CIA [08]
43:42 Share

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

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

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

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

Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Previously on Atlanta Monster. The one thing I remember most about the missing and murdered children is Maynard Jackson sitting there with piles of cash offering a reward for any information on who was committing these crimes.

We caught Wayne Williams at 2:55 a.m. on the last day of the surveillance. I've been incarcerated since 1981. Few people realize I was never convicted in connection with any of the child murders. Once it was pinned on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled. That was their way out.

Some people in the black community thought it was the Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys. The Klan wanted to take credit for it. They weren't bright enough to commit this crime. They have a letter they called Sanders, the Klansman, the prime suspect in the murders, four months before Wayne Williams was arrested and charged with two of the murders. Anybody out there who thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do all this by himself is correct. I only know that from the mouth of the devil himself.

I did some television in my early career. I learned on 16mm film and 16mm mag stripe film and was a TV reporter in the transition to videotape. 3,000 hours of it in a helicopter. Captain Dave in the WSB Skycopter. It was a nickname that was laid on me. I didn't make that one up. Started in broadcasting in 1969. So I'm an OG reporter.

A couple years in, they started finding the bodies of young black males. And we had a big newsroom, we had a lot of reporters. We would all ask the police, "Are these related? Are these things connected? Could there be a connection between these?" And the answer was no.

until the bodies started adding up. I don't know whether the police admitted to themselves, or they already knew but didn't say, but then they had to say something. It was too obvious that there was a pattern to this in some way, and they started talking about it in that manner. And I was at many of the scenes, many of the scenes where the bodies had been found. Up until that point, at a homicide, police,

knew me, knew of me, and there was a level of trust that you could walk up almost to the body and talk with them and they would know that you would be judicious about what you reported. But when they started finding these bodies, there was none of that. We were kept far away, for the most part, away from where you could take any pictures or see anything about it. And that has left many questions for me. I knew Wayne Williams. I knew Wayne Williams.

from his days as a freelance television news photographer. He had a nice camera. That's the first thing I noticed. He had a Frazzolini camera.

And not everybody has one of those on their shoulders at that time. Wayne would be out in the city scanner chasing and he would find a shooting or a fire or some such going on at night. And we would come in in the morning in the radio and Wayne would be there and he would ask us, "Do you have a story about, for instance, a fire, 14th Street?" If we said we did, he would ask to photocopy the script.

He would take that photocopy and tape it to his film can and leave it for Channel 2. The one thing that I noticed about Wayne was the car he drove. It was a blue Plymouth Satellite, and it was just like a detective police car in Atlanta.

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 money. 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.

Wayne Williams drove a blue Plymouth satellite. It looked just like an unmarked Atlanta police car. I'm pretty good at spotting undercover cars because of the way I drive.

And that one stood out. The main car in this case has always been that white station wagon, the one Wayne was driving that night on the bridge. But during my research, I was hearing more accounts about blue cars. The first blue car I heard about was a Nova. I know there was talk about a blue Nova, which Wayne didn't drive a blue Nova. Vincent Hill also mentioned this. Victim Jeffrey Mathis was seen getting into a blue Nova. And according to Rodney's story, he was picked up in a blue Nova too. But Wayne didn't drive a blue Nova.

Then I thought, what do these cars look like? How similar is a blue Plymouth to a blue Nova? Would a child know the difference? So I looked them up. And to me, these cars look very similar. In some ways, almost identical. It was medium metallic blue. He had a built-in scanner, not a magnetic mount, but a real scanner. And it looked for all the world like a cop car. Wayne Williams was quiet, didn't say much, and he got his job done and left at the station.

Here's a question I have about Wayne Williams. He was kind of pudgy. How does a guy like that, how do we reckon that he abducted fairly old, street-smart kids who probably knew how to fight without getting hurt himself?

How did that happen? How did these kids allegedly go with him with no fight, with no signs of a struggle on Wayne's part? They would have mashed his face, surely. Bruised him in some way or injured him in some way, but that was never talked about. When I heard that he was arrested, the one thing that came in my mind first was, why didn't they think of him first?

