Okay, so I want you to imagine something for
a second. Picture yourself standing on a bridge.
It's the middle of the night. It is pitch black.
And the air is so humid it feels like you're,
I don't know, wearing a wet wool blanket. Oh
yeah, that's Georgia in late May for sure. Exactly,
standard operating procedure. But the heaviness
in the air, it isn't just the weather. The date
is May 22, 1981. You're in Atlanta. And the entire
city is absolutely terrified. It wasn't just
fear. You know, it was more like a siege mentality.
You really have to understand the texture of
that time. This wasn't a simple lock your doors
kind of thing. This was a crisis that was, I
mean, it was tearing the social fabric of the
city apart. For two years, children, specifically
young black children, mostly boys, had been vanishing.
Gone. Gone. Disappearing from street corners,
from running errands for their parents, right
out of the front yards. And then they were turned
up dead. Asphyxiated, strangled, dumped in the
woods or in rivers. And by this point, in 81,
the number of victims is just, it's staggering.
Depending on which list you look at, it's getting
close to 30 victims. It is. And the police are
under this immense, immense pressure. We're talking
political pressure from the mayor's office, community
pressure from terrified parents. They had to
stop. What everyone was calling the Atlanta child
murders. The whole city is on edge. People are
looking at their neighbors with suspicion. It's
a level of civic terror that is almost impossible
to describe today. And that brings us right back
to that bridge, the James Jackson Parkway Bridge.
Yeah. The police aren't just out on a random
patrol. No. They are specifically staking out
the bridges over the Chattahoochee River. They
have this grim working theory that the killer
is using the river to his advantage. Dumping
the bodies to wash away forensic evidence. Exactly.
Fibers, hairs, fingerprints, anything that could
link him to the victim. So you have this surveillance
team sitting there in the dark. It's just before
3 a .m. Windows down, just listening. And then
at roughly 2 .50 in the morning, they hear it,
a sound that just changes everything. A big loud
splash. That's the exact phrase from the official
reports. It wasn't a little ripple. It wasn't
a fish jumping or a turtle sliding off a log.
This was a heavy impact. Something substantial
hitting the water below. And almost immediately
after that sound cuts through the silence, another
sound. A car. A station wagon turns around on
the bridge and starts to drive off. This is the
moment. This is the catalyst for everything that
follows. The police pursue the car. They pull
it over. And the driver, he's in some spectral
monster, you know, some phantom. No, he's a 23
-year -old local guy. A 23 -year -old man named
Wayne Bertram Williams. And from that second
forward, the entire mystery of the Atlanta child
murders shifts. It goes from who is doing this
to did this specific guy do this? But that shift.
It's not simple at all. And that is exactly why
we're doing this deep dive today. Right. Because
on one hand, you have the prosecution's narrative,
which is very clear. Wayne Williams is the Atlanta
monster. He's a serial killer who terrorized
the city, was convicted of two murders, and then
the authorities attributed more than 20 others
to him. Case closed. But then you have this other
hand, a story that just refuses to stay closed.
You have Williams himself, sitting in prison
for over 40 years, serving two life sentences,
and maintaining his innocence the entire time.
And it's not just him saying it. You have these
persistent theories about a Ku Klux Klan cover
up. You have intense arguments about so -called
trilobal fibers. And you have modern DNA tests
that, well, they seem to cut both ways depending
on how you look at them. Exactly. So what we
need to do today is unpack all of it. Unpack
the evidence that convicted him, which was both
groundbreaking and incredibly controversial for
its time, and weigh it against these lingering
doubts, these theories that suggest he might
have been a scapegoat. A scapegoat for something
much darker involving racial politics and maybe...
institutional failure. We're going to look at
the biographical data, the actual trial records,
some really interesting wiretaps that the jury
never even got to hear. And of course, the post
-conviction DNA testing from the 2000s, which
really complicates the picture. We have to strip
away the sensationalism, the monster monikers,
and just look at the raw data. We really need
to understand the fibers. I mean, really understand
the science of them and why it was so powerful
in that courtroom. We need to look at the wiretaps.
Yeah. And we have to look at how modern DNA testing
can sometimes make a case more confusing, not
less. So, yeah, buckle up. Because to understand
what happened on that bridge, we first have to
understand who exactly was driving that car.
