The Atlanta Child Murders

Epilogue
From the time that Wayne Williams was convicted, doubts arose about his guilt. Many black Atlantans felt that the government had manufactured the evidence just to get the case closed. While there are a number of issues in the government's case that are controversial, the fact is that the prosecutors, especially the FBI, believed that Williams was guilty. Did the government play fair and square during the trial? No, but that does not seem to be unusual, because prosecution is about winning, not about justice or fairness in the abstract.

The facts are that no one ever witnessed Wayne Williams killing or abducting anyone. The most important evidence against him was highly technical fiber evidence that only experts could judge. Any jury presented with the huge amount of fiber evidence in the Williams case and the government's experts testifying to its veracity would be likely to give it credence.

Unfortunately, Wayne Williams was his own worst enemy. He never came up with a credible reason for being on the Jackson Parkway bridge in the early hours of the morning and his alibis were easily destroyed, but it didn't mean that he was guilty of murder.

During the appeals process, the Georgia Supreme Court assigned Justice Richard Bell to draft the opinion in the Williams case. Justice Bell, a former prosecutor, wrote that Wayne Williams did not get a fair trial and his murder conviction should have been reversed. When the full court reviewed Bell's opinion, it was voted down; Bell's draft was rewritten; Bell was pressured to change his vote, and the majority opinion -- to uphold the conviction -- came out under Bell's name in December of 1983.

Justice Bell's unpublished draft criticized Judge Clarence Cooper for allowing prosecutors to link Williams to the murders of Eric Middlebrooks, John Porter, Alfred Evans, Charles Stephens and Patrick Baltazar. The standards for linking those crimes to the two for which Williams was charged were not met, according to Bell.

Specifically, Justice Bell said, according to Benjamin Weiser, Washington Post writer (Feb. 3, 1985) that "there was no evidence placing Williams with those five victims before their murders, and as in all the murders linked to Williams, there were no eyewitnesses, no confession, no murder weapons and no established motive. Also, the five deaths, while somewhat similar to each other in technique, were unlike the two for which Williams was tried."

The linking of the other crimes with the deaths of Cater and Payne had the effect of eroding the presumption of innocence. Bell pointed out that "because the evidence of guilt as to the two charged offenses was wholly circumstantial, and because of the prejudicial impact of the five erroneously admitted (uncharged) homicides must have been substantial, we cannot say that it is highly probable that the error did not contribute to the jury's verdict…"

The other dissenter was Justice George Smith, who did not change his vote as Bell did. Justice Smith stated that admitting the other crimes "illustrates the basic unfairness of this trial and Williams' unenviable position as a defendant who, charged with two murders, was forced to defend himself as to 12 separate killings."

In 1985, a five-hour CBS docudrama severely ruffled the feathers of the Atlanta city government. The producer made it clear in the movie that he believes that there were "tremendous breaches of legal ethics" during the investigation and trial and that Williams' guilt was not proven.

Over the years, an increasing number of people connected with the case do not believe that Wayne Williams is guilty, including some of the relatives of the victims. DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey, who as an Atlanta homicide detective first searched Williams home, says, " Most people who are aware of the child murders believe as I do that Wayne Williams did not commit these crimes."

In July of 1999, the Augusta Chronicle reported:

"A divided Georgia Supreme Court ruled that a state judge wrongly dismissed two claims raised by Wayne Williams in his bid for a new trial in the slayings of two Atlanta blacks 18 years ago. The 4-3 ruling sends the case back to Judge Hal Craig to rule on Mr. Williams' claims that prosecutors were guilty of misconduct and that his own attorneys did not effectively represent him at his 1982 trial."

Williams and his lawyers are seeking DNA tests on the bloodstains found in his cars, which prosecutors claimed were consistent with the blood types of two victims who were stabbed.

Throughout the murder investigation there was a fear in the black community that the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for the murders of the children and young adults. There was also credence given to the theory that the CIA and/or FBI were responsible.

A police informant allegedly claimed that Klan member Charles Sanders tried to recruit him into the racist organization. Sanders allegedly told the man that the Klan was trying to begin a race war by killing black children.

Any group that can blow up churches can and does murder children. Explosives are a very efficient way of harming lots of people quickly with limited risk of exposure. We have learned this from Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. However, individual murders are not a very effective way to eradicate a large number of people, especially considering the risks of being caught by a black community that was in a heightened state of alarm. It seems unlikely that any white person(s) could pull off all or most of these murders. He (or they) would have been too obvious to have escaped attention during a two-year period.

What seems more likely as the body of knowledge about serial killers has vastly expanded in the twenty years since the murder series began, is that all the murders were not done by one or even two people, but that multiple criminals were at work during that 2-year period. However, there does seem to be at least one prolific serial killer at work amongst young and teenage boys.

While there was little or no evidence of sexual assault, many of the victims were involved in homosexual activities, either to earn money or because it was their sexual preference. Just because there was no evidence of mutilation or sexual violence, it doesn't mean that the murders were not sexually motivated. In fact, they probably were sexually motivated.

The killer must have been very expert in gaining the confidence of these young victims. Successful serial killers become very expert at defusing any concerns that a potential victim may have. Pedophiles have made the control of young people into an art form. Whoever it was that was responsible for the deaths of these young people had to move and live and earn a living among them. And almost certainly this killer was a black man, so as not to have attracted undue attention or raised suspicions.

Is this person still operating today? Probably not. He may be dead. These crimes began at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and the killer may have been a victim of that dread disease. In fact, AIDS killed several of the suspects that were known pedophiles.