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

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

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

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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 come across a lot of unusual stories that don't seem to be widely remembered today. With this episode, we're going to dig deeper into some of these stories. This is The Vault. ♪

After driving around Atlanta with Jason and the team, locating some of the prevalent sites in this case, I had many more questions about the patterns of these murders, including if a pattern even existed at all. It was eerie just how close by some of these murders were to each other, and how the patterns seemed to change once bodies started showing up in the rivers. Is it even possible they're all connected? Or are there different patterns at play here?

In this episode, we'll be mentioning a book called The List by Chet Detlinger and Jeff Prugge. Detlinger was a law enforcement officer, independent investigator, and an author, and Prugge was a writer for the LA Times. Though now out of print, their book remains one of the most comprehensive and critical literary sources on the Atlanta child murders. During the investigation, Chet Detlinger focused on geography as part of his independent investigation.

Seven former Atlanta policemen give about 20 hours each week to this case. One of them is Chet Detlinger. His strength is not in investigation, but it is in analysis. He's compiled a map with 20 missing and murdered Atlanta children. He counts some Atlanta police do not count because they fit the pattern. Because if you travel Detlinger's route, you can see most of the places where kids were snatched or last seen or dumped without ever leaving your car. He even believes a map he has drawn would show where the killer lives and works

plays. Detlinger believes the killer lives somewhere near Memorial Drive and Second Avenue, may hang around near Hollywood and Hightower, and works somewhere between Redwine Road and Stewart Avenue. I'd have someone at this point, someone at this point, someone at this point, and at this point, and I'd be looking for the same car or the same individual to come by that place and I'd keep them there. And I'd find out, do we have a person passing these points? I mean, we've already got 20 kids dead.

And I would find out and if it showed up that the same person showed up more than say two or three times at the different points on this route, I think I'd have a suspect. Furthermore, Detlinger says the official task force can no longer deny some of these cases are related. I think maybe the kids aren't connected, but the geography sure connected because this child came from here to here.

This child came from here to here, and this child came from here to here. Now, the only other explanation would be if this guy, if there were three different killers, they just happened to wander out and find the same spot to leave a body in. Those locations are connected. I've asked members of the unofficial task force why none of their advice is sought by Atlanta police. They all answer the same thing. Politics. Petty politics. Chet Detlinger is ready to share everything he knows, if anybody wants it.

We decided to talk to Dr. Maurice Godwin, a private investigator and geographical profiler, who worked with me on my first podcast, Up and Vanished. For Atlanta Monster, we asked him to assemble a heat map of all the missing and murdered cases to see what he could tell us about the geographical patterns. There's two types of serial killers predominantly. You have a commuter, and a commuter commutes from the suburban area into a central business district.

and kills, or he commutes from the inner city out and kills and then goes back home, or the marauder. And that's just somebody that's just scattered about running around here, there, just picking them up, you know, in any way they can and killing them and dumping them. That's the two.

comparable terms, typologies that you want to call them. The first one is called a viper and the second one's called cobra, obviously based on the behavior of the snakes, the way in which they behave. In my analysis of 92 serial killers, I found that 63% were vipers. They lay low, they target victims near familiar areas such as home and work.

They dispose of earlier victims at considerable distances from home and later victims in or near their comfort zone. That comfort zone provides them, they believe, a psychological blanket of protection. 37% were cobras. Huge difference there. Huge difference. This relates also to a criminal behavior. This type of predator, the cobra, is what we call a hunter.

They target victims outside of their comfort zone, so they're not too worried about that blanket of protection. They dispose of each victim at a considerable distance from home and later victims in or near their comfort zones. I have a theory called the wedge theory, and this is based on academic research on soft cases. The wedge theory, the foundation of it is this. That every criminal retains some kind of environmental image

of his or her city. Criminals develop mental maps of their environments in the same way non-criminals do. For example, you go to the grocery store, you take a ride out of your driveway, and you go to the shopping center a particular way. Rarely do you deviate from those things. Most people do not deviate. And then finally, criminals use their mental maps thereafter

as a spatial frame of reference. That's the foundation of wedge theory. It's sort of shaped like a windshield wiper effect. The home base would typically be near the sharp point of the wedge, and the crimes will be dispersed outward toward the wide part of the wedge. In the Atlanta child murder case, I had geographical coordinates

I plotted the 33 locations dealing with these murders. I plotted the body dump sites, and I plotted the abduction sites, which is rare to have those abduction sites because a lot of cases don't have them. And then I entered those geographical coordinates into my predator system and ran it.

And what I got was a 43% to 44% probability that the fender lives between Highway 130

and Interstate 29. The probability percentage is low. Normally I'm getting, on other cases, I get at least 50, 51, 55. Here, 43, 44. I think there's something else going on that we're attributing murders to an individual here that they're not responsible for.

