February 16, 2018 • 47 mins
Payne explores theories of Klan involvement within the case.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This call is subject to monitoring, recording, and identification of
the location of the person being called.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
To accept charges.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Press one.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thank you for using the curius. You may start the
conversation now. One of my attorneys, Lenn Whatley, received a
package on his doorstep of his anonymous package. He opened
the package and found out that it contained hundreds of
GBI files about the classified investigation that the agency had
(00:38):
been doing into quite supremacist involvement in the Atlantic killings.
It also contained, to our surprise, several tape recorded confessions
some of the clansmen. They admitted and they were involved
in the murder of some of the miscan murdered cases.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
And at another body was discovered today the twenty third.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
At Voice Task Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces
on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
We do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore,
we do not have the money.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
From Tenderfoo TV in house TOI forks in Atlanta.
Speaker 6 (01:09):
Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Was a sphyxia victor.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
on killing.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
This was the first time Wayne Williams has been photographed
since his trial almost two years ago. Jail officials say
he has gained forty pounds since he's been behind bars,
but he didn't look heavier, just a little older. Sheriff
Leroy Stinchcombe allowed him to hold this unusual news conference
today because he says he thinks Williams deserves a chance
to speak his peace before he has moved from the
(01:50):
county jail into the state prison system. And predictably, Williams
began by denying he's a child killer.
Speaker 7 (01:56):
I have been wrongly accused and connected with the series
of peneous crimes, and all I ask is a chance
to see justice.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Police officials have insisted that since William's arrest, the murders
of young Atlanta blocks have stopped, but william says he
has evidence that at least forty murders fitting the pattern
of the child murderers have been committed since he's been
in jail.
Speaker 8 (02:16):
Wayne tried to get his case reopened. If you look
at it, if you go back in history, of course,
a lot of this is archive. This is long before
the Internet, back in nineteen eighty one and eighty two.
But if you pull old records. I mean there were
people dying well after Wayne got convicted. For Wayne's attorneys,
that's a good argument.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
Since my risk. Summer nineteen eighty one, the decomposed body
of a young teenage black female found strangled on I twenty.
Summer of nineteen eighty one, fifteen year old black male
found shot on West Lake Avenue in front of home,
no further information. Summer of nineteen eighty one, the twenty
one year old uncle of murder victim Curtis Walker was
found did no further information. As you can see, there
(02:54):
are definitely homicided to need to be investigated, and all
we're saying is that we want the chance to get
in court and deal with this information.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Will Jail officials say there have been threats on William's
life almost daily since he's been behind bars. He will
probably be moved into the state prison system sometime in January,
but Sheriff's Stinchcombe warrens if he is put into the
general prison population, he won't last a day. But William
says he's not afraid.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
I have some reservations about it because it will be
a change, as he said of address, but no I
don't fear from my life. I just put him a
faith in God and trust.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
William's attorneys have just two more days to ask the
state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to uphold his
two murder convictions. If the court denies that request as expected,
william says he's prepared to appeal his case all the
way to the US Supreme Court if necessary. Although today's
news conference was greatly anticipated, there were certainly no surprises. Instead,
Williams continued to play off the long standing public doubts
(03:51):
that the wrong man may be in jail, but once
his case is kicked up into the federal courts, the
only thing that matters are very complicated legal issues and
public doubts, no matter how strong, probably won't do anything
to set him free.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
That may be right, especially after all these years, the
public doubt has persisted. Tyrone Brooks, civil rights advocate and
acquaintance of Wayne Williams, started his own petition to reopen
the Atlanti Shaw murder cases.
Speaker 9 (04:18):
Representative Tyrone Brooks says he is now demanding that all
twenty eight murder cases blamed on Wayne Williams be reopened.
Brooks claiming several police task Force investigators have long doubted
Wayne Williams involvement.
Speaker 10 (04:32):
They pretty much were dissatisfied with the way things were going.
They did not believe that Wayne Williams was the right suspect.
They didn't believe that the investigators were really on the
right track, and really that the pressure was coming from Washington,
from the Vice President's office down to Governor Busby, through
the GBI, through the District Attorney, and on down to
(04:53):
the Atlanta Police Bureau.
Speaker 9 (04:55):
Pressure to do what, pressure to.
Speaker 10 (04:57):
Find somebody, to find a scapegoat.
Speaker 8 (05:00):
I mean, you had George Bush coming in and saying,
we need these murders solved. The first black mayor of Atlanta,
he was under a lot of pressure to get these solved.
There were black kids dying in the city of Atlanta.
That's not a good look for the first black mayor.
You had a lot of pressure from Washington to get
this solved. So, I mean, it looks like that's what happened,
because you can't go from we don't have enough evidence
(05:22):
to prosecute to oh my god, we have all of
these patterns and Wayne is our guy.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
Brooks alluding to a secret June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one
midnight meeting at the Georgia Governor's mansion, a meeting in
which Fulton District Attorney Lewis Slayton was reportedly pressured by
former Governor Busby to arrest Wayne Williams, despite Slayton's reluctance
to do so at the time. Two days later, on
June twenty first, Slayton did move against Williams, arresting him
(05:50):
at his house.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
If the arrest was backed by pressure from higher authorities,
what else was in those case files that didn't get
enough attention?
Speaker 11 (05:57):
One box more than sixty two hundred documents twenty homicide
files containing information never before revealed publicly on one of
the most explosive criminal cases in the nation's history. The
files don't paint a pretty picture. Instead, they sometimes paint
the troubled city scape where some of the victims came from.
One file explorer's possible ties between a group of homosexuals
(06:19):
and three victims. The files revealed that at some points
during the investigation, suspects in at least two of the
killings had included close relatives. There are mentions of drugs,
persons with criminal record surface, often one victim's mother allegedly
admitted to investigators she was a prostitute, but most of
that had little to do with the end of the
investigation that came with a conviction of Wayne Williams in
(06:41):
two of the cases.
Speaker 8 (06:43):
Oh my god, it was everything but Wayne Williams. I mean,
there was so many other suspects in Wayne was not
one of them at all.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
The newest defense rest and revolves around the murdered case
of Lubageta and the supposed involvement of some unnamed members
of the q Klux Klan. The new appeal resting as
it does on the Lubijita case and the Klan involvement
may be too fragile.
Speaker 8 (07:06):
Well, there was always speculation even before Wayne got arrested
about some clan involvement.
Speaker 10 (07:12):
I do believe that there's an element of the Ku
Kluk Klan embedded in the law enforcement community and still
is today. I do believe that wiping out young black
men was a part of the overall legitimate to weaken
the black community.
Speaker 12 (07:25):
The KKK. When you were a kid, that's what we
talked about, I mean, because it was strange for me.
I mean when we were in middle school. You know,
they still burned cross on Stone Mount. I mean that
was the rallying point for the KKK. I mean it
was just our ways to things.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
That you know that you heard.
Speaker 8 (07:43):
So there were a lot of theories right that people
developed that because they were all black, because they were
mostly male, this is you know, this was a KKK conspiracy.
Speaker 13 (07:52):
Some people in the black community thought it was the
Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys. That
whole theory around it being the clan came up because
people in the black community did not believe a black
person would do that to another black person, particularly a
black child.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
How do you feel about the people who think that
the clan is involved in the Atlanta chap murders.
Speaker 14 (08:16):
That was a joke. That was an absolute joke. The
Klan number one is not smart enough to commit twenty
five perfect crimes. Number two. If they did do it,
they were taking an ad out in the newspaper. They
were toothless. But again, the Bureau insisted on keeping watch
on them, so we just had informants monitor them meetings,
make sure nobody was going to do anything crazy plans
(08:36):
just not smart enough. A bunch of rednecks who hate
blacks and they weren't bright enough to commit this crime,
and if they did, they would have taken out an
ad in the paper. Plus, how do you go into
a black neighborhood dressed in a hood.
Speaker 15 (08:51):
The Klan wanted to take credit for it. I mean,
they're racist. It would have been a feather in their
hat if as group they could have said, yeah, we
killed twenty eight kids and got bye with it. But
they couldn't find anybody that would say, yes, I did it,
and they didn't know enough of the facts to convince anybody.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
That they did it.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
There was a guy named Charles Sanders who was known
to be a clan member. I think his brother or
uncle was pretty high up in the Klan at that time,
and there was speculation, there was talks that he was
the one that actually killed Louby Jeter.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
For years, selling things on streets and in shopping centers
has been a prime way for children to earn extra money.
Fourteen year old Chuck Jeter was no exception.
Speaker 14 (09:37):
We didn't see any pattern. We didn't see anything, and
then January third, after we came back, Louby Jeter happened.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
On January third, he went to the Stuart Lakewood mall
in southeast Atlanta to sell cans of zep Gel, a cardiotorizer.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Luby.
Speaker 14 (09:52):
Jeter was fifteen years old. He was selling zepp products
at a outdoor mall in down in Southwest at once Sat.
