Questions: Part 1 [bonus]
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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.

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.

Hi, my name is Jamal Anthony. Why this story? What made you guys decide that this was the story to tell? It's a very unique story, but it's very complex and seems to be ever-changing, you know, so many moving parts to it. So what made you guys decide to pick the Atlanta child murders story?

That's a good question. Really, Donald Albright, my business partner here at Tenderfoot TV, he brought this story to me at first. I'd never heard of the Atlanta child murders. Donald, what inspired you to bring this up in the first place? Initially, I knew we wanted to do something different. First podcast up and vanished, you know, we were planning on doing a season two of it, but I knew we wanted to do something other than a missing persons case. And just thinking back on my childhood, the Atlanta child murder was something I remembered growing up. It affected me and I think some of our other

listeners that are either 40 and up and from the black community especially remember hearing about this and I was away in California but it still affected me you know I heard about it from my parents from my uncles and it was something that just I felt like I needed to ask you if if you had ever heard of it before and when I did and you hadn't you hadn't heard of it I was like how many other people out there you know just don't know about this tragic story so I figured look if we can bring

Yeah, and I did some initial research after you told me about it to see if this would be a good podcast. And I realized very quickly how important this story was.

to the nation, especially just the city of Atlanta. All the racial bifurcations in the story, the way it sort of shaped this city and kind of had this sort of dark cloud over Atlanta for a long time. And it's something that was sort of swept under the rug. And the more you dig into it, the more you learn that just isn't readily available out there. Right. And I think also, I mean, I learned a lot. You know, I thought I knew about this case. And I think a lot of people think that they know about this case until you actually do the research, listen to the podcast. So, you know,

the things that I thought, you know, some of those were rumors and, and, you know, those were dispelled by doing the research. So I got a lot from it, but I think the interesting thing also is that, you know, we sat down with Jason from how stuff works and, and,

You also, Jason, had this idea to do this podcast. So it kind of seemed like a perfect match. And that's why we ended up doing it together. When I met you, Jason, I had just talked to Donald about the Atlanta child murders case. And we met for the first time in your office. And you brought up the Atlanta child murders. And I said, I'm not kidding. My business partner, Donald, just mentioned this to me.

And I was going to write there in between you guys. What was your take on doing this as a podcast? You know, for me, I was, what, nine or ten years old at the time, and that image of the case, even living far away in Wisconsin, was burned in my brain. And I think what Donald said is right, where some things actually surprised us here. So...

The reactions from folks who lived during that time and remembered it but actually didn't quite remember everything. These things tend to be urban legends the longer they get drawn out and the stories tend to change over time. And even if you listen to the podcast, you'll be like, it sounds like even folks at the FBI don't quite remember everything 30, 40 years later. And so there's a certain mythology that builds over time.

The second thing that I think most shocked me and I think, Payne, you probably feel this way too is how many people had no idea that this was actually a story that happened, that this many African-American children were missing and murdered and that this happened in a major metropolitan city like Atlanta. The other why is that it's been 40 years and part of this is

what's the same and what's different about this country and this city. Absolutely. And we're talking about race. We're talking about economics. We're talking about politics. We're talking about police and justice. And it's pretty stunning to see certainly some things have changed, but a lot feels the same even after 40 years. Yeah, I think I've said this before, speaking about the podcast, is that, you know, there's a difference between progress and change. And

A lot has changed, but we haven't progressed as much as a nation as we'd like to think. And I think that's one lesson or one takeaway you can have from listening to this podcast. To add to that, the why now, it's been 40 years, like you're saying. A lot of these players in this case are getting really old now, or some of them are not even around. So, I mean, in 10 years, I don't think you could do this podcast, to be honest. No, you couldn't. And just kind of brings up another side note, which is what was our goal in the podcast? So...

