Atlanta Monster Seized [03]
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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why?

Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I asked him to get his ID and they said yes. He was still sitting in his car. I still had my composite sketch and I pulled it out. He had these little glasses on and I drew the glasses and I held it up and I said, anybody recognize this guy? And it was Wayne Williams to the T. I mean, it just, it was just Wayne.

Ironically, we caught Wayne Williams at 2:55 a.m. on the last day of the surveillance. When we got there, we were immediately briefed that this guy was seen on the bridge and something hit the water. It hadn't been recovered. Of course, nobody could get in that water because, A, it's 2:55 a.m., and the water current was just outrageous. Somebody would have drowned and wouldn't have stood a good chance of recovering anything anyway, I don't think.

I went up to him and identified myself as a special agent with the FBI, and I asked him immediately if he knew why he was being pulled over. And he said, yes, it's probably because about those kids that are missing, which kind of surprised me. That was an unusual answer, I thought. That was his answer? Well, it was, you know, that's a paraphrase of it. That wasn't his verbatim answer, but yeah, it was something like that. And the next words out of his mouth was, he says, you know...

He said, "Channel 5 is really covering this very well, but Channel 11 I don't think covers it enough."

So that kind of surprised me. I remember that jumped out at me as well. In Atlanta, another body was discovered today, the 23rd. At police task force headquarters, there are 27 faces on the wall, 26 murdered, one missing. We do not know the person or persons that are responsible, therefore we do not have the motive. From Tenderfoot TV and How Stuff Works in Atlanta. Like 11 other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently was asphyxiated. Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps on killing.

This is Atlanta Monster. I asked him if I could talk to him in my car. I told him we needed to get out of the traffic because the tractor trailers were rolling by and you couldn't hear. Plus, I wanted to interview him. I wanted to get him in my car and interview him. He agreed. Real, mediable, very friendly guy. Was he nervous? No. No, he wasn't nervous. What was your first impression of him?

Well, I didn't have one. Other than me telling you what he just kind of surprised me with the media comment and acknowledging that it was about the kids, I really didn't have much of an impression. I was wanting to know more about what his story was. And eventually I got it. He gets in the car with me, and the first thing I asked him to do, and he surprised me again, I said, "Can we have consent to search your vehicle?" He said, "Sure." So we had a consent form that I had him sign, and he signed it to let us search his vehicle.

Now, as I had walked by his vehicle, I stuck my head in the window and looked around. There was a bag of clothes laying on the floor, and there was a pair of gloves laying on the seat. And what really struck me, though, was that there was a nylon cord, kind of like a ski rope. It was about 24 inches long, and it was knotted on each end. That rope really interested me.

So I started interviewing him and asking him what he was out this late at night, because like I said, it was 2.55 a.m. when he got in my car. He said that he was a talent scout and that he...

I had an 8 o'clock appointment, I think 8 a.m. the next morning. But he was out trying to find their address so that he would know where it is the next morning and not be late. That just didn't have an air of truthfulness to it. Nobody goes out at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the morning to find an address to make sure they're not late at 8 o'clock. I found out he was an only child. He lived with his parents, his mom and dad,

His dad was a freelance photographer and his mother had been a retired teacher. They were quite elderly. He had come along pretty late in life. He was a pretty intelligent guy, too. He had a very high IQ. Word had it that he had built an AM-FM radio station in his backyard when he was about 14 in the FCC. It had made him tear it down.

I asked the guys, I said, is the search of his car over? And they said yes. And I said, OK. So I said, anybody got any reason for him to stay here any longer? And they said no. So we let him go.

There was some things there that happened, that transpired that shouldn't have happened. The FBI has always been and remains an institution that is very conscious of not falsely arresting people. They've made mistakes in the past. Everybody does. It's a judgment call, but...

We did not that night want to violate any of his civil liberties, his civil rights. And so we erred on the side of caution. It was my decision and let him go. What wasn't my decision is when I asked them, I said, "Where is these things you found in the car?" And they went, "We didn't keep any of it." And I went, "What? You didn't what?" I said, "What about the gloves and the rope?" Because I'm thinking that that's probably part of the crimes that had been committed since the people had been killed from ligature strangulation.

But somewhere we dropped the ball. I was in charge, so I went ahead and took the hit for it. I said, well, that's just a decision you guys made, and I'll back you. I don't agree with it right now, but as far as official word goes, then we made that decision, and that's the way it goes. Did anyone ever see Wayne toss anything over the bridge? No, never did. But there wasn't another car on that bridge. He was the only car there.

They saw the headlights approach, they heard the splash, and then they saw what, like I described earlier, as him appeared to just be starting out again at two or three miles an hour. Did you guys ask him that night if he tossed anything over the bridge? Yes. And he, um...