Who is Wayne Williams? It's a great question,
because if you're trying to build a profile of
a typical violent offender or serial predator,
Wayne Williams doesn't immediately fit the stereotype
people had in their heads back in 1981. He's
not a drifter or an outcast? Not in the traditional
sense, no. He was born May 27, 1958, right there
in Atlanta. Yeah. He was raised in a pretty stable
middle -class neighborhood called Bixie Hills.
And he had a solid family background, didn't
he? He did. He was the son of two schoolteachers,
Homer and Faye Williams. By all accounts, he
was a... a pretty pampered only child he was
a bright kid you know graduated from douglas
high school but what's really fascinating about
him is his personality his interests he was what
we would probably call today a radio nerd i love
this detail he didn't just like listen to the
radio he built his own radio station he literally
did he constructed his own Carrier Current Radio
Station. Okay, what is that? For those of us
who aren't audio engineers. It's a way of transmitting
a radio signal through the electrical wiring
in a building rather than through a giant broadcast
tower. It has a very limited range. Maybe it's
a building or a city block, but it's a real radio
station. He was completely obsessed with the
industry. So he's not just tinkering in his basement.
He's trying to get into the business. Hanging
around professional stations. Constantly. He
frequented stations like WeGo and Walk, which
were big in the black community in Atlanta. He
befriended the announcing crews, the DJs. His
whole dream, his aspiration, was to be a pop
music producer and a talent manager. So he's
not trying to be a gangster or a tough guy. He
wants to be a media mogul. Exactly. A young...
Black entrepreneur on the rise. He was always
out there scouting for talent, trying to manage
local bands, trying to make a name for himself.
He had this very specific image of himself that
he wanted to project. OK, so that's the person,
a 23 -year -old aspiring music manager. And he's
the one driving across a bridge at 3 in the morning
when the police pull him over right after hearing
that big splash. Right. And this is where things
get, well, they get sticky. Because if you're
innocent, you usually have a pretty straightforward
answer for what you're doing. But Wayne, he starts
talking. And he just talks himself into a huge
hole. A huge one. When the police stop him, they
ask the obvious question. Where are you going
at this hour? Williams tells him he's heading
to a neighboring town to check on an address.
Okay. He claims he has an audition scheduled
for the next morning with a promising young singer.
A woman named Cheryl Johnson. Cheryl Johnson.
That sounds very specific. Almost too specific.
It does. But here's the problem. The police,
of course, they investigate this alibi immediately.
The phone number he gave them for her. Fictitious.
The person, Cheryl Johnson. She didn't exist.
The entire story was a complete fabrication.
Wow. Okay, let's just unpack that for a minute.
Why lie? If you're just driving home, or maybe
you're doing something a little shady but not
murder, why invent a whole person? That is the
million -dollar question, isn't it? Innocent
people sometimes lie to the police because they're
nervous or maybe they're hiding something minor
like they were with someone they shouldn't have
been with. Right, something embarrassing but
not criminal. Exactly. Maybe he just panicked
and wanted to sound important to fit his music
mogul persona. But in the context of a murder
investigation, a fabricated alibi is just, it's
devastating. It reads as consciousness of guilt.
Completely. And it got so much worse very quickly
because Two days after that stop on the bridge,
on May 24th, a body is found in the river. And
this is Nathaniel Cater? Yes. Nathaniel Cater,
27 years old. His body was found floating in
the Chattahoochee, downstream from that very
bridge. And how long had he been missing? He'd
been missing for four days. And here's the critical
link. He was last seen alive with Wayne Williams.
So the police now have a direct connection. They
have a direct connection. The medical examiner
rules the death. As probable asphyxia. Probable?
Why not definitive? Well, because of the condition
of the body. After being in the water, decomposition
and, you know, water damage make it really hard
to spot the classic signs of strangulation. Things
like petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes. I see.
But it fit the pattern of the other victims.
So now, the police have a theory. The splash
they heard. That was Nathaniel Cater's body hitting
the water. That's the theory. Yeah. So they have
the splash. They have the body. They have the
fabricated alibi about an audition. And they
had a suspect who was the only person on that
bridge at that exact moment. But they don't arrest
him right away, do they? I remember reading that
he was questioned for hours but then let go.
