Full Transcript for Gemini [4]

I meet this guy thirty five years removed from everything that is transpired and all of the psychological damage and everything else that he's had to and do it. So we bump hes a lot, you know, but you have to think it's a guy who had all his promise in was the only child, and it's been in prison and has had to watch his mom with away and die, watch his dad with away and die. 00:04:10 Speaker 1: When you first talked to Wayne, what did he tell you in your first conversation? 00:04:14 Speaker 3: What was he saying to you? 00:04:17 Speaker 2: He started doing the background on me. He found out what I had already been doing as far as community activism and you know, educating people in the black community. 00:04:29 Speaker 4: So when we first. 00:04:31 Speaker 2: Talked, he wanted me to know that he was impressed with what he had already. 00:04:37 Speaker 9: Learned about me. 00:04:39 Speaker 2: So, because he learned all of these things about me, he said he thought I was the perfect person to put together a documentary piece. 00:04:47 Speaker 4: Because I was aware of. 00:04:48 Speaker 2: Things that publicly most Americans just don't think it's possible or would never believe to cover up by both the GBI and FBI, and how they played such a hand in this. Because of course, whenever you get involved with something like this, it's always going to be a certain level of fear that will always be looming. 00:05:18 Speaker 1: What do you think Wayne cares about most as a person? 00:05:23 Speaker 2: I think from what I know about him now, and this is this is a fault of his very selfless human being, selfless so much so that he hurts himself. He's more concerned with helping this guy who's a good This is a good kid. 00:05:45 Speaker 4: He's not supposed to be here, right, Yeah. Absolutely. 00:05:50 Speaker 2: And the thing of it is is that, dude, if you get out of prison and we prove what we can potentially prove, you're gonna be able to help a lot a lot of people that are in this kid's situation. 00:06:03 Speaker 1: You see, Wayne cares more about other people than he does themselves. 00:06:07 Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm the same way. So I understand it. 00:06:11 Speaker 4: When you live in this. 00:06:13 Speaker 2: World and you meet Morpheus, so to speak, and you make a decision to take the red pill, and you see the injustices, and you see the things that we see in this world that we just. 00:06:27 Speaker 4: Know are not right. 00:06:30 Speaker 2: But then you have an understanding of it from my perspective. A Wayne's perspective always has to be a patsy, And usually the person who's the patsy, they have some kind of connection, just as Lee Harvey Oswald did to the CIA or to some sort of governmental agency. 00:06:50 Speaker 1: Right where do you draw the line between conspiracy theories? 00:06:54 Speaker 2: In fact, I don't even consider the concept of what people say conspiracy theory is a real thing, because is it a conspiracy theory or were the facts or what was presented to the public alter to make it seem a certain way. I know the truth, You know, Wayne knows the truth. The problem is we live in a world in which people have been programmed not to ask questions. 00:07:26 Speaker 5: Dwayne maybe right about this. 00:07:28 Speaker 1: There seems to be a lot of lingering doubt when it comes to Wayne William's guilt, but it's not exactly widely discussed. For example, I'd heard varying opinions of Wayne's physical capacity to kill and disposed of Nathaniel Cater, the twenty seven year old, was one of the few adult victims of the Atlanta child murders. 00:07:44 Speaker 5: I asked Dwayne what he thought about that. 00:07:45 Speaker 2: The murder of Nathaniel Cater and it being blamed on Wayne Williams. It's no way it could have happened at all. In the court case, Wayne's car never stop on the bridge. So a six one, one hundred and eighty pound man was thrown from a moving car over a barrier that's about five feet high. How he man can't do that? This guy six y' one, How is he gonna fit out of a window of a car. Nathaniel Cater was a badass. Nathaniel Cater was known in the streets of Atlanta to be able to beat up two guys at one time, three guys at one time. So little five to seven Wayne Williams, little fat five to seven Wayne Williams killed this guy. No, there's no way. So how now does Wayne take a six to one, one hundred and eighty pound man with one arm. 00:08:54 Speaker 3: That's the most disgusting lie ever. 00:08:58 Speaker 5: Dwayne says. 00:08:58 Speaker 1: Cater was six to one, one hundred and eighty pounds, but according to court documents, he was actually five to eleven, one hundred and forty six pounds. Nathaniel Cater was one of the two adult victims that Wayne was actually convicted of murdering. The other was twenty one year old Jimmy Ray Payne. Payne lived on Magnolia Street, about a block from the home of Patrick Boltazar. 00:09:18 Speaker 2: Jimmy Ray Payne was a guy who was in the streets who supposedly Wayne killed. On the autopsy report on Calls of death, initially it said that it was undetermined. Then it was changed to say asphyxiation, which basically means he was strangled. 00:09:43 Speaker 4: I have the actual picture. 00:09:45 Speaker 5: I checked this out. Dwayne was right. 00:09:48 Speaker 1: Records show that Jimmy Ray Pain's cause of death was originally marked as undetermined rather than homicide on the medical report on June sixteenth, nineteen eighty one. However, on August sixth, nineteen eighty one, through a short was redone and Pain's cause of death was changed to homicide. News covers of Wayne Williams's trial shows that the medical examiner could only say with certainty that Paine's death was a result of undetermined asphyxia. 00:10:12 Speaker 10: Officials from the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office spent more than six hours last night and today examining Jimmy Paine's body. 00:10:18 Speaker 1: There are multiple

