The List [bonus]
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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. 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. By the winter of 1979, Atlanta's nightly news was filled with reports of missing and murdered children.

But attached to some of the names, you'd hear a disclaimer. Top police brass resisted adding his name to the task force list. You don't see her on the official list of murdered and missing children. Not put on the special task force list until his body was found. His death never made the list either. Had not been on the missing persons list. His disappearance also didn't make the list. What exactly was the list? Where'd it come from? And what did it mean? Were the individuals on the list connected? Law enforcement seemed to waver on this.

As late as yesterday, detectives in the homicide division at APD were saying there was no link between the cases. In fact, they wouldn't even acknowledge that there have been more kidnappings and murders involving children than in the past. Homicide detectives are now trying to see whether there may be a connection in the cases. Because he is black and 15, he fits the pattern of the missing and murdered children in Atlanta.

but that may be the extent of the similarity we are unable to say categorically that there's a relationship between one case and the other the only thing all twenty nine cases have in common is that they are on the task force list i think the right thing to do is to be able to keep up

were those cases of bare similarities. Authorities told me they do not think at this point that one person is responsible for all the disappearances and deaths. There are some similarities. Obviously, we have to look at the possibility that there may be some connection between

all the cases. We're not discounting them. Investigators think several cases are totally unrelated. Authorities say there are similarities with other incidents. Police do not think that this murder is related. There are some similarities and some of the deaths. Police do think there's a possibility that this murder is connected to another case that they have under investigation. An Associated Press story quotes an unidentified source close to the investigation as saying putting all 28 murder victims' names on one task force list

is one of the biggest mistakes the police department has ever made. The source says putting all the names on one list has created the impression the cases are all related. The source says many of the cases are unrelated, but the public thinks they're all the work of one killer because they're on the same list. The source says the list is a big mistake and a scorecard for police failure to solve the cases. If the pattern could not be agreed upon, then why were some of Atlanta's missing and murdered children excluded?

This is the actual list that we used. And you know the origin of the list. You can touch it, but you can't have it. I think the list is either in need of correction or incomplete. I'm not sure. Could have been more. I think it could have been more. I think maybe instead of a list, maybe we need two lists. One involving young, small children. The other involving adolescents.

You would be hard pressed even today, even with people who have spent a lot of time poring over these records to find some consistency in what folks think represents a pattern of behavior for whoever or whoever's committed these crimes.

I don't think there should have ever been a list. I think each case should be investigated individually. This is Kirsten Tobin, creator of the At Kid website, the database that focuses on the victims in this case. It doesn't make sense to have little kids, seven and eight year olds, who were found in the woods with different causes of death, to be put in a list with adults they found in the river. I don't see how those things are related.

I think that may have just been officials panicking. It makes the city look bad. And if they put it all together and they can just focus their investigation in one place, if they make it related so they're all related, then it feels like you can get rid of the monster. It feels like there can be something done.

It was political. It was crazy. It became a thing in and of itself, and they didn't know what to do with it. They didn't know how to get out of it. I don't think they ever, nobody ever dreamed what this was going to be. This is Dale Russell. I'm the senior investigative reporter for Fox 5 News here in Atlanta. Like many we've talked to, Dale has followed this case since the beginning. In the beginning, it was really a list of unsolved murders.

But then the name Missing and Murdered got attached to it. They had no evidence linking anything back then. And then it got into this strange thing of, why is my child on the list? Why is my child not on the list? Is the murder of my child not important if it's not on the list? To their defense, they didn't really know what they had yet. At the time the list was first put together, I don't think anybody knew what this was.

Some private investigators now working on the cases don't agree with Lee Brown. They say the list of murdered and missing children in Atlanta, which now number 17, is too limited. The private detectives want to know why. They say any child who has been murdered should not be excluded from the intensive search now going on. In their words, whether it's one killer or 15, they should all be caught quickly. Discrepancies in the task force list of names form the basis of the comprehensive 1983 book, The List.