The afternoon he disappeared. So they organized a search on
the ninth of January, and I remember a cold, rainy Friday,
and they told us APD told us it gave us
(10:16):
various areas in the city areas they thought that a
body might be dumped.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Investigators were literally beating the bushes looking for any trace
of fourteen year old Chuck Jeter. Trained dogs sniffed the
area around the mall today but turned up nothing. This weekend,
volunteer searchers will be on the lookout for Jeter, but
police say so far they're stumped.
Speaker 16 (10:37):
The roll call was impressive. Officers from the SWAT Team,
the Task Force, the Motorcycle Squad were here, so were
recruits who have yet seen much action. Even agents from
both the federal and Georgia Bureaus of Investigation were helping out.
This was the first ever massive search conducted by the
Atlanta Police Bureau. The more than two hundred officers would
look for anything that could help find fourteen year old
(10:59):
Luby Jeter.
Speaker 15 (11:01):
My partner and I were walking up and down the
side of that road trying to see if we can
find any evidence, with no hope of finding anything. And
I looked down in the creek and I said, there's
a pair of jeans. The creek was overflowing its banks.
He held my arms while I leaned over into that creek.
Found those jeans and Louby's school schedules in the back
pocket the pants. We took the pants and the belt,
(11:23):
and one of the females in the family, I remember
she identified the belt as being his because he was
in such a state of deterioration that I did and
identify him was.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Kind of hard.
Speaker 14 (11:39):
I remember driving out there. The agent that had his
case assigned was Frank Pickets. Heck of a guy. He's
still around, hell of a man. And he came out
of that woods with tears in his eyes. He was crying.
Speaker 15 (11:52):
Looby Jeter just broke my heart. Outstanding kid, I mean,
just a phenomenal kid.
Speaker 16 (12:01):
Landover Road was still blocked off this morning. Only a
few people could venture near the site where Jeter's body
was found. Dozens of Atlanta, police and FBI agents gathered.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
At the site.
Speaker 16 (12:11):
The discovery of Jeter's body here now lends weight to
the theory that one person could be responsible for several
of the murders. The way Jeter died by strangulation fits
into a pattern. Three of Atlanta's other murdered children died
the same way. Two others died by suffocation. His discovery
yesterday fits into another pattern. Location. Within the last year
and a half, six children black males between the ages
(12:33):
of seven and fifteen have all been found within a
five mile radius.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
Either the pattern doesn't exist, there is no pattern, or
we got a much bigger problem. There was an independent
witness that said, this guy, Charles Sanders, said he killed
Louby Jeter. What is your evidence to say Wayne killed
Loubis Jeter. They have none.
Speaker 17 (12:55):
Wayne Williams is being represented in this healing for a
new trial by his former attorney, Lynn Watley and two
of his country's most prominent attorneys, Bobby Lee Cook of Somerville, Georgia,
and William Kuntler of New York.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
We were at Avieu's Corpus court in Butts County.
Speaker 18 (13:12):
The defense is trying to show that the police were
investigating that the Ku Klux Klan may have been responsible
for some of the child murders, but that that file
was never turned over to help with Williams's defense.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Apparently, what we found out after we got in the
Avieu's corpus court and the source source within the GBS,
was that they had a confidential informan I believe his
name Whittaker.
Speaker 19 (13:36):
The first witness today, Billy Joe Whittaker, says he worked
as a police informant during the missing and murdered investigation.
Speaker 17 (13:43):
Whittaker says he told police.
Speaker 19 (13:44):
Detectives that a klansman from Mountain View, Charles Sanders, told
Whittaker he killed.
Speaker 17 (13:50):
One of the child victims, Louby Jeter.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And we were able to contact Whittaker and he did
appear in court and testify under old force stating that
one of the families I believe they were mounted viuekbas
Panders families was indeed responsible for that. When I told
you that, I believe Charles Sanders the clok clerk Kilder
this one.
Speaker 19 (14:12):
Jail Robby Lee Cook and William Huntlers say they have
a letter from Atlanta Police Major Herman Griner. They called
Sanders the klansmen, the prime suspect in the murders four
months before Wayne Williams was arrested in charge with two
of the murderers.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
In nineteen ninety one, Wayne's attorneys called for a court
hearing were police informant Billy Joe Whittaker testified for Wayne Williams.
This man, Billy Joe Whittaker, was in jail during the
early eighties, but when he heard that Louby Jeter had
become one of the victims, he contacted the Georgia Bureau
of Investigation. Whittaker stated that a man named Charles Sanders
made threats against Louby Jeter's life. Whittaker claimed he wore
(14:48):
recording equipment, went to Sanders home and got him to
admit to the child's murder. If that was true, then
Wayne Williams was not responsible for Luby Jeter's death.
Speaker 8 (14:58):
It definitely makes you question. Okay, first, not enough evidence
to convict Wayne. Now there's these tapes from this clans
member which is mind boggling, and I've actually heard in.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The way chap recordings at all, and they talk about
openly and brazenly about saying, yes, I killed a little
black be yes, I'm going to black black black with him,
and we went to court trying to get this in
but however, the court in Budson County Block just refused
it and they put the tape recordings under seal and
not Judge Craggs Court. And we attempted to bring this
(15:32):
up at Feneral Higgs Quarters Court and that was where
the issues started the appeal. So we've been trying for
decades to getting this information out because the GBI did
not want it out because they issued in one of
the documents that the statement saying that they were fred
and prop Releasing this information was got a race war
in Atlanta.
Speaker 17 (15:52):
As in certain county District Attorney Joe J. Lay prosecuted
Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
He says he was never told about the plan file.
Speaker 17 (16:00):
Do you think you should have known about it?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Not? Particularly, It wasn't right about at the time.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
The GBI had it, The police department had it, two
prosecutors had it, two judges had it.
Speaker 8 (16:09):
If Lewis Slayton didn't have it, means he didn't want it.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
After Whitaker testified, Williams was still not granted a retrial.
The strangest part is that now the tapes are nowhere
to be found.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So this was information that the TBI had, but like
I say, they kept it suppressed because they weren't a
piece of worried about a racial war instead of trying
to solve the killing in Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
You didn't want a race war in nineteen eighty one
or eighty two.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
You just didn't.
Speaker 8 (16:36):
I mean, we weren't that far removed from the civil rights.
You had your first black mayor, You had all of
these elected officials because of the mayor that were black.
So it wouldn't look good for the city at all.
I liken it to Rodney King when those officers got off,
look what happened in that city. And then I likened
it to O. J. Simpson. Now say what you want,
(16:58):
I believe the evidence should it was that OJ killed
Ron and the colet, But there was talks in the city. Well,
if he's convicted, there's gonna be riots, It's gonna be
a whole racial thing. If you look at that case,
that was right down the middle, black and white. You know,
had OJ been convicted, we would have saw another nineteen
ninety two Rodney King. I think that would have happened
(17:21):
here in Atlanta back in nineteen eighty one eighty two.
If it would have been a klansman, there's no doubt,
no doubt in my mind.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
We are saying, you know that the white suspects declared
was responsible to allow them, but we know that they
were responsible for this particular group of killers.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Here.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We had a confidential informant that was black Eyed Canton.
We had a GVI source I can't reveal his name.
The agent then enough to box some lens George Stiff Litterally,
it had several real real Kate recorders of wire gather
jail as doctuments on their on their file stared to
widecat disappers admitted to killing the movie cheter had been
involved in several of the other cases. And we've got
(17:59):
that all white.
Speaker 8 (18:00):
When you have a name like Charles Sanders and you
have a witness who knew Charles saying that yes, Charles
is the one that said he killed Luby Jeter. Way
back when there were secret recordings, there was some incident
supposedly around the Star Wars theater where Luby Jeter hit
his car with like a shopping car to a go cart.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Apparently there was a go cart accident in which he
collided with Sandra's car according to the information we had,
and that Sanders made a thread against him that he
was killing and he reiterates the threat in the Wildcat
that we heard. I'm para raised him down to the
visit my rememory. He said, I basically, yeah, I killed
a little black beat black, black black Jim. And then
(18:41):
he said, yeah, I'm going to get sport.
Speaker 8 (18:43):
And he had made the comment he was going to
kill that little black kid for hitting his car and
he was going to strangle him to death, and of
course that's how Luby Jeter was killed.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
In nineteen eighty six, Spin magazine published an article titled
A Question of Justice. The article's authors, Barry Michael Cooper
and Robert Keating, raised doubt about way William's guilt and
brought the idea of the KKK involvement to mainstream news.
It was a hugely popular article, and really it was
the first time the Atlanta child murders KKK theory was
(19:18):
given any legitimate credence by the media.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
It's from a publication, so of course people can argue
that it was slantt you know, argue that it's fake news.
That's the new term nowadays. But what's interesting is not
only is it in the Spin article, but the FBI
talks about these recordings. Yeah, so I don't think the
tapes were made up. I definitely don't think the transcripts
(19:43):
were made up.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I asked Vincent what Charles Sanders said in those transcripts
that alluded to him being the Atlanta child murderer killing
more than one person.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
In one of those conversations, there was talk, and I
believe it came from Charles Sanders that he was going
to go out and drive around and look for another
black kid, another victim.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
If this was true, then why wasn't this a bigger deal?
