The Vault [bonus]

The team behind Atlanta Monster digs deeper into untold stories

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Atlanta child murders is one of the largest and
most complex cases in US history. As a team, we've
spent months taking through police records, court documents, and media archives.
Through all this research, we've come across a lot of
unusual stories that don't seem to be widely remembered today.
With this episode, we're going to dig deeper into some
of these stories. This is the vaults where we're going

(00:24):
down to the sub basement identity stories faults. After driving

(00:52):
around Atlanta with Jason and the team locating some of
the prevalent sites in this case, I had many more
questions about the patterns of these murders, including if a
pattern even existed at all. It was eerie just how
close by some of these murders were to each other,
and how the patterns seem to change once the body
started showing up in the rivers. Is it even possible
they're all connected or there are different patterns at play

(01:14):
here In this episode will be mentioning a book called
The List by Chet debt Linger and Jeff Pruge. Debt
Linger was a law enforcement officer, independent investigator, and an author,
and Pruge was a writer for the l A. Times.
Though now out of print, the book remains one of
the most comprehensive and critical literary sources on the Atlanta
child murders. During the investigation, Chet debt Linger focus on

(01:38):
geography as part of his independent investigation. Seven former Atlanta
policemen give about twenty hours each week to this case.
One of them is Chet that Linger. His strength is
not an investigation, but it is in analysis. He has
compiled a map with twenty missing and murdered Atlanta children.
He counts some Atlanta police do not count because they
fit the pattern. Because if you travel that Linger's route,

(02:00):
you can see most of the places where kids were
snatched or last seen or dumped without ever leaving your car.
He even believes a map he has drawn would show
where the killer lives and works and plays. Det Linger
believes the killer lives somewhere near Memorial Drive and Second Avenue,
may hang around near Hollywood and High Tower, and work
somewhere between red Wine Road and Stewart Avenue. I'd have

(02:22):
someone at this point, someone at this point, someone at
this point and at this point, and I'd be looking
for the same car or the same individual would come
by that place, and I keep him there and I'd
find out, do we have a person passing these points?
I mean, we've already got penty kids there, and I
would find out. And if it showed up, if the
same person showed up more than the two or three

(02:42):
times at the different points on on this route, I
think I have suspect. Furthermore, det Linger says the Official
Task Force can no longer deny some of these cases
are related. I think maybe the kids aren't connected, but
the geography shure connected because this child came from here
to hear this child came from here to here, and

(03:04):
this child came from here to here. Now, the only
other explanation would be if this guy, if there are
three different killers, they just happened to wander out and
find the same spot to leave a body in those
those locations are connected. I've asked members of the unofficial
Task Force why none of their advice is sought by
Atlanta police. They all answered the same thing. Politics, petty politics, chat.

(03:26):
Detlinger is ready to share everything he knows if anybody
wants it. We decided to talk to Dr Maurice Gobwin,
a private investigator and geographical profiler who worked with me
on my first podcast Up and Vanished for Atlanta Monster.
We asked them to assemble a heat map of all
the missing and murder cases to see what he could

(03:46):
tell us about the geographical patterns. There's two types of
serial killers. Predominantly, you have a commuter, and a commuter
commutes from the suburban area into a central business district
and kills, or he commutes from the inner city out

(04:09):
and kills and then goes back home. Or the marauder,
and that's just somebody that's just scattered about running around here.
They're just picking them up, you know, in any way
they can, and killing them and dumping them. That's two
comparable terms typologies that you want to call them. The

(04:32):
first one is called a viper, and the second one
is called cobra, obviously based on the behavior of the snakes,
the way in which they behave. In my analysis of
aerial killers, I found that six were vipers. They lay low,

(04:52):
They target victims near familiar areas, such as home, at work.
They dispose of earlier victims at considerable distances from home,
and later victims in or near their comfort zone. That
comfort zone provides them. They believe a psychological blanket of

(05:13):
protection thirty seven percent with Cobra's huge difference. There huge difference.
This relates also to a criminal behavior. This type of predator,
to Cobra, is what we call a hunter. They target
victims outside of their comfort zone so they're not too
worried about that blanket of protection. They dispose of each

(05:37):
victim at a considerable distance from home, and later victims
in or near their comfort zones. I have a theory
called the wedge theory, and this is based on academic
research on sold cases. The wedge theory the foundation of
it is this that ever criminal retains some kind of
environmental image of his or her city. Criminals develop mental

(06:02):
maps of their environments in the same way non criminals do.
For example, you go to the grocery store, you go,
you take a right out of your driveway, and you
go to the shopping center a particular way. Rarely do
you deviate from those things. Most people do not deviate.
And then finally, criminals use their mental maps thereafter as

(06:27):
a spatial frame of reference. That's the foundation of wedge theory,
sort of shaped like a windshield wiper effect. The home
base would typically be near this short point of the
wedge and the crimes will be dispersed outward towards the

(06:47):
wide part of the wedge. In the Atlanta child murder case,
I had geographical coordinates, A plotted the thirty three locations
dealing with these murders. I plotted the body dump sites,
and I plotted the abduction sites, and which is rare

(07:10):
to have those abduction sites because a lot of cases
don't have them. And then I entered those geographical coordinates
into my predator system and ran it, and what I
got was a forty three to forty four probability that
the fender lives between Highway one thirty and UH Interstate