Because they told us that they were looking for someone who maybe had a visage of authority that presented themselves like an authority figure, like a police or maybe a mailman or whatever. They were looking for somebody like that. Well, look at this guy. He's driving what looks like a police car. David makes a pretty good point. Wayne did fit the FBI profile. In particular, the desire to impersonate a police officer. But David still had his doubts about Wayne's guilt.

He remembers many suspects before Wayne Williams too. There were some bizarre things that happened while they were looking. There was one suspect who came into mind and was being actively watched, as we understood. And that person got angry and came to the radio station and wanted to do an interview.

The police chief came to the station with the general manager, Elmo Ellis, and me and some other people, and they were kind of explaining to us, the police were kind of explaining to us how dangerous it was to put speculation on the air. Well, we knew that.

We knew that. The general manager of the station was the recipient of a Peabody Award. I mean, we weren't slap shot at it. And this man came to us and we did the interview. And the man said, "You know, you could get killed investigating a story like this."

We called police and for a time she slept with a radio station walkie-talkie beside the bed and I had one beside mine in case she had trouble and the police had ordered protection for her. When you're investigating a murder, a serial murder, and somebody says that, that will send a chill down your spine. It really will. I can't remember the name of the person,

But I remember it was a medium-billed black male, and that's all I can remember. But the police knew who he was, and they were watching. Even David himself was investigated at one point. They tell me...

that they looked at me because there were reports, witness accounts, that a white man with a mustache wearing a flat sport cap was trying to pick up kids along Stewart Avenue. Well, I lived on the south side, I had a mustache and I wore flat caps. So there you go. And they checked me out. Years later, I was coaching my son's soccer team.

And one of the other coaches came up and put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Buddy, we know more about you than you think we do." And I said, "How's that?" He said, "I'm a GBI agent. We had you under surveillance." The head of the GBI, Phil Peters, told me, because I had developed a relationship with him and talked to him, and he knew me and I knew him. And he knew if he told me something not to get out that I could hold it in confidence.

He said, Dave, someday I'll sit down with you when this is over and I'll tell you everything I know and Phil died of kidney cancer before I could talk to him.

This whole thing sounds like it's unreal, like it's out of a TV show and it always had that kind of vibe to it. What's next? What are they going to find next? And it was the vice president and it was the mayor with a pile of cash and it was the mayor pointing his finger at the camera. I'm coming, you've seen the film. Here's $100,000 and it's all yours. This got me thinking about that reward money.

Ticket sales alone for the show brought in $145,000. Then there were a few big donations from Warner Brothers, Coca-Cola and the like, and some sizable ones from individuals, too. The after-party auction brought in another $18,000. All in all, a big haul, easily over $200,000. At this point, I'd heard so much about it, but where'd it go? I've wondered about a lot of money things. So what happened to that money? I don't know.

After all, the larger the reward, the more likely it will be that police will eventually get the information they need to solve these horrifying murders. When Muhammad Ali announced he would add to the reward fund, making it $500,000, even city officials were surprised. In thanking Ali, Mayor Jackson said this was the largest single donation in the history of the cases. All those private donations and the benefit concerts, tons of money raised to catch the killer, whatever happened to it? It's a question I ask everybody.

Captain Dave. I don't know where the money went. Monica Pearson. You know, that's one of the things you need to ask. What happened to all of that reward money? Unfortunately, the one person who could probably answer that for sure has passed on, the former mayor, Maynard Jackson. Because Maynard was very hands-on. I was the city hall reporter in those days. So he was responsible to the community, and he would know where that went.

That's a good question. That'd be something good for you to look into. I don't have any idea. So are you saying that that $2 million is missing? No one got the reward? No, I didn't. I don't know. I never even heard that there was, but I don't doubt that it's missing. It had to be kept somewhere. And whether it was real cash or not, it was just a setup for that particular shot. It may have been promised money.

- The FBI. - Well, I'm not sure that it went to anybody.

You know, usually the conditions of reward money is based on you provide information that leads to the arrest and conviction thereof. Well, the information that led to the conviction thereof was FBI and police information. It wasn't any one particular person.

Now, had somebody called me and said, this is Payne, Wayne Williams did this, and here's why. And then we went and we found out, then you would be subject to qualify to get the reward money. Word got out.

