The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (4 page)

day, he was dead from multiple stab wounds. Earl Ter-The curious and controversial string of deaths that rell joined the list on July 30, when he vanished from a sparked a two-year reign of terror in Atlanta, Georgia, public swimming pool. Skeletal remains discovered on has been labeled “child murders,” even though a sus-January 9, 1981, would yield no clues about the cause pect—ultimately blamed for 23 of 30 “official” homi-of death.

cides—was finally convicted only in the deaths of two Next up on the list was 12-year-old Clifford Jones, adult ex-convicts. Today, nearly two decades after that snatched off the street and strangled on August 20.

suspect’s arrest, the case remains, in many minds, an With the recovery of his body in October, homicide unsolved mystery.

detectives interviewed five witnesses who named his Investigation of the case began, officially, on July 28, killer as a white man, later jailed in 1981 on charges of 1979. That afternoon, a woman hunting empty cans attempted rape and sodomy. Those witnesses provide and bottles in Atlanta stumbled on a pair of corpses, details of the crime consistent with the placement and carelessly concealed in roadside undergrowth. One vic-condition of the victim’s body, but detectives chose to tim, shot with a .22-caliber weapon, was identified as ignore their sworn statements, listing Jones with other 14-year-old Edward Smith, reported missing on July 21.

victims of the “unknown” murderer.

The other was 13-year-old Alfred Evans, last seen alive Darren Glass, an 11-year-old, vanished near his on July 25; the coroner ascribed his death to “proba-home on September 14, 1980. Never found, he joins the ble” asphyxiation. Both dead boys, like all of those to list primarily because authorities don’t know what else come, were African-American.

to do with his case. October’s victim was Charles
7

ATLANTA “Child Murders”

Walker, was strangled on February 19 and found the same day. Joseph Bell, 16, was asphyxiated on March 2.

Timothy Hill, on March 11, was recorded as a drowning victim.

On March 30, Atlanta police added their first adult victim to the list of murdered children. He was Larry Rogers, 20, linked with younger victims by the fact that he had been asphyxiated. No cause of death was determined for a second adult victim, 21-year-old Eddie Duncan, but he made the list anyway, when his body was found on March 31. On April 1, ex-convict

Michael McIntosh, age 23, was added to the roster on grounds that he, too, had been asphyxiated.

By April 1981, it seemed apparent that the “child murders” case was getting out of hand. Community critics denounced the official victims list as incomplete and arbitrary, citing cases like the January 1981 murder of Faye Yearby to prove their point. Like “official” victim Angel Lenair, Yearby was bound to a tree by her killer, hands behind her back; she had been stabbed to death, like four acknowledged victims on the list.

Despite those similarities, police rejected Yearby’s case on grounds that (a) she was a female—as were Wilson and Lenair—and (b) that she was “too old” at age 22, although the last acknowledged victim had been 23.

Author Dave Dettlinger, examining police malfeasance Wayne Williams (Wide World API)

in the case, suggests that 63 potential “pattern” victims were capriciously omitted from the “official” roster, 25

of them
after
a suspect’s arrest supposedly ended the killing.

Stephens, reported missing on the ninth and recovered In April 1981, FBI spokesmen declared that several the next day, his life extinguished by asphyxiation. Cap-of the crimes were “substantially solved,” outraging ping off the month, authorities discovered skeletal blacks with suggestions that some of the dead had been remains of Latonya Wilson on October 18, but they slain by their own parents. While that storm was rag-could not determine how she died.

ing, Roy Innis, leader of the Congress of Racial Equal-On November 1, nine-year-old Aaron Jackson’s dis-ity, went public with the story of a female witness who appearance was reported to police by frantic parents.

described the murders as the actions of a cult involved The boy was found on November 2, another victim of with drugs, pornography, and Satanism. Innis led asphyxiation. Patrick Rogers, 15, followed on Novem-searchers to an apparent ritual site, complete with large ber 10. His pitiful remains, skull crushed by heavy inverted crosses, and his witness passed two polygraph blows, were not unearthed until February 1981.

examinations, but by that time police had focused their Two days after New Year’s, the elusive slayer picked attention on another suspect, narrowing their scrutiny off Lubie Geter, strangling the 14-year-old and dumping to the exclusion of all other possibilities.

his body where it would not be found until February 5.