The list and the viewpoint of its authors have always been controversial.

Chet Detlinger had a treasure trove of information. If you really want to contrast in what I just told you, read Chet Detlinger's book. Detlinger. He interviewed me in the office. I'm on page 123 of that book. I love Chet. He would probably be shocked to hear me say that. I have so much respect for him. He feels that it wasn't handled correctly. That's something I agree with. It's funny. I've talked to a lot of people who...

or kind of whisper that they read it, but don't want to say out loud that they read it or whisper that it's guided them. We didn't always see eye to eye. He's been critical of some of the reporting I've done. He had a voluminous knowledge of this case. Because he was in early...

I thought he was smart about how he got in and how he saw it. I think he's dead on in some of his depictions of the problems with the police department. Chet always liked to portray it as he knew better than anybody else, but, you know, I thought his criticisms about the politics of the list and...

Some of the other things early on in the police department were fair and valid. I think it's full of what Chet wanted people to believe. I think Chet just didn't, wasn't privileged to all the facts. I started reading it and put it down. I went, "Nah, don't like it." Didn't want to read it anymore. His theory was way out in left field, and he eventually convinced enough people that he was right, and they used him as their expert.

He talks about the politics within the force. I guess I would call him the ultimate skeptic. The police were going to psychics and Chet's like, this is ridiculous. He seems like the voice of reason to me.

in a lot of it. I basically agree with everything he says in the book. It feels in a certain way like a case file. It's almost as if people want to use it as a treasure map. You know what I mean? Like, well, I don't necessarily adhere to everything that it's promoting, but I'm going to use this as a launch pad, as a springboard to do further research. Unfortunately, Chet Detlinger and co-author Jeff Pru have both passed away.

In lieu of an interview opportunity, we've asked our producer Matt to quote directly from the book. As Atlanta's mystery deepened, I learned that it was far worse than our public officials were telling us. More victims were not part of the official investigation and body count than were on it.

The List, which consisted only of cases assigned to a special police task force that had been formed amid community pressure in July of 1980, ended with 28 slain victims, plus 10-year-old Darren Glass, missing since September of 1980. But that excludes at least 63 more unsolved Atlanta-area killings of blacks who fit the arbitrary age, sex, race, and cause of death parameters that the authorities used for The List.

It's important to keep in mind that all those cases which were not put on the list, an alarming number to be sure, don't come close to adding up to all unsolved murders in the Atlanta area. They merely fit the fluid parameters of the list, parameters that the authorities themselves established and changed with no logic. In the early morning hours of June 24th, the body of 10-year-old Aaron White was found underneath this railroad trestle on Moorland Avenue.

While Aaron Weish may seem to fit the pattern, his name was not initially added to the list. DeKalb County investigated, concluding that the boy's death was accidental. The medical examiner wrote, "The boy died from asphyxiation caused by trauma to the neck area, either from falling or in striking the ground." Even before the deaths of the young black children were being connected, the family of Aaron Weish did not believe that his death was an accident.

They say that he was always afraid of heights, and as you can see by this rail, a young boy would have to physically climb on top of the rail to accidentally fall off. Did you tell police that you didn't think it was an accident? Uh-huh. When they came in and they took me out there, I told them about it. What did they say? They said from what they know that he just got up there in the ashtray and just slipped off. What would you like to see done now? Well, what I would like to see done is for them to find out who did do it because I know my baby didn't do that on his own.

The official ruling of Aaron's death didn't sit well with Chet Detlinger, and he pursued to investigate. "I returned to the intersection of Moreland and Constitution to find the damned railroad trestle. Lo and behold, we soon found that there was no railroad trestle for Aaron Weish to fall off. Instead, he had been found at the base of a highway bridge which passes over two railroad tracks."

The bridge is six lanes wide. It blends so well into the surrounding terrain that were it not for the guardrails, which are almost as high as Ehrenweich was tall, most people wouldn't notice that they were on a bridge when passing over it. The bridge has sidewalks and is perfectly safe to walk across. There is no way Ehrenweich could have fallen off that bridge.