That's right. They brought him in for questioning
on June 3rd and 4th, held him for about 12 hours
at the FBI headquarters in Atlanta. But they
released him. Why? Not enough to hold him. Not
yet. But they did not stop watching him. He was
placed under intense 247 surveillance. They basically
glued a team of agents to his bumper. And this
is when the monster monikers start to appear
in the press. The Atlanta boogeyman. The Atlanta
child killer. And Wayne Williams, he doesn't
exactly lay low during this period, does he?
He does the opposite. He actually held a press
conference outside his own home. That's a bold
move. It's an incredibly bold move. And he volunteered
information that the police hadn't even released
to the public yet. He told the press that he'd
taken three polygraph tests. And what did he
say about the results? He announced that they
were inconclusive. Wait, wait. He told the public
that his own lie detector tests were inconclusive.
Why would you do that? Bizarre. His reasoning
was that they would be inadmissible in court
anyway, which is true. But it's one of those
things where being legally smart doesn't always
mean you're publicly smart. Right. It just makes
you look suspicious or arrogant. Exactly. It
made him look like he was confident in his ability
to talk his way out of anything. But while he
was busy talking to the press, the forensics
team was quietly building a case against him.
A case that would change the history of criminal
trials. And this brings us right to the heart
of it. Section two, the fiber case. Because when
people talk about Wayne Williams, they always,
always talk about the carpet. Always. Sounds
so mundane, you know, carpet fibers. But this
was the nail in the coffin, wasn't it? It really
was. This was one of the first major American
trials where fiber analysis wasn't just supporting
evidence. It was the primary linkage. It was
the star of the show. And you have to look at
the sheer volume. It wasn't just one or two fibers.
Not at all. end of the trial, prosecutors managed
to link 19, that's one nine, 19 different sources
of fibers and hairs from Williams's immediate
environment directly to the victims. 19. That's
an overwhelming number. What kind of sources
are we talking about? We're talking about everything.
Fibers from his bedspread, from the bathroom,
from a pair of gloves, from the trunk of his
car, his clothes, and yes, most famously, from
the carpet in his bedroom. But this wasn't just
any carpet. This is the famous trilobal fiber.
Tell us about that. What exactly are we looking
at under a microscope? Okay, so when they make
synthetic carpet fibers, they push the polymer
through a nozzle, kind of like a pasta maker.
Right. And the shape of that nozzle determines
the cross -section shape of the fiber. Some are
round, some are square, some are octagonal. The
carpet in the Williams home had what's called
a trilobal cross -section. What does that look
like? It's shaped sort of like a three -leaf
clover or maybe a radioactive symbol. And the
prosecution's experts testified that this specific
type of fiber in this specific color was incredibly
rare. So finding the specific fiber on a victim
is almost like finding a rare specific coin in
their pocket that you know only Wayne Williams
collects. That's a perfect analogy. The friend
and scientist did an incredible job of sourcing
it. They traced that specific fiber to a manufacturer
called Wellman Inc. and then to a specific dialogue
called Luxaire, made by a company called West
Point Pepperell. They got that specific. They
did. And then the prosecution brought in experts
to do the math. They calculated how much of this
specific carpet in this specific greenish color
was sold in the entire Atlanta metropolitan area
over a 10 -year period. And what was the number?
They argued that the probability of any random
house in Atlanta having this exact carpet was
minuscule. Something like 1 in almost 8 ,000.
So it's not impossible, but it's highly, highly
unlikely. Highly unlikely. And to make it even
worse for him, Williams tried to explain it away.
During questioning, he claimed that the carpet
in his house had been there for a long time.
He said it was installed in 1968. OK, why does
that specific date matter? It matters because
the manufacturer of that specific trialable fiber,
Wellman Inc., didn't even exist until 1971. Ouch.
So he told a lie to try and create distance from
the evidence. And the lie blew up in his face.
It proved he was actively trying to mislead them.
It just destroyed his credibility. If he just
said, I don't know when it was installed or my
parents handled that. it might have been less
damaging. But he gave a specific, provably false
date. He walked right into a trap of his own
making. And remember, it wasn't just the carpet.
It was the dog hair. The family's German shepherd.
Right. They found hairs that were consistent
with the Williams family dog on multiple victims,
including a young man named Junie Ray Payne.
So now you have a triangle of evidence building.
You have the carpet fibers from the house. You
have the dog hairs from the dog. And you have
Williams' own presence at the bridge where a
body was dumped. This allows the prosecution
to invoke something called the product rule of
probability. The product rule. Break that down.
