The Mindhunter Himself & ATLM Update [bonus]
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you might recognize my voice. This is the Zodiac speaking. I'm Scott Benjamin, the host of a new true crime podcast from the creators of Atlanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. It's called Monster Presents Insomniac. If you're tired of the same old true crime stories being told and retold time and time again, we'll break that pattern. In every episode, I tell the story of a lesser known killer, a monster that'll give you nightmares. But it doesn't stop there.

I'll also tell you how these killers really have invaded my dreams. It's raw, it's real, and there are plenty of episodes to binge with more on the way. Stick around after this bonus episode of Atlanta Monster for an exclusive clip from the next installment of Monster Presents Insomniac. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast and do not necessarily represent those of iHeartMedia, Stuff Media, or its employees.

So I have a friend that works in the mayor's administration. He called me the morning of the press conference and just gave me the heads up that this was going down, that there would be families there, the mayor herself, as well as police chief and other people, and that there would be some announcement made. My name is Donald Albright, president of Tenderfoot TV and executive producer of Atlanta Monster. That was the first time I heard about it. And I jumped up and said, look, I need to be there. We need to capture audio on this.

Good afternoon and thank you all for being here. In 1979, I was nine years old. I was the daughter of a single mother working two jobs and back in school in the evenings. My story was the story of many children across this city. In the backdrop of that story,

It's something that has stayed with me my entire life and that was the era of Atlanta's missing and murdered children. And for those of us who grew up in that era, in so many ways it shaped our childhood, it robbed us of our innocence, and it reminded us

us all that evil was real. 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. The mayor came out and she made a really emotional and powerful announcement.

I stand here as the 60th mayor of Atlanta, now the mother of four children, ages 8 through 16. Their ages are reflective of the children who were killed during my childhood.

A lot has changed in Atlanta since 1979 and a lot has changed in our world since 1981 when there was a conviction for two of these murders, the conviction of Wayne Williams. We now know that DNA technology is much more advanced. But also last week I watched a national story

that mentioned the arrest of a man charged with two rapes and murders based upon inputting his DNA or their DNA into a national database. I immediately reached out to Chief Shields to ask her what, if any, updated testing had we done as it relates to the missing and murdered children.

For the mayor to do this, I think is a big statement. I think it's genuine and comes from a place of someone who could have been a victim, you know, who felt that fear as a child.

You know, former Mayor Kasim Reed as well as Mayor Bottoms, they're of the age range of the children who went missing at that time. They aren't the older politicians that were, you know, a little more focused on moving the city forward and past this tragedy. They were the kids that suffered from this tragedy. So if anyone's going to take a look into this, it would be them, and in this case, the current mayor. Chief Shields then took the next step and spoke with our partners at the GBI.

who agree with Chief Shields that it would certainly be in order for us to now look once again at evidence that the city of Atlanta has in its possession, evidence that the GBI has in its possession. To once again take a fresh look at these cases and to determine once and for all if there is additional evidence that may be tested that may give some peace

to the extent that peace can be had in a situation like this, to the victims' families, to let them know that we have done all that we can do to make sure that their memories are not forgotten and that the truest sense of the word to let the world know that black lives do matter. You know, I think we should be reopening and reexamining the cases that we feel are not attributed to Wayne and that someone else is responsible for.

And also reexamining the way this was handled. I think if this was some independent investigation that was, you know, fueled by a third party, then it wouldn't feel as gratifying. The fact that the city is stepping up, you know, there are skeletons in the closet of the city of Atlanta. And this is one of them. I will turn the podium over to Chief Erica Shields. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

In May of 1980, APD detective Bob Buffington was working the homicide of one of the victims, Eric Middlebrooks, age 14. Detective Buffington spotted trace fiber evidence on Middlebrook's shoe and collected it for further examination. This type of evidence collection had never occurred before. This was brand new for the Atlanta Police Department.

And while some of his colleagues respected his attention to detail, there were many who made a mockery of his discovery. So Bob took this evidence to a microanalyst at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And fortunately, he met someone there, a young fellow by the name of Larry Peterson, who took interest in it. This piece of evidence became crucial in the trial against Wayne Williams. So let's fast forward 40 years to today.

and conceptualize all of the advancements that have been made in science since that first carpet fiber was found. We have an obligation to take those advancements and see if any further analysis can be conducted on the property and evidence that was collected four years ago. The families deserve to find closure.

The Atlanta Police Department has reached out to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. What we've asked is that they look at the evidence that was handed over to them 40 some years ago and they see whether any of it qualifies for further analysis. And what we are asking of them that they report back to us what they have that could potentially be tested. And they've agreed to do this. Separately,

There is evidence from the trial that the district attorney's office has and he's very graciously offered to go through it and see was there anything that was presented at trial that potentially is eligible for testing. And lastly, the Atlanta Police Department has numerous boxes of evidence from the trial. Now much of it is documents and transcripts.

But we already have begun the process of going through these boxes to see if there's anything that was never tested that would not be of value. We don't know what we'll find, but what we do know is we have an obligation. We have an obligation to these families to ensure that every imaginable investigative lead was followed. I think it was a step in the right direction because we have to start the conversation again.

Hopefully what they find will cause the DA's office to reopen some of these cases. But as of now, what they're doing is looking at the evidence that already has been collected. They're going to utilize the latest technology and see if there was new testing that they could do on any of the evidence that still exists in APD's custody. We know just by researching this case what's out there in that evidence locker or those evidence lockers, those boxes from 40 years ago.

some of those boxes that we've already seen ourselves and looked through. When the series wrapped, there was obviously a lot of open questions, things still hanging out there. And the one thing that kept bothering me was the mention of files related to the KKK's involvement. This is Jason Hoke, executive producer of Atlanta Monster, on behalf of HowStuffWorks.

I went to the FBI website. We looked at stacks and stacks of documents. I went down to most of the local government offices, the courthouses, and no one had any record of these KKK files. I finally landed at the APD, the Atlanta Police Department, and filed an open records request and almost immediately heard back from one of the officers who was on the front lines of their press team. And she said, we have something called the APD Annex.

which holds thousands and thousands of files and records. It might just be in there. She said, I'm just here to tell you, there's about 70,000 pages in this archive. We have no idea what's actually here. You're going to have to go through this yourself. Reviewing those documents at the time that we did, this was probably six months ago by now. Had we not reviewed them then, and then this press conference happened, I don't think we'd have access to those.