(07:36):
twenty nine. The probability percentage is low normally I'm getting
on other cases, I get at least fifty here four.
I think there's something else going on that we're attributing
murders to an individual here that they're not responsible for,

(07:59):
and that may be a reason why of the low
probability plot. For geographically, there's no pattern between the child
murders and the adult murders. It's very very rare that
a serial killer will kill children and adults. I would

(08:21):
separate uh Eddie Duncan, Larry Rogers, aged Michael McIntosh agree,
Jimmy ray Payne, a John Porter, Nathaniel cater Age. Those
victims fall into the wedge with Wayne wims Is home

(08:42):
down at the sharp point of the wedge. I would
separate those victims from the rest of the child murders.
We then asked Maurice about Daring Glass, the one victim
on the list that has never been found. Darren is
an orphan and has a history of running away. He's

(09:04):
done it twice before and told some playmates last Sunday
that he was going to do it again. Are you
worried about him? She is, but you just think he's
going to eventually come to show up. He has he
and you don't think he's been kidnapped. I shall know
you live on alone, on his own, because he won't leave.

(09:24):
And today the searchers took the form of a canvas
here in Darren's old neighborhood, where searchers went door to
door seeking out Darren's old friends who might be able
to offer some new information. We're trying to find any
information concerning his whereabouts, the way he possibly may be.
At this point, we feel that it's still very possible
that Darren Glass could be alive, safe and well at
some place. So far police have no leads at all,

(09:47):
but they say this case, like the others, is now
top priority. The bill marks the seventh month that we've
been conducting these searches, and I think it has taken
a lot of wear and tear out of a lot
of people. They combed the woods, sifted through debris, and
bagged what they thought might be evidence in the mounting
number of child murders haunting Atlanta. But slowly, as the

(10:07):
searchers found nothing, interest dwindled and the throng thin to
just a few. Now the search is at an end. Well.
To try to find the body of victim Darren Glass,
normally you would have to have is called reverse geographical
profile and meaning that we try to use the offender's

(10:30):
home base along with the rest of the victims and
try to get a pinpoint area that a victim is
likely to be at. In this case, I would pull
anything to do with when was out of that and
I would do the analysis with the rest of the victims.
And this will be the first time ever that you

(10:50):
will be able to use analysis of remaining victims to
try to find the one victim that's never been found before.
The case of Darren Glass is such an outlier from
what geographical profilers like Maurice tell us, it's not impossible
for him to still be found if he is indeed

(11:12):
a victim. In the summer of eighty one, after Wayne
Williams was arrested, a South Carolina artist came to Atlanta
to paint murals of the child victims on neighborhood housing
in the city, but it didn't get the reaction you
would expect. Over the weekend, bigger than life paintings of

(11:34):
the children started popping up around Atlanta, Latonia Wilson's picture
on a Wallet, Bowen Holmes, Angeline Ears, and McDaniel Glen,
Eric Middlebrook at Henry Thomas Housing Project. The paintings were
done in two days by Columbia South Carolina artist Ralph Waldrop.
He paid for the project himself as a gift and
remembrance of Atlanta's twenty eight tragedies. City officials are so

(11:57):
impressed with Waldrop's generosity they plan to make him an
honorary citizen of Atlanta tomorrow at a special ceremony. But
not everyone is happy with Waldrop's artistic contribution. Sixteen year
old Patrick Rogers mother says she and the other mothers
are furious that no one asked their permission. If Manages did,
he did have any reason to do it for est

(12:18):
parents gonna be all right. I don't think it's right.
It make the parents walk out him and when I
walk up to the pup, do something to me. Ms
Rogers says. Camille Bell drove through McDaniel Glenn yesterday and
was stunned to see her son Yusuf's picture in front
of her. They ain't nothing but memory. The mother's planned
to meet in the morning to decide what they should do,

(12:40):
but it appears what seems to be and out of
town or his act of kindness has turned sour. I
want it down. I want it down me, I want
it down. October nineteen eighty, during the height of the

(13:01):
hysteria around the Atlanta child murders, an explosion devastated a
local daycare center, killing four young black children. The explosion
happened at a time when no suspect was in custody
and rumors circulated constantly about KKK connections. At ten twenty
two on October, an explosion with a force of seventy
five sticks of dynamite ripped the roof off the daycare center.

(13:25):
Four three year old boys were killed instantly, so was
their teacher. Six others were injured. The black community was panicked.
Nine children in Atlanta were already murdered. Now this, they
insisted the explosion was a bomb, some sort of sick
conspiracy against blacks. Mayor Jackson and others tried to convince

(13:45):
them otherwise. The biggest rumor running through this crowd was
that the explosion was caused by a bomb. Tension began
to build because these people wanted to needed to blame
something for the tragedy they had just witnessed. Need your
place down? Why not live? Why the lack dot down?