means of asphyxiation, and the medical examiner couldn't be sure of the exact mechanism. 00:10:23 Speaker 11: Any external marks at all around the neck, no extended locks out on the neck. 00:10:27 Speaker 10: There is there any evidence of sexual molestation. 00:10:30 Speaker 7: No evidence of sexual molistation. 00:10:32 Speaker 10: Doctor Zaki says there is still a slight chance Pain drowned. He estimates the twenty one year old died very soon after he disappeared last Wednesday. 00:10:40 Speaker 1: When the medical examiner was questioned by Wayne's attorney, he admitted changing the cause of death to homicide. He also went on to say that he couldn't totally exclude drowning, but there should have been clearer evidence than Pain's lungs. 00:10:51 Speaker 3: So is there any doubt in your mind that Wayne Williams did these murders? 00:10:56 Speaker 2: Is no doubt in my mind, unequivocally, he didn't murder anyone, unequivally, without a doubt. He didn't murder anymore, absolutely not. 00:11:04 Speaker 3: Where does that firm belief come from? 00:11:08 Speaker 2: Well, for one, for me examining you know, the cases and learning what I've learned, you know, researching what I was going to need to research just to do the documentary. 00:11:23 Speaker 4: You know. 00:11:24 Speaker 2: And along the way it went from hey man, nobody is going to be able to speak up for me like you. 00:11:32 Speaker 3: So does Wayne want to get out of jail. 00:11:33 Speaker 2: He wants to get out of prison, but he also wants justice for the families more than anything else. We consider him the thirtieth victim. 00:11:44 Speaker 3: Does Wayne consider himself a victim? 00:11:47 Speaker 2: He doesn't, but I do. 00:11:49 Speaker 1: Do you think there is a killer or killers out there responsible for some of these murders that have never been apprehended. 00:11:56 Speaker 2: Yes, I know that there is. That's a fact, Jack, That is an absolute fact. 00:12:06 Speaker 1: Dwayne told me he wasn't the only one who believed in Wayne's innocence. In fact, there were two reputable sources public figures. One was named Sidney Dorsey and the other was Lewis Graham, who worked as detectives on Wayne's case back in the early eighties. Graham even tried to reopen the case into cab County back in two thousand and five. 00:12:23 Speaker 2: So one of the things we hope to be able to do is to get the actual notes from Lewis Graham and Lewis Graham and Sidney Dorsey were pretty close. Both of these guys were detectives for Atlanta Police Department. Sidney ended up being the sheriff for the Cab County. I think what he was really trying to do is he was trying to solve the murders. Initially, he found out, for one, that there were multiple people that were doing the murders. They were prepared to make arrests. 00:12:55 Speaker 3: Did he find any evidence that would Oh? 00:12:57 Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely absolutely. I mean Sidney Dorsey is. 00:13:04 Speaker 4: The key

to all of this. 00:13:06 Speaker 2: If you get a interview with Sidney Dorsey, he has all of the intimate knowledge as far as the police work. 00:13:16 Speaker 3: Where is he now. 00:13:18 Speaker 2: He's in Reesville State Prison. 00:13:21 Speaker 3: During a life sentence. 00:13:28 Speaker 1: Sidney Dorsey was the first African American sheriff of Dekap County in Atlanta from nineteen ninety six to two thousand. When he ran for reelection in two thousand, he was defeated by Derwin Brown. Sidney Dorsey then arranged for the assassination of his opponent by a deputy. Derwin Brown was then murdered and Sidney Dorsey was sentenced to life without parole. Per Dwayne's recommendation, we looked into Sidney Dorsey's involvement in. 00:13:53 Speaker 5: Reopening Wayne's case. 00:13:55 Speaker 1: Over the years, he's been quoted by news sources, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, advocating for Wayne's innocence. 00:14:02 Speaker 5: So we decided to write Sidney Dorsey a letter in prison. We haven't heard back yet. 00:14:16 Speaker 1: After meeting Dwayne Hendrix, I started looking for more people who knew Wayne Williams before he went to prison, before Dwayne even met him. 00:14:23 Speaker 5: It was hard. 00:14:24 Speaker 1: It's been a very long time and Wayne didn't seem to have tons of close living friends and family. But after weeks of searching, I eventually found someone. His name was Tyrone Brooks, a civil rights advocate, a disciple of doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and Reverend Joseah Williams. Tyrone agreed to meet with me. 00:14:41 Speaker 7: I know Wayne, I met him when he was in high school, and he invited me to his home of on Penelope off Anderson Avenue in northwest Atlanta to do a live radio show. I get a phone call from Wayne Williams. He says, my name is Wayne Williams. I'm a high school student. I have a radio show. I like for you to pay on my show. Said where's your show? He said, over here on Penelope Drive off of Anderson Avenue. I said, I'm familiar with that area, so I went over and sure enough, he's got a FCC license and he's broadcasting. He's got a tower down the street. He got a radio tower up in there down the street. His daddy had helped him build a radio station. And how in the world he gets a license from the Federal Communications Commission to broadcasts. And I was just amazed that, you know, here's a high school student with the radio station in the backyard and he's already got his FCC license. 00:15:40 Speaker 1: To brock Tyrone Pannawayne Williams as a whiz kid, a normal, likable teenage boy. 00:15:46 Speaker 7: He's very friendly, very affable, humorous, funny, funny, smart, he's a smart guy's intelligent, very intelligent. But he was kind of like, yeah, you civil rights guys, you guys are my heroes. You all really made it possible for me to be where I am. I got my own radio station and I'm working here at Channel two or eleven, one of them. He worked for both of them at for a period of time. 00:16:14 Speaker 1: Wa ain't looked up to Tyrone because at the time, Tyrone was one of the youngest members of the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded by civil rights leaders, primarily doctor Martin Luther King. 00:16:26 Speaker 7: From reconstruction up until nineteen forty six, black people could not vote in the democratic primaries. Nineteen forty six. The whole goal was cheap black people from voting. We don't want them in our democratic primary because pretty soon they're going to start wanting to hold public offices themselves. They're going to change the whole dynamic of the white segregationist whole on the South. But on April second, nineteen forty six, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously George is all white Dixiecrat Party primary was illegal and unconstitutional. So on April second, it was a huge celebration across the South of African Americans and supporters who said we can find a vote in the democratic primaries. My parents went to vote in my hometown of Warranton. Many of them were met by mobs a kookut klansman, and the klan said, ain't no niggas coming in here to vote. And my daddy and some of my relatives got guns and they went back to the courthouse and they said, we're either going to vote, we're gonna die. Five people died, two couples that an unborn infant, George Darcy May, Mary Dorsey, Roger Malcolm, Darthur Malcolm, and the baby. We named the baby. In two thousand and eight, we named the baby Justice. 