It was, you know, 70,000 documents just box upon box of, you know, a file on every single victim, crime scene photos, slideshow presentations, sheets that were filled out from every single phone tip that came in. Who called in, when they called in, where they called in, and like a summary of the tip they gave. I'm Meredith Steadman. I'm a creative producer at Tenderfoot TV. And down below and in pages behind them, it would say like how the officer followed up on that tip.

I was pretty impressed by the amount of tips they actually followed up on. We got a sense of how many man hours went into gathering all this stuff. So if you're thinking that this wasn't a thorough investigation, that they didn't really care what was happening, that could be said at the very, very beginning when there wasn't the attention given to those victims, you know, because they were poor and Black and because those mothers didn't get the respect that they deserved and those children didn't.

But once the investigation started, once there was a task force, once they dedicated man hours to this, they kept every single document. After being on this podcast for so long and hearing the frustration from so many people, it did seem like a lot of the officers were trying really hard to follow up on as much as they could. And the volume was big. These were actually original 40-year-old manila envelopes with every victim's name on them.

We saw the original crime scene photos. We saw the picture of that first red fiber on that tennis shoe. It was extremely sad because it's all real. When you're sitting behind a computer desk and you're, you know, investigating online, you're only finding what people have access to, have scanned in and have uploaded. So I saw some of those original pictures that I had seen online, but there are 30 or 50 more that never made it online.

So you might see one picture of a victim, but we've seen 50 multiple angles, close ups on what that trained photographer who, you know, is supposed to take pictures of what they see on the scene as potentially relevant. The way their clothes were positioned, you know, where they had shoes on or not, or how far away the body was from the road. It puts you right there at the crime scene. You know, it was hard to look at.

40 years later and there's nothing you can do about it, but you feel the connection there of being right there when it happens. So you just imagine like seeing that as a police officer discovering it. We heard them talk about finding those first two bodies and then seeing the pictures of that. It's an image that you don't want to see, but you also don't want to forget because this is a real story that you can't look at as just a podcast, as just an old cold case or an old case that's been solved.

These are real cases with real kids that never got to grow up. And it's just extremely sad. I think the most interesting thing that I read while going through the files is this account about knowing Wayne Williams, but knowing him under a different name. The police or whoever had filed this report, they had spoken to someone, and I guess they'd shown him a photo of Wayne Williams. They said, I know that guy, but I know him under a different name. I don't know him as Wayne Williams. And they said, he lives at this apartment.

with this other man. There was another account that said, I do know that man, but I don't know him as Wayne Williams. I know him under a different name. He has a roommate, which is this guy.

There was an apartment that someone who at least looked very identical to Wayne Williams was living in or renting with another male. And at that apartment, it seemed like they had younger men over for, I'm not sure what, but that's how they knew that apartment because they had been invited there before and they knew Wayne Williams under a different name. A lot of people express, how could he be doing something like this in his home with his parents? That doesn't seem feasible.

And I thought, oh, wait a second. Maybe Wayne Williams had an alter life, like a life outside of his home. It makes you really wonder, who was this alleged roommate? A lot of people thought, you know, this can't be a one-man job. Maybe it wasn't. It was stunning to see the kind of leads. Most of them were short one-page reports, but it also led into some interesting areas of focus.

I found Wayne's original driver's license, a medical record from his mother. I saw Homer's report card. Not Wayne's, Homer's. His dad. They were going all out to find everything they could about this family. One of the things that really stuck with me were these letters sent by Wayne to Atlanta schools, to teachers. And they were recruiting the kids in these classrooms on behalf of the teachers to try out for Wayne's talent shows.

and it happened over and over and over again. And when you see something like that in a typed out form with letterhead and the signature Wayne Williams at the bottom, it just did not feel right. It felt calculated that something was up here. They were addressed to the schools. They were addressed to vice principals. They were addressed to teachers. He was recruiting. He was recruiting kids more than you would than just kind of that average

that you see on a telephone pole somewhere. I thought about that for days and days. It really bothered me. We talked a lot on the podcast about Gemini and this group that Wayne Williams was putting together. You know, he was a talent scout trying to make the next Jackson 5. And we're always thinking, like, who was in Gemini? You know, who was in this four- or five-member group? You know, we've seen pictures when he was young with this group in his studio. You know, we've seen pictures

One of the things that we found, they were actively investigating what Gemini was, who were the members. And there's a list of about 30 names of potential Gemini group members. And it was just crazy to see that because we could never figure out, is this actually a group? If it is a group, how many versions of this group are there? You know, we talked to Jimmy Howard, who was a member of Gemini Group.

He's an advocate for Wayne Williams and doesn't believe he was guilty. He was actually with Wayne when he got arrested, him and another young boy at the time. So it definitely appears that the group wasn't a complete farce, right? There was a group that he was constantly recruiting for, makes it a much more desirable way to attract the next kid. Oh, I want to be in that group, too. You know, my friend Jimmy Howard told me about this group. And then, you know, Jimmy said he went to school with a kid that went missing.

Some of the family members say that their brother auditioned for Wayne Williams. So, you know, it's definitely a connection there.

If this is your way in to finding young kids and getting them away from their parents, you know, you don't stop when you get your first five kids in this band. Right. You still need to recruit. You still need to bring them in. So there's this extensive list of all these kids that either they found out were in the group or those kids told them they were auditioning for the group. So it was a recruitment tool is what it seems and what I gather from from looking at that list.

There was definitely a lot of men that the task force had talked to. A lot of those men had long rap sheets, they had a history of violence, and they had a history of being sexual predators. And it was completely disturbing to see detailed accounts of how grown men were sexually abusing kids and being incredibly violent towards those kids. And seeing that just hit me differently.

It told me that these kids were living in a part of town in an era where they were not only not being properly cared for, but when they were interacting with adults, it was incredibly violent and inexcusable in the way that they were being touched and manipulated sexually for a few bucks.

And I can't tell you how that feels when you actually see the files in detail, based on these interviews with some of the sexual predators, and they talk to everyone. But what they did to these kids, it is absolutely heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. There were suspects, no shortage of names given.

We saw pictures, too. There were like lineups in the files, you know, pictures that the police had taken of people that we'd never heard of and some that we had. You can understand how unbelievable it was when Wayne Williams was actually arrested because he was kind of in there somewhere. But there were so many people in there. It does lend itself to the feeling of how can we be sure? Because there was no shortage of possible suspects.

