Serial Killer Investigations (28 page)

By the beginning of July 1980, in what was later aptly labelled the ‘Summer of Death’, the murders had continued for a year, and seven black children had been murdered and three had vanished. Understandably, there was outrage on the part of the African American community, which still assumed that the killer was a white man who hated blacks. One outrageous rumour asserted that scientists needed the penis of recently dead blacks to make the protein interferon for combating cancer. But a far more widespread rumour was that the Ku Klux Klan was behind the murders. Blacks all over the country were convinced that a white racist was responsible. Camille Bell and the mothers of two other murdered children, Mary Mapp and Venus Taylor, mobilised a group of parents who had lost children, and in early July the newly formed STOP called a press conference to protest police inaction, arguing that even if the killer was an African American, the police were dragging their feet because the victims were not white children.

Two more children vanished that month: on 6 July, nine-year-old Anthony Carter, who was found behind a warehouse near his home the next day. He had been stabbed to death. On 13 July, 11-year-old Earl Terrell vanished after leaving the South Bend Park swimming pool. His aunt received a call from a man claiming that he had the boy with him in Alabama and demanding $200 for his return.

The crime of kidnapping and transporting a person across state lines falls under FBI jurisdiction, but it was soon decided that the ransom call had been a hoax; nevertheless, Agent John Douglas went down to join Hazelwood. Meanwhile the task force had been increased from five members to 25. Civic groups raised a $100,000 reward for the killer, and a plan was set up to promote athletic and cultural programs to keep young blacks off the streets. Later, a curfew on children would be imposed. Some blacks held a theory that the killer was a policeman, but the police argued that he was more likely to be a black teenager, who would be trusted by others. The belief that the killings were racially motivated was strengthened by the fact that, with the exception of Angel Lenair, none of the victims had been sexually assaulted.

The last killing of the summer was that of 13-year-old Clifford Jones, who was visiting his grandmother in Atlanta. His strangled body was found in a dumpster on 20 August. He was dressed in clothes that were not his own.

On 14 September, 14-year-old Darron Glass disappeared. By then, although many of the killings were still considered unconnected, authorities knew they had a crisis on their hands. Mayor Maynard Jackson asked the White House for help, but it was still a question of whether there had even been any interstate violations to justify the FBI’s involvement in the situation. Nevertheless, Douglas and Hazlewood began their joint investigation using the methods of the BSU—studying crime scene photographs, interviewing family members, studying the dumpsites. Their problem was to put themselves into the mind of the killer, and they even took a test under a psychologist to try to view the world through the eyes of a paranoid schizophrenic—the psychologist was deeply impressed by their results.

Like Hazelwood, Douglas concluded that this killer was a young black, probably about 29 years of age. This would explain why the children would trust him enough to accept a lift. He would be a ‘police buff’, who enjoyed posing as a police officer and probably carried a badge. He might even have a police-type dog.

As to motivation, the killer would be homosexual, attracted to young boys, but sexually inadequate, which would explain why there had been no rapes. He would probably have some kind of practiced ruse to attract the kids, and Douglas thought that he might pose as a music promoter. He hypothesised that the children probably knew their killer, and trusted him—these were not casual pickups.

The Atlanta Police Department checked through their records of known paedophiles, and ended with a list of fifteen hundred possible suspects. But not all Atlanta cops were impressed by the profile—one black officer told Douglas ‘I’ve seen your profile and I think it’s shit.’

In Conyers, a small town 25 miles away, police thought they had a lead when they received a tape from someone who claimed to be the killer, declaring that he had left a body on Sigmon Road. He sounded like a white man with strong racist views. Douglas said immediately: ‘This is not the killer, but you have to catch him because he’ll keep on calling and distracting us until you do.’ He then suggested how this could be done. The taunting tone implied that the man saw the police as idiots. Douglas advised them to go and search Sigmon Road, and make sure they looked incompetent and failed to follow the caller’s instructions. Just as he expected, the man rang to tell them what fools they were; they were waiting for his call, traced it, and arrested him in his own house—from which he had been stupid enough to make the call.

