The List [bonus]

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
By the winter of ninety nine, Atlanta's nightly news was
still with reports of missing and murdered children, but attest
to some of the names, you hear a disclaimer. Top
police brass resisted adding his name to the task Force list.
You don't see her on the official list of murdered
and missing children, not put on the Special task Force
list until his body was found. His death never made

(00:21):
the list either had not been on the missing person's list.
His disappearance also didn't make the list. What exactly was
the list, where did it come from, and what did
it mean? Were the individuals on the list connected? Law
enforcements seemed to waver on this as late as yesterday.
Detectives in the Homicide Division at ap D we're saying

(00:42):
there was no link between the cases. In fact, they
wouldn't even acknowledge that there have been more kidnappings and
murders involving children than in the past. Homicide detectives are
now trying to see whether there may be a connection
in the cases. Because he is black and fifteen, he
fits the pattern of the missing and murdered children in
atlant but that may be the extent of the similarity.

(01:02):
We are unable to think categorically that there's a relationship
between one case and the other. The only thing all
twenty nine cases have in common is that they are
on the task force list. I think the right thing
to do is to be able to keep up with
those cases of bear similarities. Authorities told me they do
not think at this point that one person is responsible
for all the disappearances and deaths. There are similarities. Obviously,

(01:25):
we have to look at the possibility that there may
be some connection between all the cases. We're not discounting that.
Investigators think several cases are totally unrelated. Authorities say there
are similarities with other incidents. At leice do not think
that this murder is related. There are some similarities in
some of the days. Police do think there's a possibility
that this murder is connected to another case that they

(01:46):
have under investigation, and associated press story quotes an unidentified
source close to the investigation as saying putting all twenty
eight murder victims names on one task course list is
one of the biggest mistakes the police department has ever made.
Sources putting of the names on one list has created
the oppression the cases are all related, says many of
the cases are unrelated, but the public thinks they're all

(02:07):
the work of one killer because they're on the same list.
Source says the list is a big mistake and a
scorecard for police failure to solve the cases. If the
pattern cannot be agreed upon, that why we're some of
Atlanta's missing and murdered children excluded. This is the actual list,

(02:30):
really we used, and you know that the origin of
the list touch it, but you can't have it. I
think the list is either in need of correction or incomplete.
I'm not sure could have been more. I think it
could have been more. I think maybe instead of a list,
maybe we need two lists, one involving young, small children,

(02:53):
the other involving adolescents. You would be hard pressed even
today been with people who have spent a lot of
time pouring over these records to find some consistency and
what folks think represents a pattern of behavior for whoever
or whoever's committed these crimes. I don't think there should

(03:16):
have ever been a list. I think each case should
be investigated individually. This is Kristen Tobin, creator of the
at Kid website, the database that focuses on the victims
in this case, it doesn't make sense to have little
kids seven and eight year olds who were found in
the woods with different causes of death to be put

(03:36):
in a less way adults they found in the river.
I don't see how those things are related. I think
that may have just been officials panicking. It makes the
city look bad. And if they put it all together
and they can just focus their investigation in one place,
if they make it related so they're all related, then

(03:58):
it feels like you can get rid of the monster. Um,
it feels like there can be something done. It was political,
it was crazy. It became a thing in and of itself,
and they didn't know what to do with it. They
didn't know how to get out of it. I don't
think they ever Nobody ever dreamed what this was going

(04:20):
to be. This is Dale Russell. I'm the senior investigative
reporter for Fox five News here in Atlanta. Like many
we've talked to, Dale has followed this case since the beginning.
In the beginning, it was really a list of unsolved murders,
but then the name missing and murdered got attached to it.

(04:42):
They had no evidence linking anything back then, and then
it got into this strange thing. Oh, why is my
child on the list? Why is my child not on
the list? Is the murder of my child not important
if it's not on the list. To their defense, they
didn't really know what they had yet at the time
the list was first put together. I don't think anybody

(05:03):
knew what this was. Some private investigators now working on
the cases don't agree with Lee Brown. They say the
list of murdered and missing children in Atlanta, which now
number seventeen, is too limited. The private detectives want to
know why. They say, any child who has been murdered
should not be excluded from the intensive search now going on.

