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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. This episode of Atlanta Monster contains explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. I'm in a recording studio recording a song and my phone rings. It's Wayne Williams. Everybody in the studio is like, 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. 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, you know.

But he's the type of person that you have to be very strong to deal with him because mentally, he could just run over the average person. 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. Atlanta Monster.

The average person doesn't have the mental acumen to be able to hold conversations with this guy. I'll tell you about the asshole part. There have been multiple conversations that me and him have had that end up in me, you know, basically having to curse him out and tell him, look, dude, you got to shut the fuck up and let me do what I know how to do. You've been in prison for over 30 years and you don't understand how the world is operating right now.

You understand? And you can't go under the premise and guise of how things were operating before you left the real world. So shut the fuck up and let me do what I do. Should I control things or what? Absolutely. Absolutely. If you're not strong, he will have you doing some shit that maybe you don't want to do. It's been a rollercoaster ride. It's been a rollercoaster ride for the simple fact that you're dealing with

a microcosm of so many different emotions and you're dealing with such a extreme personality. You're dealing with the guy who was supposed to be L.A. Reid. You understand? Wayne Williams started a radio station when he was 15 years old and it was successful. His family was educators and his dad was a college professor.

He knew the people in the affluent circles of the city of Atlanta. You imagine somebody like myself, who has a very strong personality. Now, I meet this guy 35 years removed from everything that has transpired. And all of the psychological damage and everything else that he's had to endure. So we bump heads a lot, you know. But you have to think, it's a guy who...

had all his promise and was the only child and has been in prison and has had to watch his mom wither away and die, watch his dad wither away and die. When you first talked to Wayne, what did he tell you? In your first conversation, what was he saying to you? He started doing a 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.

So when we first talked, he wanted me to know that he was impressed with what he had already learned about me. 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 because I was aware of things that publicly most Americans just don't think is possible or would never believe the cover-up

both the GBI and the 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. What do you think Wayne cares about most as a person? I think...

From what I know about him now, and 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. He's not supposed to be here.

Right. You mean like someone in prison with him? Yeah, absolutely. 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 going to be able to help a lot of people that are in this kid's situation. You think Wayne cares more about other people than he does himself? Absolutely. I'm the same way. So I understand it. When you live in this 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 know are not right. But then you have an understanding of it from my perspective or Wayne's perspective.

It 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, right? Where do you draw the line between conspiracy theories and facts? 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 altered 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.

Dwayne may be right about this. There seems to be a lot of lingering doubt when it comes to Wayne Williams' guilt, but it's not exactly widely discussed. For example, I'd heard varying opinions of Wayne's physical capacity to kill and dispose of Nathaniel Cater. The 27-year-old was one of the few adult victims of the Atlanta child murders. I asked Dwayne what he thought about that. 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 stopped on the bridge. So a 6'1", 180-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's 6'1". How is he going to fit out of a window of a car? Nathaniel Cater was a badass.

Nathaniel Cato 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 5'7 Wayne Williams, little fat 5'7 Wayne Williams killed this guy. Nah, man, there's no way. So how now does Wayne take a 6'1 180 pound man with one arm? That's the most disgusting lie ever.

Dwayne says Cater was 6'1", 180 pounds, but according to court documents, he was actually 5'11", 146 pounds. Nathaniel Cater was one of the two adult victims that Wayne was actually convicted of murdering. The other was 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne. Payne lived on Magnolia Street, about a block from the home of Patrick Balthazar. Jimmy Ray Payne was a guy who was in the streets who supposedly Wayne killed.

On the autopsy report on cause of death, initially it said that it was undetermined. Then it was changed to say asphyxiation, which basically means he was strangled. I have the actual picture. I checked this out.

Dwayne was right. Records show that Jimmy Ray Payne's cause of death was originally marked as undetermined rather than homicide on the medical report on June 16th, 1981. However, on August 6th, 1981, the report was redone and Payne's cause of death was changed to homicide. News coverage of Wayne Williams' trial shows that the medical examiner could only say with certainty that Payne's death was a result of undetermined asphyxia.

