Атланта қаны: балалар мен жасөспірімдердің қатілдік құрбандары (1979-1981)

Series of at least 28 murders, mostly of children, in Atlanta, Georgia

The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta child murders, are a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, between July 1979 and May 1981. Over the two year period, at least 28 children, adolescents, and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested, tried, and convicted of two of the adult murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Police subsequently have attributed a number of the child murders to Williams, although he has not been charged in any of those cases, and Williams himself maintains his innocence, notwithstanding the fact that the specific style and manner of the killings, which was by chokehold strangulation, ceased after his arrest. In March 2019, the Atlanta police, under the order of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, reopened the cases in hopes that new technology will lead to a conviction for the murders that were never resolved. As of December 2022, no results have been made public.

In the middle of 1979, Edward Hope Smith (also known as "Teddy"), 14, and Alfred Evans (also known as "Q"), 13, disappeared four days apart. Their bodies were found on July 28 in a wooded area, Smith with a .22 caliber gunshot wound in his upper back. They were believed to be the first victims of the putative "Atlanta Child Killer." On September 4, the next victim, 14 year old Milton Harvey, disappeared while on an errand to the bank for his mother. He was riding a bike which was found a week later in a remote area of Atlanta. His body was not recovered until November of that year. On October 21, 9 year old Yusuf Bell went to a store to buy Bruton snuff for a neighbor, Eula Birdsong, at Reese Grocery on McDaniel Street. A witness said she saw Yusuf near the intersection of McDaniel and Fulton getting into a blue car before he disappeared. His body was found on November 8 in the abandoned E. P. Johnson Elementary School by a school janitor who was looking for a place to urinate. Bell's body was found clothed in the brown cut off shorts he was last seen wearing, though they had a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had been hit over the head twice, and the cause of death was strangulation. Police did not immediately link his disappearance to the previous killings.

On March 4, 1980, the first female victim, 12 year old Angel Lenair, disappeared. She left her house around 4:00p. m. wearing a denim outfit, and was last seen at a friend's house watching the television program Sanford and Son. Lenair's body was found six days later, in a wooded vacant lot along Campbellton Road, wearing the same clothes in which she had left home. A pair of white panties that did not belong to Lenair were stuffed in her mouth, and her hands were bound with an electrical cord. The cause of death was strangulation. On March 11, one week after Lenair's disappearance, 11 year old Jeffery Mathis disappeared while on an errand for his mother. He was wearing gray jogging pants, brown shoes, and a white and green shirt. Months later a girl said she saw him get into a blue car with a light skinned man and a dark skinned man. The body of Jeffrey Mathis was found in a "briar covered patch of woodlands," 11 months after he disappeared, by which time it was not possible to identify a cause of death. On May 18, 15 year old Eric Middlebrooks disappeared. He was last seen answering the telephone at home and then leaving in a hurry on his bicycle, taking with him a hammer to repair the bicycle. His body was found the following day next to his bicycle in the rear garage of an Atlanta bar. The bar was located next door to what was then the Georgia Department of Offender Rehabilitation. His pockets were turned inside out, his chest and arms had slight stab wounds, and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head. A few weeks before he disappeared, Middlebrooks had testified against three juveniles in a robbery case. On June 9, 12 year old Christopher Richardson went missing on his way to a local pool. He was last seen walking towards the DeKalb County's Midway Recreation Center in Midway Park. He was wearing blue shorts, a light blue shirt and blue tennis shoes. His body was not found until the following January, clothed in unfamiliar swim trunks, along with the body of a later victim, Earl Terrell. The cause of Richardson's death was not determined. On June 22, 7 year old LaTonya Wilson disappeared from her parents' apartment. According to a witness, she appeared to have been abducted by two men, one of whom was seen climbing into the apartment window and then holding Wilson in his arms as he spoke to the other man in the parking lot. On October 18, Wilson's body was found in a fenced in area at the end of Verbena Street in Atlanta. By then, the body had skeletonized, and no cause of death could be established. The next day, June 23, 10 year old Aaron Wyche disappeared after having been seen near a local grocery store, getting into a blue Chevrolet with either one or two black men. A female witness says she saw Wyche being led from Tanner's Corner Grocery by a 6 foot tall 180 pound black male, approximately 30 years old, with a mustache and goatee. The witness's description of the car matched a description of a similar car implicated in the earlier Jeffrey Mathis disappearance. At 6:00p. m. Wyche was seen at a shopping center. The following day, Wyche's body was found under a bridge; the official cause of death was asphyxiation from a broken neck suffered in a fall. In July 1980, two more children, 9 year old Anthony Carter and 10 year old Earl Terrell, were murdered. Clifford Jones, aged 13, disappeared on August 20. He was found dead from strangulation. His body was found on August 21 behind a dumpster in the rear of the former Hollywood Plaza shopping center. Darron Glass, aged 10, was reported missing on September 14. His body has not been recovered. Charles Stephens, aged 12, was reported missing on October 9. His body was found the next day on Norman Berry Drive near the entrance to a trailer park. Stephens's body was missing his t shirt and one of his shoes, but he was still wearing his dark blue pants. Police determined that his cause of death was asphyxiation. Rub marks were also identified on his nose and mouth. Dog hairs and two Caucasian head hairs were found on the body along with two pubic hairs, which did not belong to Stephens or Williams and which were found on his boxers 950 feet away. The state considered this a 'pattern case' in Williams's trial. Aaron Jackson, aged 9, went missing on November 1. His body was discovered the next day strangled, lying face up on a river bank. Patrick Rogers, aged 16, knew several of the previous victims. He went missing on November 30. His body was found on December 7 in the Chattahoochee river. Police speculated that he was dropped from the bridge above.