From all the records I've seen, that's the closest to
a confession that law enforcement ever had.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
Time affects any investigation or any case, because you know,
memories get skewed and a lot of stuff gets lost
or destroyed. You know a lot of people along the
way pass away, like Charles Sanders is no longer here,
so we could never go back and question him. Here
we are thirty plus years removed, and time actually allows
(20:31):
any false narrative to become true, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah,
there were a bunch of kids that died and this
guy did it. That's the narrative. Pretty much everyone knows.
That's the narrative that they know, but they don't know
the ins and outs of Well, this person could have
been a suspect. This person, this person, this person, you know,
they just know Wayne Williams, you know, which they were
(20:52):
deep into a lot of people, right They were deep
into the guy in the Blue Nova. They were deep
into the Sanders, they were deep into the Klan. They
could have known that they were plotting something that the
public wasn't privy to. You know, if you look at
some of these terror groups that are investigated now that
you hear about later the FBI says, oh, we halted
a terror threat because we are investigating you know, this person,
(21:15):
which no one heard about besides Charles Sanders, who admitted
to killing Louis Jeter.
Speaker 20 (21:27):
What started as a joke one hundred years ago when
a group of men donned bed sheets for a romp,
has over the years attracted to it persons charged with
acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence throughout the South. Even
though the nation has been outraged for many years, the
Ku Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings,
(21:48):
but one hundred years is a long time for a joke.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
I talked to Felix Harcourt, author of the book Ku
Klux Culture, for some more historical background on the KKK.
Speaker 21 (21:58):
The Ku Klux Klan effectively operates as a white supremacist
terrorist organization founded after the Civil War, during what we
commonly refer to as the Reconstruction period. It's founded in Pulaski, Tennessee,
and it's not super popular to start with. It lies
fairly fallow through the First World War. If you're looking
(22:20):
at the Reconstruction Clan, they stand for white supremacy and
the maintenance of white power. If you're looking at the
Civil Rights era, they largely are standing for the same thing.
If you're looking at the twenties, they achieve this much
much larger success in the twenties because they effectively diversify
their hatreds. They say, hey, you know, if you hate
(22:42):
African Americans, we are there for you. But also if
you hate Catholics, we.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Are there for you.
Speaker 21 (22:48):
If you hate Jewish immigrants, we are there for you.
If you hate immigrants of all kinds. We are there
for you. If you're worried about prohibition, we're there for you.
By the time you get to the Clan of the
late seventies early eighties, the Klan is all in on
immigration and our staging stunts on the Mexican border. So
there is this kind of this fundamental racist tenet and
(23:12):
then these variations over time as to what draws people
to the clan and what people see the clan standing for.
To some extent, the Clan of the eighties sets the
model for what we see with white supremacists now, particularly
through what David Duke does. David Duke really comes out
in the late seventies and tries to remake the public
(23:37):
image of the clan to some extent, and effectively, what
he tries to do is bureaucratize hate. It's a methodology
that we're seeing being used to great effect by the
alt right now. And David Duke is really astute at
using the media to get this message out, saying that
there is a new Clan, whatever that may mean, and
(23:59):
in doing so effectively spearheads a clan revival in the
late seventies early eighties. And this doesn't exist in a vacuum.
There is a big upsweep in white supremacism in the
late seventies early eighties in the United States, and so
you do see a very active and very visible white
(24:19):
supremacist movement on the March by the early eighties. I
will say that certainly that is a period when we
are seeing a rise in clan activity, and it's a
period in which we are seeing an uptick in white
supremacist activity. More generally, all clan members are white supremacists,
(24:43):
not all white supremacists are clan members, and so we
have always seen significant white supremacist activity that fundamentally is
not linked to the clan as an organization. Most of
the anti civil rights violence is being carried out not
by clan members but by average white supremacists, if that's
(25:06):
a term we can use, and to some extent, that's
what we see today. The clan as an organization is weak,
it is diffuse. Still, there is no single clan. There
are all these individual organizations kind of battling for the
title of who is the legitimate clan, But they are
(25:28):
part of a much broader tapestry of white supremacism that
we can see operating very clearly. I think white supremacists
have always been ordinary people. That doesn't mean that we
should normalize them. It means that we should look at
ourselves and say, what is it that is giving cover
to these people to exist within our society and to
(25:50):
exist very comfortably within that society. Just because they are dapper,
that word that kept getting tagged to Richard Spencer, doesn't
mean that they are not still subscribers to a hateful
ideology of racism and white supremacism. The fact that the
(26:10):
clan is on the rise in the late seventies early eighties,
the fact that racial violence is on the rise to
the extent that congressional hearings are being held into anti
black violence at the time, and the fact that Atlanta
holds this significant position within the history of the clan
(26:31):
makes it understandable why someone would link these child murders
to clan members. It is an entirely reasonable assumption to
believe that white supremacist violence is touching your community in
this way.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
In the eyes of Vincent, it was nearly impossible that
there was only one killer involved. Of course, there is
a pattern, but according to Vincent, it doesn't match up
in each and every case.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
Where was this Atlanta monster that everyone was so in
fear of for two years? There were several monsters. All
of these victims, they had different suspects other than Wayne Williams,
other than Wayne Williams. So there, Yeah, there were several monsters,
but there wasn't just one monster going around killing these kids.
(27:30):
Is there a conspiracy going on here? You have to
You can't not question that, you know, So.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Is there a conspiracy at play here? The term conspiracy
tends to immediately incite ridicule. Many people will equate conspiracy
with total fantasy, unbelievable stories to explain away historical events.
Speaker 22 (27:49):
A conspiracy theory and a nactual conspiracy are two very
different things nowadays.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
To gain some perspective, I talked to one of the
guys from How Stuff Works, who has his own podcast
on this very topic.
Speaker 22 (28:02):
My name is Ben Bollen, and along with my co
host Matt Frederick and Noel Brown, I produce and host
a podcasts called Stuff They Don't Want You To Know,
which applies critical thinking to what we would call conspiracy theories.
So government cover ups, unsolved crimes, various allegations of that sort.
So are you a conspiracy theorist, I would say, I
(28:23):
find them interesting, but the term gets kind of problematic.
So a conspiracy at its most basic level is a
situation where in two or more people or entities work
together to deceive or manipulate a third party.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
When I even hear the word conspiracy theory, I'm already
tuning out, and I wanted to talk to you about
just sort of the origin of conspiracy theories to begin with.
Obviously there are some true ones, right, I mean, where
did this all come from?
Speaker 22 (28:54):
So what tends to happen when people hear a phraser term,
especially the the phrase of the term conspiracy theory is,
as you said, kind of shut out and sort of
the idea that, oh, okay, anything that happens after I
hear this phrase is going to be utter hogwash. Interestingly enough,
the reason that's the case in the United States today
(29:16):
is because shortly after the jfk assassination, most Americans did
not believe the official government explanation, and so intelligence agencies
spread memos to newspapers media outlets of the time saying
this is what happened. The Russian government is attempting to
spread propaganda. So if you hear anything else other than
(29:37):
this official story, be sure to dismiss it and call
it a quote conspiracy theory. We do know that certain
things that were once considered conspiracy theories are true. It
did turn out that banks were laundering money for international
drug cartels, and it turns out that it is somewhat
(29:58):
disingenuous to group that kind of phenomenon along with CIA
drug spunkling in the same bucket as the idea that
what the British Royal family is a bunch of evil,
half alien lizard people. You know, those are both called
conspiracy theories, but they're very different, and there's one incredibly
(30:19):
important difference, and that's that the first stuff is true.
The second stuff, I'm just going to go out on
a limb and say is not true.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I asked Ben to outline the most prevalent conspiracy theories
for the Atlanta child murders case.
Speaker 22 (30:33):
One would be the idea that law enforcement did not
have a clue who the real killer was and they
wanted to close the cases, so they pinned them, or
they pen many of these child murders on Wayne Williams
in court just to get them off the books. Another
would be the idea that there was some sort of
(30:55):
clandestine sex trafficking ring at play, and that again law
enforcement for some reason or another assisted in covering up
this information and keeping it from the public. And then
the third idea would be that the KKK or other
white supremacist groups were committing the murders with either tacit
(31:16):
assistance or approval by sympathetic law enforcement officers. A great
deal of it does come from the conversations relayed by Sanders,
and in the excellent Spin article from the time, there's
some top notch journalistic investigation. They had one of the
journalists who I think broke the first Spin story on
(31:38):
crack cocaine, who was writing this and exploring this angle,
and they had an informant named b. J. Jones that
they thought was a solid guy who came to them
and said that there was proof that the KKK, specifically
the Sanders, and possibly not just this individual, but members
of his family or his close associates were involved in
(32:00):
these murders with the goal of killing one black child
a month or something of that nature. And there's a
further aspect here that we have to remember, and that's
the context or the cultural ecosystem in which this occurs.
Distrust of a largely white police force is already incredibly high.