(05:25):
In their words, whether it's one killer or fifteen, they
should all be caught quickly. Discrepancies in the task Force
list of names formed the basis of the comprehensive book.
The list, the lists, and the viewpoint of its authors
have always been controversial. Ship debt Leader had a treasure

(05:47):
crotal information. If you really want to contrast in what
I just told you, read Chet debt Linger's book. Debt Linger,
he interviewed me in the office. I'm on page one
twenty three that book. I love chat. He would probably
be shocked to hear me say that. I have so
much respect for him. He feels that it wasn't handled correctly.
That's something I agree with. It's funny I've I've talked

(06:09):
to a lot of people who well kind of whisper
that they read it, but don't want to say out
loud that they read or whisper that it's guided them.
We didn't always see eye to eye. He's been critical
of some of the reporting I've done. He had a
voluminous knowledge of this case because he was in early.
I thought he was smart about how he got in

(06:30):
and how he saw it. I think he's dead on
and some of his depictions of the problems with the
police department. Chet always liked to portray it as he
knew better than anybody else. But you know, I thought
his criticisms about the politics of the list and some
of the other things early on in the police department
were fair and valid. I think it's full of what

(06:51):
Chet wanted people to believe. I think Chet just didn't
It wasn't privileged to all the facts. I started reading
and put it down and went in there. I don't like.
I didn't want to didn't want to read the more.
His theory was way out in left field, and he
eventually convinced enough people that he was right and they
used him as their their expert. And he talks about
the politics within the force. I guess I would call

(07:13):
him the ultimate skeptic. The police were going to psychics,
and Chet's like, this is ridiculous. He seems like the
voice of reason to me in a lot of it.
I basically agree with everything he says in the book.
It feels in a certain way like a case file.
It's almost as if people want to use it as

(07:35):
a treasure map, you know what I mean, Like, well,
I don't necessarily adhere to everything that it's promoting, but
I'm going to use this as a launch pad as
a springboard to do further research. Unfortunately, Chet det Linger
and co author Jeff Prue had both passed away. In
lieu of an interview opportunity, We've asked our producer Matt

(07:58):
to quote directly from the book. As Atlanta's mystery deepened,
I learned that it was far worse than our public
officials were telling us. More victims were not part of
the official investigation and body count than were on it.
The list, which consisted only of cases assigned to a
special police task force that had been formed amid community

(08:21):
pressure in July of nineteen eighty, ended with twenty eight
slain victims, plus ten year old Darren Glass missing since
September of nineteen eighty. But that excludes at least sixty
three more unsolved Atlanta area killings of blacks who fit
the arbitrary age, sex, race, and cause of death parameters
that the authorities used for the list. It's important to

(08:44):
keep in mind that all those cases which were not
put on the list, an alarming number to be sure,
don't come close to adding up to all unsolved murders
in the Atlanta area. They merely fit the fluid parameters
of the list, parameters that the authorities themselves established and
changed with no logic. In the early morning hours of June,

(09:04):
the body of ten year old Aaron White was found
underneath this railroad dressle on Moreland Avenue. While Aaron Wish
may seem to fit the pattern, his name was not
initially added to the list. The Cab County investigated, concluding
that the boy's death was accidental. The medical examiner wrote
the boy died from asphyxiation caused by trauma to the

(09:26):
neck area, either from falling or in striking the ground.
Even before the deaths of the young black children were
being connected, the family of Aaron Wish did not believe
that his death was an accident. They say that he
was always afraid of heights, and as you can see
by this rail, a young boy would have to physically
climb on top of the rail to accidentally fall off.

(09:47):
Did you tell place that you didn't think was an accident?
When they came and they took me at the had
told him about it, they saying from what they fo
they noted, he just got open and just slipped off.
What would you like to he's done? Now? Well, what
I would like to see done? It didn't put in
and find out who do you do it? Because I
know my baby didn't do that on his own. The

(10:07):
official ruling of Aaron's death didn't sit well with chet Detlinger,
and he pursued to investigate. I returned to the intersection
of Moreland and Constitution to find the damned railroad trestle.
Lo and behold. We soon found that there was no
railroad trestle for Aaron Wish to fall off. Instead, he
had been found at the base of a highway bridge

(10:28):
which passes over two railroad tracks. The bridge is six
lanes wide. It blends so well into the surrounding terrain
that were it not for the guard rails, which are
almost as high as Aaron Weish was tall, most people
wouldn't notice that they were on a bridge when passing
over it. The bridge has sidewalks and it's perfectly safe
to walk across. There is no way Aaron Wish could
have fallen off that bridge. Jumped or been thrown maybe,

(10:52):
but fall off no way. Private investigators agree that the
case should be reopened. They say the body fits into
a geographic col pattern established with other deaths and disappearances.
His death was from asphyxiation, and he fit the description
of other blackmails who were on the official list, but
Wish never made it. His death was ruled an accident.