It's just weird to like put yourself in the same investigative seat that a detective was in 40 years ago, looking at the same evidence, trying to hunt down the same killer and trying to bring closure and justice for the same families and victims. And to be on the same path and same track without even knowing it. And then you discover their notes and their evidence 40 years later. And you're like, oh, I knew that. I knew it. And that's where we were going. And I just couldn't put it together.

There was a lot of revelations like that. So we're looking through all these files, box by box, page by page, file folder by file folder. And it was pretty clear that we were not going to find the KKK files. Even with 70,000 pages, it wasn't the complete report. And then they had a series of envelopes stacked at the end of the pallet. And we didn't know what it was, but we had a sneaking suspicion that was probably photographs. And so we opened them up.

And it was crime scene photos of the kids in back alleys, in fields. Yusuf Bell, Payne, Meredith, and I had visited one of the school sites that had been torn down right off the highway in I-20. That was where Yusuf Bell was found, under a floorboard in that school. And I saw the photo for myself of Yusuf under that floorboard when they discovered him.

It took it to another level that I really wasn't ready for. I had never seen photos of a murdered child before. And the APD officer said, you never get used to it. In talking about this case, presenting this show, and really telling the story of the Atlanta child murders, it really brought it back home that this was something...

It was something deeper. It really was about these kids and to see the terrible ways that they were murdered and abandoned and treated. This visit to the annex was incredibly transformative in my opinion of what had happened. At some point, if there's something big found, it's like, oh, wow, we just figured out that 10 of these murders should not have been attributed to Wayne Williams.

One of the three agencies represented at that press conference is probably going to be someone who made a mistake 40 years ago. It's either going to be the DA's office, the mayor's office, or the Atlanta Police Department. The fact that they're all on the same page trying to figure this out is a good sign because if they find something, someone's going to be left with the blame on that one.

I hope they broaden their scope of reexamination of evidence to reinvestigation of theories. Because there may not be physical evidence, for example, that points to Luby Jeter's killer. But we did speak to a friend of Charles Sanders, KKK member who's now deceased, who took credit for killing Luby Jeter and potentially other victims.

I'm hoping that they find some evidence that leads them to want to look deeper and say, well, if we have this physical evidence, how do we now match that up with a theory or an eyewitness? Let's open this thing all the way up and let's start talking to people who experience this. Start talking to the officers about theories that they had that may have never got explored by the higher ups because they were told to let it go to, you know, this thing is over. Stop. Stop talking about it.

So, yeah, that's my hope is that, you know, we can take this first step and that it leads to a second step. It's not just a one step process where we're only looking at new technology, looking into physical evidence.

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.

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. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. 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.

In January 1981, FBI agent John Douglas wrote the criminal profile of the Atlanta child killer. The following is a conversation between Atlanta Monster host Payne Lindsey and the legendary FBI criminal profiler John Douglas. Hello, this is John. Hey, John, this is Payne. Hey, Payne. How you doing? Good, good. You finally got me on here. I know, I finally got you.

We dug in pretty deep to the Atlanta child murders case and just seeing the work you've done and your profiling. How would you summarize your experience in that case?

It was 1981, and we're just getting going, and the research began in about 1970. I got back in, I want to go 77, by 79, we were already starting the interviews. The FBI was not embracing me at all yet. I think they were a little bit standoffish or afraid in case I screwed up on a case, but

They were prepared to send me to Butte, Montana working cattle rustling cases. So I didn't get any Bureau cases. And while this case was going on, I was doing so many other cases.

The Bureau then one day calls up, and they want me down there to go to Quantico, and I went with another agent, Roy Hazelwood, who's since passed away. And it was our job to go out to the crime scenes, take a look at the cases that they had. I can't remember the exact number, but even when we were down there, bodies were showing up. And then I sat down and started doing an analysis. It turned out to be extremely controversial because I said that the offender was going to be a black man

offender. They didn't have the term African American back then, so it would be a black offender. And it went through all the specifics of the profile, the age grouping, the educational level, just based on things that we were beginning to see in serial murder cases, noting that not all serial killers are textbook. There are different types of serial killers. But I just started getting involved, so involved in the case and saw so many different victims

Why is it going to be a black offender in these cases? Well, pretty much with serial killers, it's the same race. It's the same race type of case. Once in a while you'll see them stepping over the lines, but even though we did not have many black serial killers at that time, we do today, the studies that were done down there, we did little studies in the police to see if children would go with them. If they pulled into the inner city, offered like five bucks to help

them do some errand or something like that. These kids would do anything for $5. However, if it was a white person going into the area, they certainly would have been observed by someone. And no one had observed any whites in these particular areas.

You know, went through the cases and then started trying to link some of the cases together, if are they all related. And this was before fiber evidence and hair evidence or anything like that, any of the forensics. Just based on behavioral linkage, we saw that there was maybe 10, 12 cases that we believe were perpetrated by, pretty clear cut that we could say was perpetrated by a single offender. We also saw some cases that we didn't believe were perpetrated

are related. For example, the two females, LaTanya Wilson and Angela Lanier, those two cases we felt were not. In fact, I remember Angela Lanier, how she was killed, and I remember a ligature around her neck, her panties stuffed in her mouth that were not her panties. I think she was asphyxiated, found in a wooded area. And they had a very, very good suspect. They had an excellent suspect in that case. In fact,

This guy was holding up his pants with a rope with similar ligature that was used in the killing. So I'm not involved in that part of the investigation. So that case, we felt, should not be on the list, nor should the case of the child being abducted out of her house. And then I remember seeing we had a case of a young person who was stabbed multiple times.

found in the yard. We didn't think that that case should have been on the list. Later on, when hair and fiber evidence came in, coincidentally, it was on just those cases that we had preselected. And then as time went on in the case, this happens typically with, with, uh,

Some serial killers. It happened with the BTK Strangler, who I interviewed. It happened with David Berkowitz, the son of Sam, who I interviewed. The motivation began to change because we went from bodies that were being secreted, we're finding skeletonized remains, and then all of a sudden we're finding bodies out in open view. So we have a situation where we have an offender who is getting caught up in the publicity now, and there was a lot of publicity.