(32:26):
If there were a doomsday clock for race relations in
Atlanta at this time, it would be about three minutes
to midnight.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
The only publication that pushed this out there was the
Spin story, and you can't go find these original recordings,
but these guys at Spin were able to get their
hands on some transcripts. But besides that, there's nothing out
there that publicly exists that says Charles Sanders was a
part of the Atlanta child murners.
Speaker 22 (32:52):
Yeah, and that's one of the frightening, tantalizing, and I
would say a base frustrate things for anyone investigating this.
We're really in a situation where and if we want
to prove or disprove this sort of connection, we would
need someone to go speak directly to a primary source to.
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Get to the bottom of this theory. I would have
to find someone who is close to Charles Sanders, still
alive and also willing to talk. It seemed pretty unlikely,
but after weeks of searching, I got a strange email
that led me to one of Sanders's old friends.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
I don't want to tell anything because my wife right now,
as you're a nervous we've been through this before my
name was put out there and it was a scary ordeal.
Family spent a few weeks in a hotel just out
of being scared. And I don't know you from Adam.
(34:00):
It's a story that I've held home to for a
long time that I've known about. I don't know how
you want to go about this pain.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
You can always come here to the office that we
have at part rather or not.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
I first met him back in nineteen eighty. We would
hang out and sit around and shoot the shit and
drink beers and smoke pot and you know, after working
hours and whatnot. Him and his brothers were in the KKK.
When I met him up here in this sleep little
(34:36):
town I live in, he was not involved. He had
gotten out. He was a nice guy, good old Redeck
had a few teeth missing, you know, had a beard
and a small stature, and you know, you wouldn't think
here in this little sleepy town anything different that he
was any kind of a monster. He certainly didn't act
(34:56):
like it until we drank and then he got the
eyes of Charles Manson that would look right through deil.
It was scary. It was real scary. It scared all
of us. But it wasn't that often. He stopped in
one day with this copy of Spin magazine. He had
(35:18):
that look in his eyes. He obviously had been drinking
some hard liquor. He said, I got something for y'all
to take a look at. And you know, we didn't
have a clue what he was talking about. Pulled out
the magazine and we started reading. It was jaw dropping.
Somebody asked him if it's real and if the article
(35:40):
was true. He told us it was. He said it was,
it was true. He told us about certain situations that
where was he The FBI or the ATF would come
in and read their house in the middle of the
night and shake him down. They were come in. I
(36:00):
remember him talking about them coming in all the time
and trying to shake him down and try to find
some kind of evidence. And I remember Charles saying that
he was lucky because his carpet matched Wang Williams carpet
and as well as the white German shepherd Hares match.
(36:21):
He owned a white German shepherd. Wang Williams also owned
a white German shepherd It just so happens that the
person Wang Williams that they penned all these murders on
had so many similarities with the Sanders as far as
(36:43):
the dog and the carpet.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Here.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Again, I haven't read the Spin magazine since the eighties,
but I remember situation Charles told us about. They were
hanging outside his home and there was a black kid
on a go cart. He accidentally ran into their car.
They didn't appreciate that. They were pissed, which get to
(37:08):
this Cheeter I believe that's his name, and I remember
him saying, we got him, we took care of him.
He told me they got him, they got the boy
for doing that. I don't remember him ever saying that
KKK was involved with this. I only remember him talking
(37:31):
about him and his brothers being involved in this, So
I don't know to what extent the brothers were involved.
I do you know they had a cash of weapons
because they were expecting a huge revolution to come out
of this. And he basically told us that he did
(37:58):
it and everything that's being magazine was true. I don't know.
I don't really know why he decided to come out
to us and tell us that he trusted us, I guess,
but it certainly blew us away. But he really never
(38:18):
went into any details of any of the other killings
besides the fact that there were other killings that him
and his brothers did. And what kind victims were they
They were black children, they were children, they were of adults,
they were children. I don't know what was on their mind,
(38:42):
if they were going to commit genocide in Atlanta and
try to do away with you, or if he was
trying to cause a race a race riot of some sort.
I know that's why they had that cash weapons, was
because they expected some type of a race riot.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Who do you think is responsible for the Alanche Homers?
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Well, I know who's responsible for some of them, you know,
and Wayne Williams may be responsible for some as well.
He let it be known that it was Spin Magazine
was right on that they took care of those boys.
Speaker 10 (39:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Everybody then was hoping it wasn't a white guy or
the KKK because they didn't want a race riot to
take place in Atlanta. And I believe they geared their
investigation towards Gwyn Williams, and once they found out he
had possibly killed some of the adults, it was easy
(39:54):
pickings to throw all the other children on him too.
Did you ever consider going to the police with this
information back then? No, No, I was too scared. No,
I wouldn't have gone to the.
Speaker 15 (40:06):
Police back then.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Can you tell me about why you were scared? Scared
from alife? I mean, I scared for my life, and
at that time I had had a wife. Didn't have
a daughter then, but I had a wife. And you know,
I saw that look in his eyes when he was crazy.
I believe he could have done anything anything. I did.
(40:28):
Go god By m a rural black guy that used
to do TV connotations and in Atlanta. He did a
gig on the missing and murdered children of Atlanta one time,
and I called in and told him what I knew,
and he knew about the Sanders brothers. But my my
name was brought up, and that scared me. I never
(40:52):
spoke to anybody after that. And that was in nineteen
ninety four. So once I found out that my name
had brought up, we moved into a hotel for a
couple of weeks. Stay clear of you know of anything.
I believe. Not only was my name brought up, my
town was brought up who did you fear? In particular
(41:15):
Sanders brothers, And I don't know how many of them
there are, there's like four or five.
Speaker 15 (41:20):
You them.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
I feared them more than anything else. I feared them,
you know. For some reason, I'm thinking that these acts
of murder were perpetrated by the Sanders brothers, not necessarily
by the KKKA. To my knowledge, there was no other members.
(41:42):
There was no other people involved with the murders except
of Sanders brothers and in them alone. I never heard
him talking about the KKK being necessarily involved with the murders.
It was always him and his brothers.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Uh, the wrong's been done that needs to be righted.
But I'm still the aera of of anybody who was
involved with the Sanders. Obviously, I know what they can do.
Once it was panned on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled.
(42:23):
That was their way out. He it was being pinned
on him, and that was their way out.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
What do you think should happen now?
Speaker 4 (42:41):
I don't know, you know, I really don't know. I
don't know. I don't know where it should go from here.
I know that there were some wrongs that should probably
be righted. Charles is dead, he's gone. There's family still suffering,
(43:05):
you know, and there's families that I think Wayne Williams
did it, and there's others that think he didn't do
it all. And I can't tell you he didn't do
it all. I know who killed those kids, and I'm
sorry that I did not come come forth sooner, but
(43:26):
I felt my life was in danger as well. But
justice has not been served. If it would have been
my daughter, I would want the truth reveal. Can't change
the past, but at least it would answer questions. You
had children that were brutally murdered for no reason, completely
(43:52):
innocent children. And if indeed you think it was somebody
other than Wane Williams, you're most definitely correct. You know,
anybody out there he thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do
all this by himself is correct. This wasn't all on him.
And I only know that from the mouth of the
(44:15):
devil himself.
Speaker 5 (44:27):
Next time on Atlanta Monster, The Clayton.
Speaker 11 (44:31):
County woman and her husband were driving on this narrow
cemetery road when they saw a green car coming straight
at them at a high rate of speed.
Speaker 23 (44:39):
The driver was tall, and he's light colored, A light
colored black man and he had on a wig. I
know it was a wig because he was losing it
because it was a child in the front struggling. He
was struggling with that child.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
You're sure you saw a child.
Speaker 23 (44:54):
In the criss Yes, I saw it because it was
just back and forth like that and like that was
trying to hold hang on to that child. It was
a boy between ages of the bat ten and twelve,
and he had a short haircut.
Speaker 8 (45:09):
You think you could identify these two and the one
with the.
Speaker 23 (45:12):
Week handle glasses, I could identify.
Speaker 5 (45:14):
The Atlanta Child murders is one of the largest and
most complex cases in US history. As a team, we've
spent months digging through police records, court documents, and media archives.
Through all this research, we've uncovered stories you've never heard before,
(45:36):
and next week we're going to dig deeper into some
of these stories. Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told
week by week, with new episodes every Friday. A joint
production between How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music
is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of
(45:58):
WSB News Film and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University
of Georgia Libraries For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster
dot com or follow us on social media. One last thing,
We've set up an Atlanta Monster tip line. Anyone with information, leads,
or personal accounts pertaining to the Atlanta child murders can
(46:20):
call us and leave a message. The number is one
eight three three two eight five six sixty sixty seven. Again,
that's one eight three three two eight five six six
sixty seven. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 22 (47:01):
Let's bring it to a human level here in the
United States. The first conspiracy that many people encounter occurs
when they're kids. It's the story of Santa Claus. And
you can't really blame people for being distrustful of authority
after that. I mean, it's a conspiracy that everyone participates in.
Oh and I should have put a warning in there
(47:22):
for parents, But Santa is real.