And that may be the reason why of the low probability plot of 43 to 44 percent. Geographically, there's no pattern between the child murders and the adult murders. It's very, very rare that a serial killer will kill children and adults.

I would separate Eddie Duncan, age 21, Larry Rogers, age 20, Michael McIntosh, age 23, Jimmy Ray Payne, age 21, John Porter, age 28, Nathaniel Cater, age 27. Those victims fall into the wedge with Wayne Williams' home down at the sharp point of the wedge. I would separate those victims from

from the rest of the Chow murders. We then asked Maurice about Darren Glass, the one victim on the list that has never been found. Darren is an orphan and has a history of running away. He's done it twice before and told some playmates last Sunday that he was going to do it again. Are you worried about him? Sure is. But you just think he's going to eventually come home? Oh, he's going to show up. Yes, he is. He's going to show up.

And you don't think he's been kidnapped? I sure know he left on his own. You think he left on his own? He left on his own because he wanted to leave. And today the searchers took the form of a canvas here in Darren's old neighborhood where searchers went door to door seeking out Darren's old friends who might be able to offer some new information. We're trying to find any information concerning his whereabouts or where he possibly may be at this point. We feel that it is still very possible that Darren Glass could be alive, safe and well at some place.

So far, police have no leads at all, but they say this case, like the others, is now top priority. The day marks the seventh month that we've been conducting these searches, and I think it has taken a lot of wear and tear out of a lot of people. They combed the woods, sifted through debris, and bagged what they thought might be evidence in the mounting number of child murders haunting Atlanta.

But slowly, as the searchers found nothing, interest dwindled and the throng thinned to just a few. Now the search is at an end. Well, to try to find the body of victim Darren Glass, normally you would have to have, it's called reverse geographical profiling, meaning that you try to use the offender's home base along with the rest of the victims.

and try to get a pinpoint area that a victim is likely to be at. In this case, I would pull anything to do with Williams out of that, and I would do the analysis with the rest of the victims. And this will be the first time ever that you will be able to use analysis of remaining victims to try to find the one victim that's never been found before. The case of Darren Glass is such an outlier.

From what geographical profilers like Maurice tell us, it's not impossible for him to still be found if he is indeed a victim. In the summer of '81, after Wayne Williams was arrested, a South Carolina artist came to Atlanta to paint murals of the child victims on neighborhood housing in the city. But it didn't get the reaction you would expect.

Over the weekend, bigger-than-life paintings of the children started popping up around Atlanta. LaTonya Wilson's picture on a wall at Bowen Homes. Angel Lanier's in McDaniel Glen. Eric Middlebrook at Henry Thomas Housing Project.

The paintings were done in two days by Columbia, South Carolina artist Ralph Waldrop. He paid for the project himself as a gift in remembrance of Atlanta's 28 tragedies. City officials are so impressed with Waldrop's generosity, they plan to make him an honorary citizen of Atlanta tomorrow at a special ceremony. But not everyone is happy with Waldrop's artistic contribution.

16-year-old Patrick Rogers' mother says she and the other mothers are furious that no one asked their permission. If Mayor Jackson did it, he didn't have any reason to do it before asking the parents, would it be all right? I don't think it's right. It'd make the parents walk out here. When I walk up to that picture up there, it'd do something to me. Miss Rogers says Camille Bell drove through McDaniel Glen yesterday and was stunned to see her son Yusef's picture in front of her.

That ain't nothing but memory. That ain't nothing but hurt. The mothers plan to meet in the morning to decide what they should do, but it appears what seems to be an out-of-towner's act of kindness has turned sour. I want it down. I want it down. Me, I want it down.

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. On October 13th, 1980, during the height of the hysteria around the Atlanta child murders, an explosion devastated a local daycare center, killing four young black children.

The explosion happened at a time when no suspect was in custody, and rumors circulated constantly about KKK connections. At 1022 on October 13th, an explosion with a force of 75 sticks of dynamite ripped the roof off the daycare center. Four three-year-old boys were killed instantly. So was their teacher. Six others were injured.

The black community was panicked. Nine children in Atlanta were already murdered. Nail this. They insisted the explosion was a bomb, some sort of sick conspiracy against blacks. Mayor Jackson and others tried to convince them otherwise. The biggest rumor running through this crowd was that the explosion was caused by a bomb. Tension began to build because these people wanted to, needed to blame something for the tragedy they had just witnessed.

downtown is your place where the man with all of the councilmen turn when the jailhouse is black leaders saw how dangerous the situation could get so mayor jackson and others trying to reassure the crowd but i want you to know that we will not rest until we turn every stone until we look under every leaf

until we exploit every possible lead, until we follow every possible possibility, we will do everything in our power to find the reason for this, which at this point appears to be an accident. However, the crowd here did not believe much of what Mayor Jackson had said. They still believed in the rumors that this was a deliberate act of violence.