Jumped or been thrown, maybe. But fall off? No way. Private investigators agree that the case should be reopened. They say the body fits into a geographical pattern established with other deaths and disappearances. His death was from asphyxiation, and he fit the description of other black males who were on the official list. But Weiss never made it. His death was ruled an accident.

The trestle where this happened is the boundary line between DeKalb County and Atlanta. If Aaron Weitsch's body had been found on the other side, just 50 feet away, Atlanta's task force may have been working on number 12. Chet asserts that this mischaracterization of the bridge on the official police report had a devastating impact. By itself, the discrepancy in the Aaron Weitsch case was tragic only for his family, but in the overall panoply of Atlanta's murders, it was catastrophic.

It meant that the police were dealing with an accident, not a murder. Consequently, there was nothing to investigate. It means that Aaron Weish was not plugged into the authorities' thinking about the case. What happened in the Aaron Weish case? A medical examiner perceived the word "trestle" to mean what it's supposed to mean: a span without railings and with open spaces between the railroad ties. As a result, he ruled a murder an accident.

A police officer who didn't know what a railroad trestle was became the Achilles heel of a murder investigation that cost more than $9 million. Naldecat police officials have changed their minds. They think it was murder, and they have reopened the case.

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. The origins of the list go back to 1979, to a grassroots coalition of concerned Atlanta mothers. Mothers in U.S. history have been at the forefront of a number of movements framed around protecting women.

children, communities, the nation. There's a long heritage of this, right? Of people taking the symbol of motherhood and attaching that to the kind of activism that everybody can relate to, right? And everybody can get behind and everybody can understand in terms of people who will selflessly put themselves forward to take any risk to protect their communities.

When the mothers organize themselves to come together and say, we've got to do something to stop this, the first thing that they're actually asking for is just take it seriously and investigate it. We want our children found safe.

We want justice for our children that have already been lost. While police check out the similarities in all of these crimes, the mothers of three of the dead children are warning other parents to be careful. They have set up the Committee to Stop Children's Murders. The group is planning a seminar at the end of the month to teach parents how to keep their children from becoming the next statistic. I am so sorry that what happened to my child, what happened to these other ladies' children happened, but...

What I want you to do is to hang in there and try your best to see to it that it doesn't happen to yours. Thank you so much. And almost immediately, these mothers come under scrutiny. Are they unwed mothers? Why is it just mothers and not mothers and fathers? What does this mean about the dysfunction of their families that mothers are stepping forward?

And all of this kind of sense that, you know, urban women, particularly black urban women, are matriarchal and represent kind of something that is wrong and dysfunctional and creeping into the mainstream in terms of American familyhood and American womanhood. Like all of that got played up.

The Muslims will be on the streets keeping an eye on the children, but they know they can't do it alone. Tonight they urged the men in one housing project at McDaniel and Fulton to start caring about kids, their own and other people's, instead of doing their own thing. What does it take for us men to get off our rusty dusties and come together and begin to solve the problems that affect us all?

Some men listened. Most were too busy doing other things. Those who listened said they hoped more people would get involved, but they're not confident. I don't know if this is going to do any good. As a man, I will tell you honestly, there's a lot of mothers out here that don't watch their children. There'll be a lot of children around here, the people, but the mamas don't be knowing where they at.

Sometimes I see them and take them back up on the hill or where they stay, take them to their mama, try to find out who they are. America has demonstrated over and over again that the caring for our children that we profess may not be there. I contend that it is, but that we're feeling helpless to make change. We're not helpless and we will make change and America will become a child conscious society.

Rather than being universally kind of seen as these people who have suffered the greatest loss, having to bury a child or going to bed each night not knowing where your child is, they are almost immediately kind of seized upon by many folks as a symbol of what's wrong with American familyhood.

and therefore potentially responsible for whatever has happened to their children.