(14:06):
Well in councilman? Dog time? What indail house him? That's
why we black leaders saw how dangerous the situation could get.
So Mayor Jackson and others trying to reassure the crowd,
what I want you to know that we will not
rest until we turn every stone, until we look under

(14:31):
every leaf, until we explode, exploit every possible lead, until
we follow every possible possibility. We will do everything in
our power to find the reason for this which at
this point appears to be an accident. However, the crowd

(14:55):
here did not believe much of what Mayor Jackson had said.
They still believed in the rumors that this was a
deliberate act of violence, and this didn't help. The rumor
of a bomb threat sent emergency teams into the elementary
school across the street from the daycare center. They ordered
everyone out and were tight lipped about why what are

(15:16):
you Why are you evacuating the school. Let's let's get
back when I ask you kindly to get back, okay,
and asked to get that let's go. There's a possibility
of a bomb. Nothing happened, either in the school or
in the crowds outside, although there were a lot of
passionate cries for someone to do something about anything. Could

(15:39):
you say they did know something encouraging relate took to
the future protection at you. I think that's all they
need something increasing protection for the area. We will do
everything in our power to increase protection for the area. Later,
a police investing Asian showed the explosion was an accident.

(16:03):
A poorly maintained boiler blew up. As tragic as it was,
it was an accident. Been bowling and from stuff they
don't want you to know. Sat down with us again
to go over the details of this tragic episode and
the subsequent conspiracy theories at spurred. Let's set the stage.
It's ten twenty two October at a place called the

(16:27):
Bowing Homes Daycare Center when an explosion occurs, and at
first people have no idea what's going on. From miles away,
you can see a plume of white smoke. People run
from adjacent streets. You know, especially think about the parents
who were there, who knew roughly where that building was. Right,

(16:50):
hundreds of people are mobbing the area, teachers running out
with their children. We would later learn that five people
passed away in that explosion. Uh. There were four children,
Andre Stanford, Ronald Brown, Kelvin Snelson, and Terence Bradley. These
boys were all around three years old. In addition, a

(17:10):
teacher named Nell Robinson also passed away, and UH six
to seven people were injured. The public immediately thought there
was a bomb, and in the archival footage you can
hear people in the back saying it was a bomb.
Go downtown. It was the clan. The clan did it.

(17:31):
This panic was compounded by the fact that the elementary
school across the street was also evacuated, and law enforcement
refused to say why. And in the absence of transparency,
of course, speculation grows. And so all it takes is
one person to say I heard that that there's a

(17:52):
bomb in there, right, And later officials would say that
the explosion was caused by a boiler, right, or what's
called the water to boiler, and that when this explosion occurred,
it occurred with such force that it did prove fatal,
but it did not prove some sort of premeditated action.

(18:16):
Most importantly, no one you know, snuck in and explosive.
Nobody snuck in under the cover of night and tinkered
with this boiler. But given the cultural ecology of the time,
it's completely understandable why people would think this, you know,
especially if we're looking at a community where as we
have already established distrust of authority figures is at a high,

(18:39):
a completely understandable and rational high. We also have to
consider what Chet, debt Linger, and Jet Pruved point out
in their book The List. This occurred against a backdrop
of brutal murders, horrific crimes that also appeared to target
minority popular nations. In the United States, there was the

(19:02):
shooting of the National Urban League President Vernon Jordan's in
Fort Wayne, Indiana, and in Buffalo, New York. Black cab
drivers were being murdered with their hearts literally cut out
of their chest. As you can hear on the footage show.
When you hear the explosions, the panic, the chaos, and
you already know that someone is targeting children, specific types

(19:24):
of children right, certain age range, right, and they may
even be your children. You feel powerless right in you
cling to a nature of explanation, right as that Luner
points out here when he was looking at the layout,
the mapping of this area Bowen Holmes fits into the

(19:47):
geographical region that he was looking at. He notes that
a boy who lived on the same street as the
daycare center later disappeared in a way that might have
and connected, in his opinion, with the murders. And additionally,
when a tragedy like this occurs, we hear rumors being

(20:09):
treated with the same regard as a fact. And in
den Lajers case is very by the book author an investigator.
In his case, he begins to notice things that trouble him.
One of the points was made by John Lewis, who
was then president of the Atlanta Cab Drivers Association. He

(20:30):
said he was appointed to a committee to calm public
alarm after this boiler explosion because people meet when the
explosion occurs, law enforcement pushes them away, gives medical care
to people, finds the deceased victims rent, and then later
that night there's another public gathering where people are saying,
why isn't anyone doing anything about this? So, in a

(20:53):
very real sense, at this time and place in history,
it feels as if there is not simply one Atlanta.
There's more than one Atlanta right there are at least two.
And the people who are encountering on top of this
murder epidemic explosions in places that are supposed to be

(21:14):
the safest place your kid could be. It feels like
there's another Atlanta in Atlanta that has safety for its citizens,
in Atlanta that has non antagonistic law enforcement in Atlanta
where people can walk at night without fear of a crime.
And this feels like a very different Atlanta when you're
around exploding daycares. So immediately after getting news of this explosion,

(21:40):
the mayor travels there in person, seeking to quell these fears.
This is not a bomb. Authorities assure me that while
a tragedy, this is entirely traceable to this water tube boiler.
The crowd is not buying this, and you can hear,
you can hear the fundamental anger, right, And there's always

(22:03):
a sense of betrayal that occurs in a tragedy. Right,
There's a part of there's a part of our our minds,
we could even say our souls that recognizes this is
not how things are supposed to be. And you are
the mayor, this is your job fix this, Explain this,
and if we don't believe the official explanation, then give

(22:27):
us what we see as the real one. There's a
book called Outbreak, The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior by
two authors, Hillary Evans and Robert Bartholomew. And this is
a reference work that compiles different examples of what we
would see as public panics. In the case of these
incidencies that the journalists have compiled, we see several commonalities,