The murders continued into 1981. The first known victim in the new year was 14 year old Lubie Geter, who disappeared on January 3. Geter's body was found on February 5. Geter's friend, 15 year old Terry Pue went missing in January. An anonymous caller told the police where to find Pue's body. Terry lived in the same apartment as Edward "Teddy" Smith, who was killed in 1979. In February and March 1981, six more bodies were discovered, believed to be linked to the previous homicides. Among the deceased was the body of 21 year old Eddie Duncan, the first adult victim. In April, 20 year old Larry Rogers, 28 year old John Porter, and 21 year old Jimmy Ray Payne were murdered. Porter and Payne were ex convicts and had just recently been released from Arrendale State Prison after serving time for burglary. On May 12, 1981, FBI agents found the body of 17 year old William "Billy Star" Barrett on a curb in a wooded area near his home. A witness, 32 year old Harold Wood, a custodian from Southwest High School, had run out of gas about a mile from the scene. Wood described a black man standing over and observing the location where the body was found before driving away in a white over blue Cadillac. During the end of May 1981, the last reported victim was added to the list: 27 year old Nathaniel Cater. He was last seen by gardener Robert I. Henry at the entrance of the Rialto Theatre in Atlanta, reportedly holding hands with Wayne Williams. His body was discovered two days later. Investigator Chet Dettlinger created a map of the victims' locations. Despite the difference in ages, the victims fell within the same geographic parameters. They were connected to Memorial Drive and 11 major streets in the area. Author Ginger Strand links the murders to freeway racism and Atlanta's massive urban renewal program that disrupted African American neighborhoods.

During the murders, more than 100 agents were working on the investigation. Two police cars later stopped the suspect station wagon about a half mile from the bridge. The driver was 23 year old Wayne Bertram Williams, a supposed music promoter and freelance photographer. During questioning, Williams said he was on his way to audition a woman, Cheryl Johnson, as a singer. Williams claimed she lived in the nearby town of Smyrna. Police did not find any record of her or the appointment. Two days later, on May 24, the nude body of Nathaniel Cater, 27, was found floating downriver a few miles from the bridge where police had seen the suspicious station wagon. Fibers from a carpet in the Williams residence were found to match those observed on two of the victims. Furthermore, witness Robert Henry claimed to have seen Williams holding hands and walking with Nathaniel Cater on the night Cater is believed to have died. On June 21, 1981, Williams was arrested. A grand jury indicted him for first degree murder in the deaths of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, aged 22.