00:17:45 Speaker 1: It captured national attention and President Truman tried to pass an anti lynching legislation. 00:17:51 Speaker 7: This is a case that remains unsolved. It was doctor King's project. He had two things on his agenda when he was assassinated in nineteen sixty eight. The Poor per Campaign March on Washington, which we did complete, and the Moors for a bridge lynchings. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: Though tons of names and suspects are tied of this event, cooperation was limited. No one confessed, and to this day the case remains unsolved. 00:18:14 Speaker 7: So here comes the Missing and Murdered Children crisis in the late seventies and early eighties. Okay, here it comes, you know, here it comes, and all of a sudden, Wayne is back in our lives again. 00:18:28 Speaker 1: Tyrone told me he actually went to sea Wayne the day he became a suspect. 00:18:32 Speaker 7: He calls me up and he says, I need you and Reverend jose Williams to come up to our home. My daddy his father's name Homer. Mister Homer was a photographer for the Atlanta Daily World. We need to go talk to Wayne. He's called me. I know he's called you. He told me he called you, Tyroe. We need to go, seem So jose In I drove up to the home and so we went up to the house. Now, when we got there, the whole front yard was covered with TV cameras. I mean it was like the present in the United States holding a news conference. I mean the whole front the whole the driveways, the little streets and narrow streets

were just cluttered with cars. So the authorities had made a decision that they were going to hone in on Wayne's and they were going to get him, and they had notified the media. 00:19:17 Speaker 5: So we go up to the house. So we go in. 00:19:20 Speaker 7: They let us in and Josea said to Wayne in front of his parents, jose said, Wayne, I'm talking to you as your second father. Tyrone met you when you were in high school. We're here, we respect you. We've been on your radio show You've been following us around in the movement. You've covered us in the movement, he said, But if you've been involved in any of this, you gotta tell us because we want to help you get the best legal counsel possible. And Wayne looked us in the eye and he said, Reverend Williams. Tyrone, I have not been involved in any of these killings. I've only tried to cover the killings. I've only been following the authorities. I've been getting leads and tips, and people on the inside of the police departments have been calling me and telling me, you know, they found the body here, and he would go to that spot and he'd be set up there with his camera. Yeah, people on the inside of the police department. He had connections, and I think he stepped on toes and he rubbed people the wrong way. But he told us that night, and he convinced me that he was not involved in any killings. He said, they have to find a scapegoat to close this case out. I believe he did. I believe he was telling the truth. I think he told us the truth that night, and I believe he has maintained all alone. I think Wayne is prepared to die standing on his conviction of telling the truth. I think it's a tragedy for Atlanta. I think it's a tragedy for the American criminal justice system to have an innocent person incarcerated for something they did not do. And the sad fact is the real killers were never captured, the real killers have never been punished. We believe the Ku Kluk Klan is connected to this, and we believe that some of these white officers who are klansmen, closet klansmen, they are out here picking up these young black kids. I believe that was a similus of truth to it. I really believe that was a clan connection. I'm convinced that Wayne Williams is innocent of any murder. I think Wayne Williams probably just got a little too close to the investigators. They were frustrated. And the thing that really really is important to me is the fact that the two lead detectives who worked the case, Lewis Graham, who was chief of homicide for the City of Atlanta for many years, any went over to Fulton County became chief, then he went to the Cab County became chief. Before Lewis and Graham died Lewis would always see me in passing and he would say, man, you are someone that we'll always respect. You had the courage to speak the truth to power. We were convinced that Wayne Williams did not commit those crimes. And his partner was Sidney Dorsey. Detective Sydney Dorsy who later became chef of the cab count Who's you know, famous for another reason. But they both said to me, there should have been more people in Atlanta standing up and speaking out and telling the truth about Wayne Williams. 00:22:21 Speaker 1: I asked Mike McCombs about his thoughts on the racial tensions around the Atlanta child murders. 00:22:25 Speaker 12: It always comes back to racial tensions. Of course, there was a lot of racial tensions. You know, people were afraid of each other. I mean, I don't think it's any worse than it is now, but when you have a pacific crime, that adds fuel to the fire. And like I said, the blacks wanted to be white and the whites wanted it to be a black And I didn't care who it was as long as we caught them. 00:22:45 Speaker 4: I could have cared less. 00:22:46 Speaker 12: But I don't think the racial tensions then were any worse than they are now. I mean, people treated me with respect and I treated them with respect, and so I don't think it's any different than what it is now. 00:22:56 Speaker 4: It was just a high. 00:22:57 Speaker 12: It was a very tense time. 00:22:59 Speaker 4: It was very tense. 00:23:00 Speaker 12: There's always been, you know, discrimination, always has been. I'm fearful to say that there always will be. There's just always going to be somebody that's going to discriminate, and there's blacks that discriminate against whites and whites that discriminate against blacks. It doesn't mean that either one of them's right. As a matter of fact, it means both of them are really really wrong. You know, I didn't know whether you were black or white when you called me, and didn't care, could care less. I mean, you know, it's not the way I was raised. You know, you're going to have agitators to this day. You always have agitators that get involved, that take things to the extreme, and that's that hurts. 00:23:37 Speaker 4: I mean, it hurts a lot, worse hurts the situation. So we had them then. 00:23:41 Speaker 12: You know, we had agitators that said that you know, it was we were that someone was trying to you know, commit genocide of the Blacks and this. 00:23:50 Speaker 4: That and the other. 00:23:50 Speaker 12: I mean, you have to keep in mind, And I used to tell people this all the time, The FBI wanted to know what the truth is. We didn't want to convict Wayne Williams. We wanted to know what the truth was. So when you're doing this and you're poking holes, try to see what the individual's motives are. But yeah, there's going to be those folks out there that doesn't think that, for whatever their motives are, that he didn't do it. But you know, people, that's the reason now that I'm not in the FBI, I'm not real quick to render an assessment on things because I know that I don't have all the facts. I'm not in that circle anymore, and I know that what goes on in the middle of that circle, there's a lot of things that John Doe public they just don't know, and they're not going to know, and so they don't have enough