I asked him, you know, there'd been a splash, and I think I asked him, you tossed anything? And I don't remember if he said he was throwing trash out or something. I can't remember that part. I don't remember what his answer was, but he did say, I think he said he was throwing trash away or something, that he had some trash that he needed to get rid of, and he threw it in the river. That night, no one ever saw or found what caused the alleged splash that was heard in the water.

We let him go, and at 6 a.m., we packed up, and I went ahead and went home, and home was down south of Atlanta. I lived in Morrill, Georgia. I drove up to East Tennessee because it was Memorial Day weekend. It was a long weekend to see my mother and basically crashed. I was totally exhausted. I slept for, I think I got there, it's about a three-hour drive, and I got there about noon on Friday, went to sleep, woke up at noon on Saturday, ate, went back to sleep.

Though police had a strange encounter with the man on the bridge, they decided to let him go. They had no reason to hold him in custody. The bridge stakeout operation was now officially over, and Mike McComas went home to rest for the weekend. But meanwhile, investigators were still hard at work, suspicious of the man they stopped on the bridge. And by the time McComas woke up again, big things were happening.

Sunday morning, I got a call from Bill McGrath. He was one of the administrative supervisors on the case. And Bill called me and he said, did you interview Wayne Williams? I said, yes. He said, well, do you have any notes? I said, oh, yeah, I got a lot of notes. Well, we just found a body about 500 meters downstream. You need to call in and do your report right now. And he said, get yourself back to Atlanta. We think we got him.

A few days later, a body washed up in the river, just a few miles downstream from the bridge. The body was found around 11 this morning in the Chattahoochee River just south of the I-285 bridge where the river forms the border between Cobb and Fulton counties. The body was nude and medical examiners estimated it had been in the water a couple of days. It was found by a fisherman.

The body was on the Fulton County side of the river, but it was difficult for police to get to that part of the river. Boats were launched from the Cobb County side. Members of the special task force poured in. About two hours later, the body was brought out. A medical examiner said it was a young black man in his early 20s. The body was of 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater. The FBI now had their first real suspect, the man they had stopped on the bridge. That man was Wayne Williams.

The man who has been questioned was stopped late at night on May 21st after arousing the curiosity of police on a river stakeout. The investigators heard a splash in the water underneath the Jackson Parkway Bridge. No arrest was made then and no one inspected two bags of clothes, the pair of men's shoes or the glove seen inside the station wagon.

For two days, the task force quietly dragged the river, not finding anything. Three days later, two people in a canoe did. The nude body of Nathaniel Cater, a mile downstream from the South Cobb Bridge. Within a matter of minutes, news stations swarmed the river where Nathaniel Cater's body was found. And it wasn't long after that the media discovered the name Wayne Williams. Though no arrests had been made, news stations released his name anyways.

To anyone who's been anywhere even close to the non-suspect's home, it's obvious he doesn't have any privacy anymore. In spite of his pleas to remain anonymous, and in spite of the police begging the media to use restraint, most have released his name anyway.

Reporters and camera crews from all around the nation lined up outside the home of Wayne Williams, anxiously awaiting for something to happen. A horde of police, news reporters and photographers smothered this quiet neighborhood. The media didn't want to miss any arrests that so far hasn't happened. And with this man now under the national spotlight, the FBI's investigation was sent into overdrive.

Two FBI agents and two detectives with the Atlanta Police Department sat perched on their cars, guns visible, never taking their eyes off the modest home in northwest Atlanta. The mother, father, and son inside became a family under siege in their own home. At around 10:00 this morning, the man's father came out of the house, pushed the cameras away with his commanding presence, and silently walked toward the police.

Without saying a word, he signaled them to follow him into the house. "Have they asked you to leave? Do they have anything, a confession?" The nation was glued to their TVs as reporters scrambled to find more information on the man in question for the murder of Atlanta's children. Everyone wanted to know who was Wayne Williams.

Wayne Williams is an Atlantan born and bred, 23 years old, a product of the city's public school system. He went to Anderson Park Elementary School and graduated from Frederick Douglas High School on Hightower Road, Northwest. People who know Williams say he is a highly intelligent young man, a good student when he was in school. That opinion is echoed by Williams' seventh grade teacher, Archie Wilson, who Williams continues to list as a personal reference on his resume.

Those who knew Wayne Williams were completely shocked. As a student, he was extremely bright, very intelligent young man, quiet, very respectful, honest student, very dependable, just an ideal student.

William's resume lists a number of clubs and organizations he says he belonged to in high school. National Honor Society, ROTC rifle team. But his high school class yearbook does not show him in any of the organization pictures. William's acquaintances say he is one who tends to exaggerate his accomplishments and his contacts.

