Conspiracy? [07]
47:29 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. This call is subject to monitoring, recording, and identification of the location of the person being called. To accept charges, press thank you for using the Curious. You may start the conversation now. One of my attorneys, Lynn Watley, received a package on his doorstep. It was an anonymous package.

He opened the package and found out that it contained hundreds of GBI files about a classified investigation that the agency had been doing into white supremacists involved in the Atlanta killings.

- I was surprised several tape recorded confessions. Some of the Klansmen admitted that they were involved in the murder of some of the missing murder cases. - 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 Tinder for 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.

This was the first time Wayne Williams has been photographed since his trial almost two years ago. Jail officials say he has gained 40 pounds since he's been behind bars, but he didn't look heavier, just a little older. Sheriff Leroy Stinchcomb allowed him to hold this unusual news conference today because he says he thinks Williams deserves a chance to speak his piece before he is moved from the county jail into the state prison system. And predictably, Williams began by denying he's a child killer. I have been wrongly accused.

and connected with a series of heinous crimes and all i ask is a chance to see justice police officials have insisted that since william's arrest the murders of young atlanta blacks have stopped but william says he has evidence that at least 40 murders fitting the pattern of the child murders have been committed since he's been in jail wayne tried to get his case reopened

If you look at it, if you go back in history, of course, a lot of this is archived. This is long before the Internet back in 1981 and 82. But if you pull old records, I mean, there were people dying well after Wayne got convicted. For Wayne's attorneys, that's a good argument.

since my arrest. Summer of 1981, the decomposed body of a young teenage black female found strangled on I-20. Summer of 1981, 15-year-old black male found shot on West Lake Avenue in front of home. No further information. Summer of 1981, the 21-year-old uncle of murder victim Curtis Walker was found dead. No further information.

As you can see, there are definitely homicides that need to be investigated, and all we're saying is that we want the chance to get in court and deal with this information. Jail officials say there have been threats on Williams' life almost daily since he's been behind bars. He will probably be moved into the state prison system sometime in January, but Sheriff Stinchcomb warns if he is put into the general prison population, he won't last a day. But Williams says he's not afraid.

I have some reservations about it because it will be a change, as he said, of address. But no, I don't fear for my life. I just put my faith in God and trust. Williams' attorneys have just two more days to ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to uphold his two murder convictions. If the court denies that request, as expected, Williams says he's prepared to appeal his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Although today's news conference was greatly anticipated, there were certainly no surprises.

Instead, Williams continued to play off the long-standing public doubts that the wrong man may be in jail. But once his case is kicked up into the federal courts, the only thing that matters are very complicated legal issues. And public doubts, no matter how strong, probably won't do anything to set him free.

That may be right, especially after all these years. But public doubt has persisted. Tyrone Brooks, civil rights advocate and acquaintance of Wayne Williams, started his own petition to reopen the Atlanta child murder cases.

Representative Tyrone Brooks says he is now demanding that all 28 murder cases blamed on Wayne Williams be reopened. Brooks claiming several police task force investigators have long doubted Wayne Williams involvement. They pretty much were dissatisfied with the way things were going. They did not believe that Wayne Williams was the right suspect. They didn't believe that the investigators were really on the right track.

and really that the pressure was coming from Washington, from the Vice President's office down to Governor Busbee, through the GBI, through the District Attorney, and on down to the Atlanta Police Bureau. Pressure to do what? Pressure to find somebody, to find a scapegoat. I mean, you had George Bush coming in and saying, "We need these murders solved."

The first black mayor of Atlanta, he was under a lot of pressure to get these solved. There were black kids dying in the city of Atlanta. That's not a good look for the first black mayor. You had a lot of pressure from Washington to get this solved. So, I mean, it looks like that's what happened because you can't go from we don't have enough evidence to prosecute to, oh, my God, we have all of these patterns and

Wayne is our guy. Brooks alluding to a secret June 19th 1981 midnight meeting at the Georgia governor's mansion a meeting in which Fulton District Attorney Louis Slayton was reportedly pressured by former Governor Busby to arrest Wayne Williams despite Slayton's reluctance to do so at the time. Two days later on June 21st Slayton did move against Williams arresting him at his house. If the arrest was backed by pressure from higher authorities what else was in those case files?

that didn't get enough attention. One box, more than 6,200 documents, 20 homicide files containing information never before revealed publicly on one of the most explosive criminal cases in the nation's history. The files don't paint a pretty picture. Instead, they sometimes paint the troubled cityscape where some of the victims came from.