Last night, members of the Committee to Stop Children's Murders held a closed-door meeting to decide on a formal reaction to FBI allegations of some parents' responsibility in the murders. Today, victim Curtis Walker's mother told me such talk was nothing new. She says police repeatedly accused her of killing her son. What they was trying to say that I had something to do with. I told them it was a damn lie because I didn't kill my child.

And they kept saying they're going to try to make me say that my child was a street kid, a hustler, or a runaway. And I told them to get the hell out of my house and don't come back. Camille Bell, making the formal statement for her committee to stop children's murders, said the group has sent a letter to FBI Director Webster saying his remarks were untrue and demanding an apology if no arrests are made in the next 24 hours. Usually after they get a chance to work through that.

and find out whether the parents are in fact people that could have done it or didn't do it, then either an arrest is made immediately or they go on to find other suspects. Basically, the general feeling is if they think I killed my child, tell them to come get me. Mrs. Bell says she has no idea why the FBI made the statements in the first place or why Commissioner Lee Brown did not deny they were true.

I think that it makes them in some ways that much more brave to have come out in the way that they did and insisted, even in the face of this, over and over and over again.

that their cases were going to get the attention that they deserved and that they were going to, in some ways, kind of stand at the gates, right, of their communities and make sure that people knew that this happened to them and people knew that there was still a danger and that people did whatever they could to protect themselves even if they weren't getting all of the official help that they needed. I think in many ways they could speak to what was at stake better

Because the fact that mothers came out in the ways that they did constantly forced the media and public officials to have to acknowledge that these victims are children.

And so over and over and over again saying, you know, my child was innocent and being very specific about that and pulling out photographs of their children and personalizing these stories, talking about the things that their children liked to do, talking about the ways that their children, even when they were out and about, you know, weren't, quote, street hustlers, but were kids who were trying to make extra money bagging groceries so that they could help their families.

or trying to run errands for neighbors to be helpful in the community. Well-loved and even not well-loved children in their schools where they were just in the third grade, just in the fourth grade, just in the fifth grade. It's the mothers who keep that front and center and try really hard not to allow folks to depersonalize this.

And so I think that the mothers have to be credited with keeping the memories of their children alive in that way. Interestingly and ironically, I think that as a consequence possibly of...

The ways in which they were vilified and the ways in which the case was so sensationalized, a lot of the mothers also chose at a certain point to retreat and really became fairly adamant that they didn't want to be harassed. They didn't want to be bothered, not bothered about their memories, but that it was continually traumatic.

I think it's really important to recognize that because a lot of folks were earning their livings on the backs of these children and on their families' trauma.

In the last year, eight Atlanta youngsters have been reported missing. The parents of some of these children have complained that police aren't doing enough, partly because of these complaints, but mostly just to try and get to the bottom of all this, the special task force was created, one sergeant and four investigators. As far as our investigations are concerned, it will allow us the time to

go back and tie up any loose ends that needs to be tied up in the course of all of the investigations. But most of all, it would benefit us by allowing them full time without interruption. So now we have two groups of investigators looking into these cases, one from inside Atlanta Police Headquarters and another made up of former APD officers who are now private detectives.

Commissioner Brown says he welcomes any help he can get in this matter, as long as the private detectives remember where their authority stops.

The 10 murders and kidnappings involving missing children have become priority number one at APD. The task force assigned to investigate the cases has been doubled in size to 10. The FBI has been asked to assign two of its agents to assist in the investigation. Governor Busbee will be asked to loan Atlanta police four agents from the GBI. The state will also be asked to provide money to pay for extra police overtime and other expenses. The Atlanta office of the FBI has pitched in to help in a peripheral way.