It was an investigation and we wanted to get to the root of the stories. But I think we discussed early on

We wanted people to make up their own minds and hear everything, even the wild, crazy stuff, and make up their own minds and then look in themselves and be like, why did I think that way? What's causing me to think that way? Is it based on things I've held on to for years or is it because I really feel compelled one way or another that the evidence is swaying me? Yeah, I promise as a listener, whatever you were feeling, I was feeling the exact same thing at some point. This is so confusing. This is...

puzzling what why is this like this do I believe this do I not believe this

Those are things that people have thought for almost 40 years now. It's nothing new in this case. Everyone associated with this has kind of a different perspective based on age, based on race. And like Payne being 30, you know, you weren't even born when this happened. You know, Meredith's on our team even younger. Jason and I were young and heard about this growing up. But just you two, you know, Meredith and Payne, you guys are the generation of powerhouses.

podcast listeners that, you know, really don't know about the story. So just hearing about it and learning about it in the way that you did, you can probably relate a little bit more to the listener that's hearing about it firsthand from the podcast. Right. So I didn't grow up with the story, obviously, like either of you did. But I think it's interesting in my perspective to still see parallels between the story now and

What's happening today in 2018 and social issues we're facing now and how, like you were suggesting, Donald, there might not have been as much progress as we like to think that we have. And these issues that are there in 1981, some of them are still here in 2018. And I think that it's interesting to see that from my perspective coming across the story brand new right now.

Hey, Payne. This is Wendy from North Atlanta. So my question is, so the bridge that supposedly Wayne Williams threw the body off of,

I was wondering why it took so long for them to recover that body. Don't bodies float when they're first thrown in the water and then they sink later? Therefore, they would be able to recover that body that night as opposed to waiting three days and then not being able to connect it to Wayne Williams throwing the body in. That's a good question. I am by no means an expert on that.

the human body in that sense, but from what I know, a dead body does not float up until the gases inside from the decomposition make it rise to the surface. So let's assume that it was Nathaniel Cater's body that was tossed off the bridge and he had died just a few hours earlier within that timeframe. He likely would sink and then rise to the top later.

The FBI told us, and also it's in the FBI reports, all the documents, that they did go search for a body that night with boats and with helicopters and all kind of stuff. But they found nothing. Yeah, and that's not – I've been fishing on the Chattahoochee many times, and it's –

It's very cold, very cold water, and it's a little bit tricky to navigate. It's not the widest river in the world. There's lots of overhanging trees. And if you were to do that at night, it's not the easiest thing to kind of find a clear pathway and just a body be there. And so I just, knowing that environment,

I know it is a little bit tricky and I'm sort of not surprised it took them maybe an extra day or two to find the body. Yeah, I think another thing is the current. It's been suggested to us that the current was really strong. It's also been suggested to us that the current was relatively calm. So depending on who we talk to, we get mixed – we got mixed information about that. And I think regardless –

There was a lot of time between when they heard a splash, Wayne was pulled over, they talked to Wayne, they assembled people to go out and start investigating the splash. That was in the early, early morning hours of that night and or of that day. And I think it probably took a long time before anything was set in motion. So that could account for some, you know, missing time or where Nathaniel Cater's body, if it was indeed dumped that night, where it would have been.

in relation to actually first hearing the splash. But the focus was on Wayne almost immediately. You have this splash, this suspicious character on the bridge. It's late at night. So all the police officers, the FBI, are there focused on Wayne Williams.

They're also trying to look for a body that one recruit claimed he heard hit the water. So it's late, it's dark, and I think that even McComas made a comment to us offhand, the FBI agent, that they didn't even launch a full investigation that night in the water because the current was strong and it was not safe to do. Yeah.

Yeah, and if you think about it, they didn't even really know for sure what they were looking for. They didn't know Nathaniel Cater was missing at this point. It wasn't that they were looking for someone in particular. They just, here's a kind of fishy situation. Let's look into it. So I think that definitely is a good point to bring up, that McComas, they didn't know what they were looking for. They didn't even launch an official investigation yet. I think FBI also mentioned that the recruit under the bridge could have been as much as 50 yards away from where McComas

directly where the body may have hit the water. So if he's, you know, under the bridge 50 yards away and he hears a splash, he starts to, you know, walk over there and then shine his light on the water.

And by that time, I mean, even if the body has hit the water and initially come up before it sinks again, and the current takes it away, I mean, you're looking at at least a couple of minutes of someone walking and then looking around. The body can definitely have disappeared by that time. So, you know, there's a lot of variables. I think there's no definitive answer, really, they should have found it as soon as it hit the water or three days later. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We

We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories. First-hand 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.