One file explores possible ties between a group of homosexuals and three victims. The files reveal that at some points during the investigation, suspects in at least two of the killings had included close relatives. There are mentions of drugs. Persons with criminal records surface often. One victim's mother allegedly admitted to investigators she was a prostitute, but most of that had little to do with the end of the investigation. That came with a conviction of Wayne Williams in two of the cases.

Oh my God, it was everything but Wayne Williams. I mean, there was so many other suspects and Wayne was not one of them at all. The newest defense rests and revolves around the murder case of Lubejita and the supposed involvement of some unnamed members of the Ku Klux Klan. The new appeal, resting as it does on the Lubejita case and the Klan involvement, may be too fragile. Well, there was always speculation, even before Wayne got arrested, about some Klan involvement.

I do believe that there's an element of the Ku Klux Klan embedded in the law enforcement community and still is today. I do believe that wiping out young black men was a part of the overall agenda to weaken the black community. The KKK. When you were a kid, that's what we talked about. I mean, because it was strange for me. I mean, when we were in middle school, you know, they still burned crosses on Stone Mountain.

I mean, that was the rallying point for the KKK. I mean, it was just always the things that, you know, that you heard. So there were a lot of theories, right, that people developed that because they were all black, because they were mostly male, this is, you know, this was a KKK conspiracy.

Some people in the black community thought it was the Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys. That whole theory around it being the Klan came up because people in the black community did not believe a black person would do that to another black person, particularly a black child. How do you feel about the people who think that the Klan is involved in the Atlanta child murders? That was a joke. That was an absolute joke. The Klan, number one, is not smart enough.

to commit 25 perfect crimes. Number two, if they did do it, they would have taken an ad out in the newspaper. They were toothless. But again, the Bureau insisted on keeping watch on them, so we just had informants monitor their meetings, make sure nobody was going to do anything crazy. The plan's just not smart enough. They're a bunch of rednecks who hate blacks, and they weren't bright enough to commit this crime. And if they did, they would have taken out an ad in the paper. Plus, how do you go into a black neighborhood dressed in a hood

The Klan wanted to take credit for it. I mean, they're racist. It would have been a feather in their hat if, as a group, they could have said, yeah, we killed 28 kids and got by with it. But they couldn't find anybody that would say, yes, I did it, and they didn't know enough of the facts to convince anybody that they did it.

There was a guy named Charles Sanders who was known to be a Klan member. I think his brother or uncle was pretty high up in the Klan at that time. And there was speculation, there was talks that he was the one that actually killed Luby Jeter.

For years, selling things on streets and in shopping centers has been a prime way for children to earn extra money. 14-year-old Chuck Jeter was no exception. We didn't see any pattern. We didn't see anything. And then January 3rd, after we came back, Luby Jeter happened. On January 3rd, he went to the Stuart Lakewood Mall in southeast Atlanta to sell cans of Zepgel, a cardi-odorizer.

Lou B. Jeter was 15 years old. He was selling Zep products at an outdoor mall down in southwest Atlanta. One Saturday afternoon, he disappeared. So they organized a search on the 9th of January. And I remember it was a cold, rainy Friday. And they told us, APD told us, they gave us various areas in the city, areas they thought that a body might be dumped.

Investigators were literally beating the bushes looking for any trace of 14-year-old Chuck Jeter. Trained dogs sniffed the area around the mall today but turned up nothing. This weekend, volunteer searchers will be on the lookout for Jeter, but police say so far they're stumped. The roll call was impressive. Officers from the SWAT team, the task force, the motorcycle squad were here. So were recruits who have yet seen much action. Even agents from both the federal and Georgia bureaus of investigation were helping out.

This was the first ever massive search conducted by the Atlanta Police Bureau. The more than 200 officers would look for anything that could help find 14-year-old Luby Jeter. My partner and I were walking up and down the sides of that road trying to see if we could find any evidence with no hope of finding anything. And I looked down in the creek and I said, "There's a pair of jeans." The creek was overflowing its banks. He held my arms while I leaned over into that creek. Found those jeans and Luby's school schedules in the back pocket of the pants.