This call is subject to monitoring, recording, and identification of
the location of the person being called.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
To accept charges.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Press one.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thank you for using the curius. You may start the
conversation now. One of my attorneys, Lenn Whatley, received a
package on his doorstep of his anonymous package. He opened
the package and found out that it contained hundreds of
GBI files about the classified investigation that the agency had
(00:38):
been doing into quite supremacist involvement in the Atlantic killings.
It also contained, to our surprise, several tape recorded confessions
some of the clansmen. They admitted and they were involved
in the murder of some of the miscan murdered cases.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
And at another body was discovered today the twenty third.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
At Voice Task Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces
on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
We do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore,
we do not have the money.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
From Tenderfoo TV in house TOI forks in Atlanta.
Speaker 6 (01:09):
Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Was a sphyxia victor.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps
on killing.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
This is Atlanta monster.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
This was the first time Wayne Williams has been photographed
since his trial almost two years ago. Jail officials say
he has gained forty pounds since he's been behind bars,
but he didn't look heavier, just a little older. Sheriff
Leroy Stinchcombe allowed him to hold this unusual news conference
today because he says he thinks Williams deserves a chance
to speak his peace before he has moved from the
(01:50):
county jail into the state prison system. And predictably, Williams
began by denying he's a child killer.
Speaker 7 (01:56):
I have been wrongly accused and connected with the series
of peneous crimes, and all I ask is a chance
to see justice.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Police officials have insisted that since William's arrest, the murders
of young Atlanta blocks have stopped, but william says he
has evidence that at least forty murders fitting the pattern
of the child murderers have been committed since he's been
in jail.
Speaker 8 (02:16):
Wayne tried to get his case reopened. If you look
at it, if you go back in history, of course,
a lot of this is archive. This is long before
the Internet, back in nineteen eighty one and eighty two.
But if you pull old records. I mean there were
people dying well after Wayne got convicted. For Wayne's attorneys,
that's a good argument.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
Since my risk. Summer nineteen eighty one, the decomposed body
of a young teenage black female found strangled on I twenty.
Summer of nineteen eighty one, fifteen year old black male
found shot on West Lake Avenue in front of home,
no further information. Summer of nineteen eighty one, the twenty
one year old uncle of murder victim Curtis Walker was
found did no further information. As you can see, there
(02:54):
are definitely homicided to need to be investigated, and all
we're saying is that we want the chance to get
in court and deal with this information.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Will Jail officials say there have been threats on William's
life almost daily since he's been behind bars. He will
probably be moved into the state prison system sometime in January,
but Sheriff's Stinchcombe warrens if he is put into the
general prison population, he won't last a day. But William
says he's not afraid.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
I have some reservations about it because it will be
a change, as he said of address, but no I
don't fear from my life. I just put him a
faith in God and trust.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
William's attorneys have just two more days to ask the
state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to uphold his
two murder convictions. If the court denies that request as expected,
william says he's prepared to appeal his case all the
way to the US Supreme Court if necessary. Although today's
news conference was greatly anticipated, there were certainly no surprises. Instead,
Williams continued to play off the long standing public doubts
(03:51):
that the wrong man may be in jail, but once
his case is kicked up into the federal courts, the
only thing that matters are very complicated legal issues and
public doubts, no matter how strong, probably won't do anything
to set him free.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
That may be right, especially after all these years, the
public doubt has persisted. Tyrone Brooks, civil rights advocate and
acquaintance of Wayne Williams, started his own petition to reopen
the Atlanti Shaw murder cases.
Speaker 9 (04:18):
Representative Tyrone Brooks says he is now demanding that all
twenty eight murder cases blamed on Wayne Williams be reopened.
Brooks claiming several police task Force investigators have long doubted
Wayne Williams involvement.
Speaker 10 (04:32):
They pretty much were dissatisfied with the way things were going.
They did not believe that Wayne Williams was the right suspect.
They didn't believe that the investigators were really on the
right track, and really that the pressure was coming from Washington,
from the Vice President's office down to Governor Busby, through
the GBI, through the District Attorney, and on down to
(04:53):
the Atlanta Police Bureau.
Speaker 9 (04:55):
Pressure to do what, pressure to.
Speaker 10 (04:57):
Find somebody, to find a scapegoat.
Speaker 8 (05:00):
I mean, you had George Bush coming in and saying,
we need these murders solved. The first black mayor of Atlanta,
he was under a lot of pressure to get these solved.
There were black kids dying in the city of Atlanta.
That's not a good look for the first black mayor.
You had a lot of pressure from Washington to get
this solved. So, I mean, it looks like that's what happened,
because you can't go from we don't have enough evidence
(05:22):
to prosecute to oh my god, we have all of
these patterns and Wayne is our guy.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
Brooks alluding to a secret June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one
midnight meeting at the Georgia Governor's mansion, a meeting in
which Fulton District Attorney Lewis Slayton was reportedly pressured by
former Governor Busby to arrest Wayne Williams, despite Slayton's reluctance
to do so at the time. Two days later, on
June twenty first, Slayton did move against Williams, arresting him
(05:50):
at his house.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
If the arrest was backed by pressure from higher authorities,
what else was in those case files that didn't get
enough attention?
Speaker 11 (05:57):
One box more than sixty two hundred documents twenty homicide
files containing information never before revealed publicly on one of
the most explosive criminal cases in the nation's history. The
files don't paint a pretty picture. Instead, they sometimes paint
the troubled city scape where some of the victims came from.
One file explorer's possible ties between a group of homosexuals
(06:19):
and three victims. The files revealed that at some points
during the investigation, suspects in at least two of the
killings had included close relatives. There are mentions of drugs,
persons with criminal record surface, often one victim's mother allegedly
admitted to investigators she was a prostitute, but most of
that had little to do with the end of the
investigation that came with a conviction of Wayne Williams in
(06:41):
two of the cases.
Speaker 8 (06:43):
Oh my god, it was everything but Wayne Williams. I mean,
there was so many other suspects in Wayne was not
one of them at all.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
The newest defense rest and revolves around the murdered case
of Lubageta and the supposed involvement of some unnamed members
of the q Klux Klan. The new appeal resting as
it does on the Lubijita case and the Klan involvement
may be too fragile.
Speaker 8 (07:06):
Well, there was always speculation even before Wayne got arrested
about some clan involvement.
Speaker 10 (07:12):
I do believe that there's an element of the Ku
Kluk Klan embedded in the law enforcement community and still
is today. I do believe that wiping out young black
men was a part of the overall legitimate to weaken
the black community.
Speaker 12 (07:25):
The KKK. When you were a kid, that's what we
talked about, I mean, because it was strange for me.
I mean when we were in middle school. You know,
they still burned cross on Stone Mount. I mean that
was the rallying point for the KKK. I mean it
was just our ways to things.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
That you know that you heard.
Speaker 8 (07:43):
So there were a lot of theories right that people
developed that because they were all black, because they were
mostly male, this is you know, this was a KKK conspiracy.
Speaker 13 (07:52):
Some people in the black community thought it was the
Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys. That
whole theory around it being the clan came up because
people in the black community did not believe a black
person would do that to another black person, particularly a
black child.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
How do you feel about the people who think that
the clan is involved in the Atlanta chap murders.
Speaker 14 (08:16):
That was a joke. That was an absolute joke. The
Klan number one is not smart enough to commit twenty
five perfect crimes. Number two. If they did do it,
they were taking an ad out in the newspaper. They
were toothless. But again, the Bureau insisted on keeping watch
on them, so we just had informants monitor them meetings,
make sure nobody was going to do anything crazy plans
(08:36):
just not smart enough. A bunch of rednecks who hate
blacks and they weren't bright enough to commit this crime,
and if they did, they would have taken out an
ad in the paper. Plus, how do you go into
a black neighborhood dressed in a hood.
Speaker 15 (08:51):
The Klan wanted to take credit for it. I mean,
they're racist. It would have been a feather in their
hat if as group they could have said, yeah, we
killed twenty eight kids and got bye with it. But
they couldn't find anybody that would say, yes, I did it,
and they didn't know enough of the facts to convince anybody.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
That they did it.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
There was a guy named Charles Sanders who was known
to be a clan member. I think his brother or
uncle was pretty high up in the Klan at that time,
and there was speculation, there was talks that he was
the one that actually killed Louby Jeter.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
For years, selling things on streets and in shopping centers
has been a prime way for children to earn extra money.
Fourteen year old Chuck Jeter was no exception.
Speaker 14 (09:37):
We didn't see any pattern. We didn't see anything, and
then January third, after we came back, Louby Jeter happened.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
On January third, he went to the Stuart Lakewood mall
in southeast Atlanta to sell cans of zep Gel, a cardiotorizer.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Luby.
Speaker 14 (09:52):
Jeter was fifteen years old. He was selling zepp products
at a outdoor mall in down in Southwest at once Sat.