information to make a good intelligent assessment. That's my thoughts on it. 00:24:39 Speaker 4: So, yeah, he did it. 00:24:42 Speaker 5: Why do you think Wayne liam still says he didn't do it? 00:24:46 Speaker 12: Well, I'm not really sure that there would be any advantage to him admitting it. For the first thing. But I think Wayne has some mental issues, some disorders that would cause someone to be a compulsive liar. I don't think he'll ever admit it. I don't think he has the ability to admit it. Shoot, he's been in there now. We convicted him in eighty two, so I mean he's he's got thirty five years in prison now. 00:25:12 Speaker 1: Just like mccombis, Popcorn also thinks Wayne Williams is guilty and that Wayne is the Atlanta child murderer. But he acknowledges people's disbelief. He didn't necessarily look like a cold blooded murderer. 00:25:23 Speaker 13: He was not a threatening character. The first time I looked one him, I almost laughed. I said, this guy, but he was not threatening. And that's why he got away with it, because people said, no, this guy murdered that many kids. 00:25:34 Speaker 3: They refuse to believe it. 00:25:36 Speaker 13: You know, if somebody has a better suspect out there, please let us know. But there's no one has ever come forward with anyone else. 00:25:44 Speaker 1: But after Wayne Williams was apprehended, did the murders actually stop? 00:25:47 Speaker 13: The best evidence of will was last body that fell off the bridge. We arrested Willie Williams, They ain't been a murder since what do you mean, no murder since after we arrested him, they were no more victims. 00:25:58 Speaker 1: So since eighty one, there's been no murdered African American. 00:26:02 Speaker 13: First has been don't you read the papers, but none with a similar, dissimilar mo There have been no similar murders since that last body fell off the bridge, strangling, strangling, taking off the street, young black male taken off the street, strangled and dumped. Now the people who don't believe, would have you believe that the murders still continue. The newspapers are just covering up with the police. I mean I've heard that that said, the murders have continued all this time, just the police and the media not reporting them. Do you think I'm an idiot? You work for the media, do you do you think it's true? No, but this is the stupid shit they come up with. But Wayne, that was the best evidence, the every ten day pattern of a kid stripped, dumping or stopped, and we didn't have any more. 00:26:47 Speaker 5: Why do you think Wayne Williams still claims he's innocent. 00:26:49 Speaker 13: Because that's Wayne Williams. One of the things Wayne Williams thought he was smarter than us, And I said, his biggest mistake was overestimating his intelligence and underestimating oz and he thought he can commit for a crime. He wanted to show the world that he was smarter than everyone else. So this was this was an ego. 00:27:06 Speaker 4: Trip for him. 00:27:06 Speaker 13: I tell people in my bureau career, I put five men in prison who murdered a total of thirty five people, and twenty five of them were done by one man. How many people can say that good old fashioned police work, you know, nothing fancy just sitting under a bridge waiting for something to happen. If you come up with a better suspect, please let us know. But right now, this is the best thing, the best suspect we got going. 00:27:34 Speaker 14: Like now, when you look back on it, I felt like they just they need to put it on somebody, and he kind of like fell into place, and then it hadn't helped it. After they got him, it stopped. So you know that just say, oh, we got the right man. That doesn't necessarily me he's the right man, but you know, it stopped. I mean, I think he could have did some stuff, but I definitely don't think he did all of it, even if he did any of them, you know, but the only thing hearing him is they stopped once they got him, they stopped. 00:28:05 Speaker 4: So it was like, well, even if we ain't got the man, they stopped. The problems are with. 00:28:10 Speaker 15: Wayne Williams under arrest. Everyone thinks they can relax and the string of murders has stopped. But it just may be that whoever's really doing it, if it's not Wayne Williams, they decide, well, now it's a good time to stop because this other guy's in jail for it. 00:28:24 Speaker 16: Many people think, well, maybe these murders didn't stalk. With Wayne Williams arrest, there's a lot of contention around the distinction between the murder of children and the murders of these adults who Wayne Williams was directly convicted of killing, and whether those are necessarily a part of the same pattern crimes. They see my valid questions to ask. In my opinion, every single child that was identified as part of the pattern cases of the Atlanta child murders wasn't strangled, and they all were in the same place or found in the same place or from the same place. More or less generally, when you have that volume, but not all of them. There's always this sense that what evidence was collected, what evidence was lost? 00:29:13 Speaker 17: How many children black males from poverty areas disappeared after Wayne Williams went to jail, the list existed. After he was convicted, the list disappeared. But I've always wanted to know how many black boys in that same age group from those neighborhoods disappeared after that. 00:29:40 Speaker 1: Looking at the numbers, fewer kids died from asphyxiation in nineteen eighty two versus nineteen eighty one. 00:29:46 Speaker 5: But to say that all the murder stopped just isn't true. 00:29:50 Speaker 1: Dozens of young black kids were abducted and murdered in the nineteen eighties after Wayne williams imprisonment. However, maybe a more accurate statement is that the volume of pattern crimes decreased, in particular young black males who died from asphyxiation rather than stab wounds or gun violence, and