We took the pants and the belt, and one of the females in the family, I remember she identified the belt as being his because he was in such a state of deterioration that identifying him was kind of hard. I remember driving out there. The agent that had his case assigned was Frank Pickens. Heck of a guy. He's still around. Hell of a man. And he came out of that woods with tears in his eyes. He was crying. Luby Jeter just broke my heart.

Outstanding kid. I mean, just a phenomenal kid. Vandiver Road was still blocked off this morning. Only a few people could venture near the site where Jeter's body was found. Dozens of Atlanta police and FBI agents gathered at the site. The discovery of Jeter's body here now lends weight to the theory that one person could be responsible for several of the murders. The way Jeter died by strangulation fits into a pattern. Three of Atlanta's other murdered children died the same way. Two others died by suffocation.

His discovery yesterday fits into another pattern, location. Within the last year and a half, six children, black males between the ages of 7 and 15, have all been found within a five-mile radius. Either the pattern doesn't exist, there is no pattern, or we got a much bigger problem. There was an independent witness that said, this guy, Charles Sanders, said he killed Luby Jeter. What is your evidence to say Wayne killed Luby Jeter?

They have none.

The defense is trying to show that the police were investigating, that the Ku Klux Klan may have been responsible for some of the child murders, but that that file was never turned over to help with Williams' defense. Apparently what we found out after we got into Habeas Corpus Court and the source within the GBI was that they had a confidential informant, I believe his name was Whitaker.

The first witness today, Billy Joe Whitaker, says he worked as a police informant during the missing and murdered investigation. Whitaker says he told police detectives that a Klansman from Mountain View, Charles Sanders, told Whitaker he killed one of the child victims, Luby Jeter.

and we were able to contact Whitaker and he did appear in court and testify under O-4 stating that one of the families, I believe they were Mountain View/Carver Sanders families, was indeed responsible for that. Well, I told them that I believe in Charles Sanders, the Klu Klux Klan killer, and it's one kid named Jeter.

- Haley Cook and William Kunstler say they have a letter from Atlanta Police Major Herman Greiner that called Sanders, the Klansman, the prime suspect in the murders, four months before Wayne Williams was arrested and charged with two of the murders.

In 1991, Wayne's attorneys called for a court hearing, where police informant Billy Joe Whitaker testified for Wayne Williams. This man, Billy Joe Whitaker, was in jail during the early 80s, but when he heard that Luby Jeter had become one of the victims, he contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Whitaker stated that a man named Charles Sanders made threats against Luby Jeter's life. Whitaker claimed he wore recording equipment, went to Sanders' home, and got him to admit to the child's murder.

If that was true, then Wayne Williams was not responsible for Luby Jeter's death. It definitely makes you question, okay, first not enough evidence to convict Wayne. Now there's these tapes from this Klansmember, which is mind-boggling.

And I've actually heard the Y-chap recordings and all. And they talk about openly and brazenly about, say, yes, I killed a little black bee. Yes, I'm going to blank, blank, blank with him and all. We went to court trying to get this in. But however, the court in Butts County blocked us from using it. And they put the tape recordings up to seal in our Judge Craig's court. And we attempted to bring this up in Federal Higgins Corp.'s court.

And that was where the issue started, the appeal. So we've been trying for decades to get this information out because the GBI did not want it out because they issued in one of the documents a statement saying that they were afraid that public release of this information would start a race war in Atlanta.

After Whitaker testified, Williams was still not granted a retrial. The strangest part is that now, the tapes are nowhere to be found.

You didn't want a race war in 1981 or '82. You just didn't. I mean, we weren't that far removed from the civil rights. You had your first black mayor. You had all of these elected officials because of the mayor that were black. So it wouldn't have looked good for the city.

At all. I liken it to Rodney King when those officers got off. Look what happened in that city. And then I liken it to O.J. Simpson. Now, say what you want. I believe the evidence shows that O.J. killed Ron and Nicole. But there was talks in the city, well, if he's convicted, there's going to be riots. It's going to be a whole racial thing. If you look at that case, that was right down the middle black and white.

You know, had O.J. been convicted, we would have saw another 1992 Rodney King. I think that would have happened here in Atlanta back in 1981, 82, if it would have been Klansman. There's no doubt, no doubt in my mind.