(11:13):
The trust aware this happened. Is the boundary line between
the cab County and Atlanta. If Aaron Witch's body had
been found on the other side, just fifty feet away,
Atlanta's task force may have been working on number twelve.
She asserts that this mischaracterization of the bridge on the
official police report had a devastating impact by itself. The

(11:36):
discrepancy in the Eronwisch case was tragic only for his family,
but in the overall panoply of Atlanta's murders, it was catastrophic.
It meant that the police were dealing with an accident,
not a murder. Consequently, there was nothing to investigate. It
means that Aaron Wish was not plugged into the authorities
thinking about the case. What happened in the eron Wisch case,

(11:58):
a medical examiner received the word trestle to mean what
it's supposed to mean, a span without railings and with
open spaces between the railroad ties. As a result, he
ruled a murder an accident. A police officer who didn't
know what a railroad trestle was became the Achilles heel
of a murder investigation that cost more than nine million dollars. Now,

(12:22):
the capolice officials have changed their minds, They think it
was murder and they have reopened the case. The origins
of the list go back to nine to a grassroots
coalition of concerned Atlanta mothers. Mothers in US history have

(12:43):
been at the forefront of a number of movements trained
around protecting children communities the nation. There's a long heritage
of this right of people taking the symbol of motherhood
and attaching that to the kind of activism that everybody

(13:04):
can relate to right, and everybody can get behind, and
everybody can understand in terms of people who will self
asleep put themselves forward to take any risk to protect
their communities. When the mothers organize themselves to come together
and say we've got to do something to stop this,

(13:25):
the first thing that they're actually asking for is just
take it seriously and investigate it. We want our children found,
We want justice for our children that have already been lost. Well,
police check out the similarities in all of these crimes.
The mothers of three of the dead children are warning
other parents to be careful. They have set up the

(13:45):
Committee to Stop Children's Murders. The group is planning a
seminar at the end of the month to teach parents
how to keep their children from becoming the next statistic.
I am so sorry that what happened to my child,
what happened to these other ladies, children happen up. What
I want you to do is to hang in there
and try your best to see to it that it

(14:06):
doesn't happen to yours. Thank you so much. And almost
immediately these mothers come under scrutiny. Are they unwed mothers?
Why is it just mothers and not mothers and fathers.
What does this mean about the dysfunction of their families?
That mothers are stepping forward and all of this kind

(14:29):
of sense that you know, urban women, particularly black urban women,
are matriarchal and represent kind of something that is wrong
and dysfunctional and creeping into the mainstream in terms of
American familihood and American womanhood. Like all of that got
played up. The Muslims will be on the streets keeping

(14:50):
an eye on the children, but they know they can't
do it alone. Tonight, they urged the men in one
housing project at McDaniel and Fulton to start caring about
kids their own and other our people's instead of doing
their own thing. What doesn't say for man to get
out our rusty dusties and come together and begin to
five the problems that affect That's all Some men listened,

(15:12):
most were too busy doing other things. Those who listened
said they hoped more people would get involved, but they're
not confident. I don't know if there's going to do
any good. As a man, I will tell you honestly,
there's a lot of mothers out here. They don't what's
there to be a lot of tune around, and the
people where the mama don't be knowing where they are.

(15:33):
Sometimes I see him take them back up on the
only here. You know what the stake to take them
to their mama, try to find out who. The America
has demonstrated over and over again that the caring for
our children that we profess may not be there. I
contend that it is, but that we're feeling helpless to
make change. We're not helpless, and we will make change,

(15:55):
and a miracle will become a child conscious society. Rather
than being universally kind of seen as these people who
have suffered the greatest loss having to to bury a
child or going to bed each night not knowing where
your child is, they are almost immediately kind of seized

(16:18):
upon by many folks as a symbol of what's wrong
with the American familihood and therefore potentially responsible for whatever
has happened to their children. Last night, members of the
Committee to Stop Children's Murders held a closed door meeting
to decide on a formal reaction to FBI allegations of