whose bodies were later found seemingly scattered throughout metro Atlanta. So do serial killers just stop killing? Well, sometimes they do. For example, the infamous BTK killer stopped killing after seventeen years, and he wasn't apprehended until nearly fourteen years after the last murder he committed. I sat down with Meredith, one of our producers, and a man named Kerrie Middlebrooks, the brother of victim Eric Middlebrooks. He wanted to hear his perspective as a family member. Who was his brother Eric, and what to Kerry think of Wayne Williams. 00:30:37 Speaker 8: My foster dad called me and he woke me up. He said, we'll come over here. I want to talk to you about something. He said, well, I don't know how to tell you this, but Eric was killed last night. I guess I just didn't know what to say at that point, so finally I said, well what happened? And he said, well, they found him behind the with Johnson Hotel buying some dumpsters. So what happened? Did somebody shoot him or what? And they said, well, no, he was seriously injured. He had been hitting the head with something and on his bicycle. They cut his tires and stabbed them in their arm. 00:31:29 Speaker 11: The body of fourteen year old Eric middlebrook was found about seven this morning behind a bar and the two hundred block of Flat Shoals Road near Memorial. He was hit on the back of the head with some kind of blood instrument his pockets had been gone through. The bike he was riding was next to his body. 00:31:49 Speaker 4: I mean, it was an earth shattering I guess you know. 00:31:55 Speaker 8: I still have not gotten over that because he was fourteen. Body can do something like that to a kid. This was just straight up violence, you know, holding his head stabbed in an arm. I mean, I try and sit up and imagine what was going on in his mind at the time. All of this stuff was going on, and it's rough, But I actually became an Atlanta police officer because my brother had been killed. 00:32:30 Speaker 4: I had just got out a Marine Corps. 00:32:32 Speaker 8: I was working as a security officer at the P Street Plaza Hotel. One of my supervisors said, you know, the city of Atlanta is hiring, why don't you become. 00:32:42 Speaker 4: A police officer. There was no way, in. 00:32:48 Speaker 8: My opinion, my brother died by mechanisms of Wayne Williams. 00:32:55 Speaker 1: Carrie Middlebrooks then told me his own theory about Eric's murder. He saw some thing the day his brother was found dead and it stuck with him to this day. He mentioned a woman named Lisa, one of Eric's neighbors. 00:33:10 Speaker 8: Apparently, Lisa called my foster dad's house to ask if Eric could go to the store to get some cigarettes around nine o'clock ish that night. All I know is he said they got a phone call at nine o'clock the night before about the store trip. 00:33:28 Speaker 4: He didn't come back home. 00:33:32 Speaker 8: Where my foster dad lived and where Lisa lived was approximately one hundred feet They all lived in the same apartment complex. I guess i'd been there a couple hours and Lisa said, why don't you come down to my house and we'll talk. When I went to her house, I can just say I didn't see it happened, but I just have to say something brought me to that apartment for me to observe that something that takes place. Whether it was God or you know, fake O don't, I don't know, but based on what I saw, something related to my brother had to have happened there. 00:34:13 Speaker 4: When I got down to her apartment, I noticed. 00:34:16 Speaker 8: There was a lot of blood on the floor, table, various places, you know. I started having all kinds of stuff. 00:34:25 Speaker 4: Running through my head. 00:34:27 Speaker 8: She explained to me that her finger had been cut, and I don't know how all of that blood could have come through that basically or scratch. It wasn't just in one spot. 00:34:40 Speaker 4: It was in. 00:34:40 Speaker 8: Several spots about a pint of blood. My thing is, I don't think Wayne Williams killed my brother. I think it occurred about a hundred feet from where my brother actually lived. 00:34:54 Speaker 4: I did tell the policeys, I did tell the FBI this. Now. 00:34:58 Speaker 8: What I should have done, which is what I was thinking about doing, was scoop up some of the blood and put it on something. 00:35:05 Speaker 4: Didn't do that. 00:35:07 Speaker 8: I guess I was sort of gullible, but I'm saying that he died in that apartment. I clearly told the FBI what I thought about what took place with my brother. Apparently they didn't do anything because Wayne Williams seemed to remain the primary subject they were focusing on. And so I just don't feel that man could have killed my brother, you know. I mean, like I said, Eric was fourteen, so he was really kind of like a young lion, you know. I mean, Wayne Williams was not much bigger than my brother, not that my brother was a big guy. To me, Eric would have had to have been killed sort of like in an enclosed area or confined area. I don't feel that they have the right person for my brother's murder. I think they were kind of reaching for Straws. I mean at one point they called them a psychic. We're talking professional police investigators. You call it a psychic to help you do what? 00:36:10 Speaker 1: Kerry brought with him a framed document titled a resolution. It was sent to his family in twenty thirteen by the Georgia House of Representatives. 00:36:19 Speaker 4: It said, honoring the victims and the Atlanta Missing a Murdered Children. 00:36:25 Speaker 18: Case, It's a resolution to commit to continuing work until adequate laws or passed to protect our children in Atlanta by the House of Representatives. Here is this consolation. Do you feel Did you feel good about receiving this? 00:36:45 Speaker 8: I mean, it's just the plaque or some acknowledgement that something occurred with a bunch of names on it. 00:36:53 Speaker 4: But it doesn't