His resume's list of professional references includes many familiar names in the local media. Most of those references say they knew Williams only briefly and not very well. But it is clear Wayne Williams is a bright and ambitious person. He started a radio station in his parents' home when he was only 12. In his teens, he spent time hanging around many of the city's radio stations, doing odd jobs, mostly as an unpaid volunteer, and talking to the people he met

about broadcasting. He was a bit old for his age, so to speak. I'm saying that to talk to a kid that age about something that you're doing as an adult and he's talking on your level, it's really amazing. And as I said before, he was a likable type of individual, maybe because of the knowledge of the industry as far as I'm concerned.

Several years ago, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer and for using police emergency lights on his car. The charges were reduced and handled in traffic court. In 1977, Williams began offering his photographic services to the Atlanta TV stations. Williams would drive the city streets through the night, listening to police monitors in his car, racing to the scene of accidents, fires, and homicides, then peddling film of what had happened to the news departments.

But the freelance photography business was never very successful. And most recently, Williams says he has acted as a talent scout, helping young people get ahead in the entertainment industry. Williams has always lived with his parents in this house on Penelope Road Northwest, the quiet neighborhood that has suddenly become a constant subject of interest for the police and news media.

Neighbors say they never knew the family very well. The typical wave as you go by type of thing. He's been such a good boy for as I know. I haven't seen nothing that could make me suspicious of him. If he has really surprised me, really shocked me. Why would you think it would be a shock to you?

So close, and I got sons and my sons, one of them used to go in and work with him in his radio station. Bright, intelligent, not terribly close to a lot of people. A news and police groupie of sorts. That is how Wayne Williams is described by those who know him. And as his neighbors said, there is shock that this quiet and promising kid is now a major suspect in the Atlanta child murders. He was described repeatedly as someone who was intelligent and docile.

the last person you would suspect in a murder

But the FBI was convinced otherwise. They continued their investigation and searched Wayne Williams' house. On Wednesday night, June 3rd, Action News learned that FBI agents and a representative of the Special Task Force had executed a search warrant and had collected potential evidence from Williams' home and car. They found an 8 by 10 sheet of paper that basically was a flyer that said if you're between the ages of 6 and 10 and you think you can sing or dance,

I'm a talent scout. Wayne Williams called himself a talent scout, and he had passed out flyers throughout the city in search of young kids to form a music group. I recently found a copy of that flyer, the same one the FBI had found in his home. The flyer reads, in bold letters, can you sing or play an instrument? If you are between 11 and 21, male or female, and would like to become a professional entertainer, all interviews, private and free. No experience necessary.

The FBI found this very interesting. The flyer suggests that Wayne was put in contact with young kids, probably more than one. So he put himself out there as a talent scout, and that's how we surmised that he was getting the kids into the car. Because when you're having that many kids and getting that much worldwide publicity, you would think somebody would have enough brains to not get in the car with somebody, but...

He was pretty good at what he did. It could be a huge coincidence, a line of work with the best intentions, or it was the perfect way to get children alone. Investigators were now more certain than ever that they'd found their man. And it was time they spoke to Wayne Williams again. So they brought him in for questioning. They went out and picked him up and brought him into the FBI office.

Just you two? This is Richard Ratcliffe, former special agent with the FBI.

He sat down alone in a room with Wayne Williams to conduct a polygraph test. We had this very interesting interview for about two hours. I said, you're very intelligent. He said, what's your IQ? And he said, I don't believe in IQs. The polygraph, you have to have confidence in it. I think he was totally confident he could beat it. He said that. He was just totally confident he could beat it.

And what you do, you ask a series of comparative questions. It's a series of about 10 questions. Some of them are very simple. It's everything we've discussed, all yes and no answers. It's not really confusing. It's really clear, pretty simple, and no surprises. And at that time, I ran what's considered to be the most valid format in the polygraph research, and that was the zone comparison test. I'll form a set of questions, about 10 questions. I'll go through that and record the physiology.

And then I'll ask if there's any problem with anything, anything you need to explain or correct or no. Then you run a second time. You ask the same set of questions and record a second chart. You run the same set of questions a third time, and after the third time, then you score each one of those and compare the responses to the other responses. And then you add those scores up and it would show either deception or no deception. And it's human nature to want to believe people, so I'm assuming he's going to pass the test.

He stayed pretty much composed the whole time. He was composed and it's not really fair to say relaxed because the whole situation is not one where you're relaxed. He was very engaged and he was very much cooperative and participated willingly.