They've already made available their laboratory resources, their behavioral sciences unit at Quantico Virginia. Technical assistance, they've flown in people to be of assistance to us. So we're appreciative of that. We would also, our request right now is that they assign agents to be

a part of the task force. And that's where the problem comes in. The FBI says this is a local case, and no matter how horrible it is, Congress doesn't allow the FBI to get involved in local cases. What Atlanta really wanted was money to spend the way it thought necessary on the investigation, but Ronald Reagan didn't go quite that far. Instead of a blank check, he has offered other assistance, technical help through three agencies.

the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Already the FBI has more than 26 agents working on the cases. Some days all are used, while on other days some agents sit idle. Bureau officials in Washington now say it is very unlikely any more agents or equipment will be sent to Atlanta for the investigation. Commissioner Brown thinks Atlanta's little black children's rights have been violated, and he thinks they deserve help from the federal government.

When I look at the media coverage, particularly when I look at it as a researcher, I am immediately struck by the lack of empathy that seems to be extended towards these children's survivors. People who have lost a lot, more than we can imagine. It seems like

folks are looking for an opening for a story to be like, well, this kid, you know, was in foster care and that was probably because the mother, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like real tangents that don't really have much of anything, if anything at all, to do with the fact that the child is missing or murdered. And what's interesting is you don't see a balance in that. So you don't see a lot of conversation like,

this kid comes from this home and these parents are really grieving and the parents told them to be really careful. There seems like there's this hyper interest in focusing on kind of parental lapses. And it's really unclear to me why, except for the fact that it's scintillating, it's kind of titillating. It doesn't seem to serve any kind of investigative purpose. It certainly doesn't clarify anything in most instances about what happened to these children.

There's so much to be dismayed by when you're thinking about this, but if there's anything that upsets me more than anything else, it for me is a sense of injustice about the ways that these children are characterized in their death, in their tragic, tragic deaths.

I mean, the worst imaginable kind of victimization when a person's life is taken from them and they are characterized in these ways that would suggest even for adults that they are unworthy of attention and sympathy and care and any further effort.

So these kids are, you know, often referred to as street kids and hustlers. Rather than talking about a child who has run away from home several times, they talk about them as a runaway. There is so much codified language that suggests that these kids are throwaways anyway that is deeply troubling and that enables people to distance themselves from the reality of them as runaways.

Innocence. The question is, is Patrick Rogers a runaway or has he been harmed? His family thinks the worst, claiming he would never leave without telling his mother. But Rogers has been in trouble with the law before, and some investigators think the teenager has run away this time and because of news reports is afraid to come home. The Missing Persons Bureau is checking that and until the report is either confirmed or proven false, the case will remain with that department and not be transferred to the task force.

Patrick Rogers, the authorities said, was a runaway. So what? They had said the same about other victims before, and they would say it again. I always thought runaways were missing children. But then, I always thought that a murdered child was a murdered child. Not so, if you follow the nonsensical media reports in Atlanta. We were told again that 16-year-old Patrick Rogers, who had been missing for three days short of one month and found murdered, is not one of Atlanta's missing or murdered children.

16-year-old Patrick Rogers was last seen alive on November 10th when he left his apartment at the Henry Thomas Housing Project to walk his little brother to the bus stop. Police did not believe Rogers' disappearance had anything to do with the 15 Atlanta missing and murdered children. Then on Sunday, December 7th, the body of a black teenager was dragged out of the Chattahoochee River near Paces Ferry Road in Cobb County.

Cop police still aren't sure how Patrick died or who may have killed him. But considering his burglary record, they are investigating to see if there were any burglaries in the Paces Ferry area around the time Patrick disappeared. Patrick's brother thinks that's ridiculous. Just face the facts and know that he was killed. Ain't nobody, you know, ain't nobody gonna go way out in the car counting specialists if they don't know their way. They don't know their way.

Not to be burglarized. Mrs. Rogers believes her son was murdered by someone he knew. She's always thought that. I told him all the time that my baby, my son, was dead, even when they were making all them excuses. How did you know he was dead?

Ever since Patrick vanished that November day, his family believed their boy was in trouble. A black 15-year-old male who lived in the same area where three other children had disappeared. They were later found murdered and added to the task force list.