One of the turning points, and where I was 100% confident now that he was following the press, and maybe we can do something to manipulate his behavior, was when a guy calls up from Conyers, Georgia, and he had a real thick, kind of a redneck accent. And he's calling the police, saying he's killing, he's using the N-word of these N kids who he's killing. And I killed him, and I'm going to kill more. And there's one out there on Sigmund Road, and

And so the police calls up and at that point in time I'm back at Quantico and there's a room, several agents, there's even a psychiatrist in there, Dr. Park Dietz, who's just kind of new, just came down from Harvard to understudy us and he's going to go from where we are down to University of Virginia and today he's well known. They wanted us to listen to the tape so they're listening to the tape and they're believing that this is the Atlanta child killer. And so I said...

I said, no, this redneck guy is not the Atlanta child killer. But we have to develop something. We have to identify him. What do we do? So I'm on the phone with the cops. It's a conference call type of thing.

And I tell him, what we should do is this individual thinks we're real stupid. We're just incompetent. And so he gave you specific instructions where to find this body on Sigmund Rowe. It's not going to be a body, but he's just harassing us. Let's just show him how stupid we really are. What do we do? He says, well...

All the instructions that he gave you, just do the opposite. If he tells you to search the south side of the street, you search the north side of the street. Distances, screw up the distances. And then why? He said, because he's going to call up, again, irate. And this was before the cell phones were going to have traps and traces on the phone. And you'll be able to identify this guy. So they do that. And guess what?

Sure enough, the call comes in, you dumbasses, I told you to search a specific area, you got it all screwed up. And they arrest the guy. That story and that arrest was picked up by the local papers.

And then a body would be found days later, I can't remember the exact time, on Sigmund Road. It wasn't the area where this guy who was calling in said we should find a body. But the killer saw the article, read about it, and then he kills and he brings the body and dumps it out on Sigmund Road. And so now, in a way, it's terrible for what he did.

But it's good in a sense that we know he is following the press, so maybe we can do things to manipulate the behavior. And then unfortunately, the medical examiner started talking about the victims and talking about getting hair and fiber evidence off of the bodies.

So we had a discussion, and we believe that because this information came out, it shouldn't have come out, that bodies would start ending up in water. And the body of water running through Atlanta was the Chattahoochee River. And then that's when the police, the FBI, these cadets decided to stake out all the different bridges in town. And they did it for several days, but they were about ready to break it off when that night they hear a

a loud splash in the water, and then that's when they go up on the bridge, and that's Wayne B. Williams is up there in his vehicle. They didn't keep him there. They didn't search the vehicle. They looked in the vehicle. They could see ligatures in the back seat, some other items that could have been related to these crimes. But they, meaning the Bureau, the Bureau just let him off, which turned out to be a critical mistake. They're surveilling him.

an overt surveillance and he is back in his house where he lives with his mother and his dad homer and they could see him in the backyard burning what they believe was evidence later on they found out it was photographs that he was he was burning besides papers when he started getting information back on the hair and fiber evidence they had enough to to indict him they bring him in for the interview the interrogation i was not part of that i wish i was

part of that because I believe when he came up he was vulnerable and I saw him it looked like he wanted to say something like he would I believe even confess at that point. They did not get a confession out of him then.

Did you ever sit down with Wayne Williams in person? No, I always wanted to do it. I'm sure he's kind of tear-ass with me because, well, you know, in this case, I was censured by the FBI and then received letter of accommodation by the FBI, typical in the Bureau. They kick you in the ass, then they pat you on the back. They kicked me in the ass because I was over doing training for the military and came back and was teaching a course to a correctional group. Little did I know there was media in the audience because they just made this arrest in Atlanta.

And a question popped up. They said, what about this guy in Atlanta? And I said, well, if he's the one, he's going to be good for many of them. And because I said that in bureau parlance, I was making myself an FBI spokesperson. And I shouldn't have said that, even though it was just very, very vague. So...

they kind of raked me over the coals back at Quantico and they had, you know, slapped me down and censured me. But meanwhile, you know, months later, here comes a trial. Now they want me to go down there for the trial and provide assistance. The fascinating part of it was the trial. That

At times, the prosecution didn't like what I was saying. For example, one day, all the experts are testifying, and the experts that we have are fantastic. They get on a stand. They know their stuff. But I don't understand what they're saying. And if I don't understand what they're saying,

These jurors here from the local community, they don't know what they're saying. So at the end of the day, we're back in a room, conference room, and they're laughing at the testimony given by the defense side on hair and fiber evidence. So they're talking about, oh, do you hear him testifying about the twist of the fibers? And oh, yeah, he totally doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And then they get to me, and they go, what do you think, John? What do you think? You

You're losing the case. You're losing the case. What do you mean? He says, that guy that they have may not know hair and fiber evidence, the science, whatever, and our guys do. But I have no idea what our guys, and those guys were in the room with me. I had no idea what you're saying. You're so damn technical. You're not conveying it clear enough to the jurors. So you're, in my opinion, you're losing.

And so pretty much they want me the hell out of there. So I'm sent back to Quantico, but I don't go back right away. I got a day later and now we're at a point where Williams is going to be taken the stand. And he initially did pretty good, but Al Binder was the defense attorney. His nickname was Jaws, real, real good guy. And on this day,

I felt he was doing pretty well and the jurors were kind of siding with Williams. Maybe this guy's been wrongfully accused. I tap on the prosecutor's shoulder and it was Gordon Miller and turns around, John, you know what? I says, well, one week from today, Williams is going to get sick. I said, one week from today, he's going to be feigning some type of illness. Why? Because it's going to be a sympathy ploy. He may feel like he's losing. And they look at me like, what the hell are you talking about? So,

Off again. Go back to Quantico, John. Go back. So I go back to Quantico. And then I get a call. John, come back to Atlanta. He got sick in the courtroom. They take him to the hospital. They found out he wasn't sick. He wasn't sick at all. So then I go back. And now Al Bonner was going to bring in an expert from Arizona named Dr. Michael Bayliss to testify that Wayne Williams is not the personality type to perpetrate a crime like this. And so...

I'm staying at some hotel down there all by myself, eating dinner. And all of a sudden I hear voices and I said, oh my goodness.

It is Mary Welcome. It's all the attorneys, Jim Kitchens, attorney Al Binder. And there's a guy over there, this African-American guy, who is this Michael Bayliss, who's probably, I'm thinking, he's going to be testifying tomorrow. And I said, oh, so I'm trying to hide. And all of a sudden, they spot me, and they're looking over at me. And then all of a sudden, Michael Bayliss comes walking over, and

Dr. Douglas, I didn't have my doctorate degree. And I said, no, no, I don't have my doctorate.