We had this very interesting conversation about what happened, why he's on the bridge. And one of the things that made him suspect was every time he was asked about the bridge, he gave a different story. So he'd already given two or three different versions by the time I talked to him about where he was going, what he was doing. Didn't stop on the bridge, didn't stop on the bridge. Threw some boxes in the river, didn't throw anything in the river. So, I mean, he had variations of his story.

He's a talent scout and he had this girl's name, Cheryl, whatever her name was, and he was supposed to meet her the next morning at 7 a.m. And so he went to see if he could find the apartment. And I said, are you interviewing young girls at 7 in the morning in their apartments? And that put you kind of in an awkward position. I said, I wouldn't do that. He said, I'm not homosexual. He just made a point, I'm not homosexual. He argued that, that he wasn't homosexual. I was asking him about being alone with this girl in her apartment at 7 in the morning. And I was asking him why he would do that, why he would just set up an interview at 7 in the morning in the girl's apartment.

But that would make him heterosexual. Make him heterosexual, right. Yeah, and that's why I was asking. But his argument was that he wasn't homosexual. People, I guess, were suspicious of him being homosexual. I said, well, I'm not accusing you of being homosexual. But we had that discussion, so I said, what, do you have a girlfriend? He said, not right now. So I said, well, have you ever had a girlfriend? He couldn't name one.

After a long conversation, Ratcliffe asked the big question that had brought him there in the first place. Did you cause the death of Nathaniel Cater? Did you throw Cater's body into the Chattahoochee River that night? What did he say? He said no. He just denied it.

Wayne Williams denied any involvement in the murder of Nathaniel Cater, claiming that he never even knew him. But the results of the polygraph told a different story. Wow. So you're the guy we're looking for. I mean, that's kind of how I reacted when I got through and graded it all out.

When I got through and said, "This shows deception. I'll be darned, you're the guy that we've been looking for. You're the one killing these kids." He said, "That's not me." He said, "Let me see that." So then he spread out the charts. Well, the charts, you wouldn't know from what I just saw, but you look at that and tell me that somebody's lying there that killed the kids. So he spread the charts, looked at all the tracings. So he points out and he says, "What's that question right there?" I said, "That's pretty good. Did you cause the death of Nathaniel Cater?" So he picked out that question, which is where his reaction was.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down from unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal.

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone.

It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle, not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes, he's innocent.

But in my eyes, he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There and Gone.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd.

Plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out. Subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Though Wayne appeared to show deception in his polygraph test, investigators let him go and no arrest was made. After 12 hours of interrogation, Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown told waiting reporters that the man had been released and no arrest made. In terms of our efforts tonight...

We have not ended up with the information that would result in an arrest. A late night press conference was held outside the building, fielding questions from reporters.

But as it turned out, this was a distraction. What the reporters on hand did not know was that Brown was creating a diversion for the man and his father to leave the building. Soon after, the media rushed to Wayne Williams' home in hopes of a statement from the man. And what happened next shocked everyone. Wayne invited all the reporters into his living room.

and held his own press conference for the nation to see. At 7 a.m., three and a half hours after returning home, the young man conducted a news conference, setting the condition that he would not be shown and that his name not be used. You will hear him, but you will see reporters and photographers. He contended that he was being harassed prior to his detainment, intimidated during his custody, and pressured to confess to crimes he says he did not commit.

They openly said, you killed Nathaniel Cater and you know it and you lying to us. They said that. And they said it on a number of occasions. They said it on that night, one of the task force captains on the scene pointed his finger at me and said it. And said he was tired of all the BS about working the long hours, working the stakeouts, and that he was ready to pull the thing to an end. They put a tail on me starting last week. I made them probably in the first hour or two.

And in the process of telling me, a couple of the guys apparently weren't very good drivers and I caused them to have a minor accident. And I think they were just pissed. After claiming his innocence and expressing frustration with law enforcement, he began to elaborate on his role as a talent scout, detailing his involvement in music groups.

It's our job to take some entertainers, say basically from the street, polishing them up, get them professional and try and shop a record deal for them. And we had a young group that we've been putting together since 1977, a group called Gemini. And what we're trying to do is just capture the marketplace basically that Jackson 5 had.

He mentioned recruiting kids to form music groups, naming one in particular that he was currently working on that he called Gemini. Williams himself did not exactly go into hiding. He did on several occasions call local reporters. He led police surveillance on some wild goose chases passing by Commissioner Brown's and Mayor Jackson's houses. Was this the man who was killing Atlanta's children or just a local talent scout who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time?

The FBI had gone through countless leads over the past two years, but in their eyes, the one that made the most sense was Wayne Williams.

When you work a case that long with that many people, there's going to be a lot of theories, a lot of names, a lot of people that you have to check and wash out. I mean, it's quite an ordeal. So there were a lot of theories out there, but none of them had the substance of Wayne Williams. What they had on Williams was almost entirely circumstantial. I'm not sure that we had a gigantic case when it comes to physical evidence.