(16:38):
some parents responsibility in the murders. Today, victim Curtis Walker's
mother told me such talk was nothing new. She says
police repeatedly accused her of killing her son. Of what
they was trying to say that I had something to
do with. I told there was a damn lapin key
of my child, and they kept saying they're gonna try
to make me say that my child was a three kid,

(17:00):
a hustler, runaway. I told him, get the hell out
of my house and don't come back. Camille Bell, making
the formal statement for We're Committee to Stop Children's Murders,
said the group has sent a letter to FBI Director
Webster saying his remarks were untrue and demanding an apology.
If no arrests are made in the next twenty four hours,
usually after they get a chance to work through that

(17:21):
and find out whether the parents are in fact people
that could have done it or didn't do it, then
either an arrest is made immediately or they go on
to find other suspects. Basically, the general feeling is if
they think I kill my child, tell him to come
get me. Mrs Bell says she has no idea why
the FBI made the statements in the first place, or

(17:43):
why Commissioner Lee Brown did not deny they were true.
I think that it makes them, um, in some ways,
that much more brave to have come out in the
way that they did and insisted, even in the face
of this, over and over and over again, that their

(18:04):
cases were going to get the attention that they deserved,
and that they were going to in some ways kind
of stand at the gates right of their communities and
make sure that people knew that this happened to them,
and people knew that there was still a danger, and
that people did whatever they could to protect themselves even
if they weren't getting all of the official help that

(18:26):
they needed. I think in many ways they could speak
to what was at stake better than anyone, because the
fact that mothers came out in the ways that they
did constantly forced the media and public officials to have
to acknowledge that these victims are children, and so over

(18:49):
and over and over again saying, um, you know, my
child was innocent, and being very specific about that, and
pulling out photographs of their children and person analizing these stories,
talking about the things that their children liked to do,
talking about the ways that their children, even when they
were out and about, you know, weren't quote street hustlers,

(19:11):
but we're kids who were trying to make extra money,
bagging groceries so that they could help their families, or
trying to run errands for neighbors, UM, to be helpful
in the community. Well loved UM and and even if
not well loved UM children in their schools where they
were just in the third grade, just in the fourth grade,

(19:33):
just in the fifth grade. It's some mothers who keep
that front and center and try really hard not to
allow folks to depersonalize this. And so I think that
the mothers have to be credited with keeping the memories
of their children alive in that way. Interestingly and ironically,

(19:53):
I think that as a consequence, possibly um of the
ways in which they revealified, in the ways in which
the case was so sensationalized, a lot of the mothers
also chose at a certain point to retreat and and
really became fairly adamant that they didn't want to be harassed,

(20:14):
they didn't want to be bothered, not bothered about their memories,
but that it was continually traumatic. I think it's really
important to recognize that because a lot of folks were
earning their livings on the backs of these children and
on their families trauma. In the last year, eight Atlanta

(20:41):
youngsters have been reported missing. The parents of some of
these children have complained that police aren't doing enough, partly
because of these complaints, but mostly just to try and
get to the bottom of all this, the special Task
Force was created one sergeant and four investigators. As far
as our investigations are concerned, it will allow us the
time to go back and type any loose ends that

(21:03):
needs to be tied up in the course of all
of the investigations. But most of all, it would benefit
us by allowing him full time without interruption. So now
we have two groups of investigators looking into these cases,
one from inside Atlanta Police headquarters and another made up
of former ap D officers who are now private detectives.
Commissioner Brown says he welcomes any help he can get

(21:26):
in this matter as long as the private detectives remember
where their authority stops. The ten murders and kidnappings involving
missing children have become priority number one at a p D.
The task force assigned to investigate the cases has been
doubled in size to ten. The FBI has been asked
to assign two of its agents to assist in the investigation.

(21:46):
Governor Busby will be asked to loan Atlanta Police four
agents from the GBI. The state will also be asked
to provide money to pay for extra police over time
and other expenses. The Atlanta Office of the FBI has
pitched into help in a peripheral way. They've already made
available their laboratory resources, their behavioral sciences unit at Chronical
Virginia Technical Assistance. They've flown in people to be of

(22:08):
assistance to us, So we appreciative that who would also
Our request right now is that they assign agents to
be a part of the task force. And that's where
the problem comes in. The FBI says, this is a
local case, and no matter how horrible it is, Congress
doesn't allow the FBI to get involved in local cases.
What Atlanta really wanted was money to spend the way