The killing went on. After Darron Glass, 12-year-old Charles Stevens disappeared on 9 October; his body was found the next day, suffocated. Nine days later, a search of woodland area revealed the body of the missing LaTonya Wilson, but the body was too badly decomposed for the cause of death to be determined. By then, the Atlanta police chief, George Napper, was admitting that all leads had been exhausted. Fearing a Halloween attack on trick-or-treaters, the mayor initiated a citywide curfew, and police patrols were beefed up. Nonetheless, the suffocated body of nine-year-old Aaron Jackson was found on 2 November. Although he had been a friend of an earlier victim, Aaron Wyche, there was still no clue to the identity of the killer. On 10 November, 16-year-old Patrick Rogers disappeared. Rogers had once had a crush on Aaron Jackson’s older sister. His body was found on 21 December, face down in the Chattahoochee River. A blow to the head had killed him. On 4 January 1981, Lubie Geter disappeared from a shopping mall. Five days later, police found the badly decomposed bodies of two missing children in a wood south of Atlanta—Christopher Richardson and Earl Terrell. Lubie Geter was found in early February.

Also in early February 1981, the Task Force received a call from 11-year-old Patrick Baltazer, saying the he thought the killer was coming after him. Unfortunately, the detectives failed to ask him why he thought so, and when Baltazer vanished on 6 February it was too late. His body was found a week later in an office car park, strangled with a rope. It was announced that a hair fibre found on his body matched that found on five previous victims.

On 22 February 15-year old Terry Pue was last seen at hamburger restaurant; he was a friend of Lubie Geter. An anonymous white caller told the police where his body could be found on Sigmon Road, in Rockdale Country. The body was found there, strangled with a rope, and police announced that they had been able to raise a fingerprint from the flesh, but no match proved to be on record.

Douglas recalled that there had been another Sigmon Road in the case, and that the police search there had been widely publicised. Was it possible, he wondered, that the killer was carefully following the press reports, pleased at the level of interest he was generating, and that dumping the last body in another Sigmon Road, as if making the point that he could abandon bodies wherever he liked? The two Sigmon Roads were more than twenty miles apart, so the killer had a long drive in order to make his point. Might it be possible to manipulate the killer through publicity? Would he now start dumping bodies in the river, to wash away evidence? Douglas’s insight proved correct; the next body to be found, 13-year-old Curtis Walker, was in the South River. That same day, the remains ofJefferey Mathis, who had been missing for more than a year, were finally uncovered. His funeral made national news.

The FBI cops now strongly advised that a surveillance team should be set up to watch the rivers, particularly the Chattahoochee, Atlanta’s main waterway. This was not easy, since it involved several police jurisdictions. It took the best part of two months to organise it, but by April it was in operation.

After Curtis Walker, the next two bodies, 15-year-old Joseph ‘Jo-Jo Bell’, and his friend Timothy Hill, 13, were found in the Chattahoochee River, Timothy on 30 March, Jo-Jo on 19 April. Like Patrick Baltazar, both had been stripped of outer garments. Two days after he had gone missing on 2 March, a co-worker of Bell had told his manager at the seafood restaurant where they worked that Jo-Jo had called him and told him he was ‘almost dead’ and pleaded for his help.

These were the last child victims. For reasons unknown, the killer now moved on to adults. Yet it is possible that the reason for the choice of the first adult victim, Eddie Duncan, 21, was once again dictated by publicity. Residents of the Techwood Homes housing project took to the streets to protest that the police were not doing their job. Residents decided to form a patrol carrying baseball bats. It was on the day this ‘bat’ patrol started, 20 March 1981, that Duncan, who was both physically and mentally disabled, disappeared. His body was found in the Chattahoochee River on 8 April.

Despite massive media attention and rewards promise for any help in capturing the killer or killers, the body count continued to rise. Twenty-year-old Larry Rogers was the second adult added to the list of victims. As was Duncan, Rogers was retarded. His strangled body was found in an abandoned apartment. Next came 23-year-old Michael McIntosh, who had known Jo-Jo Bell, who was pulled from the Chattahootchee River in April. John Porter was 28 when he was found stabbed to death that same month. The body of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne was also found floating in the Chattahoochee that April. In May, 17-year-old William Barrett was found strangled and stabbed after leaving home to pay a bill for his mother.