So I'm Dr. Michael Bayliss, and I said, yeah, I know who you are. I did a little research on you. Can I sit down here? I really don't think it's appropriate. Please, just for a minute. So he sits down, and he says, you said you did some background on me? What did you find out? Well, I found out what your research is. I found out you did some research with antisocial personality types, and you found one of the indicators, like animal chlorophyll,

Cruelty in the background, just like Wayne Williams had in his background and some other characteristics and bedwetting due to emotional, psychological reasons. Child could be abused. And so did you laugh when you read it? No, I said, I didn't laugh. I said, but you, Dr. Baylor, should realize that Williams does in fact fit the profile. So he leans over the table and he says, you're right.

he's a psychopath and and i said well i said look i gotta go man i gotta i gotta get back so i walk out then mary welcome and the defense team calls me over oh john and mary welcome says you know i wanted to join the fbi one time and and i said i got to go so bayless bayless walks me over to the door and he said john i really like to come back to quantico one day to take classes from you at the fbi and he shakes my hand and i'm holding his hand said well michael

We'll see how you do tomorrow on the stand, whether or not you come back to the FBI Academy. Right. Well, the next day, guess what? Al Binder gets up in the courtroom screaming and yelling that –

that the prosecution, his team, are scaring off my expert witnesses. Michael Bayliss went back to Arizona. He's not going to be testifying. It was a real big, big turning point. So now he doesn't testify. And then there's another conference where they want to know if I'm going to be testifying. And I said, look, I said, it just depends. But if it's not me, I'll bring in a psychiatrist. If you don't like my credentials, there'll be some psychiatrists who work with us.

But then when Al Binder now, on the examination of Williams, and he makes him stand up, and he says, look at him. He holds Wayne Williams' hands. Do these look like the hands of a serial killer? And there he is, you know, pudgy Williams with soft, soft hands. The end of the day, now, who's going to do now the cross-examination of Williams? That's going to be attorney Jack Mallers.

a jack mallet country southern boy from down in georgia and we have a meeting i said jack if he can hold his hands you should hold williams's hand as well and when you touch his hands talk in a low voice you know what was it like wayne when you wrapped your hands your fingers around the victim's throats did you panic wayne did you ever panic and he said no in a real low voice no and then he catches himself

and then starts screaming and yelling, you want the real Wayne Williams? Well, here he is. And he points over to where I am. He says, I know you've got that FBI profiler over there and you're trying to get me to fit that profile, but I'm not going to fit your profile. And everyone is aghast. The jurors are looking over the fence and they screwed up. They probably never should have let him get on the stand. So that was really, that was kind of the turning point for the trial itself. And

And where the defense was kind of not prepared in Atlanta, they convicted Williams of two cases, but they didn't charge him any others. But they could show linkages. Even though they didn't introduce the other cases, they could show linkages to 10 or 12 other cases. And the attorney's binder and kitchens, they try to argue that. They never heard of that before, but that's what they did in this case here.

Is Wayne Williams responsible for all the Atlanta child murders, do you think? No. And I said it then. Some people didn't like it. I remember going to the scene of one of the crimes down there and walking to the crime scene, and there's a detective next to me, and he tells me, hey, Douglas, you did this profile here, and yeah? And he says, I think it's a bunch of shit. And I said, well, good for you. I didn't ask to be here. If you don't like it, I'll just soon go back to Quantico. I have a lot of cases waiting for me.

A question came up to whether or not it was a Ku Klux Klan type of thing, and I addressed it. Because usually in Klan type of cases or these white hate types of groups, the crimes are very, very symbolic. There's some symbolism involved. You wouldn't be hiding the bodies. You're hanging a body. It's going to be on Main Street, not in some wooded, secluded area. So I just never saw it.

you know, of the cases that we were looking at as any kind of a clan-like thing. But going back to your statement, no, I did not believe, and to this day, that he was responsible for all those, you know, all those cases. In your opinion, who else is? When you analyze a case, you break it down into different groups for motivation.

Criminal enterprise is a category. Is there some kind of money involved? Is it drug-related, for example, type of thing? No, it's not that. Is it a group cause, meaning multiple people are involved? I didn't see this as a group cause type of murder. I saw this as an individual. Is it a sexually motivated crime? There was no evidence that there was sex involved.

involved in these cases. But what I felt was a personal cause, a personal cause existed. To get back to your question, Payne, I looked at the history.

Every year in Atlanta, there was about a dozen murders of children before this ever happened. A lot of those cases, too, were interpersonal violence cases where there were family members involved in the deaths of the children. And who knows? Then maybe some of those cases could be attributed to Williams early on. I don't know. You have to go back

To that date, what was happening was that there were entertainers coming in from all over the world, really. But you had Frank Sinatra, you had Sammy Davis Jr. coming in for concerts. Money is millions of dollars coming in. So families wanted to be on that list. They were getting money. And so for you to come up and say, no, these cases are not on the list, they're not happy. What do you think Wayne Williams' motive was?

I think it changed. Sometimes they'll change your motivation. I don't care how they come across in an interview or interrogation, particularly interviews or research interviews I've done in prisons.

They come across maybe real confident, but really deep down there's a lot of inadequacy. This guy here is a real failure. He was trying all different kinds of jobs, be it DJ, had a little ham operator radio station he had. His parents went bankrupt trying to support him. He really thought he was going to be developing the next Jackson 5, but he just had failure after failure.

The crimes, these are crimes of power, crimes of anger, retaliation for maybe wrongdoing or personal animosity towards some of the people that he was killing.

But then what happened, because of all the publicity and all the police agencies, I mean, the President of the United States was following this case. And he got caught up with that. And then that's when he started with the challenging. It became cocky. Now you have this insignificant nobody. He'll never call himself that, but that's what he was.

became a somebody. He's got power. He can manipulate not only the victims, but he's manipulating the entire law enforcement body, all the bodies, and law enforcement bodies are working on this case, and he's putting the fear of God in the community. He had a classic kind of background. He was also a police buff. He got busted for impersonating...

a police officer, he had the police dog, which was popular at that time, the shepherd, living at home with his elderly parents, who were old enough to be his grandparents.

