Questions: Part 2 [bonus]

Payne and the team answer more listener questions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
In Atlanta, another body whispers coming today at Police Task
Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces on the wall, murdered,
one missing. We do not know the person or persons
that are responsible. Therefore, we do not have the MODI
from Tinderfoot TV and How Stuff Works in Atlanta. Like
eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently was a
fixy victor. Atlanta was unlikely to catch the killer unless

(00:31):
he keeps on killing. This is Atlanta Monster. Hey, guys,
welcome to part two of our Q and A session.
I'm here with the Tenderfoot TV team and How Stuff Works.
I'm Jason from How Stuff Works from Tenderfoot Mrs Donald
from tinder Foot TV, and we're here today to answer

(00:53):
your questions. Hey, my name is Joe. Was there ever
a house or location of where they thought there was
like a sex at ring going on where people were
taking maybe over to that house and that's gonna bring
carpet there. Just wondered if you'd ever heard anything about
them actually investigating the house. One of the hardest parts
of this story, I think to to hear, and frankly,

(01:17):
it was a story that was told in the media,
so going to uncle Tom's house. Tom Terrell, UM, there
was frank and open talk about at least ten of
these boys visiting his house. We've seen some pretty graphic
detail of what happened there, that these kids would come
through the neighborhood and just for a couple of bucks,

(01:39):
would participate in some you know, some pretty troubling things
and even sleep over. Um. A couple of years after
this case was closed, Tom Terrell's house and the house
next door burned down. We went back, if you remember,
and it was raised. There was nothing there. It was
it was a clean field, empty lot. If you were
looking at the old and you look directly to your left,

(02:01):
you saw the Georgia Dome and you saw where the Omni,
which is a big location in the podcast. So you
can actually imagine where kids were coming from there, going
through the neighborhood, stopping and then hitting their ultimate destination
at their houses at any time of the day. UM.
It's really heartbreaking. Uh. And often in trials, not all

(02:23):
the evidence they have is presented, just enough of the
strongest evidence is used to convict someone. So even though
it was known it was in the media, it doesn't
mean it has to show up in trial. But what
we don't know is was there a larger kind of
pyramid of players here. We've heard some of the adult
victims may have been running through the same neighborhood. So

(02:45):
I hate speculating on this stuff, but something really really
nags at me that says there's a connection here. I
just don't know what it is. And we didn't present
this on the podcast because we frankly just didn't have
the evidence. We didn't have anything that would tell us
that these things were all specifically connected. Even back then,
the media theorized that some of the adult victims could

(03:08):
actually have been co conspirators. So there is a scenario
that some of these things are connected, um, and that
it's larger than one person. So we already all believe that,
you know, this wasn't all the work of one monster,
but it could be the work of a few people
working together. And then some of some other things that

(03:29):
are can be unrelated, some things that are related to
those um that those houses and some of those victims
that work at those houses that also weren't related to
Wayne Williams or any other co conspirators with Wayne Williams.
So just you know, like I said, there's just not
enough evidence to point that that is true or false.
So it's one of the things we didn't really dive
deep into because it's a big question mark. So we

(03:51):
kind of focused on, you know, the larger issues in
front of us that we had, you know, more evidence
to point to. It was called Uncle Tom's Cabin, was
the nickname that it was given in the media. Vincent Hill,
the former police officer, was a huge advocate of this theory,
and he had his own evidence. He showed me he
firmly believed that there was a real connection between this

(04:15):
Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Atlantic child murders, and based
on what he showed me, I think that at least
a few of the victims were connected. But the question remains,
did it have to do with Wayne Williams. Is there
a bigger story here or are we looking at a
bunch of different murders by different people. Yeah, I mean,
like tim Timothy Hill was at Tom Terrell's house the

(04:37):
day before he went missing and was supposed to return,
and you can't just you can't dismiss that. But it's
hard to put those connections together so many years later.
That's the problem with this Everyone says, it's so confusing.
It is confusing. It there's no way to make it
all makes sense, because I firmly believe it doesn't all
make sense. It doesn't all connect. There's not one big

(04:57):
puzzle here that makes sense. And this is this explains everything, right,
We're talking about different things that happened, right. I think
one thing that we make the mistake of just the
general public when we look at, um a crime like
this is trying to find the one after that solves everything.
And also that trying to look at every child name

(05:18):
that appears on a list and saying that, um, all
of the evidence has to fit every single victim, and
when one doesn't fit, we can't throw it all out.
It makes me that that evidence are that assailant or
you know, the person responsible for one is not responsive
for the other. There's definitely a world where several of