And this didn't help. The rumor of a bomb threat sent emergency teams into the elementary school across the street from the daycare center. They ordered everyone out and were tight-lipped about why.

Nothing happened either in the school or in the crowds outside although there were a lot of passionate cries for someone to do something about anything.

Mr. Mayor, could you say they need to know something encouraging relative to the future protection out here? I think that's all they need. We are increasing protection for the area. We will do everything in our power to increase protection for the area. Later, a police investigation showed the explosion was an accident. A poorly maintained boiler blew up. As tragic as it was, it was an accident.

Ben Bolin from Stuff They Don't Want You To Know sat down with us again to go over the details of this tragic episode and the subsequent conspiracy theories it spurred. Let's set the stage.

It's 10-22, October 13th, 1980, at a place called the Bowen Homes Daycare Center when an explosion occurs. And at first, people have no idea what's going on. From miles away, you can see a plume of white smoke. People run from adjacent streets, you know, especially think about the parents who were there who knew roughly where that building was, right? Right.

Hundreds of people are mobbing the area, teachers running out with their children. We would later learn that five people passed away in that explosion. There were four children, Andre Stanford, Ronald Brown, Kelvin Snelson, and Terrence Bradley. These people...

Boys were all around three years old. In addition, a teacher named Nell Robinson also passed away, and six to seven people were injured. The public immediately thought there was a bomb. And in the archival footage, you can hear people in the back saying, it was a bomb, go downtown, it was the Klan, the Klan did it.

This panic was compounded by the fact that the elementary school across the street was also evacuated and law enforcement refused to say, and in the absence of transparency, of course, speculation grows. And so all it takes is one person to say, I heard that there's a bomb in there, right? And later, officials would say that,

the explosion was caused by a boiler, right? What's called a water tube boiler. And that when this explosion occurred, it occurred with such force that it did prove fatal, but it did not prove some sort of premeditated action. Most importantly, no one, you know, snuck in an explosive. Nobody snuck in under the cover of night and tinkered with this boiler, right?

But given the cultural ecology of the time, it's completely understandable why people would think this, you know, especially if we're looking at a community where, as we've already established, distrust of authority figures is at a high, a completely understandable and rational high. We also have to consider what Chet Detlinger and Jeff Pru point out in their book, The List. This occurred against a backdrop of...

brutal murders, horrific crimes that also appeared to target minority populations in the United States. There was the shooting of the National Urban League president, Vernon Jordan, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And in Buffalo, New York, black cab drivers were being murdered with their hearts literally cut out of their chest.

As you can hear on the footage here, when you hear the explosions, the panic, the chaos, and you already know that someone is targeting children, specific types of children, right? Certain age range, right? And they may even be your children. You feel powerless, right? And you cling to a nature of explanation, right? As Detlinger points out here, when he was looking at children,

the layout, the mapping of this area, Bowen Holmes fits into the geographical region that he was looking at. He notes that a boy who lived on the same street as the daycare center

later disappeared in a way that might have been connected, in his opinion, with the murders. And additionally, when a tragedy like this occurs, we hear rumors being treated with the same regard as a fact. And in Dettlinger's case, this is a very by-the-book author and investigator, in his case, he begins to notice things that

trouble him. One of the points was made by John Lewis, who was then president of the Atlanta Cab Drivers Association, and

He said he was appointed to a committee to calm public alarm after this boiler explosion because people meet when the explosion occurs. Law enforcement pushes them away, gives medical care to people, finds the deceased victims, right? And then later that night, there's another public gathering where people are saying, why isn't anyone doing anything about this?

So in a very real sense at this time and place in history, it feels as if there is not simply one Atlanta.

There's more than one Atlanta, right? There are at least two. And the people who are encountering on top of this murder epidemic, explosions in places that are supposed to be the safest place your kid could be, it feels like there's another Atlanta, an Atlanta that has safety for its citizens, an Atlanta that has non-antagonistic law enforcement, an Atlanta where people can walk at night without fear of a crime.

And this feels like a very different Atlanta when you're around exploding daycares. So immediately after getting news of this explosion, the mayor travels there in person seeking to quell these fears. This is not a bomb. Authorities assure me that while a tragedy, this is entirely traceable to this water tube boiler.

The crowd is not buying this. And you can hear the fundamental anger, right? And there's always a sense of betrayal that occurs in a tragedy, right? There's a part of our minds, we could even say our souls, that recognizes this is not how things are supposed to be. And you are the mayor, right?

This is your job. Fix this. Explain this. And if we don't believe the official explanation, then give us what we see as the real one.