When you go interview him, and I know you've talked with him in prison, these guys, they have an answer for everything. After so many years, no matter what you ask, he'll give you a logical answer. That's all that's on their plate. And he just keeps talking and talking until I forget what he's talking about. Yeah, and I'll see guys like that, and it's hard to do. While you're doing it telephonically, it's hard to do even in prison face-to-face, face-to-face.

After all these years, if I was involved in an interview with him, he's not going to be crazy to admit to anything. But when I do do interviews, it's different than the Mindhunter Netflix show. I'll give you an example. They'll show a tape recorder and taking notes and all that.

I did that early on, but you're dealing with people who are paranoid to begin with, but not paranoid being psychotic, just paranoid. And for good reason for Williams too, paranoid in the system where he is, you can't trust anyone. They don't trust the guards or they won't trust anyone going into the interview. So I found out that I had to go in when I would do an interview after early stakes that I made,

go in with no notes, just memorize every aspect of the case. We also developed a 57-page questionnaire that would be asking the offender different questions, but most of that we filled out before.

the interview, then after the interview back at the motel, we would just memorize the kind of things we're interested in, victim selection, pre-offense behavior, post-offense behavior, you know, those types of things. And they test you. They test you to see if you really know the case. They'll throw a curve and they'll lie to you. They'll lie. And then you got to catch them in a lie, but you don't catch them alive by slapping them down or call them a liar. I would just laugh. I would just kind of laugh. And I would allow, William's

if I was to go face to face with him, is give him the feeling or give him the power of control. The crimes were crimes of power and control, so you have to let him take control. Say in that interview room, a lot of the guys I've interviewed would sit up on the back of chairs to look down at me or sit on a credenza. If we're both in chairs, I slip lower, that they're higher, that they have the semblance of...

of control over me. But so many years with him, he's not going to confess to anything at this point because he's denied

after all these years, you know, his involvement in these cases. Yeah, it seems like he's never going to admit anything. No. And it seems like he holds onto the truth, like the small kernel of truth that he didn't kill all the kids. He knows that, and so he focuses only on that. Yes, and he's right. You know, then sometimes he'll throw in stuff where, like, he was working for the federal government, like, give the impression like he was CIA or something like that, or FBI, I don't know, you know, like he's some intelligence kind of guy. I mean, it's just... What do you make of that? Just...

Again, he's such an inadequate loser. I mean, he has to have power and control. He's trying to give himself some self-worth. That's the only reason he'll throw out stuff like that. Again, the crimes are manipulative, manipulation, domination, and control. He did that with the victims. He did it with the police. He did it with society down there at that time.

There was always a situation, too, with Wayne Williams' sexuality. During the trial, they had different people testifying. I mean, really, there was a girl once in a while, but really it was just he never really had, there was not a relationship with females. It was always a male type of relationships. But even then, he didn't have really a whole lot of,

a whole lot of friends. And then when you start hitting that age, he was just a little younger. Usually it surfaces, I should say, at around the mid-20s, the mid-20s when the crimes begin. He's 23. Age is difficult because sometimes

Because sometimes you deal with a biological age versus emotional age, so you can miss that characteristics. But there may have been cases, like I said earlier, that happened before this grouping of cases here. And you usually look, again, for the precipitating event or stressor in the background. You commit crimes like this, it just doesn't happen all of a sudden. There's this buildup. And with him, you'd have to show a trend, perhaps, of losing and...

And he's trying to develop groups, and he's getting rejected, rejected, and maybe pressure's coming within the family. You know, he's a wannabe, a wannabe cop. He's just seeking for positions of power. He's taking photographs, goes out to scenes and tries to sell the photographs to news outlets.

But usually there's something that finally, when you talk to them, what did it? And usually that's what you find in the background. Because more times than not, I'll tell the person I'm talking to, hey, this is probably what happened to you at that particular time. When you have a bunch of cases, if you can determine which of these cases were the first crimes, the very first ones, that it's important. Because when they perpetrate a crime, they're looking for...

the comfort zone, a place where they feel they can commit a crime, be safe, they won't get caught, no interference. You'll find your most clues there. Usually it's an area where they reside, where they've been employed. Then if something happens, maybe they go back for the disposal of a child, in this case,

Someone was there or a cop car came by just coincidentally. They then go to a secondary comfort zone and they'll stay there a while, but really they're drawn back to the first generalized area. So that's some of the things that you look for with someone like that. You also look for, which probably was some of the stuff he was burning in his backyard, is that they document. They not only take pictures of their victims, almost with exception, and today, now today it's easy with your cell phone.

They may have drawings of what they want to do to the victims, but probably not so much. He probably wouldn't go with the drawings. He'd probably go more with maybe a diary and photographs. And why? Because they look for victims often. Some guys will look for them nightly. They're predatory.

These are achievements, so they will whip out these photos, articles of clothing even belonging to the children, and fantasize and kind of relive the experience over and over again. So when he was burning that stuff, that's a shame. I think there were some mishaps in the investigation. You know, why no search warrant? Why didn't they detain him on the bridge?

and just watching him from afar as he's in the backyard waving stuff before he burns it to the people who are surveilling him. That day in the backyard, what do you think he was burning? I think he was burning photos of the victims,

Maybe some clothing, clothing of the victims. Any documentation that he may have had, like contracts between the various victims. That's what he was burning. Wasn't Homer with him, though? Wasn't his dad with him? At that time, with the burning? I don't know. It's been so long. You mean when they were burning stuff? Yeah. Yeah, he may or may not have known. I mean, he may not have known what the heck he was specifically burning or seeing what he was burning. Right. Who knows what Homer knew or what he may have suspected.

Did you find anything peculiar about Wayne's relationship to his father? Yes, and there were things there, and I will tell you off the record, I mean, we're through or something, but I'm not going to say it on the air. There were things, there was something in the background of Homer that came up during the DA investigation, the police investigation, but they never brought it up during the trial.

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.

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. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone.

It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. 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. ♪♪

John, tell me about your new book coming out. It's called The Killer Across the Table and it consists of four different types of killers. A guy from the state of Washington, serial killer, kills his friend's children and no one knows he's the suspect. He even participates in searches.