Officials from the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office spent more than six hours last night and today examining Jimmy Payne's body. There are multiple means of asphyxiation, and the medical examiner couldn't be sure of the exact mechanism. Any external marks at all around the neck?

No extended marks around the neck. There's no evidence of sexual molestation? No evidence of sexual molestation. Dr. Zaki says there is still a slight chance Payne drowned. He estimates the 21-year-old died very soon after he disappeared last Wednesday. 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 in Payne's lungs. So is there any doubt in your mind that Wayne Williams did die?

These murders? There's no doubt in my mind, unequivocally, he didn't murder anyone. Unequivocally, without a doubt, he didn't murder anyone. Absolutely not. Where does that firm belief come from? 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, you know. And along the way, it went from, hey, man, nobody is going to be able to speak up for me like you. So does Wayne want to get out of jail? He wants to get out of prison, but he also wants justice for the families more than anything else. We consider him the 30th victim. Does Wayne consider himself a victim? He doesn't, but I do.

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 80s. Graham even tried to reopen the case in DeKalb County back in 2005.

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 DeKalb 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. Did he find any evidence that would? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, Sidney Dorsey is the key to all of this. If you get a interview with Sidney Dorsey, he has all of the intimate knowledge as far as the police work. Where is he now? He's in Reesville State Prison doing a life sentence.

Sidney Dorsey was the first African-American sheriff of DeKalb County in Atlanta from 1996 to 2000. When he ran for re-election in 2000, 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 reopening Dwayne's case. Over the years, he's been quoted by news sources, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, advocating for Dwayne's innocence. So we decided to write Sidney Dorsey a letter in prison. We haven't heard back yet.

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.

After meeting Dwayne Hendricks, I started looking for more people who knew Wayne Williams before he went to prison, before Dwayne even met him. It was hard. 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 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Hosea Williams. Tyrone agreed to meet with me. I know Wayne. I met him when he was in high school.

And he invited me to his home over 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'd like for you to appear on my show.

I 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's 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 broadcast radio?

And I was just amazed that, you know, here's a high school student with a radio station in the backyard, and he's already got his FCC license. Tyrone painted Wayne Williams as a whiz kid, a normal, likable teenage boy. He was very friendly, very affable, humorous. Funny? Funny. Smart. He was a smart guy. You don't say he's intelligent. Very 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 2 or 11, one of them. He worked for both of them for a period of time. Wayne 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 Dr. Martin Luther King.

From Reconstruction up until 1946, Black people could not vote in the Democratic primaries. In 1946, the whole goal was keep 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 hold on the South.

But on April 2nd, 1946, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Georgia's all-white, Dixiecrat party primary was illegal and unconstitutional. So on April 2nd, it was a huge celebration across the South of African Americans and supporters who said, we can finally vote in the Democratic primaries. My parents died.

went to vote in my hometown of Warrington. Many of them were met by mobs or Ku Klux Klan's men, 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 gonna vote or we gonna die." Five people died, two couples and an unborn infant. George Dorsey, Mamrie Dorsey, Roger Malcolm, Dorothy Malcolm, and DaBaby. We named DaBaby in 2008. We named DaBaby Justice.

It captured national attention, and President Truman tried to pass an anti-lynching legislation. This is a case that remains unsolved. It was Dr. King's project. He had two things on his agenda when he was assassinated in 1968. The Poor People's Campaign March on Washington, which we did complete, and the Morse-Ford Bridge lynchings. Though tons of names and suspects are tied to this event, cooperation was limited. No one confessed, and to this day, the case remains unsolved. So...

Here comes the missing and murdered children crisis in the late 70s and early 80s. OK, here it comes. You know, here it comes. And all of a sudden, Wayne is back in our lives again. Tyrone told me he actually went to see Wayne the day he became a suspect. 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 Williams.

Mr. 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, Tyrone. We need to go see him. So Jose and 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 president of the United States holding a news conference. I mean, the whole front, the whole the driveways, the little streets, narrow streets were just cluttered with cars and

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. So we go up to the house and we go in. They let us in. And Jose 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 got to 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 no

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. They were calling him? 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. Was he telling the truth? 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 tonight.