resolve anything. 00:36:56 Speaker 8: But yeah, hopefully y'all can do something with this man. I mean, Wayne Williams has been saying that he's innocent. How innocent I don't know, but I don't think he killed my brother. 00:37:10 Speaker 1: Carrie Middlebrooks was now the second relative of a victim to tell me he did not believe Wayne Williams was guilty, at least for any crime against his family. Back in my very first meeting with Dwayne Hendrix, he mentioned a man that knew Wayne Williams very well back in the day. 00:37:26 Speaker 5: His name was Jimmy Howard. 00:37:30 Speaker 2: Jimmy would be what you would say is was Wayne's protege. He was the lead singer for the group that Wayne was managing at the time, and he was the guy who was with Wayne every day, and he. 00:37:44 Speaker 1: Was part of the band that Wayne was putting together right before he was arrested. The same one Wayne mentioned in his press conference. Jimmy knew Wayne back at the very beginning, when Wayne was in his early twenties trying to start the next Jackson five. 00:37:56 Speaker 19: Tell me mentioning in murder kids kids, think y'all Wayne Trevor killing them kid? They got the Wayne Trither two grown, the ducks man. Put all the all the kids that are done, look at them. See the number one thing here to me. Number one. You got the parents out here who kids has been murdered. They number one that never been closed, that wounds still open. But the place keep moving on. Wayne will Number two a man that y'all use for an escapegoat. Lock this man up, forget about it. Then y'all think y'all on the side of the case. 00:38:35 Speaker 5: Ask Jimmy how he met Wayne in the first place. 00:38:37 Speaker 19: Man, I met Wayne in a talent show. Who's doing the talent show? I was in a band. We was performing. You know, after all the accident did their thing, they'll come out and said who won is who placed this and that? But when at the time was when we hit the stage. The crowd, you know, they had a big spotlights now shout. I was playing drums and they shine that light back there on me. In the crowd just went crazy cause I was singing and playing the drums at the same time. So when it was over with, as soon as we got ready to exit the stage to go out to the back and was greeting people and talking to people, that's when I met Wayne and he came in and duced. He said, Man, that was great, man. What's your name? 00:39:22 Speaker 3: Man? 00:39:22 Speaker 9: That was hot. Man. 00:39:23 Speaker 19: Listen, man, you you don't need to be on the drums, you need to be out here in the front. So I'm looking at him like, yeah, he said, what's your name? I told him he said, Man, hey, take my car, get in touch with me. 00:39:33 Speaker 13: Man. 00:39:33 Speaker 9: You gotta know I can call it man. I got some things I'm putting together. 00:39:36 Speaker 19: That's exactly how how it went, so I didn't never call him. I ended up seeing Wayne again at about two other shows and then my brother said said, what do you see? What are you talking about when? And that's that's why I went. And he told me what he was doing. 00:39:51 Speaker 3: How old were you? 00:39:52 Speaker 9: Fifteen? Sixteen? And he said, I'm putting the group together. 00:39:58 Speaker 19: So one one weekend and he asked me to come to the studio recording section, rang my mom and everybody. He said, I want to build this group around you. I met the guys, we talked. We all locked in pretty good. 00:40:10 Speaker 9: At the time. 00:40:11 Speaker 19: It was just them two guys I met, and then three of y'all yeah, and then the other two came, so it was five at that point. We went on and started doing songs man, and just doing things, meeting every other weekend, mean through the weekdays on rehearsing on these songs that he had picked that Wayne had chous, some songs and remixes that each old for us to do well. The plans were to be the next, the next famous group behind the Jackson. 00:40:45 Speaker 9: It was just crazy the time. But I can say this though I know we ain't even do no killing? 00:40:52 Speaker 3: What is The group called. 00:40:53 Speaker 20: Gemini guards at the Fulton County Jail were authorized to allow Williams three calls per week. The guards were to dial the numbers from outside Williams's maximum security selle and had him the receiver. 00:41:05 Speaker 5: But that is not what happened. 00:41:07 Speaker 20: The calls made by Williams include calls to members of this group of singers who Williams claims to manage. In fact, Wayne Williams from his sale set up this rehearsal and invited the Action News team into videotape it. 00:41:20 Speaker 1: Then Jimmy told me an incredible story. He was actually with Wayne the night he was picked up by the FBI and taking in for questioning. That night, Wayne had taken Jimmy and his fellow bandmates to Wendy's after practice. 00:41:32 Speaker 5: That's when it happened. 00:41:38 Speaker 19: We went to Wendy's on food in the dust. I was sitting in the wonder Man. You can see the cops. You can see the cars. They were just sitting there, the ones that we would recognize. Okay, we're sitting there. When I said, man, thin' gonna lot me? If I will say, just gonnun lock me up and stop harassing me. 00:41:58 Speaker 9: You know everybody at home. 00:41:59 Speaker 19: We got on bank aage they Brian home and as we was going down that street over our bank head, we went past bread house and turned around. Two mark cars was following up behind cars that I never seen that was at the windows day was behind us. We turned around, came back, dropped them off some once. I'm tired of this s As we was getting to the edge of the street, stopped trying on bank here Wain so I'm been and call him mayor tell him that they gonna lock me up, Lock me up now. He pulled a splitt across the street into the JR. It used to be a jar Creek store. It was a big star. That was a phone book now and he got out the car. Man toyot was

sitting in the car. Man, I think he got on that phone book. No more than about two minutes. Cars just come from everywhere swarmed the car. 00:42:42 Speaker 9: Helicopters. Man, it was crazy. Me and two was looking at each other. 00:42:47 Speaker 19: Man We was like, what that, what's going on here? And we looking cop opened up the door and and put one over to and say hey, come on, come on over with us. We're gonna take Wing with us. Tweyn said, why you gonna do that? 00:43:00 Speaker 4: Man? 00:43:00 Speaker 19: It is do y'all think really, way ain't killed them kids? I said, nah, I ain't did that, man, I don't believe that. He said, well, he said, come on, we're gonna we don't want the media you see your guys. Come on, he covers up. We're gonna carr y'all home. We're gonna take Wayne with us for some question. At that point, At that point, right there, that's when I really started feeling some kind of way. 00:43:20 Speaker 9: Right there. It was a scary moment. I was like, man, what the what is they doing? 00:43:28 Speaker 19: Look at who they convicted Wayne or killing and they didn't even have the evidence to convict him of that. 00:43:34 Speaker 9: What's evidence? 00:43:35 Speaker 5: This is? 00:43:36 Speaker 19: This is big, man, This is huge. This case is huge. And I'm gonna say this here. I been knowing Wayne in a long time, long time, But I know you got some bitterness in him, because think about it, if you was, if you was in his situation, in his shoes, you would want someone to stand for you knowing that you hadn't done this. 00:43:57 Speaker 9: When you man, this thing. 