— We are saying, you know, that the white suspects in the clearing was responsible for all of them, but we know that they were responsible for this particular group of killings here. We had a confidential informant that was brought to our attention. We had a GBI source—I can't reveal his name— an agent that left a box on Lynn's doorstep, literally. It had several reel-to-reel tape recorders and wiretaps, as well as documents on their file.

...

When you have a name like Charles Sanders and you have a witness who knew Charles saying that, yes, Charles is the one that said he killed Luby Jeter way back when there were secret recordings. There was some incident supposedly around the Starwood Theater where Luby Jeter hit his car with like a shopping cart or a go-kart. Apparently there was a go-kart incident in which he collided with Sanders' car, according to the information we had, and that Sanders made a threat against him that he would kill him.

And he had made the comment he was going to kill that little black kid for hitting his car. And he was going to strangle him to death. And of course, that's how Luby Jeter was killed.

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. In 1986, Spin Magazine published an article titled, A Question of Justice. The article's authors, Barry Michael Cooper and Robert Keating, raised doubt about Wayne Williams' guilt and brought the idea of the KKK involvement to mainstream news.

It was a hugely popular article, and really, it was the first time the Atlanta child murders KKK theory was given any legitimate credence by the media.

It's from a publication, so of course people can argue that it was slanted, you know, argue that it's fake news. That's the new term nowadays. But what's interesting is not only is it in the spin article, but the FBI talks about these recordings. You know, so I don't think the tapes were made up. I definitely don't think the transcripts were made up.

I asked Vincent what Charles Sanders said in those transcripts that alluded to him being the Atlanta child murderer, killing more than one person. In one of those conversations, there was talk, and I believe it came from Charles Sanders, that he was going to go out and drive around and look for another black kid, another victim. If this was true, then why wasn't this a bigger deal? From all the records I've seen, that's the closest to a confession that law enforcement ever had.

Time affects any investigation or any case because, you know, memories get skewed and a lot of stuff gets lost or destroyed. You know, a lot of people along the way pass away like Charles Sanders is no longer here. So we could never go back and question him. Here we are, 30 plus years removed. And time actually allows any false narrative to

to become true, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah, there were a bunch of kids that died, and this guy did it. That's the narrative pretty much everyone knows. That's the narrative they know, but they don't know the ins and outs of, well, this person could have been a suspect, this person, this person, this person. You know, they just know Wayne Williams, you know, which they were deep into a lot of people, right? They were deep into the guy in the blue Nova. They were deep into the Sanders. They were deep into the Klan. They could have known that they were plotting something,

that the public wasn't privy to. You know, if you look at some of these terror groups that are investigated now that you hear about later, the FBI says, oh, we halted a terror threat because we were investigating, you know, this person, which no one heard about, besides Charles Sanders, who admitted to killing Louie Jeter.

What started as a joke a hundred years ago when a group of men donned bedsheets for a romp has over the years attracted to it persons charged with acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence throughout the South. Even though the nation has been outraged for many years, the Ku Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings. But a hundred years is a long time for a joke.

I talked to Felix Harcourt, author of the book Ku Klux Culture, for some more historical background on the KKK. The Ku Klux Klan effectively operates as a white supremacist terrorist organization founded after the Civil War during what we commonly refer to as the Reconstruction period. It's founded in Pulaski, Tennessee.

And it's not super popular to start with. It lies fairly fallow through the First World War. If you're looking at the Reconstruction clan, they stand for white supremacy and the maintenance of white power. If you're looking at the Civil Rights era, they largely are standing for the same thing. If you're looking at the 20s, they achieve this much, much larger success in the 20s because they effectively diversify their hatreds. They say, hey, you know,

If you hate African Americans, we are there for you. But also, if you hate Catholics, we are there for you. If you hate Jewish immigrants, we are there for you. If you hate immigrants of all kinds, we are there for you. If you're worried about prohibition, we're there for you. By the time you get to the clan of the late 70s, early 80s, the clan is all in on immigration and are staging stunts on the Mexican border. So there is this kind of fundamental racist tenet there.

and then these variations over time as to what draws people to the Klan and what people see the Klan standing for. To some extent, the Klan of the 80s sets the model for what we see with white supremacists now, particularly through what David Duke does. David Duke really comes out in the late 70s and tries to

remake the public image of the clan to some extent. And effectively what he tries to do is bureaucratize hate. It's a methodology that we're seeing being used to great effect by the alt-right now. And David Duke is really astute at using the media to get this message out, saying that there is a new clan, whatever that may mean.

and in doing so effectively spearheads a clan revival in the late 70s early 80s. And this doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is a big upsweep in white supremacism in the late 70s early 80s in the United States. And so you do see a very active and very visible white supremacist movement on the march by the early 80s.