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 Klux 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. Is that true? I believe that was a semblance 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. Then he went over to Fulton County and became chief. Then he went to DeKalb County and became chief. Before Lewis Graham died, Lewis would always see me in passing and he would say, "Man, you're 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 Sidney Dorsey.

who later became sheriff of DeKalb County, 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. I asked Mike McComas about his thoughts on the racial tensions around the Atlanta child murders. 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 was any worse than it is now. But when you have a specific crime that adds fuel to the fire, and like I said, the blacks wanted it 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. I could have cared less. 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. It was just a high, it was a very tense time. It was very tense.

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. There's blacks that discriminate against whites and whites that discriminate against blacks. It doesn't mean that either one of them is 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. I could care less. I mean, you know, that'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 hurts. I mean, it hurts a lot worse, hurts the situation. So we had them then. You know, we had agitators that said that, you know, it was—that someone was trying to, you know, commit genocide of the blacks and this, that, and the other. 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. So, yeah, he did it. Why do you think William still says he didn't do it?

Well, I'm not real 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 '82, so I mean, he's got 35 years in prison now. Just like McComas, 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. He was not a threatening character. The first time I looked on 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, "How could this guy murder that many kids?" They refused to believe it.

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. But after Wayne Williams was apprehended, did the murders actually stop? The best evidence of all was...

Last body that fell off the bridge, we arrested William Williams. There ain't been a murder since. What do you mean, no murders since? After we arrested him, there were no more victims. So since 81, there's been no murdered African-American kids? Oh, of course there 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, that newspapers are just covering it up with the police. I mean, I've heard that said. The murders have continued all this time, just the police and the media are not reporting them. 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. Every 10-day pattern of a kid stripped, dumped, and stopped, and we didn't have any more. Why do you think Wayne Williams still claims he's innocent? 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 ours.

And he thought he could commit the perfect crime. He wanted to show the world that he was smarter than everyone else. So this was an ego trip for him. I tell people in my bureau career, I put five men in prison who murdered a total of 35 people. And 25 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.

Even if he did any of them.

The only thing hurting them is they stop. Once they got him, they stop. So it's like, well, even if we ain't got the man, they stop. Problem solved. With Wayne Williams under arrest, everyone thinks they can relax and the string of murders has stopped. But it just may be that whoever is 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.

Many people think, well, maybe these murders didn't stop 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 seem like 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 weren't 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. 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.

Looking at the numbers, fewer kids died from asphyxiation in 1982 versus 1981. But to say that all the murders stopped just isn't true. Dozens of young black kids were abducted and murdered in the 1980s 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 17 years, and he wasn't apprehended until nearly 14 years after the last murder he committed. I sat down with Meredith, one of our producers, and a man named Kerry Middlebrooks, the brother of victim Eric Middlebrooks. We wanted to hear his perspective as a family member. Who was his brother Eric, and what did Kerry think of Wayne Williams?

My foster dad called me and he woke me up. He said, "Well, 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 Howard Johnson Hotel, behind some dumpsters." I said, "So what happened? Did somebody shoot him or what?"

And they said, well, no, he was seriously injured. He had been hit in the head with something. And on his bicycle, they cut his tires and stabbed him in the arm. The body of 14-year-old Eric Middlebrook was found about 7 this morning behind a bar in the 200 block of Flat Shoals Road near Memorial.

He was hit on the back of the head with some kind of blunt instrument. His pockets had been gone through. The bike he was riding was next to his body. I mean, it was earth shattering, I guess. I still have not gotten over that because he was 14. How somebody can do something like that to a kid? This was just straight up violence. You know, a hole in his head, stabbed in the 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. I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps. I was working as a security officer at the Peachtree Plaza Hotel. One of my supervisors said, you know, the city of Atlanta is hiring. Why don't you become a police officer?

There was no way, in my opinion, my brother died by mechanisms of Wayne Williams. Kerry Middlebrooks then told me his own theory about Eric's murder. He saw something 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.

Apparently, Lisa called my foster dad's house to ask if Eric could go to the store to get some cigarettes around 9:00-ish that night. All I know is he said they got a phone call at 9:00 the night before about the store trip. He didn't come back home. Where my foster dad lived and where Lisa lived was approximately 100 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 happen, but I just have to say something brought me to that apartment for me to observe that something had taken place. Whether it was God or, you know, fate, I don't know. But based on what I saw, something related to my brother had to have happened there.