On April 21, Jimmy Payne, a 21-year-old ex-convict, Terry Pue, 15, went missing on January 22 and was was reported missing in Atlanta. Six days later, when found the next day, strangled with a cord or piece of his body was recovered, death was publicly attributed rope. This time, detectives said that special chemicals to suffocation, and his name was added to the list of enabled them to lift a suspect’s fingerprints from Terry’s murdered “children.” William Barrett, 17, went missing corpse. Unfortunately, they were not on file with any May 11; he was found the next day, another victim of law enforcement agency in the United States.

asphyxiation.

Patrick Baltazar, age 12, disappeared on February 6.

Several bodies had, by now, been pulled from local His body was found a week later, marked by ligature rivers, and police were staking out the waterways by strangulation, and the skeletal remains of Jeffrey night. In the predawn hours of May 22, a rookie officer Mathis were discovered nearby. A 13-year-old, Curtis stationed under a bridge on the Chattahoochee River
8

ATLANTA “Child Murders”

reported hearing “a splash” in the water nearby. Above ily. The clothes of victim Stephens also allegedly yielded him, a car rumbled past, and officers manning the fibers from a second car—a 1970 Chevrolet—owned by bridge were alerted. Police and FBI agents halted a vehi-Wayne’s parents. Curiously, jurors were
not
informed of cle driven by Wayne Bertram Williams, a black man, multiple eyewitness testimony naming a different sus-and spent two hours grilling him and searching his car, pect in the Jones case, nor were they advised of a criti-before they let him go. On May 24, the corpse of cal gap in the prosecution’s fiber evidence.

Nathaniel Cater, a 27-year-old convicted felon, was Specifically, Wayne Williams had no access to the fished out of the river downstream. Authorities put two vehicles in question at the times when three of the six and two together and focused their probe on Wayne

“fiber” victims were killed. Wayne’s father took the Williams.

Ford in for repairs at 9:00 A.M. on July 30, 1980, nearly From the start, he made a most unlikely suspect. The five hours
before
Earl Terrell vanished that afternoon.

only child of two Atlanta schoolteachers, Williams still Terrell was long dead before Williams got the car back lived with his parents at age 23. A college dropout, he on August 7, and it was returned to the shop next cherished ambitions of earning fame and fortune as a morning (August 8), still refusing to start. A new esti-music promoter. In younger days, he had constructed a mate on repair costs was so expensive that Wayne’s working radio station in the basement of the family father refused to pay, and the family never again had home.

access to the car. Meanwhile, Clifford Jones was kid-On June 21, Williams was arrested and charged with napped on August 20 and Charles Stephens on October the murder of Nathaniel Cater, despite testimony from 9, 1980. The defendant’s family did not purchase the four witnesses who reported seeing Cater alive on May 1970 Chevrolet in question until October 21, 12 days 22 and 23,
after
the infamous “splash.” On July 17,
after
Stephen’s death.

Williams was indicted for killing two adults—Cater and On February 27, 1982, Wayne Williams was con-Payne—while newspapers trumpeted the capture of victed on two counts of murder and sentenced to a Atlanta’s “child killer.”

double term of life imprisonment. Two days later, the At his trial, beginning in December 1981, the prose-Atlanta “child murders” task force officially disbanded, cution painted Williams as a violent homosexual and announcing that 23 of 30 “List” cases were considered bigot, so disgusted with his own race that he hoped to solved with his conviction, even though no charges had wipe out future generations by killing black children been filed. The other seven cases, still open, reverted before they could breed. One witness testified that he to the normal homicide detail and remain unsolved to saw Williams holding hands with Nathaniel Cater on this day.