I will say that certainly that is a period when we are seeing a rise in clan activity, and it's a period in which we are seeing an uptick in white supremacist activity more generally. All clan members are white supremacists. Not all white supremacists are clan members. And so we have always seen

significant white supremacist activity that fundamentally is not linked to the Klan as an organization. Most of the anti-civil rights violence is being carried out not by Klan members, but by

average white supremacists, if that's a term we can use. And to some extent, that's what we see today. The Klan as an organization is weak. It is diffuse. Still, there is no single Klan. There are all these individual organizations kind of battling for the title of who is the legitimate Klan. But they are part of a much broader tapestry of white supremacism that

we can see operating very clearly, I think. White supremacists have always been ordinary people. That doesn't mean that we should normalize them. It means that we should look at ourselves and say, what is it that is giving cover to these people to exist within our society and to exist very comfortably within that society? Just because they are dapper, that word that kept getting tagged to Richard Spencer,

doesn't mean that they are not still subscribers to a hateful ideology of racism and white supremacism. The fact that the Klan is on the rise in the late 70s, early 80s, the fact that racial violence is on the rise to the extent that congressional hearings are being held into anti-black violence at the time, and the fact that Atlanta is

holds this significant position within the history of the clan makes it understandable why someone would link these child murders to clan members it is an entirely reasonable assumption to believe that white supremacist violence is touching your community in this way

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal. This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask.

I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs. From the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy.

So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone.

It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle, not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes, he's innocent.

But in my eyes, he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd.

Plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out. Subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. In the eyes of Vincent, it was nearly impossible that there was only one killer involved. Of course, there is a pattern, but according to Vincent, it doesn't match up in each and every case. Where was this Atlanta monster that everyone was so in fear of for two years? There were several monsters.

All of these victims, they had different suspects other than Wayne Williams, other than Wayne Williams. So, yeah, there were several monsters, but there wasn't just one monster going around killing these kids. Is there a conspiracy going on here? You can't not question that, you know?

So, is there a conspiracy at play here? The term conspiracy tends to immediately incite ridicule. Many people equate conspiracy with total fantasy. Unbelievable stories to explain away historical events. A conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy are two very different things nowadays. To gain some perspective, I talked to one of the guys from HowStuffWorks, who has his own podcast on this very topic.

My name is Ben Bolin, and along with my co-hosts, Matt Frederick and Noel Brown, I produce and host a podcast called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, which applies critical thinking to what we would call conspiracy theories, so government cover-ups, unsolved crimes, various allegations of that sort.

So are you a conspiracy theorist? I would say I find them interesting, but the term gets kind of problematic. So a conspiracy at its most basic level is a situation wherein two or more people or entities work together to deceive or manipulate a third party. When I even hear the word conspiracy theory, I'm already tuning out. And I wanted to talk to you about just sort of the origin of conspiracy theories to begin with

Obviously, there are some true ones, right? I mean, where did this all come from? So what tends to happen when people hear a phrase or a term, especially the phrase of the term conspiracy theory is, as you said, you kind of shut out. It's sort of the idea that, oh, okay, anything that happens after I hear this phrase is going to be utter hogwash.

Interestingly enough, the reason that's the case in the United States today is because shortly after the JFK assassination, most Americans did not believe the official government explanation. And so intelligence agencies spread memos to newspapers, media outlets of the time saying this is what happened. The Russian government is attempting to spread propaganda. So if you hear anything else other than this official story, beware.

be sure to dismiss it and call it a quote conspiracy theory. We do know that certain things that were once considered conspiracy theories are true. It did turn out that banks were laundering money for international drug cartels and it turns out that it is somewhat disingenuous to group that kind of phenomenon along with CIA drug smuggling.

in the same bucket as the idea that, what, the British royal family is a bunch of evil half-alien lizard people, you know? Those are both called conspiracy theories, but they're very different. And there's one incredibly important difference, and that's that the first stuff is true. The second stuff, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say is not true. I asked Ben to outline the most prevalent conspiracy theories for the Atlanta child murders case.