Jury selection began on December 28, 1981, and it lasted six days. Nine women and three men comprised the jury, among which were eight African Americans and four Caucasians. The trial officially began on January 6, 1982, with Judge Clarence Cooper presiding. The most important evidence against Williams was the fiber analysis between the victims he was indicted for murdering, Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater, and the 12 pattern murder cases in which circumstantial evidence culminated in numerous links between the crimes. This evidence included witnesses who testified that they had seen Williams with the victims, and some witnesses suggested that he had solicited sexual favors. After reviewing the case, Georgia Supreme Court Justice George T. Smith deemed the evidence, or the lack thereof, inadmissible. On February 27, 1982, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury found Wayne Bertram Williams guilty of the two murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in Georgia's Hancock State Prison in Sparta. Allegedly, a family of Klansmembers living outside of Atlanta had hoped to ignite a race war in Atlanta, and attempted to recruit others for this purpose. Charles T. Sanders, a narcotics dealer and recruiter for the group, was said to have told a criminal informant he intended to kill Geter several weeks before his body was found. After Geter had backed a go cart into his car, Sanders allegedly told the informant "I'm gonna kill that black bastard. I'm gonna strangle him with my dick." Shortly thereafter, Sanders' brother Don was recorded telling another Klan member he was going out to look for "another little boy." Additionally, Charles Sanders was said to have a scar matching a description given by an eyewitness who reported seeing Geter enter the car of a White man with a "jagged scar on his neck," and a dog with similar hair to that found on Geter's and other victims' bodies. The article reported that, in 1981, members of the GBI and officials in other law enforcement agencies opted to close their investigation and seal their findings. However, a handwritten transcript of a conversation between Klansmembers regarding Geter's murder was sent anonymously to Lynn Whatley in 1985, an attorney who was then representing Wayne Williams. At a 1991 hearing on Williams' request for a new trial, wherein he was represented by attorneys Alan Dershowitz, William Kunstler, and Bobby Lee Cook, investigators from both Atlanta and Georgia law enforcement agencies testified they had little or no knowledge of the GBI's investigation. At the same hearing, an informant for the GBI reported that in 1981, Charles Sanders had admitted to killing Geter while Whitaker was wearing a concealed microphone. In May 2004, about six months after becoming the DeKalb County Police Chief in November 2003, Louis Graham reopened the investigations into the deaths of the five DeKalb County victims: 10 year old Aaron Wyche, 13 year old Curtis Walker, 9 year old Yusuf Bell, 17 year old William Barrett, and 11 year old Patrick Baltazar. Graham, one of the original investigators in these cases, said he doubted that Wayne Williams, the man convicted of two of the killings and blamed for 22 others, was guilty of all of them. On June 21, 2006, the DeKalb County Police dropped its reinvestigation of the Atlanta child murders. After resigning, Graham was replaced by the acting chief, Nick Marinelli, who said, "We dredged up what we had, and nothing has panned out, so until something does or additional evidence comes our way, or there's forensic feedback from existing evidence, we will continue to pursue the [other] cold cases that are [with]in our reach." Criminal profiler John E. Douglas said that, while he believes that Williams committed many of the murders, he does not think that he committed them all. Douglas added that he believes that law enforcement authorities have some idea of who the other killers are, cryptically adding, "It isn't a single offender, and the truth isn't pleasant." On January 29, 2007, attorneys for the State of Georgia agreed to allow DNA testing of the dog hair that was used to help convict Williams. This decision was a response to a legal filing as a part of Williams' efforts to appeal his conviction and life sentences. Williams' lawyer, Jack Martin, asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge to allow DNA tests on canine and human hair and blood, stating the results might help Williams win a new trial. On June 26, 2007, the DNA test results showed that the hairs on the bodies contained the same mitochondrial DNA sequence as Williams' dog — a sequence that occurs in only about 1 out of 100 dogs. Dr. Elizabeth Wictum, director of the UC Davis laboratory that carried out the testing, told The Associated Press that while the results were "fairly significant," they "don't conclusively point to Williams' dog as the source of the hair" because the lab was able to test only for mitochondrial DNA, which, unlike nuclear DNA, cannot be shown to be unique to one dog. Later in 2007, the FBI performed DNA tests on two human hairs found on one of the victims. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 99.5% of persons by not matching their DNA. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 98% of African American persons by not matching their DNA. However, they matched Williams' DNA and so did not eliminate the possibility that the hairs were his. On March 21, 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced that officials would re test evidence from the murders, which will be gathered by the Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. In a news conference, Mayor Bottoms said, "It may be there is nothing left to be tested. But I do think history will judge us by our actions and we will be able to say we tried." In July 2021, Bottoms announced that DNA had been identified and sampled in two cases that will be subjected to additional analysis by a private lab. As of 2019, Wayne Williams continued to maintain his innocence.