There's a book called Outbreak, the Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior by two authors, Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew. And this is a reference work that compiles different examples of what we would see as public panics. In the case of these incidences that the journalists have compiled, we see several commonalities. And the number one commonality is that the

Regardless of anything else, right, regardless of time, space, socioeconomic factors, the number one problem is the perceived lack of transparency. This becomes doubly frustrating and difficult when there is an authority figure. The people in this neighborhood played a large role in this mayor's election.

The mayor, regardless of how well perceived he might be, is still functioning as an authority figure in a time when authority figures are considered inherently untrustworthy. So when the dust has settled and all of the immediate chaos

Questions and answers that can exist, do exist. One of the more terrifying things that occurs is you begin to wonder, is it just this one daycare center? If it's a boiler, is it just this one boiler? How many other daycare centers are here? How many other...

playgrounds, for example, haven't been repaired in what, decades? Where is the sewage line that was supposed to be here? Why doesn't this infrastructure exist? An interesting note that some people may recall also in Atlanta history was the collapse of an interstate, a piece of an interstate called I-85. When this collapsed, there was an official story about a fire that was set by

people who didn't mean to burn down this concrete bridge. But again, this becomes symbolic of a larger context, right? A lack of care for public goods, right? Maybe it's not just this one daycare. Maybe it's every daycare. Maybe it's every road in this zip code.

And we have to remember that Atlanta has a provable and undeniable past of using local districting even unto the level of changing street names to denote the two or more different Atlantas that exist culturally. And for some people, I-85 falling was another thing.

example of this and even today you will find people who tell you that the official story makes no sense so it's tempting for us as people to look at history as something that is disconnected this

It happened once. We're done with it. We can read about it if we want to. That could not be further from the truth. History never leaves us. And in the case of the Bowen House Daycare Center, the story continues. Yes, this tragedy occurs in 1980.

Soon after, the community comes together and they rebuild the daycare center. It was one of the most horrible tragedies Atlanta had ever seen. But in time, attention turned toward making sure a tragedy like this could never happen again. The state legislature passed new laws tightening up the requirements for boiler operation and inspection. And in May, the rebuilt Bowen Homes Community Center was dedicated. A new and more modern boiler now in place. There was optimism all around.

So are these long-standing infrastructure problems actually fixed? Well, the answer is no, because in 2007, the furnace explodes again. And ultimately, in 2009, in June of 2009, the daycare center itself is demolished.

The Atlanta Housing Authority took a major step today to become the first major city to tear down its public housing projects. Work has officially started on tearing down Bowen Homes. This was a powerful and emotional day for many of the residents who once lived in the Bowen Homes public housing complex. But with that comes change and uncertainty.

There's no question that this is the right direction. I want them to tear down because people been getting shot in here. I hate to see it go. It's a... This is one of the oldest, um...

I mentioned the Omni in previous episodes. As a particularly significant site, many victims were last seen there or heading there.

During our research, we found an anonymous individual who claims Wayne Williams was hanging around the Omni, picking up known murdered children from this case. Unfortunately for us, the person's identity was concealed. He was interviewed after Wayne was arrested, but before the trial started. Here it is. The interest in the complex has once again been rekindled by this man, a songwriter who wishes to remain anonymous. In a statement to the FBI, he has told of Wayne Williams and Joseph Bell together at a Buckhead studio.

I remember JoJo because he came in and he sang a few tunes and he had a very good voice. And I was asking Wayne what was he going to do with it and Wayne said he was going to sign the guy to a contract immediately.

He also tells of times when he and Williams went to the Omni. He said he was going to see if he could find some more stars. I went to the Omni with Wayne. Seemingly though, most of the kids there knew Wayne. They all come up to him asking when they were gonna maybe do some recording or things of that nature. I asked Wayne how did he know so many kids. He said they were his spies. They told him everything he wanted to know about everybody.

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. Jason from How Stuff Works and Meredith from our team here at Tenderfoot sat down together to discuss the contents of a 1981 Us Weekly magazine.

a double-issue feature on Wayne Williams. Wayne was arrested for the murders of two black males, Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, that same summer. Until January of 1982, Williams remained in custody, awaiting his trial. Before the trial began, while still in prison, Williams shocked the country by giving an exclusive interview with Us Weekly. The interview itself infuriated the judge and police officials working on the case.

The main reason for today's order was this magazine article to be released next week. We were hoodwinked into allowing it to happen, and I don't appreciate it.

