GA GA - Wayne Williams - Atlanta Child Murders & more - 1979-1981

[Kell1]

I don't think there is any question he killed the two he was convicted of. The FBI profiler has said there evidence that conclusively links him to 11 of the other murders. DNA has linked him to at least 2 more. He repeatedly has his case appealed on Habeas reasons to federal courts and each time those judges have shot down his claims. Did he kill all of these people? No probably not, there are a few, as you say, that don't really fit. Did he kill most of them? Yes, I think he probably did.

I agree, (having spoken to Douglas personally ) i certainly dont think he was involved in any of the cases, of the female victims.

A few others as well

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Victim of Atlanta child murders receives headstone more than 40 years after his death - Local News 8

 

[Goecke]

I'm originally in Atlanta, and my mom was a child in the 70s and her family lived very close to where some of these murders occurred, so this case is very personal to me.
I find it interesting that the murders of children stopped, and Williams (or whoever the killer/s were) switched to adult victims as soon as a curfew was put in place in Atlanta. Also, nearly all of the adult victims were small and/or had some sort of mental disability. One of the adult victims, Larry Rogers, was 20, but if the images available of him were recent he looked about 10. All Of The Atlanta Child Murders Victims, Remembered

I personally believe that Williams was responsible for most of the murders, but not all of them, and he definitely didn't kill the two girls.

 

[FindingSabrina]

<modsnip: Quoted post was removed> ... why did the murders stop the day that Williams was arrested? That’s the question that the Williams sympathizers refuse to answer.

Because the other murderer(s) realized they were completely off the hook? Williams may be guilty but he’s not responsible for every murder. I don’t believe looking at his case with skepticism makes me a “sympathizer.” He was convicted because prosecution said he was a gay racist. I believe that every single one of those children deserves justice and Wayne Williams is not the ONLY responsible party.

 

[Richard]

There have been some other cases where a suspected serial killer has been caught and an apparent series of murders stops.

It could be (logically) that the series ended because the one and only killer was caught, OR - it could also mean that another killer, working independently of - or in association with - the captured killer decides to stop, or move away.

 

[HeWhoDaresWins]

LaTonya Wilson’s death seemed to be the most random outlier of all the cases. Why did the authorities lump her case in with the others? How did the killer(s) get in a 2nd floor window? Was she alive when she was taken outside the apartment? Could she have already been dead? If a witness saw someone breaking into the apartment did they call 911? And why did the APD not charge WW with even one child murder? Surely there had to be some fiber evidence on at least one child.

 

[JerseyGirl]

FOX 5 I-Team special 'Pattern of a Killer' revisits trial of Wayne Williams

Watch "Pattern of a Killer: The Trial of Wayne Williams" Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. on FOX 5.

www.fox5atlanta.com

 

[vls12345]

Mann hadn't heard much about Williams at all when she was asked to represent him.

[snip]

In 1981, Williams was convicted of murdering two grown men but at trial, prosecutors told the jury he was responsible for the deaths of 22 children even though he was never charge with the death of a single child.

[snip]

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reopened the investigation into those child murders in 2021.

Atlanta Police sent two DNA samples to a specialized testing facility in Utah. But 16 months later, Mann explained she can't get answers about what they found.

"We have absolutely no evidence as to what has been uncovered, what came of those DNA samples, we have no answers from the city of Atlanta or Fulton County DA," Mann stated. "I asked the city, Atlanta Police, and the District Attorney's office about the samples and they told me so far, no official report is available."

From this article:

Exclusive: New attorney for Wayne Williams demands answers in Atlanta child murders

Attorney Janis Mann recently sat down with Williams in prison. She said they talked for three hours about his case. Here's what he said.

www.11alive.com

 

[Kell1]

Ive seen some posts asking "Then why did the murders stop after Wiliams was arrested?" ,the short answer to that is

They Didn't

It was well known that during the investigation, the APD was adding virtually any murder of a child or young adult to the list of which the FBI labelled "ATKID"

Its important to understand that Atlanta at his time , had a high murder rate to begin with, however once it started involving children, the focus became much more defined, and THAT was only after the victims families took action.

It was the bravery of the parents of these children that brought the case, to the forefront , many felt they were being ignored by the police .

The FBI received a very cold welcome, by the APD, (as they usually do) but this case it was obvious the APD didnt want them there, they were bowing to pressure from parents who were going to the media, taking to the streets with these cases, as they were originally not given a priority.

APD under pressure complied literally every murder of young people and basically left the FBI to separate them, again with little help from the APD itself.

Former FBI profiler John Douglas was the first on the ground to handle the ATKID case, he felt from the beginning there were 2 overwhelming factors in this case, which ran opposite of the narrative APD was putting out

1) The killer was black
2) There was more than killer (Aka the cases, weren't all related)

For EX the female child that was murdered was never pinned on Williams, because it turned out to be a Filicide (parental murder) but it was originally classified, as one of the ATKID murders.

It was Douglas's lead on that case, that lead to Williams apprehension as he suggested staking out bridges, once the fiber evidence information was leaked .

Douglas's theorized, that these murders were being hidden among all the other murders that are committed regularly, that they would draw little attention due to the victims race and felt these were sexual in nature, which separated them from the majority of other cases, APD attributed to the ATKID case

Murders were still rampant in Atlanta at the time (as they are today) but once they had Williams, they stopped pinning murders that didnt match the MO or psychological signature anymore of Williams,and convicted him on what they could.