The afternoon he disappeared. So they organized a search on
the ninth of January, and I remember a cold, rainy Friday,
and they told us APD told us it gave us
(10:16):
various areas in the city areas they thought that a
body might be dumped.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Investigators were literally beating the bushes looking for any trace
of fourteen year old Chuck Jeter. Trained dogs sniffed the
area around the mall today but turned up nothing. This weekend,
volunteer searchers will be on the lookout for Jeter, but
police say so far they're stumped.
Speaker 16 (10:37):
The roll call was impressive. Officers from the SWAT Team,
the Task Force, the Motorcycle Squad were here, so were
recruits who have yet seen much action. Even agents from
both the federal and Georgia Bureaus of Investigation were helping out.
This was the first ever massive search conducted by the
Atlanta Police Bureau. The more than two hundred officers would
look for anything that could help find fourteen year old
(10:59):
Luby Jeter.
Speaker 15 (11:01):
My partner and I were walking up and down the
side of that road trying to see if we can
find any evidence, with no hope of finding anything. And
I looked down in the creek and I said, there's
a pair of jeans. The creek was overflowing its banks.
He held my arms while I leaned over into that creek.
Found those jeans and Louby's school schedules in the back
pocket the pants. We took the pants and the belt,
(11:23):
and one of the females in the family, I remember
she identified the belt as being his because he was
in such a state of deterioration that I did and
identify him was.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Kind of hard.
Speaker 14 (11:39):
I remember driving out there. The agent that had his
case assigned was Frank Pickets. Heck of a guy. He's
still around, hell of a man. And he came out
of that woods with tears in his eyes. He was crying.
Speaker 15 (11:52):
Looby Jeter just broke my heart. Outstanding kid, I mean,
just a phenomenal kid.
Speaker 16 (12:01):
Landover Road was still blocked off this morning. Only a
few people could venture near the site where Jeter's body
was found. Dozens of Atlanta, police and FBI agents gathered.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
At the site.
Speaker 16 (12:11):
The discovery of Jeter's body here now lends weight to
the theory that one person could be responsible for several
of the murders. The way Jeter died by strangulation fits
into a pattern. Three of Atlanta's other murdered children died
the same way. Two others died by suffocation. His discovery
yesterday fits into another pattern. Location. Within the last year
and a half, six children black males between the ages
(12:33):
of seven and fifteen have all been found within a
five mile radius.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
Either the pattern doesn't exist, there is no pattern, or
we got a much bigger problem. There was an independent
witness that said, this guy, Charles Sanders, said he killed
Louby Jeter. What is your evidence to say Wayne killed
Loubis Jeter. They have none.
Speaker 17 (12:55):
Wayne Williams is being represented in this healing for a
new trial by his former attorney, Lynn Watley and two
of his country's most prominent attorneys, Bobby Lee Cook of Somerville, Georgia,
and William Kuntler of New York.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
We were at Avieu's Corpus court in Butts County.
Speaker 18 (13:12):
The defense is trying to show that the police were
investigating that the Ku Klux Klan may have been responsible
for some of the child murders, but that that file
was never turned over to help with Williams's defense.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Apparently, what we found out after we got in the
Avieu's corpus court and the source source within the GBS,
was that they had a confidential informan I believe his
name Whittaker.
Speaker 19 (13:36):
The first witness today, Billy Joe Whittaker, says he worked
as a police informant during the missing and murdered investigation.
Speaker 17 (13:43):
Whittaker says he told police.
Speaker 19 (13:44):
Detectives that a klansman from Mountain View, Charles Sanders, told
Whittaker he killed.
Speaker 17 (13:50):
One of the child victims, Louby Jeter.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And we were able to contact Whittaker and he did
appear in court and testify under old force stating that
one of the families I believe they were mounted viuekbas
Panders families was indeed responsible for that. When I told
you that, I believe Charles Sanders the clok clerk Kilder
this one.
Speaker 19 (14:12):
Jail Robby Lee Cook and William Huntlers say they have
a letter from Atlanta Police Major Herman Griner. They called
Sanders the klansmen, the prime suspect in the murders four
months before Wayne Williams was arrested in charge with two
of the murderers.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
In nineteen ninety one, Wayne's attorneys called for a court
hearing were police informant Billy Joe Whittaker testified for Wayne Williams.
This man, Billy Joe Whittaker, was in jail during the
early eighties, but when he heard that Louby Jeter had
become one of the victims, he contacted the Georgia Bureau
of Investigation. Whittaker stated that a man named Charles Sanders
made threats against Louby Jeter's life. Whittaker claimed he wore
(14:48):
recording equipment, went to Sanders home and got him to
admit to the child's murder. If that was true, then
Wayne Williams was not responsible for Luby Jeter's death.
Speaker 8 (14:58):
It definitely makes you question. Okay, first, not enough evidence
to convict Wayne. Now there's these tapes from this clans
member which is mind boggling, and I've actually heard in.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The way chap recordings at all, and they talk about
openly and brazenly about saying, yes, I killed a little
black be yes, I'm going to black black black with him,
and we went to court trying to get this in
but however, the court in Budson County Block just refused
it and they put the tape recordings under seal and
not Judge Craggs Court. And we attempted to bring this
(15:32):
up at Feneral Higgs Quarters Court and that was where
the issues started the appeal. So we've been trying for
decades to getting this information out because the GBI did
not want it out because they issued in one of
the documents that the statement saying that they were fred
and prop Releasing this information was got a race war
in Atlanta.
Speaker 17 (15:52):
As in certain county District Attorney Joe J. Lay prosecuted
Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
He says he was never told about the plan file.
Speaker 17 (16:00):
Do you think you should have known about it?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Not? Particularly, It wasn't right about at the time.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
The GBI had it, The police department had it, two
prosecutors had it, two judges had it.
Speaker 8 (16:09):
If Lewis Slayton didn't have it, means he didn't want it.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
After Whitaker testified, Williams was still not granted a retrial.
The strangest part is that now the tapes are nowhere
to be found.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So this was information that the TBI had, but like
I say, they kept it suppressed because they weren't a
piece of worried about a racial war instead of trying
to solve the killing in Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
You didn't want a race war in nineteen eighty one
or eighty two.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
You just didn't.
Speaker 8 (16:36):
I mean, we weren't that far removed from the civil rights.
You had your first black mayor, You had all of
these elected officials because of the mayor that were black.
So it wouldn't look good for the city at all.
I liken it to Rodney King when those officers got off,
look what happened in that city. And then I likened
it to O. J. Simpson. Now say what you want,
(16:58):
I believe the evidence should it was that OJ killed
Ron and the colet, But there was talks in the city. Well,
if he's convicted, there's gonna be riots, It's gonna be
a whole racial thing. If you look at that case,
that was right down the middle, black and white. You know,
had OJ been convicted, we would have saw another nineteen
ninety two Rodney King. I think that would have happened
(17:21):
here in Atlanta back in nineteen eighty one eighty two.
If it would have been a klansman, there's no doubt,
no doubt in my mind.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
We are saying, you know that the white suspects declared
was responsible to allow them, but we know that they
were responsible for this particular group of killers.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Here.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We had a confidential informant that was black Eyed Canton.
We had a GVI source I can't reveal his name.
The agent then enough to box some lens George Stiff Litterally,
it had several real real Kate recorders of wire gather
jail as doctuments on their on their file stared to
widecat disappers admitted to killing the movie cheter had been
involved in several of the other cases. And we've got
(17:59):
that all white.
Speaker 8 (18:00):
When you have a name like Charles Sanders and you
have a witness who knew Charles saying that yes, Charles
is the one that said he killed Luby Jeter. Way
back when there were secret recordings, there was some incident
supposedly around the Star Wars theater where Luby Jeter hit
his car with like a shopping car to a go cart.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Apparently there was a go cart accident in which he
collided with Sandra's car according to the information we had,
and that Sanders made a thread against him that he
was killing and he reiterates the threat in the Wildcat
that we heard. I'm para raised him down to the
visit my rememory. He said, I basically, yeah, I killed
a little black beat black, black black Jim. And then
(18:41):
he said, yeah, I'm going to get sport.
Speaker 8 (18:43):
And he had made the comment he was going to
kill that little black kid for hitting his car and
he was going to strangle him to death, and of
course that's how Luby Jeter was killed.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
In nineteen eighty six, Spin magazine published an article titled
A Question of Justice. The article's authors, Barry Michael Cooper
and Robert Keating, raised doubt about way William's guilt and
brought the idea of the KKK involvement to mainstream news.
It was a hugely popular article, and really it was
the first time the Atlanta child murders KKK theory was
(19:18):
given any legitimate credence by the media.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
It's from a publication, so of course people can argue
that it was slantt you know, argue that it's fake news.
That's the new term nowadays. But what's interesting is not
only is it in the Spin article, but the FBI
talks about these recordings. Yeah, so I don't think the
tapes were made up. I definitely don't think the transcripts
(19:43):
were made up.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I asked Vincent what Charles Sanders said in those transcripts
that alluded to him being the Atlanta child murderer killing
more than one person.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
In one of those conversations, there was talk, and I
believe it came from Charles Sanders that he was going
to go out and drive around and look for another
black kid, another victim.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
If this was true, then why wasn't this a bigger deal?