But he wasn't, not for two months, even though he did fit into the pattern. Well, the theory that he was a runaway disappeared as quickly as Rogers did when his body was found a month later. His case is very similar to Aaron Weish's, who remained off the list for nine months until last week. His death was ruled accidental. In that case, however, DeKalb officials now say new evidence could point to foul play.

Patman's case obviously was a turning point in the Atlanta murders. But police missed the turn and went off on a tangent. The task force wouldn't investigate Patrick's death because Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown steadfastly refused to add him to the list. Authorities said that Patman was too old. The list, at the time, embraced victims aged 7 to 15.

Patrick Rogers, like Aaron Weish, was eventually added to the list. But what if he had been added earlier?

At Patrick Rogers' home today, his family took his addition to the list without much emotion. Stevie Rogers, Patrick's older sister, had just heard the news. Her mother, she said, was at the task force offices, but she knew what Mrs. Rogers would say. One added to the task force because he was found in Cobb County and that they was working on a case. That's why they added him to the task force. The only reason why he... The only thing he had to come with the other kids was his weight.

and his race and where he come from, you know, like he from a low-income family. Other than that, he said he didn't see no reason for them to add him to the task force. When you heard that, what did you and your mom think? Same thing, boys, a bunch of boys. Stevie told me Patrick had been friends with several other of the murdered children and pointed out that Aaron White, victim number seven, only lived 300 yards away.

So one of the complexities of talking about the neighborhoods that the kids were from is that it brings us right back to this question of the list. You have to think about the children who were counted and potentially the fact that there are children who were not counted. I think that when you look at the character of the neighborhoods that the kids are from, then you can see how other neighborhoods might fit.

even though they weren't named on the official list, because you're talking about neighborhoods where people don't necessarily have a lot of economic resources. You're often talking about neighborhoods that, as a consequence of that, have a number of abandoned, neglected homes, places where you might have, like,

Single room occupancy in homes or what we call boarding houses, like all of these things, right? So that you have these close-knit communities, but you also have a lot of people coming and going and not a lot of sense of control over people coming and going. And then you also have a lot of kids who are coming from housing projects and subsidized housing.

The easy thing to see in that is that people have a lot of economic resources, right? That a lot of these kids were coming from homes that were impoverished. What that also can mean is that these kids, a lot of them are coming from homes that have a lot of state intervention.

And sometimes a lot of particularly fraught state intervention. Right. So you might have more police patrols. You have more crime, generally speaking, and a sense of vulnerability around that. Generally, you have a lot more people who have relationships with state apparatus like you've got a social worker.

because you're receiving assistance or because a person is in foster care. So all of that stuff is already in place. So you have these relationships sometimes between mothers who became activists, sometimes with other people who are still close in,

But, you know, maybe not in the nuclear family system where you've just got all kinds of difficult, fraught relationships and also vulnerability. Right. Like if you come out and protest against this or you make a big stink about they're going to lose their benefits, you're going to lose your housing. What does all of that mean?

You also, though, have a space where you can be subject to state intervention and mandates much more. So, for example, when a curfew was ultimately instituted, you had a lot of patrol around city housing projects.

to ensure that people were in by the curfew, whereas you didn't have the same level of patrol around that in other neighborhoods that were more affluent. And while it could be interpreted that they were getting extra protection...

What often happened and the way that it was even framed was that it was punitive for parents, right? So these kids get picked up. First, they're taken home. And then if nobody's home for whatever reason, maybe people are working the late shift because people who have hourly jobs often aren't working at banker's hours. Then you get taken to a place that feel very much like a detention center and people get sent.

And people get fined. And so there's all of this stuff that's happening as a consequence to some extent of where people live. You also have these really high concentrations of...

of poverty in certain pockets at that time and to this day. And you also have a lot fewer options for safe and supervised recreation, or you find kids going pretty significant distances to get to safe and supervised recreation.

You have the sense that there's a curfew and that people should be in, but some of those things are assuming that people have resources that they don't have. What it seems like is happening is that, you know, families are actually encouraging their kids to go somewhere safe, but the sense is that that somewhere safe to go might not be inside your home.