That took the pressure of APD but Williams was only convicted on 2 murders among all these others, and the glaring question was why only those 2?

In other words APD just focused more on what they had on Williams, if they could pin all these other murders on Williams, with the National pressure they faced, there is no way they could've let that slide .

The "why" they did what they did has been a discussion in the lore of LE for decades, and several theories abound, but I wont discuss that here .

Murders of young adults still continue in Atlanta today, usually perpetuated by other young adults, we just know better now

 

[vls12345]

Eternal flame memorial for Atlanta Child Murders unveiled

Those killed in the Atlanta Child Murders cases were remembered with the memorial.

www.11alive.com

 

[dotr]

Eternal flame memorial for Atlanta Child Murders unveiled

Those killed in the Atlanta Child Murders cases were remembered with the memorial.

www.11alive.com

 

[Leprikawn]

Even after all these years it surprises me that DNA has not been ran on all of the case evidence to see if another killer or killers escaped justice. You have IMO a bunch of unsolved cases.

 

[dotr]

The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reissued Edition: Baldwin, James: 9780805039399: Books - Amazon.ca

The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reissued Edition: Baldwin, James: 9780805039399: Books - Amazon.ca

www.amazon.ca

''One of America's most important writers takes on the arrest of Wayne Bertram Williams for the murder of twenty-eight black children in Atlanta to offer this searing indictment of the nation's racial stagnation.

This edition of James Baldwin's classic work offers a new foreword by Derrick Bell (with Janet Dewart Bell), and is as meaningful today as it was when it was first published in 1985.''

Goodreads

Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

www.goodreads.com

 

[GracefulD1an]

To be honest I feel like there were multiple killers active in Atlanta at that time. I do think Wayne Williams is responsible for a few I just wonder if there weren’t others active, those who were commuting to Atlanta from the Chattanooga metropolitan area or the Atlanta metropolitan area. Those fibers could have been in other people’s possessions, people who didn’t live in Atlanta but somewhere close to it by car. I have wondered why the GBI didn’t try to contact forces in Tennessee to see if there were cars with similar or the same fibers in their cars but then I remember that back then different police districts didn’t necessarily think to contact people outside their respective states and coordinate with the respective law enforcement agencies to cover all ground. We were able to connect him to two of the victims but not necessarily the others. Who’s to say they weren’t victims of other people or gang violence popping up at the time. I’m just saying the investigation may have been a bit too hasty to tie one man to all those deaths.

 

[Leprikawn]

To be honest I feel like there were multiple killers active in Atlanta at that time. I do think Wayne Williams is responsible for a few I just wonder if there weren’t others active, those who were commuting to Atlanta from the Chattanooga metropolitan area or the Atlanta metropolitan area. Those fibers could have been in other people’s possessions, people who didn’t live in Atlanta but somewhere close to it by car. I have wondered why the GBI didn’t try to contact forces in Tennessee to see if there were cars with similar or the same fibers in their cars but then I remember that back then different police districts didn’t necessarily think to contact people outside their respective states and coordinate with the respective law enforcement agencies to cover all ground. We were able to connect him to two of the victims but not necessarily the others. Who’s to say they weren’t victims of other people or gang violence popping up at the time. I’m just saying the investigation may have been a bit too hasty to tie one man to all those deaths.

It's very similar to the Dean Corll Case in Houston. The police wanted the case to go away so naming him the killer of all but only convicting him of a few of the cases got them what they wanted. It is outrageous to think that only one killer was in a large city like Atlanta and the surrounding areas. Until they actually complete the DNA testing and go through each case there will never be closure for anyone.

 

[GracefulD1an]

Exactly. If I was investigating I would contact police forces in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee as well as the GBI, FBI, TNI and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency for DMV records of people in Chattanooga, Soddy Daisy, La Grange, the rest of the entire Metro Atlanta area and the rest of the entire Chattanooga Metro area just to double check how many people were registered as owning a white 1970 Chevrolet station wagon then cross-referencing that with people who owned carpets similar or the same type as the kind found in Wayne Williams, just to make sure I wasn’t convicting the wrong person. Also I would check if any child sex offenders were registered as living in those areas so I could do genetic analysis and compare their DNA to samples found on the other victims.

 

[PrairieWind]

It's very similar to the Dean Corll Case in Houston. The police wanted the case to go away so naming him the killer of all but only convicting him of a few of the cases got them what they wanted. It is outrageous to think that only one killer was in a large city like Atlanta and the surrounding areas. Until they actually complete the DNA testing and go through each case there will never be closure for anyone.

It isn't really different today. Police give cases to the DA to prosecute and the DA will actually prosecute the cases they know they can win even though they strongly believe there are more. The goal is to get the person off the streets. The killings stopped.

 

[Leprikawn]

It isn't really different today. Police give cases to the DA to prosecute and the DA will actually prosecute the cases they know they can win even though they strongly believe there are more. The goal is to get the person off the streets. The killings stopped.

I understand that but why not run the forensics of the other cases? There are some that don't fit the MO of other killings. The fact that the killings stopped could have been because the other killers wanted the world to think Williams did them all. they could have moved to other locations and continued. I understand the evidence convicted him, but they did not convict him on all of the cases. The fact that the city of Atlanta has just closed the cases and moved on is disturbing. You have multiple families that will always have their doubts. I personally feel that the city doesn't want the answers because they would have a large problem if DNA came back for anyone lese. At one point they said they were going to run DNA and then silence.