(05:40):
these victims are murdered for several different reasons, some associated
with one killer, some associated with this house, some by
street violence. And all that evidences is no way's gonna
all match up. And and one thing is true, and
that's that sex rings were a real thing in Atlanta
and other cities. UM, We're gonna share a c from
another another caller who actually know her father was named

(06:05):
Wayne Williams and was in the phone book, and they
got all kinds of nasty calls. And here she shares
a story of some of the sex ring activities that
we're having in Cabbage Town here in Atlanta. I lived
in MND Park at the time, which is just on
the other side of the tracks from where everything was happening.

(06:25):
I had a lot of memories of it. I know
for a fact that there was a kitty pornography ring
that was going on in Cabbage Town at the time.
And I noticed for a fact because I rode the
school bus with a lot of the boys who would
whisper about getting paid for ppe pictures. Have that you know,

(06:50):
kind of burned into my brain. This is there from
Los Angeles that I know, you guys kind of touched
on this before, but there's never been on any serious
te quarry on whether Wayne possibly partnered with his father
in these murders. The fibers from the house being on
the victims. It seems to me the only good way
to get a fiber onto a victim his direct contact

(07:11):
with the fibers themselves and though the victims were brought
home and disposed of, and even photographs. Most serial killers
have a trophy aspect to them, and Wayne dead with
a photographer and doing taking pictures of the funerals afterwards.
That's a good point. It would be merely speculation to

(07:32):
talk about that at all. But one thing I do
find interesting is that you take all the evidence against
Wayne Williams, it would also match his father, all the
carpet fibers, everything would be the same. So it is interesting.
And I don't know much about their relationship. I asked
Wayne a few times about his father, but he never
really got into it, which I found also was kind

(07:53):
of strange. And they had a strained relationship, and we
we kind of briefly touched on that they've had an
argument out in a parking out around the trial time.
We stayed away from trying to present a lot of
the speculation on this. We heard a lot of stories
that we actually did not put in the podcast. Um,
but I will say this, We do know that Homer
Williams was the only photographer at the Frank Sinatra Sammy

(08:16):
Davis Junior Benefit concert. We do know that he was
on stage with Frank Sinatra. We do know that he
took the iconic photo of Sammy Davis Jr. And maer
casim Read. But there's there's lots of questions, Like one
of the things we heard over and over again was
Wayne and Homer are showing up at the funerals. They're
showing up at the at the case sites where the

(08:38):
bodies were. I can tell you personally, I looked at
hours and hours and hours of video footage and never
saw it. So we're not going to make a statement
on that, Like I've never seen it with my own eyes,
so to present that out there just doesn't make sense.
We do know that Chet Deutlinger talked about Homer being
there at Jimmy Ray Paine's funeral, and we did discuss
kind of that connection. Uh, We've heard lots of things.

(09:01):
Chat also talks about he actually met with Homer and
Wayne a lot. He met Wayne and jail. He went
to their residence when Wayne was in jail and Homer
was at home and talked with him about the fact
that they took boxes and put him in dumpsters near
on nearby downtown school, and the fact that Homer had

(09:22):
all kinds of photography that he burned, and he admitted
to doing it, but he said, you know, it was
just unclaimed extra copies of stuff, and and even so
I'll burn him and not just throw him away. Yeah,
and this was in the kind of clean up phase.
He said, Um, they were unclaimed extra copies and photos

(09:43):
that just didn't turn out right. And Chet said, I've
never been satisfied with any part of the explanation about
the cleanup, either Wayne's or Homer's. The best I can
say is it could be true. Mhm. Hi, my name
is Laurie. So several years ago I read the book
Mine Hunter by John Douglas. He is one of the
people that basically founded the field of criminal profiling. That's

(10:05):
a really fascinating book. And he had an entire chapter
on the Atlanta child murders and in that chapter he
describes exactly what was in the profile before they caught
Wayne Williams and it is absolutely uncanny. Yes, I've read that.
I've read that section of his book, Mine Hunter. Um,
we did try to reach out to John Douglas early on. Uh,

(10:26):
the name John Douglas came up multiple times in the FBI.
Everyone we talked to really looked up to this person.
He was a brilliant man. He's still around and we
tried to reach out to him early on, but we
were not able to get an interview lined up. I
think there was a sort of conflict of interest with
the My Hunter show and our show. But you know,
he expressed that he would like to do it, but
it didn't work out. But you know, everyone we talked