If you got on the list, you got money. They raised a quarter of a million dollars, which is a lot of money at that time. And that went into the fund for the parents of the murdered and missing kids. So if you made the list, you got money. I wasn't involved in it. There was decisions to give so much money to the victims' families to help them out. Because they were, a lot of them were on the lower end of the socioeconomical scale. If the families are saying they didn't receive it, and the FBI really doesn't know where it went...

then is it sitting in a bank account somewhere drawing interest? What happened to that money? I don't know. I really wish it had shaken loose more people to talk. Somebody knows something. They might be dead now. They might be dead. Somebody knows something. No one I talked to had any idea where it went. What reward money? I don't remember a know-of of anyone mentioning to us

monies being raised for the family. I don't know if it was being, and whatever happened to it, if it did. Of course, my dad, it was never mentioned to me by him or either one of my brothers or sisters that any monies was involved in it. My brother being killed like that, I don't think none of us was thinking about any money in the first place.

If someone said money being raised and it's being, that money is given to somebody, say, well, come tell me exactly who killed your brother. I'm going to give him that reward. That's where I would look at the money. I think that is maybe something needs to be looked into.

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. When I listened to the tape of his interview on your podcast, no wonder his attorney didn't want him to talk. He was wacky.

He was wacky. He talked in a scattershot manner about stuff that had nothing to do with anything, like trying to enterprise a rap singer out of prison, and his connection with the CIA. I just didn't, I don't see that. When I started my research on Wayne Williams and the Atlanta child murders, a certain storyline kept popping up. Wayne Williams' alleged CIA background. It sounds crazy, I know.

In my first call with Wayne, he briefly mentioned it.

If I remember correctly in talking to Wayne, he said when he was 17, when he got approached. Vincent spoke to Wayne on several occasions, and he told him about it too. This agency that fronted as the Junior ROTC program. But what they would do is they would recruit young individuals to train for the CIA. And in that training, he learned to kill people with chokeholds. I don't know why he told that story. Again, it goes back to...

Wayne loving to embellish stuff that ended up getting him in trouble. Here, some of the victims were supposedly strangled, and here's this guy saying, "Yeah, I'm trained to put people in chokeholds." "Wayne, what are you doing?" "Do I believe it happened?" "No, not at all." A, there would be some kind of declassified record by now, 30-plus years ago, that said, "Yes, we recruited Wayne B. Williams for this program," right?

I mean, now you can get the declassified Kennedy files. Thirty-plus years later, no one's ever came forward and said, "Yep, Wayne's telling the truth about that." If it happened by now, we would know about it. Dwayne Hendricks also mentioned it to me. Wayne told me the first in-depth conversation that we had, that when he was a part of the CIA junior officers program, he went on two missions to Africa, and he saw two villages of men, women, and children

that were completely and totally wiped out dead bodies stacked who showed him this dude he was a part of the CIA junior's officers program do you think this somehow plays into him being convicted as the killer because of what he saw yep

In doing some more digging, I found an old documentary called Reclamation. Wayne talks about it there too. When I was going through school, when I started in college, I was approached to work for something called the JLT program, the Junior Officer Training Program, which is a minority recruiting program for the Central Intelligence Agency. I asked to went so far as to take two trips to Camp Perry, Virginia, 1977 and 1978.

These people wanted me to work with them because I already had an electronics background, I knew photography, and they were having some problems at the time in Africa. Apparently the United States, what we were told, was involved in some action in Africa going against the government in Angola and all that. They needed some blacks to work for them at the time. So in the process of considering me for that, my name was already on the government's computer roll. And I think after the bridge stopped,

When you put one plus one equals two together, people jump. And I think that's exactly what happened, panic. During the radio station era, we came to find out that while we were operating the radio station, I was also under surveillance by the FBI's corn and tail program. The NSA had a program which was also called Mineret and Shamrock. If you get those files that came out of the Frank Church hearings in 1975 and '76,

I am the young black reporter that's mentioned in those files where we were under observation because of our association with SCLC. They knew me for a long time. If you listen to that interview and he talks about being with the CIA and all this stuff, he could have been duped into thinking it was CIA work or super secret agency stuff. I don't know. I've often wondered if there were others.

The way that they just took all of the cases after those convictions and shoved them into a bin and closed the door and locked it. I still am not sure that Wayne Williams was the only guy responsible. I think he deserves to be in prison. David Volk told me that he didn't believe Wayne was the Atlanta child murderer, but he also admitted that Wayne was an unusual guy with some pretty out there stories, larger than life. They got him dead to rights at the Jackson Bridge.