Well, according to Wayne Williams himself, he did know about this. He

He told me it was in episode 10 in one of my last phone calls with him that he knew about the bridge stakeouts.

Was he telling the truth? I don't know. But according to Wayne, in 2018, he did know about the bridge takeouts, and he did have a car that was like a police car with a police scanner, so he had the know-how and the ability to hear a police scanner and possibly find out about bridge takeouts. I don't know if that helps or hurts his story, but that's what he told me. That's the only time I've ever heard him say that. Do you think that was just another turn in the story at the end because...

I don't think he even had the police scanner in the White Station wagon. I think it was in some of the other vehicles. I just, I have a tough time believing that he knew. And if he knew, why would he do it anyway? I think Wayne tends to say things and shape things as he's talking to people. And he shapes the stories in a way that fits whoever he's talking to and whatever he's trying to get across. I think in that moment, he felt compelled to tell me that he

You know, all this is ridiculous because he knew about these stakeouts when I don't know why he didn't say that in his trial. I think it's a good point that he didn't necessarily have the police scanner with him in that car. I'm not sure if that was something he moved around to different cars that he moved around plenty of cars, as we know.

But he did know, like, enough about what was going on. This is me talking, assuming that Wayne did this. But he did know enough about what was going on to change the place of dumping to the rivers. So I don't think it was out of the question to think that he—

knew they would be looking at rivers by this point. It wasn't like this was the first body that had shown up in a river. Yeah, bottom line is kids were turning up dead in the Chattahoochee River. That was in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That was in articles. It was in the news. That was a known fact in Atlanta at that time. And mainly adults at the end showing up further and further outside the Atlanta city boundaries, right?

in rivers, again, as Popcorn says, because he heard the fibers were important, so he was stripping the clothes off of them. I'm actually really surprised that the law enforcement was able to keep their stakeouts a secret from the media. I don't know if there was an agreement with the media to keep it quiet.

But for all the stuff that happened to be able to essentially cover every one of these bridges out in the country for 30 days and no one know about it, I'm still surprised that that didn't get out. I thought it was suggested to us once that maybe people didn't know exactly what was going on and where, but that they knew that police were staking out new locations. Even Captain Dave. Yeah, Captain Dave said offhand in our interview that he recalls –

On the police scanner, they were using code words. I don't know what the word was, but it was something, it was some street name that he'd never heard of in Atlanta. He said, where is this street? Where is this? Turns out it was a code word for the bridge takeout. And he found this out during that time period. So Wayne Williams having the same access that this guy has.

And, you know, it's plausible that Wayne would know about the bridge stakeout. The question is then if he did, like Wayne saying, if he did know about the bridge stakeout, then why is he going to the bridge at three in the morning? Yeah, it's it's surprising, but it is conceivable. And I think it's important that to remember that when he was pulled over, at least to us, he suggested that when he was questioned, he said, is this about the kids? Even if he's claiming his innocence.

he knew that he was being pulled over in association with, you know, the kids being missing and turned up murdered. So also I think he could have known about the bridge stakeouts and that's not going to deter if it, you know, if he's the one who's guilty of this, it's not going to deter that person from dumping them in the water. That was, he, he believed at the time that it was, you know, getting rid of evidence. So,

You know, the killer has to know. It's just common sense. If I'm dumping bodies in rivers, if there is a stakeout, they're probably looking at rivers and, you know, where these bodies are being found. And also, let's say he was aware of the stakeouts. It doesn't mean he knew exactly which bridges, exactly which times, when the bridge stakeouts were ending, and that that was the actual last night. So, you know, it's a lot of variables when it comes to that stakeout. Yeah, and I was going to say, just while we're on the topic of the bridge issue,

Again, over and over again, we were out at the bridge and they have a kind of an extra fence on top now, one of those kind of curved rails that prevent people from jumping off into the river. And so we had to use a lift in order to get Randy over the top and drop him.