It's a statistical concept. If you have one coincidence,
say, the 1 in 8 ,000 chance of the carpet match,
that's suspicious, but... Maybe plausible. But
then you multiply the odds of that by the odds
of the dog hair match. And then you multiply
that by the odds of a fiber match from the trunk
of his car. So each new piece of evidence makes
the coincidence exponentially less likely. Exactly.
The prosecutor argued that the combined mathematical
probability of this all just being a random coincidence
was something like 1 in 30 million. It was a
number designed to be so large that the jury
couldn't possibly believe it was anyone else.
And on top of all this physical evidence, we
can't forget his behavior, both before the trial
and in the courtroom itself. It was disastrous
for him. You mentioned he was this kind of radio
nerd, maybe a bit arrogant. How did that play
out when he was in front of a jury fighting for
his life? Terribly. The trial began in January
1982. And Williams made the incredibly risky
decision to take the stand in his own defense.
Which is always a gamble. A huge gamble. At first,
he was calm, collected, trying to project that
intelligent, media -savvy persona. But the lead
prosecutor, Joseph Drolet, he knew exactly how
to push his buttons. He started poking at Williams'
story, his inconsistencies, his failed music
ventures. And Williams snapped. He didn't just
snap. He completely alienated the jury. He became
angry, combative, argumentative. He started calling
the prosecutor names like fool. He came across
not as a man wrongfully accused, but as someone
with a volatile temper. Which is not the look
you want when you're accused of strangling people.
It's the worst possible look for a jury that
is trying to decide if this man was capable of
strangling someone in a fit of rage. Seeing that
anger explode live in the courtroom. I mean,
by all accounts, it was a major turning point
in the trial. So on February 27, 1982, the verdict
finally comes down. Guilty on both counts. The
murders of Nathaniel Cater. And Jimmy Ray Payne.
End the sentence. Two consecutive life terms.
But wait a minute, there were nearly 30 victims
in this whole string of murders. He was only
officially charged and tried for two of them,
and they were both adults. That is a critical
distinction, and it's a point of a lot of confusion.
He was only formally convicted for the murders
of two adult men, Cater and Payne. So why do
we call them the Atlanta child murders if he
was convicted for killing adults? Because the
prosecution was allowed to introduce evidence
regarding 10 other... victims, mostly children,
including an 11 -year -old named Patrick Baltazar,
to establish a pattern of behavior. So they were
saying, look, the way these 10 other people were
killed is so similar, the fiber evidence is so
similar, that if we prove he did these two, it
strongly implies he did the others as well. That
was the strategy, and it worked. Once he was
convicted and sentenced, the Atlanta Police Department
and the FBI effectively declared the entire Atlanta
child murders case solved. Why? What was their
public justification? It was simple and very
powerful. The killing stopped. They said, look,
we arrested Wayne Williams and the body stopped
appearing on the sides of roads and in rivers.
Which you have to admit sounds incredibly convincing.
It does. But, and this is a massive but, this
is where we have to pivot. Because despite the
mountain of fiber evidence, despite the splash
in the night, and despite the jury's verdict,
there is this huge alternative narrative that
has never, ever gone away. And this is where
the story gets really interesting and, frankly,
really dark. We have to start talking about the
Ku Klux Klan. Right. Let's get into Section 3,
the cover -up theory. Because Wayne Williams
from Day One has said, I didn't do this. I'm
a scapegoat. Yes. And his defense team argued
that Atlanta officials were terrified of a full
blown race war. You have to paint the picture
of the sociopolitical context here. Atlanta in
the early 80s was a real powder keg. It was.
You had a new black administration running the
city with Maynard Jackson as the first black
mayor. It was seen as this beacon of the new
South. But you still had deep seated, violent
white supremacist activity bubbling just under
the surface, especially in the surrounding counties.
So the theory goes, if it came out that a white
supremacist group was systematically hunting
and murdering black children. The city would
burn. There would be riots on a scale that make
the 60s look small. The political damage, the
social damage, it would have been catastrophic.