I mean, he had no explanation for that. But it is possible, I think it's extremely possible, that there were other people involved. I think he was a conspirator. Dr. Blackwelder, who is close to Wayne's family and also currently owns his old white station wagon, has his own story of Wayne's CIA involvement. Somebody would take him out to some place in Georgia that had a firing range and let him shoot all kinds of machine guns and all.

Blackwater asked me to get his wife from the kitchen because she remembered the story better. I got to meet his dog, too.

Tell him what the deal was on Homer and Wayne was supposed to be an undercover agent for somebody or this guy pulled up in this black car and came into the radio station somewhere and took him out way off somewhere and let him shoot machine guns and all that. That was when Wayne was 14. It was CIA.

He said the CIA took interest in Wayne because of Homer, his father. And apparently Homer had contact with them too.

When these CIA agents or whatever they were told Wayne, if you'll work for us and help us, we'll take you out and let you fly in an airplane and shoot machine guns and everything. And they took him somewhere that looked like a horse ranch. But when you went down in it, they had these targets set up and all these kind of things. They told me about a collection of files Homer had, one they had seen with their own eyes. Homer had four file cabinets full of...

of files, pictures, film of the Manhattan Project. And he told Eddie and myself that we could have it when he passed away. And he passed away, and we went up there, and they were in a storage building locked. We were the only ones that had a key. It had all of Wayne's high school textbooks and everything in it.

And we went in there and it was full of stuff. And here was this file cabinet. Because I remember I found one of these little metal file boxes that had pictures of them grading off for the Atlanta airport when they were building the Atlanta airport.

And then there were three or four file cabinets that were so full that you couldn't have gotten another file folded if you had to. And it had a lot of stuff in there that Homer had when he was at the Manhattan Project. After Homer died, Wayne said, "Any of that kind of stuff you want, get it." And so we looked in there the day that we went to get the car, but we didn't have any way of bringing that stuff back. So Shirley and I said, "We'll come back and get it." And then went back the next time to get it, and somebody cleaned the place out.

Somebody broke in. But the padlock was locked. Ms. Gray still had the key and we went out there and came back and said, "Ms. Gray, there's nothing in that house." And who got the stuff? She said, "Had anybody been in it?" Well, somebody had. She was scared because she didn't know that anybody had been out there. And it was right there at her back door. But everything in there was gone that was worth anything. The file cabinets were there, but they were empty.

This wasn't the only unsettling experience for the Blackwellers. I was doing a church service up in Rome, out in the country. And so after church on a Sunday morning, we wouldn't come back home and go back again that night. We'd just stay up there. We went shopping one day at a mall, and I was sitting in the car listening to the radio, and she went in the belt shopping. And I got a telephone call, and it was from Secret Service and FBI. Said, "We've got a threat on your life that seems serious."

And he said, "Our closest agent is in Somerville, and he's on his way down there right now." And I said, "Well, let me tell you what kind of car I'm driving." I told him, "It ain't the tag number at all." And he said, "Where are you going to go tonight?" I said, "We're going back to the church." And he said, "We'll have somebody sitting outside the church watching the door. Do you know who comes to church at night?" And it's a small country church. It's always the same people. I said, "Yes."

He said, if anybody comes in that you don't know, just fall down behind the pulpit and we'll be in their room. Is Wayne making all this up? Is Black Boulder making this up? And for what reason? Wayne had mentioned Iran-Contra to me. That's when they panicked because they had Iran-Contra going...

I wanted some more background. So I reached out to Ben Bolin again from stuff they don't want you to know. The Iran-Contra affair, as it's known today, occurs in the 1980s with the final federal government conclusion coming in 1993. Here's what happened. The Reagan administration was very anti-communist, unsurprisingly, and they wanted to fund the operations of Congress.

Contras, anti-Sandinist or anti-communist fighters in Nicaragua.