But this kind of question of how could anyone Wayne's size pick up a body and throw them in the river? Well, if you look at the original bridge structure and some of the photographs, that structure is actually not that tall. It's less tall than the height of a normal car. And it is solid concrete. So the ability, again, I'm getting a little bit graphic here, but to pick up a body, even force it up against that concrete structure and push it over is

To me, that doesn't seem very difficult, even if those bodies were a lot heavier than the victims whose bodies were pushed over. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely doable. I mean, if you take— You tried to lift Randy. Yeah. If you take Randy at his height and weight compared to Nathaniel Cater, which is—you know, it's been some back and forth about exact height and weight, but it's all very similar to what we were dealing with in—

you know, my height and weight and not much different than Wayne Williams at that time. And I was able to take the dummy from about the middle of the bridge, drag, you know, put my arms underneath the dummy's arms and drag it up the curb over to the bridge and lift it at least to my chest height and to be able to put it over what would have been the barrier at that time. It wasn't a scientific test being done by us. It was

You know, what do we believe? Like, what did I just hear? Like, the best way to test this is to do it yourself and see if there's anything there. We put ears where the recruit heard this splash. So you as a listener got to hear what it could sound like. It wasn't altered. We literally bought these microphone ears to emulate the way people hear things. And so that's the closest we could possibly get.

Hey, Payne, it's Gennaro again. Why did they rent so many cars during that period? I mean, the mom's sick, the father, I don't know. You know what I'm talking about? I wonder why they rented so many station wagons or whatever. Bye-bye. They did rent a lot of cars, and we asked Wayne about that. According to Wayne and to Larry Peterson, too, who's the fiber analyst, they did rent

The Williams family was having trouble with a newly purchased LTD during this time period, and it was in and out of the shop immediately.

So all of the rental cars they got were associated with that. I don't know if it was directly suggested that it was from the car shop that they were going to that was giving them these rentals, but it was because they had a new car that was having trouble. It sounds convenient that they had all these rental cars, not planned necessarily. You know, looking at the list by Chet Dettlinger, there was even, he talks about the confusion around the cars and what

goes where and when, and I had trouble following it, frankly. This is something I found that was interesting to me, not just because of the cars, but they had pulled over another individual and their car, it was actually a tag associated with Wayne Williams, associated to Metro News Productions on 1817 Penelope Road, which is Wayne and his family's address. So they actually went to visit Wayne

in January of 1981. It's the first time he was talked to as part of this investigation and well in advance of him being questioned and arrested later that summer. So whether they knew it or not, they had actually already talked to Wayne because of an association with one of his cars.

Well, we talked to Popcorn, the FBI agent. He told Meredith and I that there was this list of about 3,000 people that the FBI had created, and Wayne Williams was on that list. So he said that no matter what, eventually they were going to find Wayne because there was this list of individuals that fit a profile that they had built, and Wayne's name was, lo and behold, on that list.

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.

Hi, Payne. My name is Yolanda and I'm calling from Campton, Georgia. Is it possible that Cheryl Johnson was like a frame by the GBI or the FBI? Like, could they have called and left the incorrect name and number in hopes that he would go out and end up on that bridge so that they could arrest him? Or am I really far-fetched in that?

I think that's a little far-fetched. I don't believe in these huge elaborate conspiracies to pin all this on Wayne Williams. What's the point? If it was thought out that much, then they would have more evidence on Wayne Williams, first of all. And if that's also the case, why isn't Wayne saying that?

The FBI with plants and stuff like that, it just doesn't make any sense. It's too much. They didn't say, this is Cheryl Johnson, come to my house right now. He decided when he wanted to go to her house. He could have went after the first call, after the second call, before he went to the club or after the club. So he could have went a completely different direction. He could have been coming from North Atlanta or from East Atlanta. You never know where he's coming from when he decides to go to Cheryl Johnson's house. So, yeah, I think it's kind of far-fetched, and I also don't believe in the—

larger conspiracy theories that involve, you know, a ton of players that are out to get Wayne Williams. There's just not enough, there's not enough evidence to support that. And like you said, Payne, if they were framing him, there'll be, it'd be a much better frame job than this. I think it's important that Wayne doesn't suggest it was ever that. Regardless,

regardless of Cheryl Johnson is real or not, he always stays true to that it was a prank call about someone who knew he was in the music business. And he always stays true to the conspiracy only started after I was stopped on the bridge. So it doesn't even matter if Cheryl Johnson is real or not. I think Wayne Williams knows no matter what that it's a bad alibi. Yeah, there's just no way that it's a setup. If it was, then they messed up and