But we had an overwhelming wave of circumstantial evidence. Except for one key piece of physical evidence. They do have numerous fibers from the man's house that match those found on several victims. The fibers. The fibers are of different colors and texture. Some think that's good enough. Others, including prosecutors, disagree. But even the fibers they found weren't convincing enough for the district attorney to press charges.

Public Safety Commissioner Brown, FBI head John Glover, and task force head Morris Redding met with District Attorney Louis Slayton for an hour this morning. Slayton's office took out the search warrants to search the house of the man police questioned, and Slayton decided last night there was not enough evidence to charge the man. So he didn't press charges? No charges filed. You might have missed that fact if you read the New York Post.

Its headline this morning was sensational. But the New York Post had already run their morning paper with a very conflicting headline that read, Atlanta monster seized. But investigators here are worried about sensationalism only to the extent it affects their investigation.

He was a freelance photographer for WSB-TV, so that was the shocker for our newsroom. As the media dove deeper into Wayne Williams' background, his story became even more interesting. In addition to being a talent scout, he had also worked as a freelance photographer for the local news station in Atlanta, WSB-TV. Monica Pearson, who worked at WSB-TV and was also anchor at that time, recalls this very well.

I was just an anchor, but I can tell you from our viewpoint, it was what? You know, this is somebody we all worked with who was a photographer, but a freelance photographer, not on staff. And I did not know him, but because he worked mainly on weekends, but other people did. And it was kind of a matter of not Wayne. He is so mild mannered. And, you know, what do you mean? He couldn't hurt a fly.

But then there were others who said, well, maybe. In the weeks following the bridge incident, America was gripped by the ups and downs of the FBI's investigation into Wayne Williams. But on June 21st, 1981, everything would change. Suddenly, late in the afternoon, authorities arrested Williams. As you know, we meet on this on a day-to-day basis as a result of the meetings we've had.

Today, the decision was made to issue the arrest warrant, which was done, and he was taken into custody as a result of that. Williams was taken to the Fulton County Jail. He was booked on a charge of murder, the murder of 28-year-old Nathaniel Cater. Despite his initial hesitation, the district attorney suddenly changed his mind, and Wayne Williams was charged with the murder of Nathaniel Cater.

An indictment for the Cater murder was almost predictable, but the surprise came when District Attorney Lewis Slayton made the announcement. The grand jury had returned an indictment in two counts charging Wayne Bertram Williams

with the murder of Jimmy Ray Payne in one count and Nathaniel Cato in the second count. Wayne was also charged with the second murder. On April 27th, 1981, the body of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne

was also found in the Chattahoochee River. The cause of death was asphyxiation. - That announcement came as a very big surprise late this afternoon. Not only did the attorneys for Wayne Williams think any indictment wouldn't come until next Tuesday, they never thought their client would be indicted for the murder of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne. - The police have arrested and charged him, but he still has to be judged by his peers and in a court of law. So until he is found guilty,

We have to say alleged. There was still the question, is he guilty or is he not? In a brief statement, Williams stood in front of Judge Clarence Cooper and said, I plead not guilty to both counts. The trial was underway, and Wayne Williams' defense attorney, Mary Wilcom, was ready to fight back.

She implied that law enforcement was ganging up against Wayne in an effort to close the case and felt very strongly about her client's innocence.

Larry Peterson of the Georgia State Crime Lab began analyzing fibers found on the bodies of victims.

The fibers collected were dog hairs and green, violet, yellow, and red material fibers. In particular, some of the green fibers reportedly came from unique carpeting that was found inside Wayne Williams' family home.

We came up with three types of fiber. Some of it was microscopically found. The green fiber I have personal knowledge of because my partner and I tracked that down. They used to have an old green carpet. It was a shag carpet. Did you guys ever see any of that old shag? Yeah, it's quite old.

Very dated. And it was a green color. And when Harold Dedman told us, when he finished with his, he took a microscopic fiber and found out that this was manufactured in South Carolina. And it was transported by West Point Pepperell to Dalton, Georgia. At Dalton, there was like 200,000 square yards of it. And it went to 10 or 12 different distributors in Atlanta. And then we came down from Dalton and we contacted those 10 or 12. And we found the paperwork where...

Wayne Williams' parents had purchased that carpet like 15 years before. So we traced a microscopic fiber from its very beginning all the way to Wayne's house, and it was the same fiber that we were pulling off of the bodies. Now that, my friend, is a piece of investigation, okay?