But they needed to get the money from some other source. So at the time, Iran and Iraq are in a war. And the Reagan administration decides to violate an arms embargo and sell weapons illegally to Iran in this war against Iraq and then take some of the money from that sale and funnel it again into

illegally, super illegally to the Contras in their fight against the communists. This was in violation of something called the Boland Agreement that came from the U.S. Congress. So it was a situation where one hand of the government is saying something to the public and the left hand is doing exactly the opposite. It was a real life conspiracy.

What do we think Wayne is suggesting here? Where's the connection? What does this have to do with the possibility of him being innocent?

Right. Yes. So what does this person, whether or not they're committing a string of murders in Atlanta at the time, what did they have to do with events in the Iran-Iraq war? What did they have to do with communist conflicts in Nicaragua? And that's a question that's very difficult to answer because Wayne has mentioned that

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. Nearly every time I talk to Wayne, I ask for important people I should interview. And the name that came up the most was Sidney Dorsey.

According to Wayne, Dorsey, a detective on Wayne's case, later admitted to the corruption he was involved in that got Wayne convicted in the first place. You're going to get to hear from Sidney Dorsey, who was the ex, he was the person, one of the persons responsible for putting me in prison. Now he wants to tell the story about the witnesses he paid and why he did what he did.

But again, I didn't have the details. You're going to find out what Lewis Graham took to the grand jury and tried to get inside and why he stopped. Fitton and Dorsey, who is probably going to agree to talk to you. He's willing to come clean. I have back-channel communication with him as we speak. These are things that you're going to learn as we talk. That's what I'm trying to get to you.

If you remember from episode four, Dorsey became sheriff of DeKalb County, but later went to jail for conspiracy to commit murder. Sidney ended up being the sheriff for DeKalb County. I think what he was really trying to do is he was trying to solve the murders initially. He found out, for one, that there were multiple people that were doing the murders. They were prepared to make arrests. Did he find any evidence that would... Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, Sidney Dorsey is the key to all of this. If he was the key to all this, then I had to talk to him. So I wrote him a letter in prison. And in the meantime, my team looked around for any way to corroborate his story. That's when we came across an old Dateline interview with Sidney Dorsey regarding the Atlanta child murders. I frankly don't think that Wayne Williams has killed anyone. That's former Atlanta homicide detective Sid Dorsey, who was with the task force that put Williams behind bars.

He's one of an unlikely group of people in the criminal justice system now coming forward to say Wayne Williams did not commit the Atlanta child murders. I have never thought that Wayne Williams was guilty of any murder. Not one of those dozens of killings. Not one. It's pretty hard to misinterpret his answers. Without a doubt, his statement was in favor of Wayne's innocence. People ask me often,

Did Wayne Williams do it? And I says, no. Dorsey brings up Clifford Jones's case. Jones's body was found by a dumpster outside a laundromat. Jones disappeared in August 1980, close to this inner city strip mall. Hours later, he was found near a dumpster behind the mall, strangled, wrapped in plastic. There was a young man.

who claims to have witnessed the murder of Clifford Jones. Dorsey says an alleged eyewitness described the strangling of Jones and identified the strangler, not Wayne Williams, but a man named Jamie Brooks.

I've always lived with the notion that Jamie Brooks murdered the child. Brooks later died after serving time in prison for rape, sodomy, and kidnapping. And despite all that evidence, the task force blamed Clifford Jones' murder not on Jamie Brooks, but on Wayne Williams.

The owner of the laundromat, Jamie Brooks, wasn't deemed guilty, even though eyewitnesses testified to seeing him place Jones' body there. Years later, Jamie Brooks went to prison for raping and killing a young boy. By now, I had talked to Wayne Williams off and on for months, countless late-night phone calls, and digging through old stories that he says proves his innocence. And to be honest, it seemed like some of it checked out, but not everything.

I felt it was time to meet Wayne in person, and he thought so too. It's a lot easier to get on the regular visitation list instead of special visits. In the meantime, to get a special visit, I can have two people at one time to get. I really want to get you and Dwayne together down here at the same time. So I'll get the forms to you. You have to fill it out and return it ahead of time. And then all you got to do is set whatever date you want to come on the weekends or the holidays. Sounded simple. So I filled out the forms and sent them in.

Then a few days later...

And we have to do that through our public affairs department before you can enter the facility. You know, we probably would have gone ahead and approved it, but he said, well, we just need to run it by just in case, you know. He said he thought we would need to talk with public affairs and just make them aware of it. And then we would get back with you.