(22:30):
of thought necessary on the investigation, but Ronald Reagan didn't
go quite that far. Instead of a blank check, he
has offered other assistance technical help through three agencies, the FBI,
the Justice Department, and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Already,
the FBI has more than twenty six agents working on
the cases. Some days all are used, while on other

(22:52):
days some agents said idle. Bureau officials in Washington now
say it is very unlikely any more agents or equipment
will be sent to a line of for the investigation.
Commissioner Brown things that Lanta's little Black children's rights have
been violated, and he thinks they deserve help from the
federal government. When I look at the media coverage, particularly

(23:15):
when I look at it as a researcher, I am
immediately struck by the lack of empathy that seems to
be extended towards these children's survivors, people who have lost
a lot um more than we can't imagine. It seems
like folks are looking for an opening for a story

(23:39):
to be like, well, this kid, you know, was in
foster care and that was probably because the mother blah
blah blah blah, like real tangents that don't really have
much of anything, if anything at all, to do with
the fact that the child is missing or murder and
what's interesting is you don't see a balance in that,
So you don't see a lot of conversation like this

(24:01):
kid comes from this home and these parents are really
grieving and the parents told them to be really careful.
There seems like there's this hyper interest and focusing on
kind of parental lapses, and it's really unclear to me why,
except for the fact that it's scintillating. It's kind of stintillating.
It doesn't seem to serve any kind of investigative purpose.

(24:23):
It certainly doesn't clarify anything um in most instances about
what happened to these children. There's so much to be
dismayed by when you're thinking about this, But there's anything
that upsets me more than anything else. It for me
is a sense of injustice about the ways that these
children are characterized in their death and their tragic, tragic deaths.

(24:50):
I mean, the worst imaginable kind of victimization. When a
person's life is taken from them and they are characterized
in these ways that would suggest, even for adults, that
they are unworthy of attention and sympathy and care and

(25:16):
any further effort. So these kids are, you know, often
referred to as street kids and hustlers. Rather than talking
about a child who has run away from home. Several
times they talk about them as a runaway. There is
so much codified language that suggests that these kids are
throwaways anyway. That is deeply troubling, and that enables people

(25:39):
to distance themselves from the reality of them as innocence.
The question is is Patrick Rogers a runaway or has
he been harmed? His family thinks the worst, claiming he
would never lee without telling his mother. But Rogers has

(26:02):
been in trouble with the law before, and some investigators
think the teenager has run away this time and because
of news reports, is afraid to come home. The Missing
Person's Bureau is checking that, and until the report is
either confirmed are proven false, the case will remain with
that department and not be transferred to the task force.

(26:22):
Patrick Rogers, the authorities said, was a runaway, so what
they had said the same about other victims before, and
they would say it again. I always thought runaways were
missing children, But then I always thought that a murdered
child was a murdered child. Not so if you follow
the nonsensical media reports. In Atlanta, we were told again
that Sixteen year old Patrick Rogers, who had been missing

(26:44):
for three days short of one month and found murdered,
is not one of Atlanta's missing or murdered children. Sixteen
year old Patrick Rogers was last seen alive on November tenth,
when he left his apartment at the Henry Thomas Housing
Project to walk his little brother to the bus stop.
Police did not believe Roger's disappearance had anything to do

(27:06):
with the fifteen Atlanta missing and murdered children. Then, on Sunday,
December seven, the body of a black teenager was dragged
out of the Chattahoochee River near Pacis Ferry Road in
Cobb County. Company still aren't sure how Patrick died or
who may have killed him, but considering his burglary record,
they are investigating to see if there were any burglaries

(27:27):
in the Pacis Ferry area around the time Patrick disappeared.
Patrick's brother thinks that's ridiculous, just faith to that note
that he was killed. Ain't nobody no, ain't nobody gones
go away out and called counts bishop down, know their way,
no way, not to be burglized, burglize. Mrs Rogers beliefs

(27:50):
her son was murdered by someone he knew. She's always
thought that I told him even when he was How
did you know he was doing because I know he
had him in Did he'd got in touch with me?