The second major part of the prosecution's case was the bridge incident, but the prosecution had no eyewitnesses. The bridge incident was the closest investigators could put their suspect to a dead body, a legal necessity called corpus delicti. Although prosecutors had most of the pieces that night in May, a splash and alleged slow-moving car,

No one who actually saw what allegedly happened on the bridge that night.

The defense argued in the courtroom that Wayne Williams was 5'7" and Nathaniel Cater was 6'1", claiming that it was impossible for a man of Wayne's size to pick up his body and throw it over a bridge. I asked Mike McComas about this. Wayne wasn't a great big guy, but he was round and he was pudgy. I don't know if you ever had a real rush of adrenaline. People do amazing things when they've got a rush of adrenaline.

And when you're not trying to be careful and hurt somebody, you can drag them, pick them up. It's no problem. Another point the prosecution argued was the sound that a car would make when driving across the bridge. What was interesting, there was an expansion plate on the bridge, and if a car goes over the—we later determined if a car goes over the bridge faster than five miles an hour, the expansion plate will make a loud clank. Under five miles an hour, there's no sound.

That sound, the defense claims, is the key to their proof. Police recruit Bob Campbell, part of the stakeout team, says Williams' car did not make that sound, indicating the vehicle was traveling at a slow rate of speed. But a sound expert hired by the defense says that's impossible, that even at four miles an hour, the family station wagon makes the joint rattle loud enough for someone underneath the bridge to hear it. Suggestion? That recruit Campbell was fast asleep on the job the night Williams was stopped.

And the prosecution, surprisingly, went along with the theory, asking Mark Oviatt if a loud splash would wake the recruit up. The expert said, yes. The state contends that loud splash was the body of Nathaniel Cater hitting the water.

Williams bluntly stated the police version of the now famous bridge incident was wrong, a lie. He claimed he wasn't driving slow, that he didn't turn around in a parking lot next to the bridge, that he did not throw anything into the river. He tried to persuade the jury he really was out near a bridge that night looking for a Cheryl Johnson, who still remains a mystery to this trial. According to Wayne Williams, the night he was stopped on the bridge, he was going to find a young woman named Cheryl Johnson who wanted to do an audition for him.

Earlier that day, Cheryl Johnson had called his home, and Wayne's mother answered, and wrote down her name, phone number, and address. According to Wayne, that night, he was going to verify her home address, so he would know where to go for the morning appointment. But the major problem was, investigators never found a Cheryl Johnson. When they went to the address on the piece of paper, there was no Cheryl Johnson who lived there, and the phone number didn't work. So who was Cheryl Johnson, and where was she? The prosecution claimed that she wasn't real.

but wayne stuck by a story the state implied he fabricated the story but williams didn't budge from it claiming the woman simply gave him a wrong number and wrong address after a grueling two-month trial it was time for a verdict

After several days of testimony, three experts summed it up in two sentences. Fiber and hair from William's home and car matched fibers and hair taken from the bodies of Cater and Payne. They also painted him as a possible homosexual who hated poor young blacks. The defense, steered by a Mississippi lawyer, fought back better than many had predicted. Their goal? Place doubt in these people's minds.

As Binder said throughout the trial, Wayne Williams is not a killer. He countered with former police recruits who charged members of the stakeout team that night in May were drinking and asleep. A loose-fitting fiber expert from Kansas came in and showed that fibers may not be as unique as the state had claimed. For 12 hours, the jury deliberated. And on February 27th, 1982, the jury returned their verdict.

guilty. When the verdicts were read, William's father stood before the court and said, I feel this is very unjust. I don't see how anyone could find my son guilty of anything. I just don't see it. William's mother called the judge and Uncle Tom. The 23-year-old freelance photographer this morning, only a suspect, was optimistic. Tonight at

As he left the courthouse, his mood had changed. He is now painted as the mass murderer. Wayne Williams was found guilty for the murder of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne. But in addition, the FBI essentially closed all other cases of Atlanta's murdered children.

attributing them to Wayne Williams. The question of race popped up a lot tonight. Mrs. Williams remarks about Uncle Tom. Binder even said a white man would have been treated differently. And the mother of victim Yosef Bell, a woman who prodded police into forming a task force several years ago, was very disappointed with the outcome. Camille Bell, mother to victim Yosef Bell, acted as a voice for the parents of the missing and murdered children. And she wasn't very happy with the verdict.

If I believe that Wayne Williams killed the other 12 that they claim, the same fibers that were found on those bodies were also found on Yousef's body, then I must believe that Wayne Williams killed my son. But since I don't believe that Wayne Williams killed anybody, I can't believe that Wayne Williams therefore killed my son. What it all boils down to is now we have Wayne Williams, 23, the 30th victim of the Atlanta slayings.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal. This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask.

I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs. From the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy.

So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone.

It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle, not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes, he's innocent.