00:44:00 Speaker 19: It's deep, man, It's deepen than a lot of people, let me tell you, So, that was the name that the media giving Wayne Way. They wouldn't use his name. They gave him this name, Atlanta Monster. We're gonna show this man and it's a good thing. So you know, we can put this puzza together and everybody gonna be shocked. 00:44:49 Speaker 5: I currently live in Atlanta now. 00:44:50 Speaker 1: I work downtown off Poncetan Leon Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward. I wanted to explore the city through the lens of the Atlanta Child Murders. Living here, I'd heard of many places in this case, but a lot's changed in Atlanta since then. Jason from Hellstuff Works went through the process of mapping out all the major sites in the Atlanta child murders, including the homes of victims, places they were last seen, and where each victim was found. One day, we hopped in the car and drove around the city to get a feel for where these tragedies took place thirty five years ago. 00:45:27 Speaker 4: Where'd you get this? 00:45:30 Speaker 21: Well, the only place you can give them at these days Barnes and Noble. 00:45:34 Speaker 5: So we are here, Yuseph Bell can. 00:45:40 Speaker 4: Hear the traffics from I twenty right behind us. 00:45:43 Speaker 5: So This definitely used to be a building, and they found Bell's body when it was abandoned. Yusuf was last seen three days ago. He was running an errand for a woman who lived in the apartment complex. 00:45:56 Speaker 8: He came to this little store at the corner of McDaniel and Georgia Avenue. 00:45:59 Speaker 17: Ibody out there like that that has and I just wish they knew that somebody here loves him, that a whole lot of people love him, that this whole community loves him, and they want him back too. 00:46:09 Speaker 22: Yusuf's body was found Thursday in an abandoned schoolhouse at Fulton and Martin Streets, near the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. Police believe the boy, who had been missing for eighteen days, was strangled. 00:46:25 Speaker 5: We're probably five minutes from the office right now. 00:46:27 Speaker 1: If you were just dropped me here and blindfolded, I'd have no idea where I was. 00:46:36 Speaker 8: There's like a new kid I disappearing every three or four weeks. 00:46:41 Speaker 1: The last place we went that day in your neighbor was Wayne William's old home off Penelope Road in Atlanta. 00:46:46 Speaker 4: Left here, go. 00:46:48 Speaker 5: Straight then should be next. 00:46:56 Speaker 17: Just cross this bridge, then your destination will be on the right. 00:47:08 Speaker 23: Your destination is on the right. 00:47:10 Speaker 1: We turned down the street and I went by myself to the door. There was no one there, so I walked down to one of the neighbor's houses. Someone came to the door. He didn't live here in the eighties, but he had an interesting take. 00:47:36 Speaker 21: Nonetheless, it's so funny though, because like every time I take the left, and every time a left driver. 00:47:41 Speaker 9: Come over, they say, that's the way william house. 00:47:43 Speaker 21: And then like then we heard of it, and then we googled in and everything. 00:47:47 Speaker 24: It was somebody at the gas station told me because he needed a ride home or whatever, and they told him, oh, you live over there by where and he said it and he didn't think really anything about it. And then a second person told him in the same. 00:47:58 Speaker 4: Weeks, different mix. 00:48:00 Speaker 5: You know, what's the general consensus you're getting from people. 00:48:04 Speaker 21: That he has something to do in it or whatever. But it was like, it's probably because clann alre they bringing kids for them or whatever. I don't know, Yeah, what did you hear about whatway Williams? I google No, But I believe that it's a lot of people in pressing for stuff that they didn't do. Trust me, you know, and they get scared and taking deals, you know, and especially in place like Georgia, like where it's not even safe to go outside of Fourteenth County. Like you know, if you're African American, you know, the South is still the South is all black on the outside and white in the middle. That's not a racist statement, it's it's a true statement. Because you have black people out here still that fear of white people. They don't want to, you know, they

don't want to cross that line. A lot of people are still stuck in the past out here. 00:48:55 Speaker 1: I'd seen Wayne's house in his old neighborhood. But what about his car, the car that he was driving on the bridge that night, the same one Jimmy Howard was writing in. 00:49:05 Speaker 5: When the FBI picked him up. 00:49:07 Speaker 1: The car that would have been a key piece of evidence in this case, if Wayne was in fact the Atlanta schold murderer. 00:49:12 Speaker 5: I searched the internet, but I wasn't hopeful. 00:49:15 Speaker 1: But believe it or not, I found a two thousand and nine article suggesting that I was completely intact. The car was in possession of a man named doctor Blackwelder in northeastern Alabama, or at. 00:49:25 Speaker 5: Least that's where it was eight years ago. I didn't know. 00:49:28 Speaker 1: Who this man was, and I couldn't find a single phone number for him, but I drove down there anyways. 00:49:33 Speaker 5: And gave it a shot. Maybe the car was still around and it was. 00:49:43 Speaker 1: Doctor Blackwelder was willing to give me his perspective. He was actually a good family friend of Wayne Williams and had been there through the whole thing, including the trial. 00:49:51 Speaker 6: Trot was in eighty two, and as the hand of the law enforcement and criminalistic program in a community college, he would want to know if I'd come up some evidence. She just give him an opinion about what I thought about the evidence, if it was any good or not. And as it ended up, I staved through the whole trial and got to know Wayne's mom and dad real well, and then after it was over, I just stayed with him and I kept going to see Wayne's mother had catch her and she sometime during our conversation she made me promise that I'd never turned my back on her baby, and I told her, I said, well, I'll promise you that I'll ever turn my back holding But I said I might go promise him. 00:50:33 Speaker 4: Well, all I should. 00:50:34 Speaker 6: Agree with him, because he was hard to you know, sometimes she'd I did exactly agree on things. 