(28:10):
I know he would. Ever since Patrick vanished that November day,
his family believed their boy was in trouble. A black
fifteen year old male who lived in the same area
where three other children had disappeared. They were later found
murdered and added to the task Force list, but he
wasn't not for two months. Even though he did fit
into the pattern well. The theory that he was a

(28:30):
runaway disappeared as quickly as Rogers did when his body
was found a month later. His case is very similar
to Aaron Weisch's, who remained off the list for nine
months until last week. His death was ruled accidental. In
that case, however, the CAB officials now say new evidence
could point to foul play. Pat Man's case obviously was

(28:53):
a turning point in the Atlanta murders, but police missed
the turn and went off on a tangent. The Task
Force wouldn't investigate Patrick's death because Public Safety Commissioner Lee
Brown steadfastly refused to add him to the list. Authorities
said that pat Man was too old. The list at
the time embraced victims aged seven to fifteen. But I

(29:17):
don't like the Wish case in the Camp County. Cobb
County officials admit they don't have enough evidence to like
the Rogers case. Would the others? Nor do they have
enough evidence so we even say that Rogers was murdered.
All they do have are a bunch of dead ends.
Patrick Rogers, like Aaron Weish, was eventually added to the list,
But what if he had been added earlier. At Patrick

(29:39):
Rogers home today, his family took his addition to the
list without much emotion. Stevie Rogers, Patrick's older sister, had
just heard the news. Her mother, she said, was at
the Task Force offices, but she knew what Mrs Rogers
would say. I want added to the test was because
of the Fountain Cobb County. Indeed, they was working on

(29:59):
it case. That's why they had add him to the
test book. The only reason why, the only thing he
had to come with other kids was his way and
his race and where he comes from and all that
he from a low income family. Say this you no
reason for them and to test when you heard that,
what did you and your mom think? Same? Thankful front

(30:23):
of cool Stevie told me Patrick had been friends with
several other of the murdered children, and pointed out that
Aaron White, victim number seven, only lived three hundred yards away.

(30:43):
So one of the complexities of talking about the neighborhoods
that the kids were from is that it brings us
right back to this question of the list. You have
to think about the children who were counted, and potentially
the fact that their children who were not counted. I
think that when you look at the character of the
name borhoods that the kids are from, then you can
see how other neighborhoods might fit, even though they weren't

(31:08):
named on the officialist. Because you're talking about neighborhoods where
people don't necessarily have a lot of economic resources. You're
often talking about neighborhoods that, as a consequence of that,
have a number of abandoned, neglected homes, places where you
might have like single realm occupancy in homes or what

(31:30):
we call boarding houses, like all of these things, right,
so that you have these close knit communities, but you
also have a lot of people coming and going and
not a lot of sense of control over people coming
and going. And then you also have a lot of
kids who are coming from housing projects and subsidize housing.
The easy thing to see in that is that people

(31:51):
do have a lot of economic resources, right, that a
lot of these kids were coming from homes that were impoverished.
What that also can mean is that these kids, a
lot of them are coming from homes that have a
lot of state intervention already, and sometimes a lot of
particularly fraught state intervention. Right, So you might have more
police patrols and you have more crime generally speaking in

(32:13):
a sense of vulnerability around that. Generally you have a
lot more people who have relationships with state apparatus, like
you've got a social worker, um because you're receiving assistance,
or because a person is in foster care. So all
of that stuff is already in place. So you have
these relationships sometimes between mothers who became activists, sometimes with

(32:37):
other people who are still close in but you know,
maybe not in the nuclear family system where you've just
got all kinds of difficult fraud relationships and also vulnerability, right,
Like if you come out and protest against this, or
you make a big stink about they're gonna lose their benefits,
You're gonna lose your housing. What does all of that mean?

(32:59):
You also, though, have a space where you can be
subject to state intervention and mandates much more so. For example,
when a curfew was ultimately instituted, you had a lot
of patrol around city housing projects to ensure that people
were in by the curfew, whereas you didn't have the

(33:22):
same level of patrol around that in other neighborhoods that
were more affluent. And while it could be interpreted that
they were getting extra protection, what often happened, and the
way that it was even framed was that it was
punitive for parents. Right, So these kids get picked up. First,
they're taking home, and then if nobody's home for whatever reason,

(33:44):
maybe people are working the late shift because people who
have hourly jobs off and art working at bankers hours.
Then you get taken to a place I can feel
very much like a detention center, and people get cited
and people get fined, and so there's all of this
stuff that's happened in as a consequence to some extent
of where people live, you also have these really high

(34:06):
concentrations of poverty in certain pockets at that time and
to this day, and you also have a lot fewer
options for safe and supervised recreation, or you find kids
going pretty significant distances to get to safe and supervised recreation.