That, of course, was the sheriff's reaction today to the article. When he and the judge in charge of the case read it last night, they were both shocked, and sources say Judge Clarence Cooper was outraged. For most of the morning, they both sought out this woman, defense attorney Mary Welcome. Last night, she told us she knew of the article but would not say any more. Well, today, she did say more to the judge and sheriff. Apparently, the reporter, a freelance writer...

came into town the weekend of August 22nd and 23rd. Today, over the phone, Mickey Siegel told me she went along with Miss Welcome to the jail. When asked who she was, the reporter gave her name, then Miss Welcome said the woman was with her. No more questions were asked by the jailers. I asked Miss Welcome, did you tell them that she was a newspaper reporter? She said, no, they didn't ask me. But again, I didn't think it was necessary to ask a lawyer.

Are you doing something you know we do not allow? Us Magazine paid the writer for the story, which has a part two for a later issue. And we've learned Homer Williams, Wayne's father, was paid $350 for the use of these family pictures. No other money was reportedly paid for the story. The writer now says she plans to write a book about the Atlanta murders.

The story is headlined on the cover, but it's what is inside that is bound to raise a few hackles. Williams is highly critical of police conduct, beginning with the night he was stopped and questioned on a bridge over the Chattahoochee River. The two men he's charged with killing were found a short time later in the river. Williams calls the FBI keystone cops and compares Atlanta police to Car 54 Where Are You. He says he is a scapegoat, that somebody has to be caught because of the federal and local money put into the investigation. He told the writer...

In the article, Williams again said he is innocent.

and even says he did not know the two he is charged with killing, Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne. The magazine promises a second installment in the interview they say was conducted at the jail. We'll hear more about this later. This is Monica Kaufman.

So this is Us Weekly, like the Us Weekly we still see in newsstands. Yeah, so I pull up the cover and I certainly see a headline that says accused Atlanta killer Wayne Williams tells his exclusive story. But I also see headlines like how to be important by Ronald Reagan and how to beat the SATs. He's become a weird cultural icon, I guess. On this one, his name is up here and there's a picture of Jackie Kennedy on the cover.

And a mention of Stevie Nicks. So that kind of sets the stage for what happened here. So reporter Mickey Siegel, she gained access to Wayne via Wayne's attorney, Mary Welcome. So she went into the prison where he was being housed, waiting his trial. And she didn't tell the people at the front gates that the person she had with her was a reporter.

And this caused a ton of outrage. Once this was found out by the judge and the other police officials, the fact that she did not identify the reporter. So this is how it all started. So Mary Welcome was Wayne's attorney and she thought this was a good idea? I don't know whose idea this was. I have a feeling that in the midst of all the hubbub of this pretrial kind of intensity and news that most people...

probably including Wayne Williams, forgot about this interview. Because a lot of what we've uncovered here seems to contradict a lot of what we've heard on the podcast. But Wayne willingly knew he was talking to a reporter, it seems like. Yeah, oh, definitely. And the article actually kicks off in this way. I find this fascinating, and we'll get into this. So, sleeping in odd snatches, reading book after book, watching TV endlessly, Wayne Bertram Williams sits in Georgia's Fulton County Jail.

He's articulate and intelligent. His IQ is 136, and he's known to America as the accused Atlanta killer. Yeah, there always seems to be a stress on exceptional intelligence. I'm trying to understand where the narrative of Wayne being a super intelligent person came from. We've heard numbers from 136 to 150, to even from Wayne himself saying IQ doesn't matter.

This seems very questionable as the first thing in this article that we hear. There's a what was then 1981 photo of Wayne Williams in his looks like his living room. Photos of him also with his parents down in the basement in the in the little radio station studio. It looks like a normal childhood. Looks like a normal childhood. All the photos are from H.C. Williams, otherwise known as Homer Williams. That's Wayne's father.

And depending on the source, it says that Homer was paid somewhere between $300,000 and $3,000 for these photos. This came at a time when Wayne's mother, Faye, she had cancer and was going through a lot of things physically.

And frankly, they didn't have the money. Wayne Williams' attorney, Lynn Whatley, says that the family needed about $40,000 to support this case. So what ended up happening is the Williams family and some others formed a legal defense fund called End Justice for All as a way to raise funds or raise money for the trial. And they raised $10.

Wow. If the trial lasts six weeks, as expected, it will cost the county more than $190,000 in extra expenses. Most of that money will be spent on housing and feeding the jury, on transportation costs for Williams and Judge Cooper, and for special security equipment.

Of course, the tab for all that will be picked up by Fulton County taxpayers. But in the meantime, bills on the defense side are also mounting up. Every day the trial goes on is like a huge cash register ringing up thousands of dollars in legal expenses, legal expenses which may never be paid.

Members of the defense team have revealed that co-counsels Mary Welcome and Alvin Binder and investigator Derwood Myers have spent well in excess of $15,000 of their own money on the Williams case so far, mostly to bring fiber and pathological experts to Atlanta for consultation. The trial has also been a financial drain on Williams' parents.