(22:52):
and the number one commonality, regardless of anything else, right,
regardless of time space, socioeconomic actors, the number one problem
is the perceived lack of transparency. This becomes doubly frustrating
and difficult when there is an authority figure. The people

(23:13):
in this neighborhood played a large role in this mayor's election.
The mayor, regardless of how well perceived he might be,
is still functioning as an authority figure in a time
when authority figures are considered inherently untrustworthy. So when the
dust has settled and all of the immediate questions and

(23:36):
answers that can exist do exist, one of the more
terrifying things that occurs is you begin to wonder is
it just this one daycare center? If it's a boiler,
is it just this one boiler? How many other daycare
centers are here? How many other playgrounds, for example, haven't
been repaired in what decades? Where is the sewage line

(24:01):
that was supposed to be here? Why doesn't this infrastructure exist?
An interesting note that some people may recall, also in
Atlanta history, was the collapse of an interstate piece of
an interstate called I five. When this collapse, there was
an official story about a fire that was set by

(24:21):
people who didn't mean to burn down this concrete bridge.
But again, this becomes symbolic of a larger context. Right,
a lack of a lack of care for public goods. Right,
it's not Maybe it's not just this one day care.
Maybe it's every daycare. Maybe it's every road in this
zip code. And we have to remember that Atlanta has

(24:45):
a provable and undeniable past of using local districting, even
unto the level of changing street names to denote the
two or more different Atlantis that exist culturally. And for
some people, I five falling was another example of this,

(25:07):
and even today you will find people who tell you
that the official story makes no sense. So it's tempting
for us as people to look at history as something
that is disconnected. Happened. Once we're done with it, we
can read about it if we want to. That could

(25:27):
not be further from the truth. History never leaves us,
and in the case of the Bowenhaus daycare Center, this
story continues. Yes, this tragedy occurs soon after the community
comes together and they rebuild the daycare center. It was
one of the most horrible tragedies Atlanta had ever seen,

(25:50):
but in time, attention turned towards making sure a tragedy
like this could never happen again. The state legislature past
new laws tightening up the requirements for boiler operation and
inspect and in May, the rebuilt Bowen Homes Community Center
was dedicated, a new and more modern boiler now in place.
There was optimism all around. So are these long standing

(26:11):
infrastructure problems actually fixed? The answer is no, because in
two thousand and seven, the furnace explodes again, and ultimately
in two thousand nine. In June of two thousand nine,
the daycare center itself is demolished. The Atlanta Housing Authority

(26:34):
took a major step today to become the first major
city to tear down its public housing projects. Work has
officially started on tearing down Bowen Holmes. This was a
powerful and emotional day for many of the residents who
once lived in the bow and Holmes public housing complex.
But with that comes change and uncertain On reflection, there's

(26:55):
no question that this direction shot I hate to see
it go. It's a This is one of the all
this um tragics in in America. Sound it's kind of SATs.

(27:16):
These are perfect good apartments. It wouldn't's had nothing to renovate.
The spot may keeping going on, but they did whatever
they had to do to make sure that they got
this land and its profety. I mentioned the Omni in

(27:36):
previous episodes as a particularly significant site. Many victims were
last seen there were heading there. During our research, we
found an anonymous individual who claims Wayne Williams was hanging
around the Omni picking up known murdered children from this case.
Unfortunately for us, the person's identity was concealed. He was
interviewed after Wayne was arrested, but before the trial started.

(27:59):
Here it is the interest in the complex has once
again been rekindled by this man, a songwriter who wishes
to remain anonymous. In a statement to the FBI, he
has told of Wayne Williams and Joseph Felt together at
a bucket studio. I remember Joe Joe because he came
in and he uh, he sang for a few you know,

(28:22):
he's sing a few tunes and he had a very
good voice. And I was asking Wayne what was he
gonna do it in Wayne said he was gonna sign
the guy to a contract immediately. He also tells of
times when he and Williams went to the Omni. Um
he said he was going so he can find some
more stars. Um. I went to the Omni with Lane

(28:44):
Um singing those most of kids they got new Wayne. Uh.
They all come up to him asking when they were
gonna do maybe do some record and the things of
that nature. Um I asked when how did he know
so many kids? He said they were his spies. They
told him everything he wanted to know about everybody. Jason

(29:11):
from How Stuff Works and Meredith from our team here
at Tenderfoot sat down together to discuss the contents of
a night one US Weekly magazine, a double issue feature
on Wayne Williams. Wayne was arrested for the murders of
two black males, Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy ray Payne, that
same summer. Until January, Williams remained in custody awaiting his trial.

(29:35):
Before the trial began, while still in prison, Williams shocked
the country by giving an exclusive interview with US Weekly.
The interview itself infuriated the judge and police officials working
on the case. The main reason for today's order was
this magazine article to be released next week. We were
hud winked in align and I don't appreciate it. That,

(29:57):
of course, was the sheriff's reaction today the article. When
he and the judge in charge of the case read
it last night. They were both shocked, and sources say
Judge Clarence Cooper was outraged. For most of the morning.
They both sought out this woman defense attorney Mary Welcome.
Last night she told us she knew of the article
but would not say anymore. Well, today she did say
more to the judge and sheriff. Apparently the reporter of

(30:20):
freelance writer came into town the weekend of August two
and three. Today over the phone, Mickey Segal told me
she went along with miss Welcome to the jail. When
asked who she was, the reporter gave her name. Then
this Welcome said the woman was with her. No more
questions were asked by the jailers. Asked me, as Welcome,
did you tell him them that she was a newspaper report?