(10:48):
to an FBI really looked up to this guy, and
he was sort of the mastermind of creating these FBI
profiles like this. Some of them are even his students.
I think Popcorn said he went to John Douglas's class
and things like that. Yeah, it's pretty interesting, it is.
It's really interesting with the extra context of watching Mine
Hunter and seeing some of those classes conducted to kind
of it's gonna be really interesting to see how that

(11:11):
the rumored kind of um coverage of Wayne Williams in
the Atlanta child murders in season two of Mine Hunter
plays out based on everything that we know. Hi, my
name was Kia. A few episodes back, you talked to
a gentleman that was abdusted in a car and kind
of got out, but the plastic seats kind of grabbed

(11:32):
the back of the pick that was in his pocket,
and on his way out, the guy who kind of
sort of maybe looked like Wayne Williams said goodbye and
called and by his name. Did you think any deeper
into that story? Did you revisit it? Because it sounds
like there's somebody out there that was snatching kids that
looked very much like Wayne Williams. I don't have enough information,

(11:52):
but I was just curious. That story stuck with me
by Rodney, that's what he said. It was extremely erie.
It's a bizarre story. I don't know what else to
say about it, to be honest, I don't. I don't
know where to look for more information on that to
build a bigger story out of it. This guy was
being one sincere to me. He had never told anyone

(12:15):
publicly this story before. And we've also heard after that
a few other stories that make it sound like there
was maybe this guy who resembled Wayne Williams who was
roaming around the streets of Atlanta in abducting kids, or
at least attempting to. Is that true. I don't know.
I cannot say for certain if it is or not.

(12:36):
Either when you slice it, it seems like there was
someone who looked like Wayne Williams who was out in
Atlanta at that time abducting kids, or at least attempting to.
Was it Wayne? This guy says for certain it was not.
He knew what Wayne looked like and it wasn't him.
So was there someone else out there? I don't know, Okay,
So Wayne's look seems to be unique to us. I

(12:58):
think now in two thousand eighteen, we here, here's the
guy with afro and glasses, and it seems almost like
this iconic, you know, pictures that we've seen of Wayne Williams.
But at the time, it's been suggested to us many
times that that was not a unique look. Lots of
people had that hairstyle, lots of people had those same
types of glasses at that time, and so it's possible

(13:19):
that there was someone who looked a lot like him.
Vincent Hill even said I looked like that, My dad
looked like that, We all looked like that. Yeah, that
was a go to look, you know, late seventies, early eighties,
So not surprising that you know, someone else is out
there and being mistaken for Wayne Williams. If that's what
you know, what the look was I think what gives
UM a little more creagence to some of the other

(13:41):
eyewitnesses is them being able to also say that guy had,
you know, abrasions or a scar on his face. And
I think that's um kind of what sets the idea
apart from, you know, the people who say it definitely
wasn't Wayne, and people say that it was him. When
I listened to the interview with Rodney for the first time,
it was just a stunning story by itself, but I

(14:02):
was also struck by the story of the driver giving
Rodney drugs and not really knowing what was in that.
The question has come up multiple times, how do you
get these scrappy kids in your car or you know,
take them and kill them and without having a scratch
or out having scars. And Wayne's just five seven and
a pudgy guy, and it just it's always kind of

(14:24):
bothered me that maybe that was the trick, right, is
giving these young kids some concoction that that reduced their resistance.
I don't know, there was something that's always kind of
bugged me about that, and that being the almost like
the candy that the strangers giving these kids to uh
to make them more vulnerable. Because I think there is
a point to these kids being tough and scrappy and

(14:47):
on the streets that would be difficult to take down.
I think the power that you're talking about when it
comes to serial killers is in their manipulation. Every serial
killer manipulated their victims and gained their trust somehow. I
think that we often underestimate what that is. I think
that if you're a psychopath, your sociopath, you have all

(15:09):
these traits and you're trying to kill somebody, you are
convincing them of everything you need to to get them
in your car. Yeah. And if you remember the kind
of anonymous interview that we played in one of the
episodes um of the Guy That Knew Wayne and and
Jojo Bell, he talked about how Wayne had a network

(15:30):
of spies that were kids helping him watch the neighborhood.
So again, if he is the person his ability to
kind of manipulate those kids and have them act on
his behalf, it's pretty powerful. This is Jenny Kafka and Ediston,
New Jersey. How has the podcast shaken things up with

(15:51):
the law enforcement? Have they been responding, has they've been acting,
has they've been pursuing um or reevaluating because of what
you're doing. I highly doubt it. I think that this
is a very old case. Uh. The FBI is happy
with the way this ended. It's closed in their minds.