(34:28):
You have the sense that there's a curfew and that
people should be in but some of those things are
assuming that people have resources that they don't have. What
it seems like is happening is that you know, families
are actually encouraging their kids to go somewhere safe, but
the senses that that somewhere safe to go might not

(34:49):
be inside your home. So it's not as simple as
just thinking, oh, we'll just go home and close the
door and then you'll be safe. But maybe I need
to try to figure out how to get my kid
someplace it's a couple of miles away to be inside
and safe and also have me be compliant with the

(35:09):
law at this point in time. So this is a
lot more complicated than it seems. There was one place
that I think is gone now as a housing project,
that what they called the back patrol, and these were
adults that walked around with baseball bats and looking for
suspicious characters or protecting the community whatever they call them.
The back patrol today. Residents of the project said they

(35:35):
will police their own community. You've got to drop out
keys here in community that can be their own patrol
and can't get nothing out of the city Council of
all the bills, men who were fit to all the
large communs and the people who but unlike the Guardian
Angels who do not carry weapons, the tech Wood group
will be armed. Teenagers over sixteen were carried baseball bats

(36:03):
and adults over twenty one will carry guns. The Tenants
Association is taking the law into its own hands. They
claimed police patrols in the neighborhood are not enough. They
say budget cuts by the Atlanta Housing Authority have closed
down recreation centers for children at a time when you're
needed most. They don't want to spend the summer keeping
their children indoors. So beginning next weekend, the patrols planned

(36:24):
to be on the street. And they say anyone who
looks like a stranger is fair game in the outside.
It comes in here to try melissa, kids or anything.
They are being known. They go weapon out and all
the comma do the same thing. One organizer was asked

(36:45):
what would be done to prevent volunteers from shooting an
innocent person by mistake. His answer, no force of arms
is too large when it comes to protecting our children.
There was a lot of press attention Checkood Homes about
the bat patrol. They're all gonna arm ourselves with bats.
Nobody's coming into Tech with homes and they walked around
with the baseball bats to protect the kids. I guess

(37:08):
where Bubba Duncan lived, the next murder victim. After the
bat patrol hit the press Tech with Holmes, things are
tense tonight in Tech with Homes. People are angry. Earlier
it had been reported that Bubba Duncan was a member
of the Tech What bat Patrol. He was not, And
now that he's been taken and killed, some people in
Tech what are saying The bat patrol was just a

(37:29):
challenge to the killer. You can build a fence, one
man said, and this maniac will just climb over it
and get you. The bat patrol is not getting a
lot of support in Techwood tonight. I be they shouldn't
have said no bad patrol. You know that that man
was whoever it is. You know they're showing us that
down him came in about no bats and Nathan else,
you know. I also talked with Eddie Duncan Senor. He

(37:51):
said his son was strong and could not have been
taken by a killer without a struggle. He said it
had to be someone he knew, I could trusted. I
don't know what's happening. All I know is they call
him Tom and they were found him, which she did.
Attended Abou two weeks ago that he was missing and
she couldn't get no, no help from the police department.
Bubba was older, he was twenty one, and it threw

(38:12):
everybody through us in the press. If you go back
and look at the articles, you'll see they were asked.
They're asking questions, Well, he's he's twenty one, he's an adult.
These are child murders. These are kid murders. How do
you have an adult? And so that the police responded, well,
he was slow mentally, he was childlike. I remember that

(38:33):
quote from Lee P. Brown. He was childlike. So it's
like the police had to explain to everyone how you
could have a twenty one year old in this string
of child murders, child and teenagers, young adults. And from
that point on, this when they started getting older and

(38:54):
the child murders I believe morphed at the Bubba Duncan
case into older twenty year old victims. Remember called where
we seeing a typically Lee Brown was vague and rambling
when questioned by reporters on April eighth about the finding
of one Sleen adult Bubba Duncan, aged one, and about

(39:15):
a second adult still missing, Larry Rogers, aged twenty. We
know that the two young men in question are in
context of age small in stature, Brown said at a
news conference. Age is not a determining factor how he
changed his tune since pat Man had been found. There
is some speculation that one of the reasons the killer

(39:37):
or killers has or have gone to the young adults,
who by the way physically still resemble teenagers, is that
the net is so tight on children, with families now
being far more involved than before, far closer watch on
our children, and obviously is more difficult now to steal

(39:59):
away With a youngster like victim Eddie Duncan, Rogers looks
much younger and is moderately mentally handicapped. Officials say Larry
looks and behaves like an adolescent. Rogers looks younger and
with a mental handicap acts younger he fits the pattern.