From all the records I've seen, that's the closest to
a confession that law enforcement ever had.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
Time affects any investigation or any case, because you know,
memories get skewed and a lot of stuff gets lost
or destroyed. You know a lot of people along the
way pass away, like Charles Sanders is no longer here,
so we could never go back and question him. Here
we are thirty plus years removed, and time actually allows
(20:31):
any false narrative to become true, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah,
there were a bunch of kids that died and this
guy did it. That's the narrative. Pretty much everyone knows.
That's the narrative that they know, but they don't know
the ins and outs of Well, this person could have
been a suspect. This person, this person, this person, you know,
they just know Wayne Williams, you know, which they were
(20:52):
deep into a lot of people, right They were deep
into the guy in the Blue Nova. They were deep
into the Sanders, they were deep into the Klan. They
could have known that they were plotting something that the
public wasn't privy to. You know, if you look at
some of these terror groups that are investigated now that
you hear about later the FBI says, oh, we halted
a terror threat because we are investigating you know, this person,
(21:15):
which no one heard about besides Charles Sanders, who admitted
to killing Louis Jeter.
Speaker 20 (21:27):
What started as a joke one hundred years ago when
a group of men donned bed sheets for a romp,
has over the years attracted to it persons charged with
acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence throughout the South. Even
though the nation has been outraged for many years, the
Ku Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings,
(21:48):
but one hundred years is a long time for a joke.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
I talked to Felix Harcourt, author of the book Ku
Klux Culture, for some more historical background on the KKK.
Speaker 21 (21:58):
The Ku Klux Klan effectively operates as a white supremacist
terrorist organization founded after the Civil War, during what we
commonly refer to as the Reconstruction period. It's founded in Pulaski, Tennessee,
and it's not super popular to start with. It lies
fairly fallow through the First World War. If you're looking
(22:20):
at the Reconstruction Clan, they stand for white supremacy and
the maintenance of white power. If you're looking at the
Civil Rights era, they largely are standing for the same thing.
If you're looking at the twenties, they achieve this much
much larger success in the twenties because they effectively diversify
their hatreds. They say, hey, you know, if you hate
(22:42):
African Americans, we are there for you. But also if
you hate Catholics, we.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Are there for you.
Speaker 21 (22:48):
If you hate Jewish immigrants, we are there for you.
If you hate immigrants of all kinds. We are there
for you. If you're worried about prohibition, we're there for you.
By the time you get to the Clan of the
late seventies early eighties, the Klan is all in on
immigration and our staging stunts on the Mexican border. So
there is this kind of this fundamental racist tenet and
(23:12):
then these variations over time as to what draws people
to the clan and what people see the clan standing for.
To some extent, the Clan of the eighties sets the
model for what we see with white supremacists now, particularly
through what David Duke does. David Duke really comes out
in the late seventies and tries to remake the public
(23:37):
image of the clan to some extent, and effectively, what
he tries to do is bureaucratize hate. It's a methodology
that we're seeing being used to great effect by the
alt right now. And David Duke is really astute at
using the media to get this message out, saying that
there is a new Clan, whatever that may mean, and
(23:59):
in doing so effectively spearheads a clan revival in the
late seventies early eighties. And this doesn't exist in a vacuum.
There is a big upsweep in white supremacism in the
late seventies early eighties in the United States, and so
you do see a very active and very visible white
(24:19):
supremacist movement on the March by the early eighties. I
will say that certainly that is a period when we
are seeing a rise in clan activity, and it's a
period in which we are seeing an uptick in white
supremacist activity. More generally, all clan members are white supremacists,
(24:43):
not all white supremacists are clan members, and so we
have always seen significant white supremacist activity that fundamentally is
not linked to the clan as an organization. Most of
the anti civil rights violence is being carried out not
by clan members but by average white supremacists, if that's
(25:06):
a term we can use, and to some extent, that's
what we see today. The clan as an organization is weak,
it is diffuse. Still, there is no single clan. There
are all these individual organizations kind of battling for the
title of who is the legitimate clan, But they are
(25:28):
part of a much broader tapestry of white supremacism that
we can see operating very clearly. I think white supremacists
have always been ordinary people. That doesn't mean that we
should normalize them. It means that we should look at
ourselves and say, what is it that is giving cover
to these people to exist within our society and to
(25:50):
exist very comfortably within that society. Just because they are dapper,
that word that kept getting tagged to Richard Spencer, doesn't
mean that they are not still subscribers to a hateful
ideology of racism and white supremacism. The fact that the
(26:10):
clan is on the rise in the late seventies early eighties,
the fact that racial violence is on the rise to
the extent that congressional hearings are being held into anti
black violence at the time, and the fact that Atlanta
holds this significant position within the history of the clan
(26:31):
makes it understandable why someone would link these child murders
to clan members. It is an entirely reasonable assumption to
believe that white supremacist violence is touching your community in
this way.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
In the eyes of Vincent, it was nearly impossible that
there was only one killer involved. Of course, there is
a pattern, but according to Vincent, it doesn't match up
in each and every case.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
Where was this Atlanta monster that everyone was so in
fear of for two years? There were several monsters. All
of these victims, they had different suspects other than Wayne Williams,
other than Wayne Williams. So there, Yeah, there were several monsters,
but there wasn't just one monster going around killing these kids.
(27:30):
Is there a conspiracy going on here? You have to
You can't not question that, you know, So.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Is there a conspiracy at play here? The term conspiracy
tends to immediately incite ridicule. Many people will equate conspiracy
with total fantasy, unbelievable stories to explain away historical events.
Speaker 22 (27:49):
A conspiracy theory and a nactual conspiracy are two very
different things nowadays.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
To gain some perspective, I talked to one of the
guys from How Stuff Works, who has his own podcast
on this very topic.
Speaker 22 (28:02):
My name is Ben Bollen, and along with my co
host Matt Frederick and Noel Brown, I produce and host
a podcasts called Stuff They Don't Want You To Know,
which applies critical thinking to what we would call conspiracy theories.
So government cover ups, unsolved crimes, various allegations of that sort.
So are you a conspiracy theorist, I would say, I
(28:23):
find them interesting, but the term gets kind of problematic.
So a conspiracy at its most basic level is a
situation where in two or more people or entities work
together to deceive or manipulate a third party.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
When I even hear the word conspiracy theory, I'm already
tuning out, and I wanted to talk to you about
just sort of the origin of conspiracy theories to begin with.
Obviously there are some true ones, right, I mean, where
did this all come from?
Speaker 22 (28:54):
So what tends to happen when people hear a phraser term,
especially the the phrase of the term conspiracy theory is,
as you said, kind of shut out and sort of
the idea that, oh, okay, anything that happens after I
hear this phrase is going to be utter hogwash. Interestingly enough,
the reason that's the case in the United States today
(29:16):
is because shortly after the jfk assassination, most Americans did
not believe the official government explanation, and so intelligence agencies
spread memos to newspapers media outlets of the time saying
this is what happened. The Russian government is attempting to
spread propaganda. So if you hear anything else other than
(29:37):
this official story, be sure to dismiss it and call
it a quote conspiracy theory. We do know that certain
things that were once considered conspiracy theories are true. It
did turn out that banks were laundering money for international
drug cartels, and it turns out that it is somewhat
(29:58):
disingenuous to group that kind of phenomenon along with CIA
drug spunkling in the same bucket as the idea that
what the British Royal family is a bunch of evil,
half alien lizard people. You know, those are both called
conspiracy theories, but they're very different, and there's one incredibly
(30:19):
important difference, and that's that the first stuff is true.
The second stuff, I'm just going to go out on
a limb and say is not true.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I asked Ben to outline the most prevalent conspiracy theories
for the Atlanta child murders case.
Speaker 22 (30:33):
One would be the idea that law enforcement did not
have a clue who the real killer was and they
wanted to close the cases, so they pinned them, or
they pen many of these child murders on Wayne Williams
in court just to get them off the books. Another
would be the idea that there was some sort of
(30:55):
clandestine sex trafficking ring at play, and that again law
enforcement for some reason or another assisted in covering up
this information and keeping it from the public. And then
the third idea would be that the KKK or other
white supremacist groups were committing the murders with either tacit
(31:16):
assistance or approval by sympathetic law enforcement officers. A great
deal of it does come from the conversations relayed by Sanders,
and in the excellent Spin article from the time, there's
some top notch journalistic investigation. They had one of the
journalists who I think broke the first Spin story on
(31:38):
crack cocaine, who was writing this and exploring this angle,
and they had an informant named b. J. Jones that
they thought was a solid guy who came to them
and said that there was proof that the KKK, specifically
the Sanders, and possibly not just this individual, but members
of his family or his close associates were involved in
(32:00):
these murders with the goal of killing one black child
a month or something of that nature. And there's a
further aspect here that we have to remember, and that's
the context or the cultural ecosystem in which this occurs.
Distrust of a largely white police force is already incredibly high.