When I got down to her apartment, I noticed there was a lot of blood on the floor, table, various places. You know, I started having all kinds of stuff running through my head. 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 a scratch. It wasn't just in one spot. It was in several spots, about a pint of blood.

My thing is, I don't think Wayne Williams killed my brother. I think it occurred about 100 feet from where my brother actually lived. I did tell the police this. I did tell the FBI this. Now, 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. Didn't do that. 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 14, so he was really kind of like a young lion, you know. I mean, he...

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 him a psychic. We're talking professional police investigators. You call it a psychic? Yes.

to help you do what? Kerry brought with him a framed document titled "A Resolution." It was sent to his family in 2013 by the Georgia House of Representatives. It said: Honoring the victims in the Atlanta mis-and-murdered children case. It's a resolution to commit to continuing work until adequate laws are 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? I mean, it's just a plaque or some acknowledgement that something occurred with a bunch of names on it, but it doesn't resolve anything. 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.

Kerry 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 at my very first meeting with Dwayne Hendricks, he mentioned a man that knew Wayne Williams very well back in the day. His name was Jimmy Howard. Jimmy would be what you would say 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 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 20s, trying to start the next Jackson 5. Tell me this. Missing them other kids. Who killed the kids? They ain't got Wayne Trevor killing no kid. They got Wayne Trevor with two grown adults, man. Look at all them other kids that are down. Look at them. See, the number one thing here to me,

Number one, you got the parents out here who kids have been murdered. They number one. That never been closed. That wound's still open. But the place keep moving on. Wayne Williams, number two, a man that y'all use for an escape goal. Lock this man up. Forget about it. I mean, I think y'all don't solve the case. I asked Jimmy how he met Wayne in the first place. Man, I met Wayne in a talent show. We was doing a talent show. I was in a band. We was performing together.

After all the acts done did their thing, they'd come out and say, who won this, who placed this and that. But at the time, when we hit the stage, the crowd, they had a big spotlight. I was playing drums. And they shined that light back there on me. And the crowd just went crazy because 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 introduced himself. Man, that was great, man. What's your name? Man, that was hot. Man, listen, man, 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, I said, man, hey, take my car. Get in touch with me, man. You got to know my car. Man, I got some things I'm putting together. That's exactly how it went. So I didn't ever call him. I ended up seeing Wayne again at about two other shows. And then...

My brother said, "See what he's talking about." And that's where it went. And he told me what he was doing. How old were you? 15, 16. And he said, "I'm putting a group together." So one weekend, he asked me to come to the studio recording section. Brought 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. At the time, it was just them two guys I met. And then. So it was 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. Meeting through the weekdays on rehearsing on these songs that he had picked, that Wayne had chose.

So some remixes that he chose for us to do. Well, the plans were to be the next famous group behind the Jackson. It was just crazy, the timing. But I can say this, though. I know Wayne didn't do no killing. What was the group called? Gemini. 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' maximum security cell and hand him the receiver. But that is not what happened. 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 cell, set up this rehearsal and invited the Action News team in to videotape it.

Then Jimmy told me an incredible story. He was actually with Wayne the night he was picked up by the FBI and taken in for questioning. That night, Wayne had taken Jimmy and his fellow bandmates to Wendy's after practice. That's when it happened. We went to Wendy's on Ford in the Dutch. We were sitting in the window. Man, you could see the cops. You could see the cars. They were just sitting there, the ones that we would recognize. Okay, we were sitting there. Wayne said, man, they're going to lock me up. I would say, just come on, lock me up. Stop harassing me.

You know, everybody home, we got on a bankhead to take Brad home. And as we was going down that street over to our bankhead, we went past Brad, had to turn around. Two marked cars was falling right behind, cars that I'd never seen. That was at the windows, they was behind us. We turned around, came back, dropped them off. So, Wayne said, I'm tired of this. So, as we was getting to the edge of the street, stopped, sat on a bankhead. Wayne said, I'm going to call the mayor. Tell him, if they're going to lock me up, lock me up now.