00:50:39 Speaker 5: I asked Blackwold, why you even had the car. 00:50:42 Speaker 1: He explained that the car being part of the house of Wayne's father, Homer Williams, for years just sitting there and. 00:50:47 Speaker 6: He just pretty much parked in the backyard and just left it. So and I went to the prison several times to see Wayne until I got to where I just had a heart attack and cancer and all that. And then Homer died and Wayne called and he said, you can have that scean wagon if you want it. 00:51:02 Speaker 4: So my wife and I went over. 00:51:04 Speaker 6: There with a roll bag and got the car and brought it back over here. 00:51:09 Speaker 3: That's pretty much is. 00:51:10 Speaker 6: Most people just want to look at it and take pictures, but we have people about two or three times and boks that want to buy it. 00:51:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, do you carefully look at it? Yeah? 00:51:28 Speaker 4: Wow, everything is it? 00:51:33 Speaker 6: It was in there when when I got it. Nobody's earing thing. 00:51:37 Speaker 4: So we don't want to worry. 00:51:38 Speaker 1: Abrom all the stories i'd heard the station wagon was white, but it wasn't white anymore. 00:51:44 Speaker 6: The car there's been white in the plays. When when Wayne headed it was this color, and Homer painted the blue collar after he got after Wayne was in prison. 00:51:55 Speaker 5: It's now a light blue color and covered with brown rust. 00:52:00 Speaker 1: Also full of dirt and junk fishing that papers men's athletic shoes. Blackwater said he believes that most of this stuff belonged to Wayne's father, Homer. Blackwaters seemed pretty close to Wayne Liams and his family, so I asked him what was Wayne like. 00:52:26 Speaker 6: He had an old police car that had he had a scanner in it, and he would go out and take pictures of fires and crime sines and things like that and sell the pictures sing and bodies that warned you. And he had a job of some type with WSB Television. He would make you think that he was the star of the show, but I think really he was just a runner or so it was really when it came out down to it, you know, he had a pretty normal life. He was he was an only child, only was spoiled, and I think his mom and dad he had a need to be in the limelight. Have you ever been in that house up there? 00:53:09 Speaker 3: Not inside of it. 00:53:09 Speaker 6: We walked outside, okay, and on very back was where his radio station was, and he had some kind of small transmitter that would cover the neighborhood. 00:53:19 Speaker 12: You know. 00:53:20 Speaker 6: Yeah, he was the DJ and the news director, but he wanted to open his radio station up and then he wanted to be a promoter or something. That's what he was doing out when they caught him on the bridge. He was trying to find the address of a girl that he had an interview with the next day to do singing or whatever. 00:53:37 Speaker 1: Blackwater had sat through the entire trial, so he actually owned all the defense documents. He even played a role in the trial actively working with wings attorneys. 00:53:46 Speaker 6: My agreement was with him that I would get a copy of all of the documents that they used, and I got copies of all. I've got a basement with eight or ten bucars full of documents, all the reports and all the documentaries that the defense got under discovery, the federal documents, FBI documents, and practically all of the state documents, FBI reports, all the autopsy reports had scribble notes that the attorneys took dinner, a meeting at night. His mother gave me several photographs that of their family album of Wayne. It was just a little bit fellow growing up. You see how my filing system. 00:54:22 Speaker 4: Is right here. 00:54:22 Speaker 3: So yeah, it seems like it's kind of my folly system. 00:54:25 Speaker 6: Yeah, after I retired, I brought everything into

the house. It's all just so I'll have to get somebody to get somebody to go through and dig it out. 00:54:32 Speaker 4: But I've got it. It's all. It's sealed up. 00:54:36 Speaker 6: I don't think he got a fair trial because I know that Maynard Jackson and all of them needed somebody to call it because it was affecting convention in trade and so forth. And when I would go up there on the weekends and go out and eat, a lot of the resturants will be just about empty. And the people said the business had really fallen off since that happened, and it it hadn't picked up, you know. But once they called him, then everybody took a shower or leave and thought, well, you know, we can go back to live in our normal lives. And of course they called him, which means people will assume that if they catch somebody, he's guilty, and then during the trial it would have been hard, I think for Jerry to find him not guilty and then go back into their neighborhoods and live. 00:55:23 Speaker 4: And I don't know how much to a what degree. 00:55:26 Speaker 6: They just didn't want to have to put up with what they would catch from the people of school, to work at church or whatever if they had found him not guilty. So I think that plays a part in it, but I don't know how much. 00:55:46 Speaker 1: After several months of researching the Atlanta child murders and Wayne Williams himself, I found the case perplexing and nobody seemed to agree on anything. After meeting in person with Tween Hendricks in Texas, he called me out of the blue one day and was about to send this projects in a whole new direction. 00:56:07 Speaker 2: It was going all day and I just wanted to reach out to you. 00:56:12 Speaker 23: I actually spoke. 00:56:13 Speaker 8: With Wayne WI about the podcast. 00:56:17 Speaker 2: He basically gave his blessings, gave me ain't light, and he's. 00:56:22 Speaker 12: Willing to talk. 00:56:26 Speaker 11: Give me a call you get. 00:56:27 Speaker 4: Out the tummy tree. 00:56:45 Speaker 5: Next time on Atlanta Monster. 00:56:58 Speaker 2: This conference is recorded. 00:57:03 Speaker 6: My bed. 00:57:08 Speaker 1: Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast wholl week by week with new episodes every Friday, A joint production between How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film and Videotape Collection Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries. 00:57:30 Speaker 5: For the latest updates, please visit. 00:57:32 Speaker 1: Atlantamonster dot com or follow us on social media. 00:57:57 Speaker 4: Alexa, watch the temperature. 00:58:01 Speaker 23: Right now in Piedmont. It's forty nine degrees with clear skies throughout the night. You can expect more of the same with a low of thirty six degrees. 00:58:10 Speaker 3: Alexa, thank you very much. 00:58:14 Speaker 6: You're welcome, Alexa. 00:58:19 Speaker 24: Will you marry me? 00:58:21 Speaker 23: I don't want to be tied down. In fact, I can't be. I'm amorphosed by nature. 00:58:28 Speaker 3: Are you drinking her prisoner here? 00:58:30 Speaker 1: Yeah? 00:58:30 Speaker 12: I am really