Homer and Fay Williams are retired school teachers. They say most of their savings have been spent supporting their son's home radio station and his musical promotion business. A recent highly controversial magazine interview in which Wayne Williams calls the FBI Keystone Cops netted the family $2,000. But lawyers say it will take thousands more to defend Williams.

They have launched a nationwide appeal for money trying to raise an immediate $40,000. The fact that you have so much evidence that's going to concern forensics, acoustical tests, fiber evidence, and it's going to be necessary to employ experts in order to effectively assist in Wayne Williams' defense. And...

Obviously these things are going to cost money. Six weeks ago, a special legal defense fund was set up for Williams as a non-profit organization called And Justice For All. But today, its organizers told me business has not been very good. At this time, we have received one $10 donation. Why do you think people have been so reluctant to give money? I think that in the mind of the general public,

there is a feeling that we have the guilty man, which means that they have already convicted him. Ware says his organization plans to step up its appeal for funds for Williams' defense, but many courthouse observers agree even if the money doesn't come in now, future publishing opportunities for this famous trial may more than make up the deficit someday. When you talk about public sympathy and really where people were at at this time,

I think that is really telling as to what the attitude was in the community of this guy being the guy. No one was getting behind them. It almost seems like public sympathy has increased the longer we become separated from the killings. Yeah, absolutely. That was my reaction also. And do we know where this $10 came from?

No, we don't. It would be interesting. But I think that was incredibly embarrassing to have show up on the television broadcast that that was as far as they had gotten, frankly. This kind of media coverage and photos and videos and everything, it just points to something that's been nagging at all of us as we've gone through this process. And that is this kind of constant obsession by the Williams family, and that's both Wayne and Homer, to be connected to the media.

One of the things I found from the 1983 book called The List, authored by Chet Detlinger and Jeff Pru, Jeff Pru was with the Los Angeles Times, based here in Atlanta doing some of the reporting for the LA Times. And who's Chet? Who's Chet Detlinger? Chet Detlinger was both the author of this book, but he was also part of the defense team

As a private investigator. As a private investigator. And he was very much involved in questioning all the details of the case, the patterns. Was there a pattern? And should every one of the children that was on the list be on the list? I'll read a quote here. On May 2nd, 1981, Jeff Pru and I, along with a Los Angeles Times photographer,

went to the church where Jimmy Ray Payne's funeral was in progress. Like many of the funerals, it was a media circus. Throughout these cases, all the sobs, the moans, the tears, the eulogies, even poems read by bereaved schoolmates, were caught in the glare of TV strobe lights and handheld minicams. A woman emerged from the door of the small church during the funeral of Jimmy Ray Payne. Wailing uncontrollably, she swooned into the supportive arms of two men.

They began to assist her as she stumbled forward on rubbery legs into the wide, busy street. A photographer dashed towards her, his camera lens only inches from her tearful face. Snapping pictures, he backpedaled across the street, oblivious to the traffic flow. I would see that same cameraman make like a broken field runner again, on another street at another time.

I also would learn that he had taken photos on the stage of the Sammy Davis Jr. Frank Sinatra benefit concert. For security reasons, only this one still photographer had been allowed on the stage by arrangement with City Hall. Had the mourner of Jimmy Ray Payne known later who the photographer had been, she probably would have had another strong reaction.

I wonder if, to this day, she knows. So the photographer that was at Jimmy Ray Payne's funeral, the one he's mentioning, was the same one who was on stage that we've seen in those archive clips. That's right. So in the course of our research, as you know, in the 2010 CNN documentary on the Atlanta child killer, who was on stage? Homer Williams. That's right. He was the only one. And what did Frank Sinatra say to him on stage?

Didn't he say something along the lines of like, who let this guy up here? He kind of like shamed him for... The only one that wasn't wearing a tux. Wasn't wearing a tux, right. So Chet Detlinger doesn't come out and say Homer Williams at all. But when you connect the dots and put two and two together, you see the connection between Homer Williams at Jimmy Ray Payne's funeral and at the Benefit concert. And it does seem like a really...

odd coincidence to have the father of the man convicted as the Atlanta child murderer be at funerals, be on stage at a benefit to raise money to find the serial killer? I mean, we did see like in the FBI profile that this would be someone who'd be close. So what are the chances that it would be the convicted person's father? All right. So let's get into a little bit of the Q&A with Wayne Dunn in prison. Yes. Yeah.

Some of the narrative from Mickey Siegel says, interviewed at the jail, he appears shorter, more frail, and a little bit pudgier than expected. He peppers his sentences with phrases like, let me say this, and you've got to understand, as to be very precise or to distance himself from what he's saying. In addition, the phrase, being in control, comes up several times in our talks. Though he denies it, this appears very important to him.