(30:43):
She said no, They didn't ask me, but again, I
didn't think it was necessary to ask a lawyer. Are
you doing something you knew? You know we're doing? Do
not allow us. Magazine paid the writer for the story,
which has a part two for a later issue, and
we've learned Homer Williams Wayne's father was paid three d

(31:05):
fifty dollars for the use of these family pictures. No
other money was reportedly paid for the story. The writer
now says she plans to write a book about the
Atlanta murders. The story is headlined on the cover, but
it's what is inside that is bound to raise a
few hackles. Williams is highly critical of police conduct, beginning
with the night he was stopped and questioned on a

(31:25):
bridge over the Chattahoochee River. The two men he's charged
with killing were found a short time later in the river.
Williams caused the FBI keystone cops and compares Atlanta police
to Car fifty four. Where are You? He says he
is a scapegoat that somebody has to be caught because
of the federal and local money put into the investigation.
He told the writer, it's a matter of justifying money.

(31:47):
When you get all this money and you don't do
anything with it, people start to ask questions. At some
point you've got to answer for it. I feel that
I'm the scapegoat. William said the FBI brought him in
for accusations and not questioning as they said. He said
they tried to pit him against his parents. He said
he was told his parents confessed he was part of
the child killings, and the article, Williams again said he

(32:09):
is innocent and even says he did not know the
two he is charged with killing, Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy
ray Paine. The magazine promises a second installment in the
interview they say was conducted at the jail. We'll hear
more about this later. This is Monica Kaufman. So this
is US Weekly, like the US Weekly we still see
in newsstands. Yeah, so I pull up the cover and

(32:31):
I certainly see a headline that says accused Atlantic killer
Wayne Williams tells his exclusive story. But I also see
headlines like how to Be Important by Ronald Reagan and
how to beat the s A T s He's become
a weird cultural I kind of guess on this one.
His name is up here, and if there's a picture
of Jackie Kennedy on the cover, and I mentioned of
Stevie next, so that kind of sets the stage for

(32:54):
what happened here. So reporter Mickey Siegel to gained access
to Wayne via Wayne's a turn Mary Welcome. So she
went into the prison where he was being housed awaiting
his trial, and she didn't tell the people at the
front gates that the person she had with her was
a reporter, and this caused a ton of outrage once

(33:15):
this was found out by the judge and the other
police officials, the fact that she did not identify the reporter.
So this is how it all started. So Mary Welcome
was Wayne's attorney, and she thought this was a good idea.
I don't know whose idea this was. I have a
feeling that in the midst of all the hubbub of
this pre trial kind of intensity and news, that most people,
probably including Wayne Williams, forgot about this interview because a

(33:37):
lot of what we've uncovered here seems to contradict a
lot of what we've heard on the podcast. But Wayne
willingly knew he was talking to a reporter. It seems like, yeah,
oh definitely. And the article actually kicks off in the
in this way. I just I find this fascinating and
we'll get into this. So sleeping in odd snatches, reading
book after book, watching TV endlessly, Wayne Bertram Williams sits

(34:00):
in Georgia's Fulton Countie jail. He's articulate and intelligent. His
i Q was one thirty six and he's known to
America as the accused Atlanta killer. Yeah, there always seems
to be a stress on exceptional intelligence. I'm trying to
understand where the narrative of Wayne being a super intelligent

(34:21):
person came from. We've heard numbers from one thirty six
to one fifty too, even from Wayne himself saying i
Q doesn't matter. This seems very questionable. As the first
thing in this article that we hear, there's a what
was photo of Wayne Williams um in his looks like
his living room. Photos of him also with his parents

(34:47):
down in the basement in the in the little radio
station studio. It looks like a normal childhood, looks like
a normal childhood. All the photos are from H. C. Williams,
otherwise known as Homer Williams. That's Wayne's father, and depending
on the source, uh it says that Homer was paid
somewhere between three hundred and three thousand dollars for these photos.

(35:09):
This came at a time when Wayne's mother, Faye was
she had cancer and was going through a lot of
things physically and frankly, they didn't have the money. WAYE.
Williams attorney Lynn Watley says that the family needed about
forty dollars to support this case. So what ended up
happening is the Williams family and some others formed a

(35:33):
legal defense fund called Injustice for All has a way
to raise funds or raise money for the trial, and
they raised ten dollars. Wow. If the trial lasts six
weeks as expected, it will cost the county more than
one hundred nine dollars in extra expenses. Most of that
money will be spent on housing and feeding the jury,

(35:56):
on transportation costs for Williams and Judge Cooper, for special
security equipment. Of course, the tab for all that will
be picked up by Fulton County taxpayers, but in the meantime,
bills on the defense side are also mounting up. Every
day the trial goes on is like a huge cash register,
ringing up thousands of dollars and legal expenses, legal expenses