He pulled straight across the street into the JR. It used to be a JR, a big stop. There was a phone booth there. He got out the car. Me and Tuan was sitting in the car. Man, I think he got on that phone booth no more than about two minutes. Cars just come from everywhere. Swarmed the car. Helicopters. Man, it was crazy. Me and Tuan was looking at each other, man. We was like, what the hell? What's going on here? And we're looking. Cop opened up the door.

and put one over to him and said, "Hey, come on, come on, go with us. We're gonna take Wayne with us." Twan said, "Why you gonna do that, man? Do y'all think really Wayne killed them kids?" I said, "Nah, he ain't did that, man. I don't believe that." He said, "Come on, we don't want the media seeing you guys. Come on, he covers us. We're gonna carry y'all home. We're gonna take Wayne with us for some questions." At that point, at that point right now, that's when I really started feeling some kind of way right there. It was a scary moment. I'm like, "Man, what is they doing?"

Look who they convicted Wayne of killing. And they didn't even have the evidence to convict him of that. Where's the evidence? This is big, man. This is huge. This case is huge. And I'm going to say this here. I've been knowing Wayne a long time. Long time. And I know you got some bitterness in him. Because think about it. If you was in his situation or in his shoes, you would want someone to stand for you, knowing that you hadn't done this. Wouldn't you? This thing is deep, man. It's deeper than a lot of people know.

Let me tell you something. That was a name that the media giving Wayne with. They wouldn't use his name. They gave him this name, Atlanta Monster. We're going to show this, man. And it's a good thing. So, you know, we can put this puzzle together and everybody going to be shocked.

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.

I currently live in Atlanta, and I work downtown off Ponce de Leon Avenue in 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 mentioned in this case, but a lot's changed in Atlanta since then. Jason from HowStuffWorks 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 35 years ago. Where'd you get this? About the only place you can get a map these days, Barnes & Noble. So, we are here, Yusuf Bell. You can hear the traffic from I-20 right behind us. This definitely used to be a building. And they found Bell's body when it was abandoned.

Yousef was last seen three days ago. He was running an errand for a woman who lived in the apartment complex. He came to this little store at the corner of McDaniel and Georgia Avenue. If there's somebody out there like that that has him, 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.

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 18 days was strangled. We're probably five minutes from the office right now. If you were to just drop me here blindfolded, I'd have no idea where I was. There was like a new kid disappearing every three or four weeks.

The last place we went that day was Wayne Williams' old home off Penelope Road in Atlanta. Left here? No, go straight. Just cross this bridge. Your destination is on the right. 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 80s, but he had an interesting take nonetheless. It's so funny, though, because, like, every time I take the left, and every time a left driver come over, they say, that's the Wade Williams house. And then, like, then we heard of it, then we Googled it and everything. 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

Wayne Williams. And he said it and he didn't think really anything about it and then a second person told him the same week. It's all different mixed stories, you know. What's the general consensus you're getting from people? That he has something to do with it or whatever but it was like it's probably the Ku Klux Klan or they bringing kids for them or whatever. I don't know. Yeah. What did you hear about it? What? The Wayne Williams story.

I googled it. No, but I believe that there's a lot of people in prison for stuff that they didn't do. Trust me, you know, and they get scared and take in deals, you know. And especially in a place like Georgia, like where it's not even safe to go outside of 14th County, like, you know, if you're African American, you know. The South is still the softest. All black on the outside and white in the middle. That's not a racist statement. It's a true statement because you have black people out here still that fear 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. 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 riding in when the FBI picked him up. The car that would have been a key piece of evidence in this case. If Wayne was in fact the Atlanta child murderer. I searched the internet, but I wasn't hopeful. But believe it or not, I found a 2009 article suggesting that it was completely intact.

The car was in possession of a man named Dr. Blackwelder in northeastern Alabama, or at least that's where it was eight years ago. I didn't know who this man was, and I couldn't find a single phone number for him, but I drove down there anyways and gave it a shot. Maybe the car was still around, and it was. Dr. 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. The trial was in 82.

