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The initial mention of a Child Murders scenario came in a July 31, 1979, crime briefs roundup in The Atlanta Structure. Reporter Gail Epstein wrote “an official of the Fulton County healthcare examiner’s workplace said he suspected ‘foul play’ in the fatalities of two boys whose bodies had been observed about 160 yards aside in southwest Atlanta.”
The bodies had been later determined as the 1st Youngster Murders victims, Edward Smith and Alfred Evans.
Following, a Nov. 9 post comprehensive the discovery of the system of 9-calendar year-old Yusuf Bell at the abandoned Johnson Elementary College in southeast Atlanta. In the course of 1980 and into 1981, the reports of missing, and later on murdered, youths ongoing dominating AJC news fronts.
And almost two a long time afterwards, Journal and Structure reporters launched readers to the suspect law enforcement attempted linking to lots of of the Atlanta Youngster Murders.
“(Wayne) Williams induced the Sunday afternoon arrest by primary a law enforcement surveillance staff which experienced been seeing him for weeks on a substantial-speed chase by means of Atlanta Saturday night time,” David B. Hilder and Hyde Post claimed in the Journal on Monday, June 22, noting the households of Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown were on Williams’ chase route.
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1st questioned the morning of Could 22 by authorities staking out the South Cobb Generate bridge about the Chattahoochee and again June 3 at FBI headquarters in Atlanta, Williams did not stay away from the highlight during the subsequent two-in addition weeks he used beneath surveillance.
“Hours just after he left FBI brokers and polygraph examiners who had kept him awake all night time, he held a push meeting in his household,” Hilders and Publish wrote. “To the reporters who collected (there), he handed out copies of his resume and said police experienced informed him they viewed as him a primary suspect in the slaying cases.”
June 1981 – A Volkswagen heads north into semi-rural Cobb County on the South Cobb Travel bridge in excess of the Chattahoochee River. It was on this bridge that Wayne Williams was sighted the evening of May possibly 22 – the function that inevitably led to his arrest in the murder of Nathaniel Cater.
Credit score: AJC
Credit: AJC
Williams was later on charged with killing Jimmy Ray Payne, 21. In February 1982, Williams was convicted in both situations and sentenced to two consecutive lifestyle phrases.
Metropolis officials mainly considered the guilty verdicts as an conclusion to nearly a few years of Atlanta becoming portrayed in the nationwide spotlight as the stalking grounds of a serial killer instead of the Empire Metropolis of the South.
“It has been settled,” then-City Council President Marvin Arrington instructed the Journal’s Ron Taylor in 1982. “Now we can get back to currently being the No. 1 metropolis in the world.”
Tom Hamall, government director of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce at the time, observed the Williams verdicts as a starting off issue, having said that, in its place of an ending.
“Hopefully, our nightmare as a community is over,” he claimed, “But I hope we will not neglect it. I hope we will not overlook that we have some obligation for a single another.”
The Youngster Murders saga is ongoing for the families of the 28 victims whose conditions were by no means settled. Anthony Terrell, brother of murder sufferer Earl Terrell, was part of the 2020 HBO docuseries “Atlanta’s Lacking and Murdered: the Lost Small children.” He’s not glad with the causes why circumstances, this sort of as his brother’s, have been promptly closed.
“You indicate no person has an answer for (the loss of life of all people) little ones? We’re not value it is what you’re telling me,” he stated in the series.
Authorities shut the children’s situations right after Williams’ murder convictions.
Atlanta law enforcement confirmed to the AJC this week that only a few conditions stay unresolved, all those of the only two ladies stated amid the Little one Murders victims, Angel Lenair and Latonya Wilson, and Darron Glass, who stays lacking. The other circumstances are still closed, attributed to Williams, who was hardly ever charged in a child’s death.
In March 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms declared that law enforcement and prosecutors would use fashionable engineering to test aged circumstance proof, probably reopening the little one cases.
Previous AJC reporter Gary Pomerantz interviewed Williams in June 1991, ten several years after his arrest in the Cater homicide.
“All I want is for modern society to see me for the particular person I am and not the development that was important for the point out to get a conviction,” Williams told Pomerantz, including, “I know at some point that I’m gonna get out.”
Currently housed at Telfair Condition Jail, Williams’ future parole hearing is scheduled for November 2027.
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CHRONOLOGY: THE ATLANTA Kid MURDERS
From 1979-81, extra than 20 Black young children, teens and young grown ups went missing and had been later on identified dead in and close to Atlanta. All shut cases listed ended up attributed to Wayne Williams by investigators except usually specified down below.
1979
Title Date Discovered Situation Standing
Edward Smith July 28 Closed
Alfred Evans July 28 Shut
Milton Harvey November Shut
Yusuf Bell Nov. 8 Shut
1980
Angel Lenair March 10 Unresolved
Eric Middlebrooks May well 19 Shut
Aaron Wyche June 24 Shut
Anthony Carter July 7 Shut
Clifford Jones Aug. 21 Shut
Charles Stephens Oct. 10 Shut
Latonya Wilson Oct. 18 Unresolved
Aaron Jackson Nov. 2 Shut
Patrick Rogers Dec. 17 Shut
1981
Christopher Richardson Jan. 9 Shut
Earl Terrell Jan. 9 Shut
Terry Pue Jan. 23 Closed
Lubie Geter Feb. 5 Closed
Jefferey Mathis Feb. 13 Closed
Patrick Baltazar Feb. 13 Closed
Curtis Walker March 6 Shut
Timothy Hill March 30 Closed
Eddie Duncan March 31 Shut
Larry Rogers April 9 Closed
John Porter April 12 Closed
Joseph Bell April 19 Shut
Michael McIntosh April 20 Shut
Jimmy Payne April 27 Williams attempted, convicted
William Barrett May 12 Closed
Nathaniel Cater May well 24 Williams tried, convicted
Observe: Darron Glass, mentioned among the Baby Murders victims, has been lacking because Sept. 14, 1980. His circumstance is unresolved.
Resource: AJC print archives Atlanta Law enforcement Section