(16:13):
I don't think way Williams is getting out of prison
anytime soon, regardless of whether or not he's guilty or innocent.
That's just the way it is now. It's been almost
forty years. I don't think the police feel compelled to
go back through their own information in their own cases
and try to find something, try to find something that

(16:34):
was missing before. I don't think it's in the city's
best interest for that to happen either. I think that
the important part of Atlanta Monster is not just whether
or not Wayne Williams killed anybody. It's just the retelling
of the story as a whole. Just like I had
never heard this story, there were plenty of other people
who had never heard the story too, even my parents.

(16:55):
They were around in Atlanta at this time, but I've
never been told this story, and they remember did it
way differently. They didn't have all the facts, they only
were They were limited to what they saw on the news.
And my dad told me he didn't have a TV
in his in his apartment, so he only saw the
news at dunkin Donuts or something so so much it's
always archived stuff we're going through. But who all saw that?

(17:19):
I mean not everybody, to be honest. It's night one. Yeah,
I mean just just look at look at your life today.
You know, if you if you're you get busy for
a few days and you don't watch the six o'clock
news and o'clock news, you're not up to date on
everything that's happening. And we have the internet, so you
think about in in the late seventies, you know, you
you missed the evening news and for a couple of

(17:39):
days you're completely outdated. So if you don't have a TV.
So yeah, just it's a it's a lot. You know,
the flow of information isn't uh the way the way
it is now is completely different than how it was then.
And you know, people are gonna hear this story through
a lens or you know, through a different I guess
lens may not be the right word, but you know
they're going to hear this story, um, and it's going

(18:00):
to come with a twist on on it based off
who's telling it to you. You know, based on your community,
based on your age, um. But I think overall the
you know the good question, I think that you know
you answered it perfectly. I mean, it's a case closed,
like we got our guy, and we're not going to
go revis anything, especially if it's going to kick us
some dusted we don't want to get into. That's that's

(18:21):
the opinion of local and federal law enforcement. Yeah, I
think to law enforcement, this is done. And if you
remember from the last two episodes, um, every child's case
that they thought was connected in a compelling way with
trace evidence and circumstantial evidence, they brought those up in trial.
So though it didn't maybe make the news that way,

(18:42):
and many people don't think that the kids were tried
and they and they weren't. Their cases were tried, um,
but they still brought those up. So I don't know
why they would ever reopen these cases. I don't think
they're going to get more evidence on those cases. That's
why they were so flimsy. But they connected in some
way through you know, fibers to the two cases they

(19:04):
had more evidence for, and that's Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Raypain, right.
And I think I think The problem that I have,
and then maybe some of the listeners have as well,
is that they didn't just close the cases that were
brought up in court. And there is the you know,
elephant in the room. So those parents, you know, not
only was there a child never brought up in court,
but you know, they were never never had there was
never a trial, there was never anything. Those cases were

(19:26):
just closed. And I think that's where you know, the
big issue lies. So, uh, if there was going to
be an effort to look into something, I think it
should be into the cases that were not brought up
in court that we aren't so sure that he did.
But I think we've said it before that you know,
if you close twelve cases and there are thirty, there's

(19:48):
still an Atlanta child writer out there. And I think
that's what the city was dealing with at the time.
So I think they politically, you know, they were motivated
to close you know, the majority of these cases, which
they did, and I think there that's where the injustice
came in. Yeah, so I guess that's not necessarily opening
up Wayne Williams case. Again, it's like those outlying undetermined cases, right,

(20:10):
but they would have to admit that those outlying on
determined cases. UM, we're not coming by Wayne Williams, and
they've already closed and attributed over twelve that were not
brought into court, and that, you know, there's the there's
a difference. Yeah. I would love to just view all
the stuff that never got presented to the public, because
I mean, this went on for a couple of years,

(20:31):
and I think that is kind of the unknown question
of what happened within the task force, within ap D,
within the FBI, What leads did they get and not follow,
What kind of conversations did they have if they were
talking to Tom Tarrell and investigating the sex ring, what
was that investigation like and how come it was not presented. Hi,

(20:52):
my name is Kelly. It was listening to another true
crime podcasts and it was about the freeway sansom slangs
that happened in the seventies. UM there were six young
DC females who disappeared and were found off the side
of freeways, um strangled and dead and raped. UM. This