Wow, that's spot on. You've got to understand. I mean, you and I have both heard the interviews. Yeah. He still says that. Yeah. I could hear Wayne's voice as I read this. And what's the other catchphrase? It was, let me say this and you've got to understand. They really grip whoever he's talking to. Yeah. That's a control thing. Yeah. Controlling the narrative. Just like having the reporter come to the prison to be able to give this interview in the way that they wanted to release it.

the control of the actual story contents itself really comes out here. Next up, he actually is asked what happened that night on the bridge. And he says he was scared. He says he was shaking. And then he says, quote, let me say this. When they stopped me, I had no idea why. Two or three hours later, toward the end of the questioning, I began to put two and two together. I mean, that's a different story than what

We've heard when we asked for FBI agent Mike McComas' account, McComas says as soon as he pulled him over, Wayne Williams said, this is about those kids, isn't it? Or this is about those children, isn't it? That's two different stories. You can either say you were blindsided and had no idea and shaking with fear, or you can say at least what we've heard today from Wayne, and that's...

I was totally in control. I was calm and collected. I knew exactly what it was, and I wasn't a bit worried. Those are very different accounts. I don't know if that's hindsight bias or if it's lying. He's asked about the press conference. He said, I would never have said anything publicly if the story hadn't already come out. It was leaked to the media that I had been arrested on a 10-count murder indictment, and no such thing had been done.

The Atlanta newspapers and several other national papers had already used my name, address, everything. The New York Post even printed, Atlanta monster killer seized. I feared recrimination. I called the conference because I didn't want 200 people coming out and attacking me in my home. At the end of the day, it ended up backfiring because the media perched outside his house anyway. Right. And it ended up being a bigger media circus. Right.

He's asked, are you guilty? He said, no, I am not guilty. Did you have anything to do with cater or pain? I didn't even know them. No is emphasized here. Have you ever known any of the others? Have you had them in your singing room? Talking about Gemini, have you had any of them in your home? He says, nope, never.

I mean, there's just the constant questions which comes up about if he's had a girlfriend before and his acquaintances. But this was a constant focus of the media and of the various agents to ask him because they were really looking for a pattern. Right. He talked about having a girlfriend and having any romantic ties. I think that's important because of his alibi. He says he's looking for Cheryl Johnson,

That night at 2 a.m. and even Richard Brockliff, the polygrapher, he asked him, you know, why would you be going to a woman's house at 2 a.m.? And he says, Wayne's told him, or at least in Richard's account, Wayne said, I'm not homosexual. Yeah. He's like, well, I wasn't suggesting that. Yeah. So it seems like it's always been a question on people's minds, maybe from that moment. I don't know where it originated. Yeah.

So he's very explicit here. He says, I have gone out with women, some married, some single. Yes, I do see ladies. And yes, I do date. So he's very firm in making sure that that point came across. So that's part one of the interview. That was October 13th, 1981. People had to wait two weeks for the next interview.

Issue to come out October 27th, 1981. The kind of primary focus initially on this interview is actually with Faye Williams, Wayne's mother. And she was battling cancer, high blood pressure. She was 66 and had gone through a lot and had just recently retired from being an educator or a schoolteacher.

And she was certainly very frightened for Wayne and what had happened. It was very devastating for their family. Both Wayne's parents, Homer and Faye, were older when they had Wayne, and this was pretty devastating to them. See, he has been tried, and may as well say has virtually been convicted long before by the media. We had no savings or anything, and what little bit we had due to my illness, in this case, that's depleted.

So it's been mental and it's been a financial strain. I might add, I think it's been a physical strain on her also because she has suffered with the high blood pressure recently. In fact, she hasn't been suffering with it. Not until this case came up. He didn't have and don't have enough evidence not only to indict him but to arrest him.

I'd just like to give them a warning that whether they believe it or not, the killer is still at large. He's out there. So this is the question that Mickey Siegel asked to resume part two of the interview, the discussion around dog hair. As we know, Wayne had a German Shepherd. This is Wayne's reply. He says, how many dogs are there in Atlanta? And how many different kinds of dogs have they talked about?

They're looking for a dog that has a top coat and an undercoat. That fits Malamutes, Collies, Huskies, St. Bernards, some Spaniels, and a German Shepherd, which I have. Anyhow, a dog hair is a dog hair. I took a hair from one dog and a hair from my present dog and couldn't distinguish the difference under a microscope. And the reporter asked, why did you do that? And he replied, after the case came down, I got curious about it.

So let me just pause there for a second. So Wayne's pulling out the microscope in his home to do his own scientific breakdown of the evidence, staying ahead of the story for sure. Oh, yeah. This is right in line with what Richard Radcliffe has said about them finding a book in his house about how to pass a polygraph test or what are the inner workings of a polygraph test. He seems very closely following something more closely than the average person would.