(40:24):
The list grew to include thirty victims between the ages
of seven and twenty eight. The final and oldest victim
was added not by the Task Force, but by the
prosecution during trial, Even before a jury ruled, Rumors alluded
to the disbanding of the task force. Privately, many police
officers think it's time to disband the task Force, but
they say the top grass hesitates for two reasons. It

(40:48):
simply wouldn't look good to the public, and especially to
the victims mother's Curtis Walker's Mothers cases. Public Safety Commissioner
Lee Brown feels that pressure from many of the families.
He always reminds the news media that there are still

(41:08):
twenty six open cases. We shall continue that ongoing investigation
until we're able to charge someone for the cases for
which we have not charged someone at this time. Do
you mean that the task force will stay intact until
you have somebody charged in all twenty six cases. That
is absolutely correct. Brown then instantly realized the bond he

(41:33):
had put himself in. It's common knowledge that many of
the cases may never be solved, so Brown quickly backtracked
and in essence retracted his statement itself. We will assess
what we do on a daily basis, and if any
point in time we need to increase our decrease, will
do what the situation dictates. High ranking officials inside the

(41:54):
police department tell me the Task Force has become a
political issue, so no more office. This will be removed
at least before the mayor's election, and after that well,
sources inside the task force tell me that will depend
on whether Wayne Williams is convicted. If he is not,
this could go on indefinitely. Two days after Wayne Williams

(42:15):
was found guilty of two of Atlanta's murders, the special
task Force created to solve the string of young black
killings is about to be closed, according to reports here.
I can understand that alloying the public's fees about such
a horrible situation as good when everyone wants to get
all the life. District Attorney Louis Layton was asked whether
investigators were closing the books on twenty four more Task

(42:38):
Force cases because of links to Wayne Williams. I believe not.
There would be some meetings in the next few days
about certain cases, but I don't believe they would be
that figure. With twenty three of the Atlanta murders blamed
on Wayne Williams leave. Brown announced Monday the Missing and
Murdered Children's task Force was closing for good next Monday,

(43:01):
but then church leaders complained to Mary Young that the
closing was premature and the heat was on Brown. Today,
he came back to the media to announce the old
task force that investigated child murders was still officially closed,
and he still maintains Wayne Williams killed twenty three of
those victims. But Brown says a new task force has

(43:23):
been created to take its place. It will be made
up of twenty five Atlanta policemen no other jurisdictions. They
will team with remnants of the old task force to
investigate all Atlanta homicides. It will be called the Homicide
Task Force. One of the things that was brought to
our attention by the the ministers had met with us

(43:45):
people who represent even just through their congregation, if not
through the fact that they're leaders in our community, is
the fact that community has an attachment to the task force,
and we had seven cases which were not closed, and
as a result, we want to continue the effort and

(44:07):
be responsive to the community. Commissioner, haven't you just renamed
the homicide Department to appease the parents. Well, the answer
to that is no, we have never made any decisions
for purposes of appeasement. But as the commissioner was continually
drilled about the name change, even he found some humor

(44:28):
in it. Do you understand, of course it occurred to us.
They closed the cases, which was horrible for the families.

(44:49):
There was no closure. The list existed. After he was convicted.
The list disappeared. There's thirty victims, two of them got
a trial, whether or not you agree with the conclusion
of the trial. There's twenty eight then left who had

(45:12):
no trial, and they were just closed after the conviction.
So that doesn't seem right to me. That doesn't seem
like any real ending. It feels very incomplete, just pitiful.
That's a bad thing to do if it was one
of my kids that died. I don't want to know

(45:34):
what they all happen and who. They need to know
an answer, They need to know why, or they need
to know what some answer m After Williams is arrested,

(46:04):
the mothers are still very focused often and saying I
want justice for my child. My child matters more than
closing this case matters more than the implications of this
open case for the city matter. Remember them my child
was somebody who deserved to live a full life or

(46:38):
archive clips or courtesy of WSBTV. Be sure to tune
in next Friday for episode nine. There's two episodes left.
See you then? Why do you do it? Yeah? Um, well,
I don't know. I guess it's like anything else. You
get involved, you can't let it go. And the more
involved I get, the more involved I want to get

(47:00):
want to catch the guy. Uh. Primarily I want to
stop the killing. I want to see that. I want
to see the kids killing. Stop h