I was head of the law enforcement and criminalistics program at a community college. He wanted to know if I'd come look at some evidence, 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 stayed 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 them, and I kept going to see. Wayne's mother had cancer, and she...

sometime during our conversation, she made me promise that I'd never turn my back on her baby. And I told her, I said, well, I'll promise you that I'll never turn my back on him. But I said, I'm not going to promise you I'm going to always agree with him because he was hard to

I asked Blackwelder why he even had the car. He explained that the car had been parked at the house of Wayne's father, Homer Williams, for years just sitting there. And then Homer died.

And Wayne called and he said, "You can have that station wagon if you want it." So my wife and I went over there with a roll bag and got the car and brought it back over here. That's pretty much it. Most people just want to look at it and take pictures, but we have people about two or three times a month that want to buy it, yeah. Do you care if we look at it real quick while it's still sunlight? No, go right ahead, yeah. Wow.

Everything that's in it was in there when I got it. Nobody's hearing things, so you don't have to worry about it. From all the stories I'd heard, the station wagon was white, but it wasn't white anymore. The car has been white in the past. When Wayne headed, it was this color. And Homer painted it the blue color after Wayne was in prison. It's now a light blue color and covered with brown rust.

It's also full of dirt and junk. Fishing net, papers, men's athletic shoes. Blackwelder said he believes that most of this stuff belonged to Wayne's father, Homer. Blackwelder seemed pretty close to Wayne Williams and his family. So I asked him, what was Wayne like? He had an old police car. He had a scanner in it and...

He would go out and take pictures of fires and crime scenes and things like that and sell the pictures to anybody that wanted him. 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 of sorts, really, when it came down to it. He had a pretty normal life. He was an only child and he was spoiled.

And I think his mom and dad, he wanted to, he had a need to be in the limelight. Have you ever been in that house up there? Not inside of it. We walked outside. Okay. And on the very back was where his radio station was. Okay. And he had some kind of small transmitter that would cover the neighborhood, you know. 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...

a promoter or something. That's what he was doing out at, 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. Blackwalter 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 Wayne's attorneys. My agreement was with him that I would get a copy of all the documents that they used, and I got copies of all, I've got a basement with eight or ten boxes full of documents.

All the reports and all the documents that the defense got under discovery, the federal documents, FBI documents, and practically all of the state documents, FBI reports, all the autopsy reports, and scribble notes that the attorneys took during a meeting at night.

His mother gave me several photographs out of their family album of Wayne, who was just a little big fella growing up. You see how my filing system is right here? Yeah, it seems like it's kind of like my filing system. Yeah. After I retired, I brought everything into the house. It's all just... I'll have to get somebody to go through it and dig it out, but I've got it. It's sealed up. I don't think he got a fair trial because I know that Maynard Jackson and all of them

needed somebody caught because it was affecting the convention and trade and so forth. And when I would go up there on weekends and go out and eat, a lot of the restaurants would be just about empty and the people through the business had really fallen off.

since that happened, and it hadn't picked up, you know. But once they caught him, then everybody took a sigh of relief and thought, well, you know, we can go back to living our normal lives now because they caught him, which means people assume that if they catch somebody, he's guilty. And then during the trial, it would have been hard, I think, for a jury to find him not guilty and then go back into their neighborhoods and live.

And I don't know to what degree they just didn't want to have to put up with what they would catch from the people at school or 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.

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 Dwayne Hendricks in Texas, he called me out of the blue one day and was about to send this project in a whole new direction. ♪

Hey, what's going on, Payne? I just wanted to reach out to you. I actually spoke with Wayne Williams about the podcast. He basically gave his blessing, gave me green light. And he's willing to talk. Give me a call when you get an opportunity to. Next time on Atlanta Monster.

This conference is being recorded. My bad. 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 Video Tape Collection. Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries. For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster.com or follow us on social media. Alexa, what's the temperature? Right now in Piedmont, it's 49 degrees with clear skies. Throughout the night, you can expect more of the same with a low of 36 degrees. Alexa, thank you very much.

You're welcome. Alexa, will you marry me? I don't want to be tied down. In fact, I can't be. I'm amorphous by nature. Are you taking her prisoner here? Yeah, I am really. 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.