(21:15):
was prior to the Atlanta Monsters appearance. But the link
that was most intriguing to me is that in both cases,
these were young children from enfranchise communities who also had
green carpet fibers found on them and on their clothing
and possessions. So I just thought that that was a

(21:36):
really interesting link. I'm not sure if anyone has investigated
the links between these two serial murders, but UM, I
thought that I would call in in the off chance
that it could be a helpful trip. Firstly, I think
it's important to reiterate that there are many, many types
of green fibers, and I think it's a misconception that

(21:57):
green is the thing that made these fibers stand out.
In the Williams case. It wasn't that they were UM green,
it was that the green carpet fibers they did find
had this unusual structure that was trilobal and it was
called the Wellman one A one B and it was
among fibers, extremely rare. So it's not inconceivable that other cases,

(22:19):
UM They're victims would be tied together through fibers, even
green fibers, even green carpet fibers, but it was the
lynch pen in this case because the fibers were so rare. UM,
I'm not familiar with the fibers in the case that
UM you're bringing up, but I think that it would
be very unlikely that there's any tie at all, because

(22:41):
we when we narrowed it down with Larry Peterson, the
fiber analyst, it was like, maybe eighty two rooms in
Georgia might have that carpet. Maybe, Hi, I have a
question for you in the team. Out of this listening
to episodes, and I was wondering, were given a story

(23:02):
actually like got in contact with the police or the
family member was going to contact with the police. So
out of the three stories that I was told, um,
only one person did go to the cops, and that
was the man who ended up in prison with way Williams. Ironically,
years later, he said he did tell the police about
what happened to him, and they came to his house

(23:24):
and they uh asked some questions about what happened, and
they seemed interested, but it's just kind of ended there,
and uh they never followed up after that. But he
did make an attempt to tell law enforcement. They did
come to his house and they asked a bunch of questions,
but it pretty much just ended there. Hey, Kane and Team.
My name is Jason. I'm a big fan of your

(23:44):
work and i'm your podcast. I loved I'thing vanished, and
I just got finishing with the Atlanta Monster. With I've
been Vanished, I felt that there was a very clear win,
if you want to call it that with the evidence
that was uncovered, kind of turned a new leaf in
the investigation went to Atlanta Monster, or I didn't feel
it was kind of the same way. So really, I
was just curious pain on a personal level. If you

(24:05):
were convinced that Wayne Williams is innocent or are you
convinced that Wayne Williams was in fact the Atlanta Monster.
Oh man, that's the tough one to answer right there.
I'm not convinced of his innocence or his guilt, to
be honest. But what I'll tell you is that Wayne
Williams lied to me. He lied to me about the

(24:25):
bridge incident and the club on multiple occasions, and I
called him out on it. Why was he lying to me?
Is it because he killed Nathaniel Cater that night? Or
is it because he was doing something suspicious and it
just makes him look bad. If that's the case, then
why not, almost forty years later, come out and say, hey,

(24:46):
I'm sorry, I lied about this. This is why it
doesn't make any sense. But I still didn't kill anybody.
He's not saying that. He's still lying for some reason.
Why is that? You know? And I also can't argue
with the fiber of it. It's you know, it's funny
because you know, on the way up to Larry Peterson's house,
I was with Meredith and we were both talking about

(25:07):
how man, we really think that Wayne maybe didn't do this.
Maybe he's innocent. It just sounds two perfect things don't
add up all the way. What's the deal here? Maybe
he's innocent. When we left after about a four hour
conversation with Larry Peterson, we both looked at each other
and said, I think he did it. So I don't know.

(25:28):
I've gone back and forth a lot, but I don't
want to be the guy who says you should believe this,
or you should believe that what I wanted to do
was present the whole story, and have you decide and
have you understand why this has been so puzzling for
so long? And also the focus should not be Wayam Williams.
It should be the kids. It should be what happened

(25:48):
almost forty years ago that was wrong. There were things
that were done the wrong way in this case, and
there's things to learn from. It's also an important part
of our culture to know how things were and how
they are to a So those are the more important
factors that I would like to focus on. Did he
do it? I don't know, but he lied to me
and he's very suspicious. Thanks for listening to part two

(26:13):
of our Q and A session. If you have any
questions of your own, please call us at one eight
three three to eight five six six six seven. Again
that's one three, three five six six six seven, and
be on the lookout for more specials of Atlanta Monster
this summer.