One would be the idea that law enforcement did not have a clue who the real killer was and they wanted to close the cases. So they pinned them or they penned many of these child murders on Wayne Williams in court just to get them off the books.

Another would be the idea that there was some sort of clandestine sex trafficking ring at play and that, again, law enforcement for some reason or another assisted in covering up this information and keeping it from the public. And then the third idea would be that the

KKK or other white supremacist groups were committing the murders with either tacit assistance or approval by sympathetic law enforcement officers. A great deal of it does come from the conversations relayed by Sanders. And in the excellent spin article from the time, there's some top-notch journalistic investigation. They have one of the journalists who I think

think broke the first spin story on crack cocaine who was writing this and exploring this angle and they had an informant named BJ Jones that they thought was a solid guy who came to them and said that there was proof that the KKK specifically the Sanders and possibly not just this individual but members of his family or his close associates were involved in these murders with the goal of killing one of

one black child a month or something of that nature. And there's a further aspect here that we have to remember, and that's the context or the cultural ecosystem in which this occurs. Distrust of a largely white police force is already incredibly high. If there were a doomsday clock

for race relations in Atlanta at this time, it would be about three minutes to midnight. The only publication that pushed this out there was the Spin Story. And you

you can't go find these original recordings, but these guys at Spin were able to get their hands on some transcripts. But besides that, there's nothing out there that publicly exists that says Charles Sanders was a part of the Atlanta child murders. Yeah, and that's one of the frightening, tantalizing, and I would say at base frustrating things for anyone investigating this, was

We're really in a situation wherein if we want to prove or disprove this sort of connection, we would need someone to go speak directly to a primary source. To get to the bottom of this theory, I would have to find someone who was close to Charles Sanders, still alive, and also willing to talk. It seemed pretty unlikely. But after weeks of searching, I got a strange email that led me to one of Sanders' old friends. I don't want to tell anything because my wife right now is real nervous.

You can always come here to the office that we have at Palm. I first met him back in 1980.

We would hang out and sit around and shoot the shit and drink beers and smoke a pot and, you know, after working hours and whatnot. Him and his brothers were in the KKK. When I met him up here in this sleepy little town I live in, he was not involved. He had gotten out. He was a nice guy, good old redneck, had a few teeth missing. You know, had a beard and a small stature. And, you know, you wouldn't think you were in KKK.

this little sleepy town anything different that he was any kind of a monster he certainly didn't act like it until he drank and then he got the eyes of charles manson that would look right through you it was scary it was real scary it scared all of us but it wasn't that often he stopped in one day with this copy of spin magazine he had that look in his eyes he obviously had been drinking some hard liquor

He said, I got something for y'all to take a look at. You know, we didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Pulled out the magazine and we started reading it. It was jaw-dropping. Somebody asked him if it's real, if the article was true. He told us it was. He said it was true. He told us about certain situations that it was either the FBI or the ATF would come in and raid their house in the middle of the night.

and shake them down. They would come in, I remember him talking about them coming in all the time and trying to shake them down and try to find some kind of evidence. And I remember Charles saying that he was lucky 'cause his carpet matched Wayne Williams' carpet. And as well as the white German Shepherd hairs matched, he owned a white German Shepherd. Wayne Williams also owned a white German Shepherd. It just so happens that

The person, Wayne Williams, that they pinned all these murders on had so many similarities with the Sanders as far as the dog and the carpet. Here again, I haven't read the Spin magazine since the 80s, but I remember a situation Charles told us about. They were hanging outside his home and there was a black kid on a go-kart. He accidentally ran into their car. They didn't appreciate that.

They were pissed. - Which kid did this? - Cheater, I believe that's his name. And I remember him saying, "We got him. We took care of him." He told me they got him. They got the boy for doing that. I don't remember him ever saying the KKK was involved with this. I only remember him talking about him and his brothers being involved in this. So I don't know to what extent the brothers were involved.