On 22 May came the break. Police posted close to the Parkway Bridge over the Chattahoochee River spotted headlights, heard a splash, and saw a man climb into a station wagon. They stopped it, and found that it was driven by a plump young black man who identified himself as Wayne Williams, age 23. He claimed to be a freelance photographer and music promoter, travelling across the bridge to audition a woman named Cheryl Johnson. In fact, her phone number was incorrect and her address did not exist. Williams was questioned for an hour, but the police could see no reason to detain him, so he was allowed to go, and placed under constant surveillance.

Two days later, the body of 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater, the oldest victim, was found floating in the river. Dog hairs found on the body matched those found in Williams’s station wagon and in his home. One witness testified to seeing Williams leaving a theatre hand in hand with Cater just before his disappearance. Another witness testified to seeing Williams in the company of another of the victims, Jimmy Ray Payne, also found in the river. A young black who knew Williams well testified that Williams had offered him money to perform oral sex, and another described how, after he had accepted a lift, Williams had fondled him through his trousers, then stopped the car in secluded woods; the teenager had jumped out and run away. He also said that he had seen Williams with Lubie Geter. When laboratory examination established that fibres and dog hairs found on ten more victims were similar to those found in Williams’s bedroom, the police decided to arrest him. He was charged only with the murders of Cater and Payne.

Wayne Bertram Williams was the only child of two schoolteachers, Homer and Fay Williams, in their mid-forties when he was born on 27 May 1958. He was a brilliant and spoiled child. He studied the sky through a telescope and set up a home-built radio station. When his transmitter was powerful enough to reach a mile, he began selling advertising time. He was featured in local magazines and on TV When he left school at 18 he became obsessed by police work and bought a car that resembled an unmarked police car.

The prosecution later described him as a ‘Manichean’ personality (the Manichees were world-haters): intelligent, literate, and ‘talented, but a pathological liar’ (‘a bullshitter’ as one friend described him). He was a frustrated dreamer, and a man who felt himself to be a failure. He was obsessed by a desire for quick success, and first became a photographer, studying television camera work. He claimed to be a talent scout, trying to set up a pop group to sing soul music. He seemed to hate other blacks, according to several witnesses, referring to them as ‘niggers’. Yet he distributed leaflets offering blacks between the age of 11 and

21 ‘free’ interviews about a musical career. One of the victims, Patrick Rogers, was a would-be singer.

The evidence was, as the prosecutor conceded in the trial that opened on 28 December 1981, entirely circumstantial, and it was with some reluctance that the judge, Clarence Cooper, allowed it to be strengthened by details relating to other murders besides those with which Williams was charged.

Carpet fibre was a key component of the prosecution’s case. Fibres found on the bodies of the victims were similar to fibres found in Williams’s home and automobile—28 fibre types linked to 19 items from the house, bedroom, and vehicles driven by Williams.

Five bloodstains were also found in Williams’s station wagon, matched to the blood of victims William Barrett and John Porter.

Another telling argument by the prosecution was that Williams had lied extensively about the evening he stopped on the bridge, offering various alibis that proved to be false.

The trial began in January 1982, and ended in March when, after 12 hours’ deliberation, the jury found him guilty of the two murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

John Douglas comments: ‘Wayne Williams fit our profile in every key respect, including his ownership of a German shepherd. He was a police buff who had been arrested some years earlier for impersonating a law officer. After that, he had driven a surplus police vehicle and used police scanners to get to crime scenes to take pictures. In retrospect, several witnesses recalled seeing him along Sigmon Road when the police were reacting to the phone tip and searching for the nonexistent body. He had been taking photographs there, which he offered to the police.’

Too little is known about Wayne Williams and his motivations, which is why many writers on the case—including novelist James Baldwin—have doubted his guilt. In the last analysis, the story of the Atlanta child murders is as frustrating as a jigsaw puzzle with a crucial piece missing. But the missing piece may well have been destroyed by Williams himself. According to Chet Dettlinger in his book
The List,
in the days following the incident on the bridge, Williams and his father ‘did a major cleanup job around their house. They carried out boxes and carted them off in the station wagon.