A (helpful) commentator recently asked if I have been in touch with anyone connected to the case. I would like eventually to start doing first-person research, but I haven’t yet started such a project.
While I’m at it, I should apologize for not having updated this blog in a while. More than once I have heard the advice that a never-updated blog is even more unprofessional than no blog at all. I’m hoping to get back to regular updates soon. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to send your comments — they won’t show up immediately on the site, as I have to hand-approve them, but I get a copy in my inbox immediately.
February 6, 2010 – 10:23 pm
Apologies for neglecting this blog. I had to hit the pause button while taking my PhD comprehensive exams, and will may have to again while moving to a new place later this month. But in the meantime I wanted to draw your attention to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview with Jack Mallard, the lead prosecutor in the Wayne Williams case, who has written a new book about the murders. Mallard says explicitly that Angel Lenair and Latonya Wilson, the two female victims, should not have been on the famous “list”; unfortunately the interviewer didn’t ask (or asked, and the answer didn’t get printed) whether Mallard had an opinion on who did kill Lenair and Wilson.
Here’s the Amazon page for The Atlanta Child Murders: The Night Stalker. Here’s a BlogTalkRadio interview with Mallard. Nonfiction books concerned directly with the case are not, as you might have noticed, a dime a dozen, so I’m definitely curious.
Update: Last link has been corrected to go directly to the interview.
December 29, 2009 – 9:06 pm
I asked friends for comments on the map and blog, and one responded with, “The map is too modern.” By which he meant that the Google map of 2009 doesn’t reflect how Atlantans actually got around in 1979.
So, a note on Atlanta’s highways: the year before the murders started, the Georgia Department of Transportation began the “Freeing the Freeways” project, which (for $1.4 billion, according to this book) widened the existing interstates and more than doubled local interstate miles available. Work didn’t start on Spaghetti Junction, at the northeast intersection of I-85 and I-285, until 1982. Interstate 285 was four lanes until 1989, when it was widened to eight lanes (it’s now ten on the northern side).
Granted, this is the kind of detail harped upon mainly by transportation nerds (says a transportation nerd). But at some point I will come up with historical traffic numbers to show you that there were simply a lot fewer people driving around the area in 1979, and they were by and large not covering such long distances. As my friend put it, to cover that much ground at that time indicates a very determined person.
December 28, 2009 – 6:04 pm
I’ve had a bit of a hard time articulating why I felt driven to put together something on the Atlanta child murders. I was in Atlanta during the period they occurred — well, just barely; I was a 1-year-old northwest of the city, not aware of what was going on. I don’t have any personal connections to anyone involved with the case.
It boils down to two reasons. Read More »
December 28, 2009 – 5:35 pm
The “Atlanta child murders” refers to a series of murders between July 1979 and June 1981. Atlanta police drew up an official “list” of victims all believed to have been killed by the same person, although different methods were used — shooting, stabbing, manual strangulation, ligature strangulation (use of a rope or something similar), blunt trauma to head, and drowning. Of the 30 victims of the list, 29 were found and one is still missing. All were African-American; all but two were male; all but one lived in metropolitan Atlanta. They ranged in age from 7 to 28.
In June 1981, Wayne Williams, a self-made music promoter and amateur radio operator living in northwest Atlanta, was arrested and charged with two murders. After he was convicted and given consecutive life sentences in 1982, the rest of the cases were closed. Williams is currently in prison, maintaining his innocence.
A good many people have gone on the record since as also believing that Williams was framed. In 1985 an investigator and a journalist teamed up to write The List, which argued that police had deliberately left other unsolved murders off “the list” of victims, including people killed after Williams’s arrest. In 1986 Spin Magazine published an article suggesting that some of the victims had actually been killed by the Ku Klux Klan. More recently, in 2005, the police chief of DeKalb County moved to re-investigate four of the cases, but as best I know nothing has come of those efforts.
December 21, 2009 – 10:12 pm
Nathaniel Cater (#30 on the list) was 27. He was last seen alive on May 21, 1981, and his body was found on May 24, 1981.
1) Cater’s was one of two murders for which Wayne Williams was convicted; the other was Jimmy Ray Payne. Cater disappeared the day before Williams was stopped on a bridge over the Chattahoochee River in Cobb County, and his body was found two days later.
2) Cater was reportedly a friend of LaTonya Wilson’s family.
December 21, 2009 – 10:09 pm
William Barrett (#29 on the list) was 17. He was last seen alive on May 11, 1981, and his body was found on May 12, 1981.
Barrett’s was one of four cases re-opened by DeKalb County police chief Louis Graham in 2005. The other three were Patrick Baltazar, Curtis Walker, and Joseph Bell.
December 21, 2009 – 10:07 pm
John Porter (#28 on the list) was 28. His body was found on April 12, 1981.
Porter was not considered an official victim when his body was found, but was added to the list later.
December 21, 2009 – 10:04 pm
Jimmy Ray Payne (#27 on the list) was 21. He was last seen alive on April 22, 1981, and his body was found on April 27, 1981.
Payne’s was one of two murders for which Wayne Williams was officially convicted; the other was Nathaniel Cater.