(36:18):
which may never be paid. Members of the defense team
have revealed that co counsels Mary Welcome and Alvin Binder,
and investigator Derwood Myers have spent well in excess of
fifteen thousand dollars of their own money on the Williams
case so far, mostly to bring fiber and pathological experts
to Atlanta for consultation. The trial has also been a

(36:40):
financial drain on William's parents, Homer and Faye Williams, are
retired school teachers. They say most of their savings have
been spent supporting their son's home radio station and his
musical promotion business. A recent highly controversial magazine interview in
which Wayne Williams caused the FBI Keystone cops netted the
family two thousand dollars, but lawyers say it will take

(37:03):
thousands more to defend Williams. They have launched a nationwide
appeal for money, trying to raise an immediate forty dollars.
The fact that you have so much, uh evidence that's
going to concern forensics, acoustical tests, fiber evidence, and it's
going to be necessary to employ experts in order to

(37:25):
effectively assist in Wayne Williams defense. And uh, obviously these
things are going to cost money. Six weeks ago, a
special legal defense fund was set up for Williams as
a nonprofit organization called and Justice for All, But today
it's organizers told me business has not been very good

(37:47):
at this time. We have received one ten dollar donation.
Why do you think people have been so reluctant to
give money. I think that in the mind of the
of the general public there is a a feeling that
we have the guilt demand and which means that they

(38:11):
have already convicted him. Where says his organization plans to
step up its appeal for funds for William's defense, but
many courthouse observers agree even if the money doesn't come
in now, future publishing opportunities for this famous trial may
more than make up the deficits someday. When you talk
about public sympathy and really where people were at at

(38:33):
this time, I think that is really telling as to
what the attitude was in the community. Um of this
guy being the guy no one was getting behind them.
It almost seems like public sympathy has increased longer we
become separated from the killings. Yeah, absolutely, that was my
action also, And do we know where this ten dollars

(38:53):
came from? No, we doubt it would be interesting, but
it was I think that was incredibly barrassing to have
show up on the television broadcast that that was as
far as that they had gotten. Frankly, this kind of
media coverage and photos and videos and everything, it just
points to something that's been nagging at all of us
as we've gone through this process, and that is this

(39:15):
kind of constant obsession by the Williams family. And that's
that's both Wayne and Homer to be connected to the media.
One of the things I found from the book called
The List, authored by Chett Linger and Jeff Prue. Jeff
Prue was with the Los Angeles Times based here in Atlanta,
doing some of the reporting for for the l A Times,

(39:38):
and he's chat. He's chat linger Linger was both the
author of this book, but he was also part of
the defense team as a private investigator. As a private investigator,
and he was very much involved in questioning all the
details of the case, the patterns. Was there a pattern?
And should every one of the children that was on

(39:59):
the list be on the list? I'll read a quote here.
On May, Jeff Prue and I, along with a Los
Angeles Times photographer, went to the church where Jimmy Ray
Paine's funeral was in progress. Like many of the funerals,
it was a media circus throughout these cases. All the sobs,
the moans, the tears, the eulogies, even poems read by

(40:20):
bereaved schoolmates were caught in the glare of TV strobe
lights and hand held mini cams. A woman emerged from
the door of the small church during the funeral of
Jimmy ray Payne. Wailing uncontrollably. She swooned into the support
of arms of two men. They began to assist her.
As she stumbled forward on rubbery legs into the wide,

(40:41):
busy street. A photographer dashed towards her, his camera lens
only inches from her tearful face. Snapping pictures, he backpedaled
across the street, oblivious to the traffic flow. I would
see that same cameraman make like a broken field runner
again on another street at another time. I also would

(41:03):
learn that he had taken photos on the stage of
the Sammy Davis Jr. Frank Sinatra benefit concert. For security reasons.
Only this one still photographer had been allowed on the
stage by arrangement with City Hall. Had the mourner of
Jimmy ray Paine known later who the photographer had been,

(41:25):
she probably would have had another strong reaction. I wonder
if to this day she knows so. The photographer that
was at Jimmy ray Paine's funeral, the one he's mentioning,
was the same one who's on stage that we've seen
in those archive clips. That's right. So in the course
of our research, as you know in the two thousand
ten CNN documentary on the Atlanta child killer, who was

(41:49):
on stage Harmer Williams. That's right, he was the only one.
And what did Frank Sinatra say to him on stage?
You say, didn't he say something along the lines of
like who let this guy up here? He kind of
like shamed him for the only one that wasn't wearing
a top, wasn't wearing a right, So check det Lander
doesn't come round, he doesn't come out and say Homer

(42:10):
Williams at all. But when you put the connect the
dots and put two and two together, you see the
connection between Homer Williams um at Jimmy ray Paine's funeral
and at the benefit concert. And it does seem like
a really odd coincidence to have the father of the

(42:30):
man convicted as the landed child murder be at funerals,
be on stage of a benefit to raise money to
find the serial killer. I mean, we did see, like
in the FBI profile that this would be someone who
would be close. So what are the chances that it
would be the convicted person's father. All right, So let's
get into a little bit of the Q and A

(42:52):
with Wayne done in prison. Yes, some of the narrative
from Mickey Seagal says interviewed at the jail, he appears sure, order,
more frail, and a little bit pudgier than expected. He
peppers his sentences with phrases like let me say this,
and you've got to understand, as to be very precise,
or to distance himself from what he's saying. In addition,

(43:13):
the phrase being in control comes up several times in
our talks. Though he denies it, this appears very important
to him. Wow, that's spot on. You've got to understand.
I mean, you and I have both heard the interviews.
He still says that I could hear Wayne's voice as
I read this. And what's the other catchphrase? It was,

(43:35):
let me say this, and you've got to understand, you
really grip whoever he's talking to. That's a control thing.
Control in the narrative, just like having the reporter come
to the prison to be able to give this interview
in the way that they wanted to release it. The
control of the actual story contents itself really comes out here. Um.