a body was tossed over the bridge as a result like if if they were really trying to set them up they would have been waiting at the top of the bridge and it just seems very far-fetched the two in the morning thing if he's a suspect you knock on his door and you take him downtown and you question him with all the stuff you've got on him you do not do an elaborate

you know, bridge stakeout to trap the killer, if you will. And to not see someone drop the body off the bridge. If the point was to catch the killer, then they would have caught the killer right then and there, but they didn't. Yeah, and if it's all made up, I mean, make up a better story. The guy under the bridge would say, oh, I saw Wayne Williams throw that body over. Like, why so, you know, why is it such a shaky story if it's a setup? Yeah, if you're luring a killer and you're expecting them to drop a body off a bridge and no one sees it, it just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, how many different versions of that story did we hear? Hi, my name is Megan. I thought that I heard earlier in the podcast that some of the victims had been sodomized. And so I was just curious if there was ever a DNA collection that would have correlated with Wayne Williams, or if there was even the ability to gather DNA and compare it, since that's not necessarily what he was on trial for. So it's just one piece I was curious about. I think it's firstly important to talk about the suggested sexual abuse issue.

Apparently, from everyone we talked to during our own investigation of this, there was no evidence of sexual abuse. It was theorized that sex was a motive and it's possible, but we couldn't find any records of rape kits. No one from the FBI or the APD ever suggested that there's any sexual abuse evidence.

So I think, firstly, that's an important distinction. We've thought a lot about the DNA connection because DNA testing wasn't even a thing. It really came to light around 84, 85. And...

the suggestion to be able to kind of go back and see what happens. I've asked that question. We'll probably play a clip from Maurice Godwin, who came on the show and talked a little bit about this. Corporate Fibers is not direct dividends. Corporate Fibers, you've got to have something else to support it, to make it stronger.

DNA is direct evidence. You don't need anything else to support DNA in fingerprints. Carpet fibers that was in the vehicle for 40 years could still hold DNA that could produce a profile. The problem is what type of environment the car had been in. He destroys the DNA.

Time destroys the DNA. Now, a case that I worked in 08 to 010 happened in 1985. It was a woman and her two children brutally murdered in their house. And I worked for the defense from 08 to 010. And they used a vaginal swab from her

from 1985 that was just kept in an old cardboard box, and they matched it to him in 06 from 1985. Back then, you only could use blood. The original blood analysis, they couldn't say was his or not, but they said the DNA was. And so they recharged him in 06 and court-martialed him in 010 and found him guilty. He's on death row now.

Everything that was collected by the FBI and the GBI and law enforcement for the William Williams case, where is it? Well, they have the right to

to destroy the evidence after the trial. Do you think that they did in this case? I don't think so. I think it's in probably about 25 places. It's probably in the sheriff annex. It's probably in some boxes down in who knows where in the police department. It's probably in all kinds of locations. And I very seriously doubt that they transferred the information and the evidence and everything when computer technology came along

I very seriously doubt they transferred that to a spreadsheet. So the problem is you would have to put somebody down there to physically crawl on the floor and look and everything to find the things. You might find some things.

But I would not be surprised at all if it's not in the trash dump. Victim's clothing with blood, do you think they held on to that? Well, you got two convictions and the rest of them have been exceptionally cleared is what it's called. They probably don't.

And then frankly, you could go deeper and say, you know, DNA evidence matching is not what it used to be. It was originally, you know, positioned as how do we take the wrongly accused and find something that exonerates them? And it's turned into how do we get a guilty plea out of someone based on this DNA to also going even further in saying, you know,

It's actually swaying some of the jurors they've said because if I see DNA testing put in front of me, I tend to believe that that is the truth. And so even DNA kind of being considered this bulletproof evidence actually has a lot of biases in here and is problematic in these days. So even if we opened it up, even if the samples were clean, there are some problems there.