(32:26):
If there were a doomsday clock for race relations in
Atlanta at this time, it would be about three minutes
to midnight.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
The only publication that pushed this out there was the
Spin story, and you can't go find these original recordings,
but these guys at Spin were able to get their
hands on some transcripts. But besides that, there's nothing out
there that publicly exists that says Charles Sanders was a
part of the Atlanta child murners.
Speaker 22 (32:52):
Yeah, and that's one of the frightening, tantalizing, and I
would say a base frustrate things for anyone investigating this.
We're really in a situation where and if we want
to prove or disprove this sort of connection, we would
need someone to go speak directly to a primary source to.
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Get to the bottom of this theory. I would have
to find someone who is close to Charles Sanders, still
alive and also willing to talk. It seemed pretty unlikely,
but after weeks of searching, I got a strange email
that led me to one of Sanders's old friends.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
I don't want to tell anything because my wife right now,
as you're a nervous we've been through this before my
name was put out there and it was a scary ordeal.
Family spent a few weeks in a hotel just out
of being scared. And I don't know you from Adam.
(34:00):
It's a story that I've held home to for a
long time that I've known about. I don't know how
you want to go about this pain.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
You can always come here to the office that we
have at part rather or not.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
I first met him back in nineteen eighty. We would
hang out and sit around and shoot the shit and
drink beers and smoke pot and you know, after working
hours and whatnot. Him and his brothers were in the KKK.
When I met him up here in this sleep little
(34:36):
town I live in, he was not involved. He had
gotten out. He was a nice guy, good old Redeck
had a few teeth missing, you know, had a beard
and a small stature, and you know, you wouldn't think
here in this little sleepy town anything different that he
was any kind of a monster. He certainly didn't act
(34:56):
like it until we drank and then he got the
eyes of Charles Manson that would look right through deil.
It was scary. It was real scary. It scared all
of us. But it wasn't that often. He stopped in
one day with this copy of Spin magazine. He had
(35:18):
that look in his eyes. He obviously had been drinking
some hard liquor. He said, I got something for y'all
to take a look at. And you know, we didn't
have a clue what he was talking about. Pulled out
the magazine and we started reading. It was jaw dropping.
Somebody asked him if it's real and if the article
(35:40):
was true. He told us it was. He said it was,
it was true. He told us about certain situations that
where was he The FBI or the ATF would come
in and read their house in the middle of the
night and shake him down. They were come in. I
(36:00):
remember him talking about them coming in all the time
and trying to shake him down and try to find
some kind of evidence. And I remember Charles saying that
he was lucky because his carpet matched Wang Williams carpet
and as well as the white German shepherd Hares match.
(36:21):
He owned a white German shepherd. Wang Williams also owned
a white German shepherd It just so happens that the
person Wang Williams that they penned all these murders on
had so many similarities with the Sanders as far as
(36:43):
the dog and the carpet.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Here.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Again, I haven't read the Spin magazine since the eighties,
but I remember situation Charles told us about. They were
hanging outside his home and there was a black kid
on a go cart. He accidentally ran into their car.
They didn't appreciate that. They were pissed, which get to
(37:08):
this Cheeter I believe that's his name, and I remember
him saying, we got him, we took care of him.
He told me they got him, they got the boy
for doing that. I don't remember him ever saying that
KKK was involved with this. I only remember him talking
(37:31):
about him and his brothers being involved in this, So
I don't know to what extent the brothers were involved.
I do you know they had a cash of weapons
because they were expecting a huge revolution to come out
of this. And he basically told us that he did
(37:58):
it and everything that's being magazine was true. I don't know.
I don't really know why he decided to come out
to us and tell us that he trusted us, I guess,
but it certainly blew us away. But he really never
(38:18):
went into any details of any of the other killings
besides the fact that there were other killings that him
and his brothers did. And what kind victims were they
They were black children, they were children, they were of adults,
they were children. I don't know what was on their mind,
(38:42):
if they were going to commit genocide in Atlanta and
try to do away with you, or if he was
trying to cause a race a race riot of some sort.
I know that's why they had that cash weapons, was
because they expected some type of a race riot.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Who do you think is responsible for the Alanche Homers?
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Well, I know who's responsible for some of them, you know,
and Wayne Williams may be responsible for some as well.
He let it be known that it was Spin Magazine
was right on that they took care of those boys.
Speaker 10 (39:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Everybody then was hoping it wasn't a white guy or
the KKK because they didn't want a race riot to
take place in Atlanta. And I believe they geared their
investigation towards Gwyn Williams, and once they found out he
had possibly killed some of the adults, it was easy
(39:54):
pickings to throw all the other children on him too.
Did you ever consider going to the police with this
information back then? No, No, I was too scared. No,
I wouldn't have gone to the.
Speaker 15 (40:06):
Police back then.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Can you tell me about why you were scared? Scared
from alife? I mean, I scared for my life, and
at that time I had had a wife. Didn't have
a daughter then, but I had a wife. And you know,
I saw that look in his eyes when he was crazy.
I believe he could have done anything anything. I did.
(40:28):
Go god By m a rural black guy that used
to do TV connotations and in Atlanta. He did a
gig on the missing and murdered children of Atlanta one time,
and I called in and told him what I knew,
and he knew about the Sanders brothers. But my my
name was brought up, and that scared me. I never
(40:52):
spoke to anybody after that. And that was in nineteen
ninety four. So once I found out that my name
had brought up, we moved into a hotel for a
couple of weeks. Stay clear of you know of anything.
I believe. Not only was my name brought up, my
town was brought up who did you fear? In particular
(41:15):
Sanders brothers, And I don't know how many of them
there are, there's like four or five.
Speaker 15 (41:20):
You them.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
I feared them more than anything else. I feared them,
you know. For some reason, I'm thinking that these acts
of murder were perpetrated by the Sanders brothers, not necessarily
by the KKKA. To my knowledge, there was no other members.
(41:42):
There was no other people involved with the murders except
of Sanders brothers and in them alone. I never heard
him talking about the KKK being necessarily involved with the murders.
It was always him and his brothers.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Uh, the wrong's been done that needs to be righted.
But I'm still the aera of of anybody who was
involved with the Sanders. Obviously, I know what they can do.
Once it was panned on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled.
(42:23):
That was their way out. He it was being pinned
on him, and that was their way out.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
What do you think should happen now?
Speaker 4 (42:41):
I don't know, you know, I really don't know. I
don't know. I don't know where it should go from here.
I know that there were some wrongs that should probably
be righted. Charles is dead, he's gone. There's family still suffering,
(43:05):
you know, and there's families that I think Wayne Williams
did it, and there's others that think he didn't do
it all. And I can't tell you he didn't do
it all. I know who killed those kids, and I'm
sorry that I did not come come forth sooner, but
(43:26):
I felt my life was in danger as well. But
justice has not been served. If it would have been
my daughter, I would want the truth reveal. Can't change
the past, but at least it would answer questions. You
had children that were brutally murdered for no reason, completely
(43:52):
innocent children. And if indeed you think it was somebody
other than Wane Williams, you're most definitely correct. You know,
anybody out there he thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do
all this by himself is correct. This wasn't all on him.
And I only know that from the mouth of the
(44:15):
devil himself.
Speaker 5 (44:27):
Next time on Atlanta Monster, The Clayton.
Speaker 11 (44:31):
County woman and her husband were driving on this narrow
cemetery road when they saw a green car coming straight
at them at a high rate of speed.
Speaker 23 (44:39):
The driver was tall, and he's light colored, A light
colored black man and he had on a wig. I
know it was a wig because he was losing it
because it was a child in the front struggling. He
was struggling with that child.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
You're sure you saw a child.
Speaker 23 (44:54):
In the criss Yes, I saw it because it was
just back and forth like that and like that was
trying to hold hang on to that child. It was
a boy between ages of the bat ten and twelve,
and he had a short haircut.
Speaker 8 (45:09):
You think you could identify these two and the one
with the.
Speaker 23 (45:12):
Week handle glasses, I could identify.
Speaker 5 (45:14):
The Atlanta Child murders is one of the largest and
most complex cases in US history. As a team, we've
spent months digging through police records, court documents, and media archives.
Through all this research, we've uncovered stories you've never heard before,
(45:36):
and next week we're going to dig deeper into some
of these stories. Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told
week by week, with new episodes every Friday. A joint
production between How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music
is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of
(45:58):
WSB News Film and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University
of Georgia Libraries For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster
dot com or follow us on social media. One last thing,
We've set up an Atlanta Monster tip line. Anyone with information, leads,
or personal accounts pertaining to the Atlanta child murders can
(46:20):
call us and leave a message. The number is one
eight three three two eight five six sixty sixty seven. Again,
that's one eight three three two eight five six six
sixty seven. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 22 (47:01):
Let's bring it to a human level here in the
United States. The first conspiracy that many people encounter occurs
when they're kids. It's the story of Santa Claus. And
you can't really blame people for being distrustful of authority
after that. I mean, it's a conspiracy that everyone participates in.
Oh and I should have put a warning in there
(47:22):
for parents, But Santa is real.
Atlanta Monster News
Host
Payne Lindsey
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