So the alleged cover up theory is find a black
suspect, any plausible black suspect. Pin it
all on him, calm the city down, and avoid the
race war. That's the core of the theory. But
the question is, is there any actual evidence
for KKK involvement? Or is this just a convenient
conspiracy theory to deflect guilt? And there
is some evidence, isn't there? It's not just
smoke. There is. And it primarily centers on
one man. A man named Charles T. Sanders. Okay,
so who was Charles T. Sanders? Sanders was a
known white supremacist. He was affiliated with
the KKK. And he wasn't just some random racist
guy. He was actively on the radar of the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation, the GBI. They were watching
him? They were more than watching him. There
were wiretaps. Wiretaps. Okay, now we're talking.
What did they actually catch him saying? In a
1981 recording, Sanders was speaking to a GBI
informant. He was recorded praising the killer.
He allegedly said that the person responsible
for the murders had, paraphrasing the sentiment
here because the actual language was a horrific
racial slur, wiped out a thousand future generations
of black people. That is absolutely chilling.
That sounds like a motive. It certainly does.
And it gets even more specific. There was an
article in Spin magazine in 1986 where an anonymous
friend of Sanders's came forward. This friend
claimed that Sanders had actually taken credit
for the murders and said that his brothers were
also involved. He took credit for it. So if they
had him on wiretap praising the killer and a
witness saying he confessed, why on earth didn't
they go after him harder? Well, the official
story is that Sanders and his brothers were brought
in for questioning and they all passed lie detector
tests where they denied any involvement. Hold
on a second. Wayne Williams had inconclusive
lie detector tests and the police used that against
him. He even announced it himself. But Sanders
and his brothers pass a lie detector test and
they're just off the hook. That seems inconsistent.
That is the exact point the defense has made
for 40 years. They argue it's a glaring double
standard. And there's another. bizarre, almost
unbelievable coincidence here. What's that? Sanders
allegedly mused to his friends about how lucky
he was that the police were focused on Williams.
And do you know why he considered himself lucky?
I'm afraid to ask. Because Charles T. Sanders,
the KKK -affiliated white supremacist, also owned
a white German shepherd. You have got to be kidding
me. And according to reports and sources from
that time, he also had carpet in his home that
was reported to be of a similar type and color
to the fibers found on the victims. So let me
get this straight. You have a known KKK member
who openly expresses hatred for the victims,
praises their killer, potentially confesses to
a friend, and he just happens to own the same
rare breed of dog and have similar carpet to
the main suspect. That is the allegation. That
is the foundation of the cover -up theory. The
idea is that once the police and the FBI zeroed
in on Williams, the Klan realized they had a
perfect way out. Yeah. As that anonymous friend
in the Spin article put it, once it was pinned
on Wayne Williams, they were through. They were
off the hook. It sounds like the plot of a John
Grisham novel, but this was the real life defense.
So what happened to the investigation into Sanders?
It was eventually officially closed in July of
2006. They effectively said, we looked into it
and there's nothing here. But for a lot of people,
closed doesn't mean resolved. Not at all. And
that feeling, that lingering doubt, is what brings
us into the modern era of this case. Because
science, unlike police investigations, doesn't
stand still. In the 2000s, we started getting
access to DNA technology that was pure science
fiction in 1981. Right. So this brings us to
section four, modern science versus old convictions.
Williams and his legal team have been fighting
for appeals for decades. So in the 2000s, they
finally get some DNA testing done on the evidence.
What did they find? The first major round of
testing was in 2007. The FBI agreed to test two
human hairs that had been recovered from the
body of one of the victims. Now, before we get
into the results, it's really important to understand
the difference between two types of DNA. Okay,
let's break that down. There's nuclear DNA and
there's mitochondrial DNA. Nuclear DNA is the
one we always hear about on TV shows, right?
It's unique to you, like a genetic fingerprint.
Correct. Nuclear DNA comes from both of your
parents. It's found in the nucleus of the cell.
And unless you have an identical twin, it's yours
and yours alone. Okay, and mitochondrial. Mitochondrial
DNA. Or ME DNA is different. It's found in the
mitochondria of the cell, and you inherit it
only from your mother. It's not unique to a single
person. It's shared by everyone along that same
maternal line. So I would have the same mitochondrial
DNA as my mother and my sister and my grandmother
on my mother's side. Exactly. Which means it's
less presourced for making a positive identification.
You can't say this hair belongs to John Smith,
but it is incredibly powerful for exclusion.