May 21, a few hours before “the splash.” Another, 15

In November 1985, a new team of lawyers uncov-

years old, told the court that Williams had paid him ered once-classified documents from an investigation of two dollars for the privilege of fondling his genitals.

the Ku Klux Klan, conducted during 1980 and ’81 by Along the way, authorities announced the addition of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A spy inside the a final victim, 28-year-old John Porter, to the list of Klan told GBI agents that Klansmen were “killing the victims.

children” in Atlanta, hoping to provoke a race war.

Defense attorneys tried to balance the scales with tes-One Klansman in particular, Charles Sanders, allegedly timony from a woman who admitted having “normal boasted of murdering “List” victim Lubie Geter, fol-sex” with Williams, but the prosecution won a crucial lowing a personal altercation. Geter reportedly struck point when the presiding judge admitted testimony on Sanders’s car with a go-cart, prompting the Klansman 10 other deaths from the “child murders” list, designed to tell his friend, “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna choke to prove a pattern in the slayings. One of those admit-the black bastard to death.” (Geter was, in fact, stran-ted was the case of Terry Pue, but neither side had any-gled, some three months after the incident in question.) thing to say about the fingerprints allegedly recovered In early 1981, the same informant told GBI agents that from his corpse in January 1981.

“after twenty black-child killings, they, the Klan, were The most impressive evidence of guilt was offered by going to start killing black women.” Perhaps coinci-a team of scientific experts, dealing with assorted hairs dentally, police records note the unsolved murders of and fibers found on certain victims. Testimony indi-numerous black women in Atlanta in 1980–82, with cated that some fibers from a brand of carpet found most of the victims strangled. On July 10, 1998, Butts inside the Williams home (and many other homes, as County Superior Court Judge Hal Craig rejected the well) had been identified on several bodies. Further, vic-latest appeal for a new trial in Williams’s case, based tims Middlebrooks, Wyche, Cater, Terrell, Jones, and on suppression of critical evidence 15 years earlier.

Stephens all supposedly bore fibers from the trunk liner Judge Craig denied yet another new-trial motion on of a 1979 Ford automobile owned by the Williams fam-June 15, 2000.

9

“AX Man of New Orleans”

“AX Man of New Orleans”

vived to bear a healthy daughter, but her memory of the In the predawn hours of May 23, 1918, New Orleans attack was vague, at best. A hulking shadow by her grocer Joseph Maggio and his wife were murdered in bed, the ax descending—and oblivion.

bed by a prowler who chiseled through their back door, On August 10, sisters Pauline and Mary Bruno woke used Joseph’s ax to strike each victim once across the to sounds of struggle in the adjacent room occupied by skull, then slit their throats with a razor to finish the their uncle, Joseph Romano. They rushed next door to job. Maggio’s brothers discovered the bodies and were find him dying of a head wound, but they caught a briefly held as suspects, but police could find no evi-glimpse of his assailant, described in official reports as dence of their involvement in the crime and both were

“dark, tall, heavy-set, wearing a dark suit and a black soon released.

slouch hat.”

A few blocks from the murder scene, detectives The rest of August 1918 was a nightmare for police, found a cryptic message chalked on the sidewalk. It with numerous reports of chiseled doors, discarded read: “Mrs. Maggio is going to sit up tonight just like axes, and lurking strangers. Several of the latter were Mrs. Toney.” Police could offer no interpretation, so pursued by vengeful mobs but always managed to the press stepped in. An article in the
New Orleans
escape. At last, with time and the distraction of an
States
cited a “veritable epidemic” of unsolved ax mur-armistice in war-torn Europe, the hysteria began to ders in 1911, listing the victims as Italian grocers fade.

named Cruti, Rosetti (allegedly killed with his wife), On March 10, 1919, the scene shifted to Gretna, and Tony Schiambra (whose spouse was also reportedly across the river from New Orleans. A prowler invaded slain). Over nine decades, half a dozen authors have the home of Charles Cortimiglia, helping himself to the accepted that report as factual, relying on the “early”