(43:56):
Next up, he actually is asked what happened that night
on the ridge, and uh, he says he was scared.
He says he was shaking, and then he says, well,
let me say this. When they stopped me, I had
no idea why. Two or three hours later, towards the
end of the questioning, I began to put two and
two together. I mean, that's a different story than what

(44:18):
we've heard when we asked for FBI agent Mike Macomis's account.
Macomis says, as soon as he pulled him over way,
Williams said, this is about those kids, isn't it? Or
this is about those children, isn't it. That's two different stories.
You can either say you were blindsided and had no
idea in shaking with fear, or you can say, at
least what we've heard today from Wayne, and that's I

(44:40):
was totally in control. I was calm and collected. I
knew exactly what it was, and I wasn't a bit worried.
And those are very different accounts. I don't know if
that's hindsight bias or if it's a lying. He's he's
asked about the press conference. He said I would never
have said anything publicly if the story hadn't already come out.
It was linked to the media that I've been arrested

(45:01):
on a ten count murder indictment, and no such thing
had been done. The Atlanta newspapers and several other national
papers had already used my name address everything. The New
York Post even printed Atlanta monster killer seized. I feared recrimination.
I called the conference because I didn't want two people
coming out and attacking me in my home. At the

(45:23):
end of the day, it ended up backfiring because the
media perched outside his house anyway, and it ended up
being a bigger media circus. He's asked, are you guilty?
He said, no, I am not guilty. Did you have
anything to do with Cater or Pain I didn't even
know them. No. Is emphasized here, have you ever known

(45:46):
any of the others? Have you had them in your
singing room? Talking about Gemini? Have you had any of
them in your home? And he says nope, never. I mean,
there's just the constant questions which comes up about if
he's had a girlfriend before and his acquaintances. But this
was a constant focus of the media and of of

(46:07):
the various agents to ask him because they were really
looking for a pattern. Right here talking about having a
girlfriend and having any romantic ties. I think that's important
because of um his alibi. He says he's looking for
Cheryl Johnson that night at two am. And even Richard Brackliffe,
the polygrapher, he asked him, you know, why would you

(46:29):
be going to a woman's house at two am, And
he says Wayne's told him, or at least Richard's account.
Wayne said I'm not homosexual, and He's like, well, I
wasn't suggesting that. So it seems like it's always been
a question on people's minds, maybe from that moment. I
don't know where it originated. So he's very explicit here.
He says, I have gone out with women, some married,
some single. Yes I do see ladies, and yes I

(46:51):
do date. So he's very firm in making sure that
that point came across. So that's part one of the
interview that was October eighty one. People had to wait
two weeks for the next issue to come out oct
The kind of primary focus initially on this this interview

(47:12):
is actually with Faye Williams, Wayne's mother, and she was
battling cancer, high blood pressure. She was sixty six and
had gone through a lot and had just recently retired
from being an educator or a school teacher. And she
was certainly very frightened for Wayne and what had happened.
It was very devastating for their family. Both Wayne's parents,

(47:33):
Homer and Faye, were older when they had Wayne. Uh,
and this is pretty devastating to them. See, he has
been tried and miss well say, he has visually been
convicted long before bad the media. We had no savings
in anything, and what a little bit we had due
to my illness in this case, that's depleting. So it's

(47:56):
been mental and it's been on financial string. Oh my,
and I think the physical stren also because she is
suffer with the high blood pressure recently and actually had
me stuff with it. They didn't have and don't have

(48:18):
enough evidence. I don't to indicted, but to the rest,
I'd just like to give them a one and that
where they believe it or not. The killer is still
at large. He's out there. So this is the question
that Mickey Seagull asked to resume part two of the interview,

(48:38):
the discussion around dog hair as we know Wayne had
a German shepherd. This is Wayne's reply. He says, how
many dogs are there in Atlanta? And how many different
kinds of dogs have they talked about? They're looking for
a dog that has a top coat and an undercoat
that fits Mala Mutes College's Huskies St Bernard, some Spaniels,

(49:01):
and a German shepherd which I have. Anyhow, a dog
hair is a dog hair. I took a hair from
one dog and a hair from my present dog and
couldn't distinguish the difference under a microscope. And the reporter asked,
why did you do that? And he replied, after that,
after the case came down, I got curious about it.