So it's not as simple as just thinking, oh, we'll just go home and close the door and then you'll be safe. But maybe I need to try to figure out how to get my kid someplace that's a couple miles away to be inside and safe and also have me be compliant with the law at this point in time. So this is a lot more complicated than it seems. There was one place that I think is gone now. It was a housing project. They had what they called the Bat Patrol.

And these were adults that walked around with baseball bats and looking for suspicious characters or protecting the community, whatever they call them, the bat patrol. Today, residents of the project said they will police their own community. You got dropout kids here in community that can be their own patrol. They can't get nothing out of their city councilman or the businessmen. Who more fit to organize the community than the people living in the community?

But unlike the guardian angels who do not carry weapons, the Techwood group will be armed. Teenagers over 16 will carry baseball bats.

And adults over 21 will carry guns. The Tenants Association is taking the law into its own hands. They claim police patrols in the neighborhood are not enough. They say budget cuts by the Atlanta Housing Authority have closed down recreation centers for children at a time when they're needed most. They don't want to spend the summer keeping their children indoors. So beginning next weekend, the patrols plan to be on the street. And they say anyone who looks like a stranger is fair game.

Any outsider comes in here to try to molest the kids or anything, they'll be known. They're going to watch our community. And I'm advising all the communities to do the same thing. One organizer was asked what would be done to prevent volunteers from shooting an innocent person by mistake. His answer, no force of arms is too large when it comes to protecting our children. There was a lot of press attention at Techwood Homes about the Bat Patrol.

We're all going to arm ourselves with bats. Nobody's coming into Techwood Homes. And they walked around with a baseball bat to protect the kids. Guess where Bubba Duncan lived? The next murder victim after the Bat Patrol hit the press. Techwood Homes. Things are tense tonight in Techwood Homes. People are angry. Earlier, it had been reported that Bubba Duncan was a member of the Techwood Bat Patrol. He was not. And now that he's been taken and killed, some people in Techwood are saying the Bat Patrol was just a challenge to the killer.

you can build a fence one man said and this maniac will just climb over it and get you the bat patrol is not getting a lot of support in techwood tonight i feel they shouldn't set up no back patrol you know that that man was whoever it is you know they're showing us that they don't him coming about no bats and nothing else you know i also talked with eddie duncan senior he said his son was strong and could not have been taken by a killer without a struggle he said it had to be someone he knew and trusted i don't know what's happening

All I know is they called and told me that they were found, but she did tell me about two weeks ago that he was missing and she couldn't get no help from the police department. Bubba was older. He was 21. And it threw everybody, threw us in the press. If you go back and look at the articles, you'll see they were asking questions. Well, he's 21. He's an adult. These are child murders. These are kid murders. How do you have an adult? And so then the police responded, well, he was slow mentally, mentally.

He was childlike. I remember that quote from Lee P. Brown. He was childlike. So it's like the police had to explain to everyone how you could have a 21-year-old in this string of child murders, child and teenagers, young adults. And from that point on is when they started getting older. And the child murders, I believe, morphed at the Bubba Duncan case.

into older 20-year-old victims. Typically, Lee Brown was vague and rambling when questioned by reporters on April 8th, 1981, about the finding of one slain adult, Bubba Duncan, aged 21, and about a second adult, still missing, Larry Rogers, aged 20.

We know that the two young men in question are, in context of age, small in stature, Brown said at a news conference. Age is not a determining factor. How he'd changed his tune since Patman had been found. There is some speculation that one of the reasons the killer or killers has or have gone to the young adults, who by the way physically still resemble teenagers, is that the net is so tight that

on children with families now being far more involved than before. Far closer watch on our children. And obviously it's more difficult now to steal away with a youngster. Like victim Eddie Duncan, Rogers looks much younger and is moderately mentally handicapped. Officials say Larry looks and behaves like an adolescent. Rogers looks younger and with a mental handicap acts younger. He fits the pattern.