Hi, my name is Kim, and my question after listening to the podcast is about the evidence collected. I'm assuming it's just sitting in an evidence locker or in storage or something, and I'm just wondering why they can't now use modern DNA testing to either clear or condemn Wayne if there's so many questions about his innocence or his guilt. A couple points here. In 2010, there was a case update that actually said in looking at

DNA findings between Wayne Williams and Patrick Balthazar, it would have actually strengthened the case against Wayne Williams, not for him. The other thing to consider in looking at, again, we talk about these flawed techniques. Think about it this way. Even if you were to match some of the DNA from the hairs, that was a part of the case, but the fiber matching was such a stronger case for the state against Wayne. And

He has less of a defense against that. So I think you answer one question, you end up opening up a bunch of others. I just, I still think it's problematic. I mean, I think the lack of DNA evidence in this case is what's allowed it to be so confusing over the years. Usually it's in a murder case in 2018 when there's DNA, you can usually rule someone in or out as to being at the crime scene or anything like that. That wasn't really done here. The closest thing we had to it was these blood samples in the back of one

one of Wayne Williams' cars. And what's interesting is I actually asked Wayne Williams about those blood samples. It didn't make it into the final episode, but I want to play that clip for you guys here. This is his answer.

My understanding is what they claim to have found in the car were two dried scrapings of blood that were determined to be human blood. And these scrapings were supposed to have come from the Barrett case and the John Porter case. And they presented evidence in trial about supposedly enzyme testing matching their blood type or something like that. But the issue is, according to the DeKalb County Medical Examiner report in the case of William Barrett,

He was apparently stabbed post-mortem or near the time of death or whatever. But in any case, the medical examiner was emphatic in that there was no external bleeding on him. How can you have a case where somebody did not bleed externally, but yet you said you found a blood scraping from that person? That doesn't add up.

And remember the thing on John Porter? He was originally not even included on the task force list. He was, hold on, let me get my notes here. Okay, he was found in the open in a vacant lot and with multiple stab wounds. And this probably was a street crime. So it was just an attempt to link two cases in a pattern that basically never existed.

When we were petitioning the court for DNA testing back in 2009, one of the issues we raised was to have those blood samples tested at the state crime lab. And my attorneys did go to the state crime lab to get the two-slide samples of the scrapings to send off to the lab to have it tested. But when they went back the next day to oversee the package, the packing of the blood-slide samples,

the samples were lost. Not only were they lost, but they also lost the car seat that they claimed that these samples came from. Now, my point is this. You've got the samples the day before, but yet all of a sudden overnight you lose them when you find out, you know, in the process of doing DNA testing, you know, that raises a red flag with anybody.

I have a somewhat related question that I've never been able to get my head around, and that's the lack of fingerprint evidence that came up a couple times, especially with Wayne. I don't know the answer to that either. Do you guys have any thoughts there? It's certainly odd that there's no fingerprints of any of the victims inside Wayne Williams' home if that's where they're theorizing that he killed some of these kids. I don't know if that's because they didn't dust the entire place or

I do know that when Larry Peterson told us about the night that he went to the house to get the carpet samples, he told us exactly what he was looking for. He was not looking for fingerprints. He was looking for a match on the carpet.

So he saw the green carpet, took the sample. He saw the purple material, took that sample. He knew what he was looking for. He came back that night and it was a match. So I don't know if the focus was just not on fingerprints or what it was, but there weren't any. So I think one thing to consider is Wayne Williams had a leg up on anyone coming to search his atmosphere.

In fact, like people have said, there's that one strange story of like Homer in the backyard burning things, bringing boxes out to the trash. I don't know how good fingerprint evidence is or was then, but it sounds like there was some time to cover some tracks if there were tracks to be covered. Yeah. Even if you weren't covering your tracks as you were, you know, committing these murders, you had time when once you left that bridge, you knew that you were a suspect and you had time to then cover your tracks. And also, you know,

We don't know where else to look for fingerprints because there is no like where's the scene of the crime. You don't know where these kids exactly were when they disappeared. All we know is that, you know, they have evidence from the house, evidence from the cars. And those are two places that he was able to clean up after himself. If the FBI didn't come into Wayne Williams' house and view a crime scene, they just viewed a normal looking house. There was no body on the ground. There was nothing to there was nothing to definitively test for fingerprints.

Sure, in theory, you could fingerprint the whole house, but I'd assume that they just did not do that. Remember, half the media was in his house when he got back from being downtown. Yeah, it was pretty loosey-goosey. There was people in and out. It was all over the place at that time. Thanks for listening to part one of our Q&A session. If you have any questions of your own, please call us at 1-833-285-6667.

Again, that's 1-833-285-6667. And tune in next week for part two.

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...

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.