Meaning if the mtDNA doesn't match, you know
for a fact it's not from that person or anyone
in their maternal family line. Precisely. So
back to the 2007 test. They test the mtDNA from
the two hairs found on the victim. What do you
think they found? Well, if it exonerated him,
we'd probably know about it. So I'm guessing
it didn't. It did not. The DNA sequence they
found was rare. It eliminated 99 .5 % of the
general population and eliminated 98 % of the
African -American population for being the source
of that hair. But it matched Wayne Williams.
So it didn't prove 100 % that it was his hair,
but it proved that he falls into that tiny 2
% of African -Americans who could have been the
source. That's right. For the defense, they can
say, see, it's not a unique match. But for the
prosecution, they say when you combine this with
the 30 million to one odds of the fiber evidence,
the probability starts to stack up against him
again. And it didn't stop there. There was more
testing in 2010. Yes. On evidence from the Patrick
Balthazar case. Remember, the 11 year old victim
who wasn't part of the original murder charges,
but was used to show that pattern of killings.
Right. What did they test? They found two scalp
hairs on Balthazar's body. They ran the mtDNA
on those. The result was a sequence that was
found in only 29 out of 11 ,148 samples in the
FBI's existing database. And again, it matched
Wayne Williams. That's very tough to explain
away if you're the defense. Two different victims,
years apart, and hairs consistent with your rare
DNA profiler on both of them. It is. And they
even went back to the dog. The German Shepherd.
The German Shepherd. In 2007, the veterinary
medicine lab at UC Davis, which is one of the
best in the world, tested non -human hairs that
were recovered from Balthazar's body. And did
they match the Williams family dog? They did.
The mitochondrial DNA sequence from the hairs
on the body matched the sequence from the Williams
family dog. But again, there is a caveat. It's
dog mtDNA, so it's not unique. Right. The lead
scientist on that study said the specific genetic
sequence they found occurs in about one in every
100 dogs. He called the match fairly significant,
but not conclusive proof. On its own, having
a dog with that DNA isn't a crime. One in a hundred
is actually pretty common. If you go to a dog
park, you might find another dog with that exact
sequence. You might. But this is the so what.
moment for the prosecution you have to look at
the totality of the evidence what are the odds
that a man is on a bridge at the exact moment
a body is dumped lies about his alibi has incredibly
rare carpet fibers that match the victims has
his own rare dna profile consistent with hairs
on the victims and has a dog with a fairly significant
dna profile consistent with hairs on the victims
when you stack it all up like that the coincidence
theory just starts to crumble under the weight
it does however The defense got a bit of a boost
in 2015. What happened then? The Department of
Justice, in partnership with the FBI, released
a massive study. And it was a bombshell. It admitted
that microscopic hair analysis testimony by FBI
examiners in the 80s and 90s. Right. Well, it
often failed to meet professional standards.
Meaning what? They were lying. Not necessarily
lying, but overstating the certainty of their
findings. They would testify in ways that implied
a hair match was a unique identification, like
a fingerprint, when scientifically it isn't.
The DOJ admitted that this flawed testimony had
been used in thousands of cases. So the defense
team for Williams can now say, see. The foundational
science of your case was junk. The hair analysis
was flawed from the start. And that's exactly
what they argue. But the prosecution's response
is, the microscopic hair comparison was just
one small piece of a massive puzzle. Even if
you throw it out entirely, the rest of the fiber
evidence, the DNA evidence, and the circumstantial
evidence all still stand. Which brings us to
the lingering questions. Because even with all
this science, if the evidence is so seemingly
overwhelming, Why do so many people, and not
just conspiracy theorists, still feel like justice
wasn't really done here? That is the gut check
problem of this entire case. And it brings us
to our last section here, section five, public
opinion and the pervasive doubt. You have these
incredibly prominent, thoughtful voices raising
questions, like the author James Baldwin. The
great James Baldwin. In 1985, he wrote a whole
book about this, right? The Evidence of Things
Not Seen. He did. And he was profoundly skeptical.
He looked at Wayne Williams, this articulate,
nerdy son of two black schoolteachers, and he
just couldn't reconcile that image with the image
of a monster who was preying on poor black children
from the other side of the tracks. He saw a disconnect.
A huge one. He raised these profound... questions
about whether the justice system needed a conviction
more than it needed the absolute truth. And it
wasn't just intellectuals like Baldwin. The victims'
families themselves were deeply divided. That's
the most heartbreaking part of this entire story.
You would expect the families of the murdered
children to be the ones most certain of his guilt,
the ones who want closure the most. But many
of them didn't believe it was him. Many did not.