His name is Joseph Conjo. And they get Donald Harvey from Cincinnati area. Over about a 16, 17 year period, he kills between 70 and 100 patients in a couple of different hospitals. Then you go down to South Carolina and it's Todd Kohlhepp. He was a guy in 2016, the police rescued Carla Brown in a storage container where she was kept a couple of months during the hot heat in the summers of South Carolina. Very interesting guy, real smart. He

He would kill seven people. They rescued her. But I got involved after public speaking at a university down there, and the cops came up to me. Can I help him on a case where four people were killed in a motorcycle shop? What I said was, in all probability, after looking at your case, this is a personal cause homicide. This is a disgruntled employee, a

or a disgruntled customer, but in all probability, disgruntled customer. His name is gonna be probably in this file drawer. Unfortunately, at that time, the police had that information, started going through the file system, but they stopped because they began to focus on an individual who arrived at the scene

that day and was the first one to find these four people having shot multiple times. So he was a suspect for years and years. Kohlhepp's name was in that file. Then he would go on and he would kill three more. Smart guy, age 15, he rapes a 14-year-old girl, goes to a men's prison, not a juvenile prison, gets out 15 years later, picks up two college degrees. He picks up a

real estate license, then a broker's license, owns a real estate company, then he picks up a private pilot's license. Smart guy. Asking me, he wants me to tell him really what makes him tick. So I go through that. Another interesting case is out of Trenton, New Jersey. Get real close to the family, the

the mother of the victim, sends her daughter out to collect money for the sale of a box of cookies. And here's a guy named McGowan living with his mother and grandmother. The mother's away. He lives in the basement of this bi-level house. Little girl comes to the door. And what happened here was that the parole board asked me to go...

to speak with him and give an evaluation. And again, I'm not a psychologist. I have a doctorate degree. It's an education. But I give classes to psychologists and psychiatrists just from my experience. And so they had me go in. He was going to get out. And after, it was about a five-hour interview or so. It was unbelievable. I was able to bring him back

to that 30 years ago where he starts trembling, shaking. It was freezing in this cell room where we were together. And his pecs and his chest are trembling, but he's perspiring. And he's looking off, and he says...

When I heard the knock on the screen door, John, I knew I was going to kill her. And he goes through all the gory details of what he did. And I'm talking positive to him. I have no notes, no nothing. Again, no tape recorder.

I asked him the question, when you get out, where are you going? And he says, New York. And I said, man, I was raised as a kid in New York, and it's expensive. And so he looks around to see if the guards are listening in on our conversation, and they weren't. And he comes up and he says, John, he whispers into my ear, he says, I got money. You got money from where? You make a license plate? And he said, no. He said, when my mother died, I got insurance money. When my grandmother died, I got insurance money.

And then sale of the house, I got insurance money. And I said, where's the money? And he whispers and he said, well, I put the money out of state. Why'd you do that? So the victim's family can't get any of the money. How much money you got? $650,000. So I, wow. I said, man, you're going to do great when you get to New York. I mean, with that kind of money. Well, little does he know the next day. No, I guess he does know. He just forgot who I was.

I'm going to slam dunk his ass before the parole board one or two times. And I go through all this, but I just told you, told you, and they're shocked. They're shocked pain. They, they, how were you able to do it? I said, I said, well, again, I went in, I had no notes. I just studied the files that you provided to me. I police files and, and, and,

I'm not going to rely on self-reporting. You people rely on self-reporting. You don't want to look at the crime scene. You don't want to look at those crime scenes of Joan D'Alessandro, who he sexually assaulted and how he killed her and how he disposed of her. You don't want to, you don't do that. And because you don't do it, you don't understand the criminal mind. And then they get, sometimes they'll get angry and they'll say, well, if we look at it,

It would prejudice me or us if we saw all that. What are you going to do? I'm going to rely on the interview process. They'll tell me, and I can determine maybe the nonverbals or through my experience when he's lying. And I said, well...

Good luck, I say, because unless you look at the material, these guys will lie to you and they test you real early on in the interview process with them. And the crime scene is a reflection of the offender. And I always say to understand the artist's

you must look at the artwork. If you're going to interview an artist, you better look at the artwork before you talk to him. To understand the criminal, you better look at the crime before you talk to him. So how can you, you know, Mr. Psychologist, psychiatrist, board of parole, corrections, for example, you've got to be determining whether or not a rapist, for example, should be released from prison. Unless you know the sexual...

what the sexual assault entailed, what the verbal assault was of the victim before, during, and after the crime, what the physical assault was, I mean physical, how much force did he use before, during, even perhaps when he left the victim. Unless you have the verbal, sexual, physical, you have no clue, you have no idea what type of rapist you're dealing with.

And with some of them, yes, there may be some rehab potential, but others you can throw the key away. And there are five different rape typologies and I try to educate them. But it's based on you have to have that information. So I tell them that, but then again,

They probably still, even if they look at it, they may not know what it all means. I had one tell me, though, how he had nightmares. He was involved in one of our early research. We were going to use him as a psychologist, and he couldn't look at the pictures, even the photographs of the crimes and get into the details. And so we deep-sixed him. We got rid of him quick because you have to do it.

Work in these cases or being on Atlanta child homicides, the impact it's having on families, the community, it's terrible. And one of the hardest things is really dealing with the surviving victims of these types of crimes. It takes its toll. It took its toll on me, I'll tell you that much.

I understand that the Atlanta PD reached out to you? They want to know what you've got? Yeah, I mean, they actually opened their doors to me and let me go with my team and go through all their boxes of files. This is actually before they made that big announcement about reopening the case.

It seems like for whatever reason, they're open to discussing this. They weren't a year and a half ago when I was doing the podcast, but I think since then, everyone's opened up a little bit and they want to bring whatever closure they can. Your podcast is so popular and law enforcement is saying that social media can be very, very helpful. You don't want people like running out...

conducting interrogations like your listeners are doing anything like that. But for lead value, gosh, I mean, today it's fantastic. And you can come up with some very, very good leads on cases like this, even though it's so old now. There could be people out there, and I'm sure there are people out there who may have other information that could help, and help with these cases. I guess they're saying that

They're not saying that they don't believe he's responsible. But I think they're thinking, well, let's see, did he do them all? I mean, they closed 29 cases. That's not the first time I've seen something like that, too. They've done it. I've done it.

Some other cases I've been involved with where they just kind of will clear the books and wipe them all off. You can link cases through victimology, the similarities in victim. You can link cases by MO, modus operandi. But modus operandi will change because it's learned behavior. And if subjects make mistakes, something doesn't go right, they'll modify the MO. And the other way is it's signature. It's something unique. I mean, posing a body alongside of a road, posing.

