is featured on their Rapture of the Deep album.
- In 2007, No Place Safe, written by Kim Reid was
published. The book surrounds her life as a child of a police
officer investigating the case.
- In 2007, "Big Gee's" song, "I'm a rider", referred to growing
up in Atlanta at the same time as the murders.
- In the 2007 song "Paper", from the "Back Up N Da Chevy" album
by "Boyz N Da Hood", Big Gee referers to the conviction and
sentencing of Wayne Williams in his verse.
See also
References
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