A small roadblock, but still promising.

♪♪

And finally, it was happening. And in just a few days. But I'd never been to a prison before. This is Mark Smerling, creator of the podcast Crime Town and the docuseries The Jinx. This was nothing new to him.

Most of the time you're in a public area with other people. I've been in one prison visit where I was alone with an officer, with a guard. Usually there's a guard sitting very close, listening to everything, which is really annoying. But I found that those people are usually pretty good about letting you talk about whatever you want to talk about. As long as you're not talking about escaping.

Have you ever done a prison visit before? Nope, I never have. Oh, okay. It's even a lot better.

You cannot bring anything but chorus. Don't bring anything in but your driver's license and support. So we'll be able to exchange everything. So we'll like to get here as early as you can. The reason why is because they have a count that happens like at 11 o'clock. If you get here after 11, it'll be 1 o'clock before you get in. So you've got to get here by 9 or 9.30, you know, so we can make the best. We'll make it happen. It'll be worth your time.

You gotta go through metal detectors and all that stuff. They gonna make you take your shoes off. You know, you just wanna have maybe like a roll of quarters. You can get a coat and you wanna be dressed as minimal as possible. Just like going to the TSA. I need y'all to get me as close to that as possible. You gotta have plenty of time to talk. This is me and you to talk.

I'm doing this project for all those people in Atlanta who never got justice. I'm talking about those Camille Fields, those Jones, those parents who lost family members and, you know, the police, by my language, didn't give a damn because they were black.

Wayne was anxious to meet, and so was I. And just as things seemed to be going smoothly, I got a phone call.

from the prison. Mr. Lindsay, this is Michelle calling from Terraflate Prison. I've been speaking with you about your visit with inmate Williams. That visit for Saturday has been canceled, sir. When you get this message, please give me a call at 229-868. Just like that, it wasn't happening. While he's in the lockdown unit under investigation, you will not be allowed to visit him.

I'm not really that familiar with what that means exactly. So did something happen all of a sudden like this morning or? Do you think that it might be weeks before he can talk or what? I'm not sure, sir. I'm not sure how long it would be before he can talk. We'll have to wait, sir. There's nothing you can do.

According to Dwayne Hendricks, Wayne was in the hole now. I think that meant isolation. He was under some sort of investigation. But Dwayne said this was nothing new. Yeah.

When I first got involved with this, initially I went and visited Wayne. I went and I met some of the people that he told me I needed to meet. And I said, well, fuck it, I'm just going to go and do what I need to do to get started and start working with Sidney Dorsey. I wrote Sidney Dorsey. I told him who I was. I was exchanging letters with Sidney Dorsey.

The next step was to go through the public relations officer for Georgia Department of Corrections. And I got the form that I needed. I submitted the form. When I made the phone call to see if they received the form, it was a complete total lockdown for all inmates in the Georgia Department of Corrections that no one would be able to interview anyone.

That's the extent these people are willing to try to go to make sure this shit don't get out. There's multiple people that will end up going to prison maybe for the rest of their lives because of this thing. Next time on Atlanta Monster. Send me a Dorsey letter. Well, at least you know it wasn't tampered with. Because the Georgia State Prison stamp.

Interesting. This is handwritten, which is why it's hard to read. Okay. I received your letter dated December 4th, 2017, and I truly apologize for my delay in responding to you. Please forgive and charge it to my head and not my heart. Best regards, Sydney. Sydney.

Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week, with new episodes every Friday. A joint production between HowStuffWorks and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives, courtesy of WSB News, Film, and Videotape Collection. Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries. For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster.com or follow us on social media.

One last thing. We've set up an Atlanta Monster tip line. Anyone with information, leads, or personal accounts pertaining to the Atlanta child murders can call us and leave a message. The number is 1-833-285-6667. Again, that's 1-833-285-6667. Thanks for listening. I don't think the whole truth will come down. Not unless somebody who knows something hears this.

and opens up. I could be absolutely wrong. This whole podcast, the information could be upside down. But if it is, there has to be somebody who knows it is and will come forward. And it's like a promo. Stay tuned. Well, stay tuned for what? That's also the promo for the next episode. How me?

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

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

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

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

A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why? Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