But in my eyes, he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd.

Plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out. Subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. From that day forward, Wayne Williams was in history books as the Atlanta child murderer. A lot of people think he's innocent, believe it or not. I think they view him as someone who got caught up in it and ended up getting blamed for it.

I'm going to be honest with you. I never spent a lot of time paying attention. I was happy when they was like, all right, we off cold red now. Everybody can go out and play again. So is Wayne Williams the Atlanta child murderer? Absolutely. Without a shadow of a doubt, Wayne Williams was the child murderer.

I'm not saying he did all of them. He was convicted on two because we didn't have enough evidence to take him on the rest of them. We attributed the lion's share of them to him. I mean, he definitely did more than just two, but that was the only two that we had enough to take him to court and convict him on.

I didn't have any problem with the way it was concluded. You know, it's like if you catch a guy with 100 bank robberies, he's not going to get any more. I mean, you can only sentence a guy so many times so much. So two life sentences is the same as 10 life sentences. Life is life. It really wasn't over. It really wasn't over. Today it's not over. Wayne Williams says he didn't do it. The families don't believe he did it.

Law enforcement says he did it. The court said he did the adults. But no one has ever convicted him on killing the children, the boys who were found suffocated. I still think it's a story that needs to be investigated. I would love, and I'm glad you're doing this, to open up the case again and see what you can find all these years later.

Remember Russell Balthazar, whose brother Patrick was found brutally murdered? I asked him about this. I think he got taken as an escaped goat to shut down the problems we had. I don't believe that he was tried with all evidence and said you're guilty for killing all of those kids. I think it was a way for them to slow it down. Somebody better find somebody to put in the jailhouse so make a lot of these people start being quiet.

The arrest of Wayne Williams appeared to solve one of the biggest multiple murder mysteries in American history. The closing of the cases effectively branded Wayne Williams the Atlanta child murderer. On nearly every list of American serial killers, you'll find the name Wayne Williams. Wayne Williams remains in jail and may well be there for the rest of his life.

In 1985, they made a movie about it, starring Morgan Freeman. - Was this the man who choked the life out of, shot, bludgeoned and drowned 28 human beings? - The coach hereby sentences the defendant, Mr. Wayne Bertram Williams, to the custody of the State Board of Corrections, where he is to serve two life sentences. - And over the next three decades, it continued to make its way into pop culture, especially in the hip hop community, being so closely linked to Atlanta.

Yeah.

Andre 3000 from OutKast even has a verse on Travis Scott's 2016 album.

But a lot of people think he didn't do it. Russell Balthasar doesn't. And he has his own story to back that up. Russell heard about a strange incident involving his brother Patrick, and it made him doubt that Wayne Williams was the killer.

Spoke to several people out there, and one of the police officers, the story was told to me that they had him on tape, that he was running, him and two kids, from individuals, more than one person, and they ran into a phone booth. He picks up the phone and dials, I guess, 911 or call the police department, and they supposedly had it on recording that he said that someone was chasing him.

Did he describe the person? He said it was two white people that was chasing him. And that's all I've ever heard about that story. I did try to call the police department and talk to someone about that tape. And all of a sudden, no one knew what I was talking about. So pretty much just left that alone up until now. You mentioned it to me. I'm telling you the story about it. I think most of us like myself, if I knew in my heart,

that they proved that he killed those kids and that would be a lot of relief for us. But I don't think they did. I realized that Russell Bultazar was probably not the only person related to a victim that doesn't believe it was Wayne Williams. I started scouring the internet for other stories like this. And one day I found a YouTube video from 2015 under the username InJustUs. It's a video of a guy named Emmanuel, brother of Clifford Jones, one of the victims.

Okay, and your brother's name was? Clipper Jones. Basically, it was one early morning, August the 20th, 1980. My brother and I basically walked up to a grocery store for my grandmother. People had kidnapped my brother, a man named Jamie Brooks, Horace Hopgood, Freddy Cosby. These guys...

held my brother captive in a laundromat right on the corner of Hollywood Road. They raped him and beat him all day long. One of the people stood in the doorway watching my brother get raped, crying, screaming, saying he wanted to go home and saying that he was going to tell his grandmother and said that the dude, Jamie Brooks, put a rope around his neck

and pulled on the rope. And then the man told the police this, and the police had all this information, and they still blame someone else for Clifford's murder, and knowing why William didn't kill Clifford. So who made this? Who was in Just Us? Who was the man behind the camera? Whoever it was, they had been doing their own research on this case decades later. Someone I definitely wanted to talk to.