So when the reporter asked, didn't you receive several science awards in school? Wayne answers, at first, but I made a change when I got to high school, a very significant change. Until then, I was Mr. Academia, you know, teacher's pet.

But in the eighth grade, that changed drastically, and my home relations changed quite a bit. I became more of an assertive person. My father and I had disagreements over how much trust he put in me. We had plenty of arguments over the car.

I don't drink, but one weekend I got completely wasted, completely drunk, and my relationship with my father got much worse. He was pushing me for an education, but I had only applied myself in school when I had to because I had my radio station by then. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost sounds like he's trying to distance himself from the intelligent, for lack of a better word, dorky kind of image he was given and almost sound like a

cool and rebellious. And he's using the media as a platform, is what it sounds like, to further the vision he wants of himself. One of the questions that kind of was on everyone's mind is with so many kids having gone missing and many of them showing up murdered, of course, his connection to adolescents that were involved in the music business with him. And the question was really asked of him, didn't your dealings with adolescents make you a suspect?

And he said, And when he was asked, He responded,

so there wouldn't be any problems later. You don't go around talking to kids on the streets of Atlanta because everything gets reported. You don't understand what this city was like. I had contact with the task force three times before I was ever questioned. Then he was asked, why did you contact them the other two times? And he replied, I can't talk about that. So this is new. This is nothing we've heard before. This story of him reaching out to the task force and

And frankly, nothing from the task force that says this was ever logged because they really didn't know who he was until they caught him on the bridge. Yeah, I wonder how many people were proactively reaching out to the task force to tell them they would be interacting with children. It seems like another getting close to the case, you know, for the sake of getting close to the case. Yeah, so this entire, you know, couple-week interview process

segment that ran on Us Weekly was really an incredible find that we passed this around the office. We've not known what to do with it. It feels like such an isolated standalone type of interview and also incredibly unusual that it was really the only thing that was coming out between his arrest and the trial.

I almost don't know what to make of it still. And it's odd that it was almost smuggled in by his own lawyer. Yeah. This opportunity to be in such a pop culture magazine with like almost a emphasis on like celebrity and luxury. And here's a Wayne Williams interview, 23-year-old Wayne Williams biding his time in jail. Yeah. And I think it also points to the fact that there's so many occasions during the course of 35 to 40 years where –

you hear different versions of the same thing. And I think maybe that's where we should leave this is as we've uncovered things in the archives, we've just found that there is no single story that has maintained its kind of its essence as the Bible of this is exactly what happened. And I'm not just talking about Wayne Williams. I'm talking about FBI agents. I'm talking about police officers who...

They get most of the details right, but their recall of everything that happened so many years later has differed. Absolutely. Every time a different story. Yeah. And so what's difficult here is what is the motivation behind that? Is there motivation? Is it forgetfulness? Is it changing the narrative to be most convenient? Those are the kind of questions I think that we continue to ask ourselves as we get into the archives and kind of look at the vault. One of the most unusual stories we've heard so far is this one.

It involves a woman and her husband driving through a cemetery and witnessing a struggle between a man and a young black child. But despite being on television and being submitted to the task force, this story never seemed to lead anywhere. This is Southview Cemetery off Jonesboro Road in southeast Atlanta. The Clayton County woman and her husband, who we're not identifying because if they did see the killers, we don't want them to have a way of tracing them.

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. Her husband swerved to the side to get out of the way. They say they've reported it to the task force by phone, but the task force hasn't got back to them for an in-person interview. The driver was tall and he's light colored, a light colored black man. And the other one was darker black.

And he had on a wig. It was a reddish brown. I know it was a wig because he was losing it because it was a child in the front struggling. He was struggling with that child, but he had broad shoulders. His head came about like mine, so he would be about my height. But the other one was tall. His head almost touched the roof. But I know it was a wig because it was falling off.

You're sure you saw a child in the car? Yes, yes, I saw it because it was just back and forth like that. And it was trying to 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 them.

We hope this gave you a feel for just how many stories are out there and why this case is just so hard to untangle. Lastly, we'd like to play you a song that the Atlanta officials promoted in 1981 in the wake of the poor PR the city was facing. The song is called Let's Keep Pulling Together Atlanta and was broadcasted throughout the city. The video features black and white citizens standing side by side and pulling a never-ending rope.

Glossing over the obvious racial tension at the time, it's not hard to imagine that it wasn't entirely well-received. You decide. We'll leave you with this. Thanks for listening to the first episode of The Vault, and be sure to tune in next Friday for episode 8. See you next week. The things we do, the things we say, are sure to touch the sky. Rich at last, I know his blood broke. It's all a symbol of feeling I'm falling back.

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. ♪