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.

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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. The list grew to include 30 victims between the ages of 7 and 28.

The final and oldest victim was added not by the task force, but by the prosecution during trial. Even before a jury ruled, rumors alluded to the disbanding of the task force. Privately, many police officers think it's time to disband the task force, but they say the top brass hesitates for two reasons. It simply wouldn't look good to the public and especially to the victim's mothers. I wouldn't like that at all.

Curtis Walker's mother. I want my son's case to be solved, also the other parents' cases. Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown feels that pressure from many of the families. He always reminds the news media that there are still 26 open cases. We shall continue that ongoing investigation until we're able to

to charge someone for the 26 cases for which we have not charged someone at this time. Do you mean that the task force will stay intact until you have somebody charged in all 26 cases? That is absolutely correct.

Brown then instantly realized the bind he had put himself in. It's common knowledge that many of the cases may never be solved. So Brown quickly backtracked and, in essence, retracted his statement. We will assess what we do on a daily basis, and if at any point in time we need to increase or decrease, we'll do what the situation dictates.

High-ranking officials inside the police department tell me the task force has become a political issue, so no more officers will be removed at least before the mayor's election. And after that? Well, sources inside the task force tell me that will depend on whether Wayne Williams is convicted. If he is not, this could go on indefinitely.

Two days after Wayne Williams was found guilty of two of Atlanta's murders, the special task force created to solve the string of young black killings is about to be closed according to reports here. I can understand that allaying the public's fears about such a horrible situation is a good one. Everyone wants to get on with life. District Attorney Louis Slayton was asked whether investigators were closing the books on 24 more task force cases because of links to Wayne Williams. I believe not.

There will be some meetings in the next few days about certain cases, but I don't believe that there would be that figure. With 23 of the Atlanta murders blamed on Wayne Williams, Lee Brown announced Monday the Missing and Murdered Children's Task Force was closing for good next Monday. But then church leaders complained to Mayor Young that the closing was premature and the heat was on Brown.

Today he came back to the media to announce the old task force that investigated child murders was still officially closed and he still maintains Wayne Williams killed 23 of those victims.

But Brown says a new task force has been created to take its place. It will be made up of 25 Atlanta policemen, no other jurisdictions. They will team with remnants of the old task force to investigate all Atlanta homicides. It will be called the Homicide Task Force. One of the things that was brought to our attention by the ministers that met with us, people who represent, even just through their congregation, if not through the fact that they're

Leaders in our community is the fact that the community has an attachment to the task force and we had seven cases which were not Closed and as a result we want to continue the effort and be responsive to the community Commissioner haven't you just renamed the homicide department to appease the parents the answer to that is no we have never made any of decisions for purposes of appeasement and

But as the commissioner was continually drilled about the name change, even he found some humor in it. You understand why we might be skeptical? Of course. It occurred to us. They closed the cases, which was horrible for the families. There was no closure. The list existed. After he was convicted, the list disappeared.

There's 30 victims. Two of them got a trial. Whether or not you agree with the conclusion of the trial, there's 28 then left who had no trial and they were just closed after the conviction. So that doesn't seem right to me. That doesn't seem like any real ending. It feels very incomplete, just pitiful. That's a bad thing to do. If it was one of my kids that died,

I don't want to know what the hell happened and who. They need to know an answer. They need to know why or they need to know what. Some answer.

After Williams is arrested, the mothers are still very focused often in saying, I want justice for my child. My child matters more than closing this case matters, more than the implications of this open case for the city matter. Remember that my child was somebody who deserved to live a full life.

Our archive clips are courtesy of WSB TV. Be sure to tune in next Friday for episode 9. There's two episodes left. See you then. Why do you do it, Chet? Well, I don't know. I guess it's like anything else. You get involved and you can't let it go. And the more involved I get, the more involved I want to get. I want to catch the guy. Primarily, I want to stop the killings. I want to see the kids' killings stop.

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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...

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.