After a little digging, I found him. The man who made the video was a guy named Dwayne Hendricks. I tracked him down and I gave him a call. And within the first 30 seconds, it was already getting interesting. With this shit, you know, it's going to be how deep do you want to go to get to the bottom of this.

would literally change American history. I mean, it would do so many things. When you just get into this and you get into, like, all the layers of it, the corruption you deal with, the cover-up, the actual murders themselves, who was responsible for a lot of this? People in high places that want this shit, and then there are some people that want it to come out, but they're afraid of how it's gonna come out.

Dwayne Hendricks told me that he wanted to meet in person, but he lived in Texas and I was in Atlanta. So the next weekend, I hopped on a flight. I wanted to hear his whole story.

He was so invested, so personally involved. It popped up in the news. I just knew it wasn't right. And I remember saying out loud, they lying on that man. When I grow up, I'm going to help him get out of jail. Those are my exact words. And my grandmama goes, if you don't sit your little narrow ass down, them racist ass white boys will kill you. And I told her, I said, well, they'll have to kill me then because that man didn't do it.

That's one of the memories from my childhood that was just always etched in my psyche. This case, it was just something so wrong. It resonated in my soul that there's something wrong about this. Dwayne remembers seeing the arrest of Wayne Williams in the news as a child. It was something that stuck with him.

We were real close. She had me when she was getting ready to go for her freshman year in college. We basically grew up together. We had this bond.

And it was almost like if anything was ever wrong with my mom, she didn't even have to say something. I could just look at her and I knew. And she's a tough woman. So to see her crying uncontrollably to the point to where, you know, it's like snot all over the place. It was real tough. My mom was crying like every day, nonstop for like four days in a row.

And she basically didn't want to tell us. And my pop, you know, he pulled me to the side.

And he sat me down and he said, "Son, this was about to happen. I'm going to have to turn myself in." Dwayne told me that he was all too familiar with injustice from a very young age. He talked about his stepdad's wrongful conviction, which happened during a pivotal point in his childhood. It was very difficult because those years of your life, you're basically becoming a young man. I ended up becoming like so many things in life.

based on the example that he said. This was my first respectable man that I was around all the time and I could ask for advice and talk to and he would teach me stuff like, son, this is what a man does, that type of thing. It was tough, man. It was real tough because you go from

just trying to figure out your body and the changes you're going through as a young man and everything else. And you have all that wound up in your head. And now you got to figure out how you're going to lie to your homeboys about where's your step pops. It really, psychologically, it does something to you. It makes you very angry. For me, it made me hate any authoritative figure. At that particular time in my life, I didn't realize it, but I

I would just disrespect teachers in class.

You know, I would go in class and I would just go to sleep in class, you know, because I just really psychologically didn't understand what I was going through. But it made me very rebellious. All of this together inspired Dwayne to research Wayne Williams' story. I asked him about the YouTube video of one of the victim's brothers, Clifford Jones. When we initially spoke with one another, I cried.

In the meeting that we were having, I had to walk out of the meeting a couple times. His brother was inside being beaten and raped all day before they actually killed him and disposed of his body. He said he knew that Wayne Williams didn't kill his brother. He knew that.

It made me even more want to try to do everything in my power. After talking to Clifford's brother, Dwayne reached out to more families and was slowly piecing together a documentary with one goal in mind. The actual goal was to make sure that we put together a piece that was going to actually highlight everything that needed to be highlighted to give the public

The facts that they would need to know to make an informed decision as to whether or not they believe Wayne Williams is the Atlanta child murderer, that was the whole goal. Whether or not Wayne was a murderer at all, he was never formally charged or indicted for killing any children.

So again, that's another big misconception, right, that comes with the cases that, you know, he's been dubbed the Atlanta child murderer. Dwayne had one main point that I really couldn't argue with. He was only charged with the murder of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne. These are anomalies because these was two adults. This thing is like something that has always been talked about, and it won't go away until...

something is done about it. It will always be the elephant in the room in the city of Atlanta. A few months into making his documentary, he got a random phone call late one night in the studio. I'm in a recording studio and I'm recording a song and my phone rings. It's Wayne Williams. And everybody in the studio is like, everyone was stuck.

From that point forward, what transpired? What did Wayne say? What was developing after that? Welcome to the real world, Neo. Next time on Atlanta Monster. So you know Wayne Williams? Absolutely. Describe Wayne to me. What's he like? Brilliant asshole.

Very intelligent asshole. That's the best way I could put it. And I don't mean it in a bad way because I'm an asshole at times. This thing is huge. It's huge. And believe me, if there was more hands in this shit, to me, it's the eye that we're going to bring. That was a name that the media giving Wayne with. They wouldn't use his name. They gave him this name, Atlanta Monster.

Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week, with new episodes every Friday. A joint production between HowStuffWorks 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. For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster.com or follow us on social media.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday.

Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why?

Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.