(49:23):
So let me just pause there for a second. So
Wayne's pulling out the microscope in his home to do
his own scientific breakdown of the evidence, staying ahead of
the story for sure. Oh yeah, this is right in
line with what Richard Rackliff had said about them finding
a book in his house about how to pass a
polygraph test or what are the inner workings of a
polygraph test. He seems very closely following something, more closely

(49:45):
than the average person would. So when the reporter asked
didn't you receive several science awards in school? Wayne answers
at first. But I made a change when I got
to high school, a very significant change. Until then, I
was Mr Academia, you teacher's pet. But in the eighth
grade that changed drastically, and my home relations changed quite

(50:06):
a bit. I became more of an assertive person. My
father and I had disagreements over how much trust he
put in me. We had plenty of arguments over the car.
I don't drink, but one weekend I got completely wasted,
completely drunk, and my relationship with my father got much worse.
He was pushing me for an education, but I had

(50:27):
only applied myself in school when I had to because
I had my radio station by them. Correct me if
I'm wrong, But it almost sounds like he's trying to
distance himself from the intelligent, for lack of better word,
dorky kind of image he was he was given and
almost sound like a cool and rebellious and he's using that.

(50:49):
He's using the media as a platform, is what it
sounds like, to further the vision he wants of himself.
One of the questions that kind of was on everyone's
mind is with so many kids having gone missing and
many of them showing up murder. Of course, um his
connection to adolescence. UM that were involved in the in
the music business with him, and the question was really

(51:10):
asked of him, didn't your dealings with adolescence make you
a suspect? And he said, I always let the authorities
know what I was doing in November, specifically because of
the murders. I even called the Task Force to let
them know i'd be out auditioning children. And when he
was asked, why do you feel you had to do that,

(51:31):
he responded, so there wouldn't be any problems later. You
don't go around talking to kids in the streets of
Atlanta because everything gets reported. You don't understand what this
city was like. I had contact with the Task Force
three times before I was ever questioned. Then he was asked,
why did you contact them the other two times? And

(51:51):
he replied, I can't talk about that. So this is new.
This is nothing we've heard before, this story of him
reaching out to the Task Force, and frankly, nothing from
the Task Force that says that this was ever logged,
because they really didn't know who he was until they

(52:13):
caught him on the Bridge. Yeah. I wonder how many
people were proactively reaching out to the Task Force to
tell them they would be interacting with children. It seems
like another getting close to the case, you know, for
the sake of getting close to the case. Yeah. So
this entire you know, a couple of week interview um

(52:34):
segment that ran on US weekly was really an incredible
fine that we we've passed this around the office, We've
not known what to do with it. It feels like
such a an isolated, stand alone type of interview and
also incredibly unusual that it was really the only thing
that was coming out between his arrest and the trial.

(52:56):
I don't I almost don't know what to make of
it still, and it's odd that it was almost smug
gold in by his own lawyer, this opportunity to be
in such a pop culture magazine with like almost a
emphasis on like celebrity and luxury, and here's a Wayne
Williams interview twenty three year old Wayne Williams biding his
time in jail. Yeah. And I think it also points

(53:17):
to the fact that there's so many occasions during the
course of thirty five to forty years where you hear
different versions of the same thing. And I think maybe
that's where we should leave this is as we've uncovered
things in the archives, we've just found that there is
no single story that has maintained its um kind of

(53:37):
its essence as the bible of this is exactly what happened.
Um And I'm not just talking about Wayne Williams. I'm
talking about um FBI agents. I'm talking about police officers
who they get most of the details right, but their
recall of everything that happened so many years later has
differed absolutely every time, a different story. Yeah, and and

(54:01):
so what's difficult here is what is the motivation behind that?
Is their motivation? Is it forgetfulness? Is it changing the
narrative to be most convenient. Those are the kind of
questions I think that we continue to ask ourselves as
we get into the archives and kind of look at
the vault. One of the most unusual stories we've heard

(54:38):
so far is this one. It involves a woman and
her husband driving through a cemetery and witnessing a struggle
between a man and a young black child. But despite
being on television and being submitted to the task force,
this story never seemed to lead anywhere. There is a
Soft View Cemetery off Johnsboro Road in southeast Atlanta. The
Clayton County woman and her husband are not identifying because

(55:01):
if they did see the killers, we don't want them
to have a way of tracing them. The Clayton 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. Her husband swerved
to the side to get out of the way. They

(55:21):
say they've reported it to the task Force by phone,
but the task Force hasn't got back to them for
an imperson interview. The driver was tawel and he's light colored,
a light colored black man. And the other one, uh
was dark or black and he had on a wig.

(55:42):
It was a rudish brown. I know it was a
week because it was he was losing it because it
was a child in the front struggling. He was struggling
with that child. But he had broad shoulders, but his
head came about like man, so he would be back
in my henight. But the other one was towel was
he had almost touched the roof. But I know it
was a wig because it was coupling off. You're sure

(56:09):
you saw a child, and yes, yes, I saw because
it was just back and forth like that, and they're
like that was trying to hang on to that child.
It was a boy between the ages of the baton
and trial, and he had a short haircut. Do you
think you could identified these two? Many yes, and the
one with the wig hand on glasses I could identify.

(56:41):
We hope this gave you a feel for just how
many stories are out there and why this case is
just so hard to untangle. Lastly, we'd like to play
you a song that the Atlanta officials promoted in the
wake of the poor pr the city was facing. The
song is called Let's Keep Pulling Together, Atlanta and was
broadcasted throughout the city. The video features black and white

(57:02):
citizens standing side by side and pulling a never ending rope,
glossing over the obvious racial tension at the time. It's
not hard to imagine that it wasn't entirely well received.
You decide, we'll leave you with this. Thanks for listening
to the first episode of The Vault, and be sure
to tune in next Friday for episode eight. See you
next week. SA showing Sky