Several of the parents were very outspoken, saying
they felt the police just wanted to close the
cases, declare victory, and move on. They didn't
feel like Williams was the man who killed their
children. And even some people within law enforcement
agreed with them. I was reading about the DeKalb
County police chief, a man named Louis Graham.
Yes, this was a big deal. In 2005, Graham officially
reopened four of the murder cases that fell within
his jurisdiction. And he stated publicly that
his decision was driven by his personal belief
in Wayne Williams' innocence. A police chief
saying that, that's incredible. It's almost unheard
of. And then you have the former sheriff of neighboring
DeKalb County, a man named Sidney Dorsey, who
said something incredibly provocative about the
case. What did he say? He said, quote, if they
arrested a white guy, there would have been riots.
He was convinced that Williams was the safe arrest,
the one that would prevent the city from exploding
into racial violence. Wow. So this doubt isn't
on the fringes. It's coming from inside the system
itself. It is. Which leads us to 2019. We have
a new mayor in Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms,
and a new police chief, Erica Shields. And they
make a massive announcement. They're going to
re -examine and re -test all the evidence in
the Atlanta child murders cases. This was a huge
moment. A huge moment. And Mayor Bottoms was
very clear about the motivation. She 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. The goal
was to apply all the latest modern technology
to this decades -old evidence to see if a definitive
answer could finally be found. Has anything new
come out of that reexamination yet? It's still
an ongoing process. These things take an incredible
amount of time. But interestingly, right as this
reexamination was getting started, new accusations
against Williams surfaced. In 2019, after all
this time. Yes. In 2019, two men. Their names
were Derwin Davis and Isaac Rogers. They came
forward publicly. And what did they claim? They
both claimed that way back in 1979 and 1981,
when they were children, Wayne Williams had attempted
to abduct them in separate incidents. My goodness.
So at the very same time that some people are
looking for his exoneration, you have others
coming forward and adding to this pile of accusations
against him. It just shows you how incredibly
complex and raw this legacy is in Atlanta. It's
not just a legal case. It's a cultural trauma.
You see it reflected in pop culture, in the show
Mindhunter, in the Atlanta Monster podcast. This
case haunts the city because it sits right at
that painful intersection of forensic science,
racial tension, and the unresolved grief of nearly
30 families. So after all of that, where does
that leave us today? What's the current status?
Wayne Williams remains in Telfair State Prison.
He has been denied parole multiple times, most
recently in late 2019. He won't even be eligible
to be considered for parole again until November
of 2027. And he is still sitting there over 40
years later, insisting he didn't do it. And the
state of Georgia is still insisting just as strongly
that he did. OK, so let's try to wrap this up.
After going through all of this, what is the
main takeaway from this deep dive? I think it's
a paradox. At the end of the day, you have a
man who was convicted on a mountain of circumstantial
and, at the time, cutting edge forensic evidence.
Fibers, dog hair, his timing on the bridge, his
lies to the police. And the undeniable fact that
the string of killings stopped the moment he
was taken off the street. That is a very powerful
narrative. An incredibly powerful narrative.
But on the other side of the paradox. On the
other side, you have this persistent whisper
of what if. What if the KKK involvement was real
and was actively covered up to keep the city
from imploding? What if Williams was involved
in some of the murders, but not all of them?
What if the terrifying reality is that a serial
killer and a racist hate group were both operating
in the same city at the same time, preying on
the same vulnerable population? That is a truly
terrifying thought. The idea of two distinct
evils operating in the same space. It is. But
that may be the reality of the Atlanta child
murders. It was a chaotic, terrifying time. And
there may not be one neat, single answer that
explains everything. It just keeps bringing us
back to that one moment on the bridge. That one
loud splash. And then the silence that followed.
Indeed. So I want to leave you with a final thought
to Mullover. We focus so much on the fiber evidence,
the DNA, the complex science of it all, but I
want you to consider this. In a case where the
monster fits the forensic profile so perfectly,
the carpet, the dog, the location, but fits the
community's intuition so poorly, is the silence
after his arrest absolute proof of his guilt?
Yeah. Or is it simply proof that once the police
had their man, they just stopped looking for
anyone else? That is the question that 40 years
later, history is still trying to answer. Thanks
for listening to this deep dive. Stay curious
and keep questioning the narrative. Until next
time.