I do know they had a cache of weapons because they were expecting a huge revolution to come out of this. And he basically told us that he did it and everything in that speeding magazine was true. I don't know, I don't really know why he decided to come out to us and tell us that. He trusted us, I guess, but it certainly blew us away. But he really never went into any details.

of any of the other killings besides the fact that there were other killings that him and his brothers did. - And what kind of victims were they? - They were black children. They were children. They weren't adults. They were children. I don't know what was on their mind if they were gonna commit genocide in Atlanta and try to do away with the, you know,

or if he was trying to cause a race riot of some sort. I know that's why they had that cash weapons, was because they expected some type of a race riot. Who do you think is responsible for the Elanchal murders? Well, I know who's responsible for some of them. You know, and Wayne Williams may be responsible for some as well. He let it be known that it was Spin Magazine was right on, that they took care of those boys.

You know, everybody then was hoping it wasn't a white guy or the KKK because they didn't want a race riot to take place in Atlanta. And I believe they geared their investigation towards Gwen Williams. And once they found out he had possibly killed some of the adults, it was easy pickings to throw all the other children on him too.

Did you ever consider going to the police with this information back then? No, no, I was too scared. No, I wouldn't have gone to the police back then. Can you tell me about why you were scared? Scared for my life. Scared for my life. And at that time, I had a wife. Didn't have a daughter then, but I had a wife. And, you know, I saw that look in his eyes when he was crazy. I believe he could have done anything, anything. I did go, got me a royal black guy that used to do TV commentations and stuff.

in Atlanta. He did a gig on the missing and murdered children of Atlanta one time. I called in and told him what I knew. And he knew about the Sanders brothers. My name was brought up and that scared me. I never spoke to anybody after that. And that was in 1994. So once I found out that my name had brought up, we moved into a hotel for a couple of weeks. Stay clear of

I believe not only was my name brought up, my town was brought up that I live in. Who did you fear in particular? Sanders Brothers. And I don't know how many of them there are. There's like four or five. You feared them? I feared them more than anything else. I feared them. You know, for some reason, I'm thinking that these acts of murder were perpetrated by the Sanders Brothers and not necessarily by the KKV.

To my knowledge, there was no other members, there was no other people involved with the murders except the Sanders brothers and them alone. I never heard him talking about the KKK being necessarily involved with the murder. It was always him and his brothers. You know, a wrong's been done that needs to be righted. But I'm still leery of anybody who was involved with the Sanders. Obviously, I know what they can do.

Once it was pinned on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled. That was their way out. It was being pinned on him, and that was their way. What do you think should happen now? I really don't know. I don't know where it should go from here. I know that there were some wrongs that should probably be righted. Charles is dead. He's gone. There's families still suffering, you know. And there's families that think Wayne Williams did it, and there's others that think he didn't do it all. I can tell you he didn't do it all.

I know who killed those kids. I'm sorry that I did not come forth sooner, but I felt my life was in danger as well. But justice has not been served. If it would have been my daughter, I would want the truth revealed. You can't change the past, but at least it would answer questions. You had children that were brutally murdered for no reason. Completely innocent children.

And if indeed you think it was somebody other than Wayne Williams, you are most definitely correct. Anybody out there who thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do all this by himself is correct. This wasn't all on him. I only know that from the mouth of the devil himself. Next time on Atlanta Monster.

The Clayton County woman and her husband were driving on this narrow cemetery road when they saw a green car coming straight at them at a high rate of speed. The driver was tall and he's light colored, a light colored black man and he had on a wig. I know it was a wig because it was he was losing it because it was a child in the front struggling. He was struggling with that child. You're sure you saw a child in the car? Yes, yes I saw because it was just back and forth like that and like that was trying to hold hang on to that child.

It was a boy between the ages of about 10 and 12, and he had a short haircut. You think you could identify these two men? Yes, and the one with the wig hat on glasses, I could identify him. The Atlanta child murders is one of the largest and most complex cases in U.S. history. As a team, we've spent months digging through police records, court documents, and media archives. Through all this research, we've uncovered stories you've never heard before. And next week, we're going to dig deeper into some of these stories.

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.

Let's bring it to a human level. Here in the United States, the first conspiracy that many people encounter occurs when they're kids. It's the story of Santa Claus. And you can't really blame people for being distrustful of authority after that. I mean, it's a conspiracy that everyone participates in. Oh, and I should have put a warning in there for parents. But Santa's real.

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.