Another case, there was torture involved in a series of cases. So I was able to testify and link the cases. You can't say that this guy here in the courtroom did it. All you're saying is whoever did it, did these cases, in my opinion, did them all. And profiling, just so you know too, and listeners, it's an investigative tool and it's not a substitute for thorough and well-planned investigations.

Sometimes law enforcement comes a little bit too early and want this, like, it's a magical profile. In the 80s, it wasn't so much. They came for the profile because they were getting so much heat, but it wasn't 100% accepted. Probably not 100% accepted today, but again, too, it depends who's doing the analysis.

I think my original group that I had up to the point where I retired were really good because they all had around 16, 17, 18 years experience

in that unit and were really top notch. I had about 42 people and a dozen profiling. And it wasn't more, we call them profiles, but they were just so much more than that. Because a lot of times you just can't do a profile. It may be

the case is not suitable to do a profile so you may may you have to tell the police that but maybe hey look here's a proactive you know you know technique we can employ um give an example go i just you know let you go or you'll let me go is it's uh the uh when frank sinatra's coming down sammy davis jr they're going to come down and the concert i i i believe what greater thrill it would be

for the killer to attend the conference, be in the audience, but you could have like 50,000 people there. But what can I do? And I suggest this, it would have been great, but it was analysis paralysis and it never went through. And this is what it was. It's that I believe the killer would be a police buff, uh,

have a vehicle. And so we would advertise that we need security and may get a nominal amount of money or it could be voluntary type of thing, but must have a, perhaps have a, definitely have a vehicle because we knew the killer had a vehicle. And then to have some kind of maybe background and, and, uh,

law enforcement or tangentially connected to that. And what we could do is when people applied for the job, we'll use the analysis I developed to eliminate or put others on the front burner. And that's what I thought was a great idea. But it went around analysis, paralysis. The Bureau at the time was, this is too much of a high risk. And I thought it was fantastic. So it never was employed

And that's some of the things I liked really developing for law enforcement is if you can't do an analysis, maybe I can come up with some kind of proactive technique to try to get the guy. And sometimes it's better just to do it. And rather than ask for permission, ask for forgiveness, they say. If you screw up, just go ahead and do it. Rather than ask, because sometimes they just analyze and analyze. And I heard...

That would be a question. If you ever get to interview him again, Payne, ask him that question. Did he ever go to those concerts? Right. I heard that he did. I heard that he did or was planning to. Ask him that if you ever talk to him in the future. I'm pretty sure his dad was there because he was taking pictures. Oh, really? Oh. So I would think that Wayne would also be there. Yes. Interesting. See?

This has been extremely helpful and enlightening. Well, thank you. You probably got more than you ventured for, Payne. All right. Have a good one. You too. Atlanta Monster is a joint production between iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV.

Special thanks to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta Police Department Chief of Police Erica Shields, and author and founder of the FBI Investigative Support Unit, John Douglas. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. For the latest updates, visit atlantamonster.com or follow us on social media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. ♪

As promised, here's an exclusive clip from the next episode of Monster Presents, Insomniac. Following the November 1970 murder of his niece and her friend, Gaskin's next serious murder was a 20-year-old named Martha Dix. Pee-wee had discovered she was the one who had sold his niece the drugs. Dix was attracted to Pee-wee and often hung around him at his part-time job at a car repair shop.

But apparently, Pee-Wee didn't feel the same attraction. He killed her with the strong dose of acid he had stolen from a photographer. He poured it into her Coca-Cola, and she unknowingly ingested the fatal dose. The acid worked fast, and she died a relatively quick, but painful death right in front of him. In 1973, another young woman who considered Gaskins a friend was 23-year-old Doreen Dempsey. Doreen was a mother of a two-year-old baby girl named Robin Michelle,

and she was pregnant with a second child at the time. She felt comfortable enough around Pee-Wee to accept a ride to the bus station. After all, Pee-Wee was an old friend. Instead, Gaskins drove her to a secluded, wooded area, raped and killed her in the backseat of his hearse, and then raped and sodomized two-year-old Robin Michelle before killing her too. Pee-Wee provided a graphic description of this pair of rapes and murders in his book, Final Truth, and the details are just as horrific as you might imagine.

At the time, no one suspected Pee-Wee Gaskins was capable of such sadistic killings. But word was getting around about Pee-Wee, and there were a few people in town who knew that he would do it, if the price was right. In 1975, a year that Pee-Wee would later call his "killingest" year, Gaskins got a little careless and murdered three people whose van had broken down on the side of the highway. Gaskins suddenly found himself in need of a favor.

He needed help getting rid of the trio's van, and he enlisted the help of an ex-con, Walter Neely. Neely and Gaskins went about their own criminal business, but would occasionally help out each other if they were in need of some sort of assistance, disposing of stolen cars, stolen goods, and, occasionally, bodies. Also in 1975, a woman named Suzanne Kipper Owens hired Pee-Wee to kill her ex-boyfriend, a man by the name of Silas Barnwell Yates.

Yates was a wealthy farmer in Florence County, South Carolina. Gaskins and a pair of accomplices were successful in kidnapping and murdering Yates, and he collected the $1,500 Susan Owens had promised him. But things went wrong soon after, and Pee-wee realized that he had to kill two additional people to cover up the Yates murder. His accomplices were 29-year-old Diane Neely and 35-year-old Avery Howard. Diane Neely was the wife of Walter Neely,

and she and Howard, an ex-con, were having an affair. The pair attempted to blackmail Gaskins for $5,000 in hush money after assisting in the abduction and murder of Silas Yates. The two were quickly killed by Gaskins after they agreed to meet Pee-Wee at the payoff location. In the meantime, Gaskins was busy killing and torturing more coastal kills as well as other people he knew, including a 13-year-old named Kim Gilkins.

who sexually rejected him. All leads in the investigation of the disappearance of Kim Gelkins pointed to Gaskins, but there was no body yet, so there was no arrest. The authorities eventually did find evidence implicating Pee-Wee, so he was indicted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor and kept in jail until his trial. Walter Neely was also being held, but during that time, he began to speak with a local preacher and they began to pray together. They prayed for forgiveness

And when Walter Neely was ready to confess his sins to God, he was also ready to speak to the authorities. Listen to Monster Presents Insomniac on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you listen to podcasts.