Atlanta Monster Seized [3]

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get ready to serve. We always say that. Trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts. I'll tell you, I'll tell you. What's up everyone? I'm Ago Vodum. My next guest, it's Will Farrell. Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, "Just give it a shot." But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fine anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of love. Yeah. Listen to ThinkStat on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctor this particular test twice in selling, right? I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Regal espionne, I command cheating. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trap's podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It was the fall of 2016, and girls were disappearing from Newark, New Jersey, one after another. But there was no press conference, no scary headlines. No one suspected the truth. He looked nice. Like, have you look at him? You don't look at him and think he's a serial killer. This is Someone's Hunting Us, a podcast from ng.com and the Star Ledger. It's the story of a serial killer you've never heard of, and the woman who took him down. Including the one woman who escaped. They didn't even believe it. I feel like they let him get away. But these women saw what he really was. I didn't know what I was doing, but I felt like I had to do something. Imagine your sister or your best friend just disappeared, and the police say they can't locate her. What wouldn't you do to try to find her? Would you catfish a serial killer? Listen to Someone's Hunting Us, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Edwin Castro, also known as Castro 1021. And I'm Conkey, his best friend and business manager. And we've got a new show called The 1021 Podcast. I'm taking you behind the scenes on how I became one of Twitch's most popular streamers. We also love sports. And with the World Cup right around the corner, we'll be breaking down the biggest storylines ahead of the big tournament here in the USA. Listen to The 1021 Podcast on the iHeartRadioF, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I asked him to get his ID and they said, "Yes, he was still sitting in his car. I still had my composite sketch." And I pulled it out, had these little glasses on, and I drew the glasses and I held it up and I said, "Anybody recognized this guy and it was Wayne Williams to the tee." I mean, it was just Wayne. Ironically, we called Wayne Williams at 255 AM on the last day of the surveillance. When we got there, we were immediately briefed that this guy was seen on the bridge and something hit the water. It hadn't been recovered. Of course, nobody could get in that water because, "Hey, it's 255 AM." And the water with current was just outrageous. Somebody would have drowned and wouldn't have stood a good chance of recovering anything. Anyway, I don't think. I went up to him and identified myself as Special Agency FBI. And I asked him immediately if he knew why he was being pulled over. And he said, "Yes, it's probably because about those kids that are missing." Which kind of surprised me. That was an unusual answer I thought. That was his answer. Well, it was, you know, it's a paraphrase of it. That wasn't his verbatim answer, but yeah, it was something like that. And the next words out of his mouth was, he says, "You know, he said Channel 5 is really covering this very well, but Channel 11, I don't think covers it enough." So that kind of surprised me. I remember that jump out at me as well. And Atlanta, another bonding 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 the person that is responsible. Therefore, we do not have a moody. From Tinder for TV, in-house to forks in Atlanta. Like 11 other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently was a fix today. Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer. Unless he keeps on killing. This is Atlanta monster. I asked him if I could talk to him and my car. I told him we needed to get out of the traffic. Because the tractor trailers were rolling by and you couldn't hear. Plus, I wanted to interview him. I wanted to get him in my car and interview him. He agreed. A real, mediable, very friendly guy. Was he nervous? No. No, he wasn't nervous. Was your first impression of him? Well, I didn't have one. I was telling you what he just surprised me with the media comment and acknowledging that it was about the kids. I really didn't have much of an impression. I was wanting to know more about what his story was. And eventually I got it. He gets in the car with me and the first thing I ask him to do, and he surprised me again. I said, "Can we have consent to search your vehicle?" He said, "Sure." So we had a consent form that I had him sign, and he signed it. I let us search his vehicle. Now, as I had walked by his vehicle, I stuck my head in the window and looked around. There was a bag of clothes laying on the floor, and there was a pair of gloves laying on the seat. And what really struck me though was that there was a nylon cord kind of like a ski rope. It was about 24 inches long, and it was knotted on each end. That rope really interested me. So I started interviewing him and asking him what he was out this late at night, because like I said, it was 255 am when he got in my car. He said that he was a talent scout, and that he had an eight o'clock appointment. I think 8 am the next morning, but he was out trying to find their address so that he would know where it is the next morning and not be late. That just didn't have an air of truthfulness to it. Nobody goes out at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning to find an address to make sure they're not late at eight o'clock. I had found out he was an only child. He lived with his parents. His mom and dad. His dad was a freelance photographer and his mother had been a retired teacher. They were quite elderly. He had come along pretty late in life. He was a pretty intelligent guy too. He had a very high IQ. Word had it that he had built an AMFM radio station in his backyard when he was about 14 in the FCC. It had made him tear it down. I asked the guys, I said search of his car over and they said yes. Okay. I said if anybody got any reason for him to stay here any longer and they said no. We let him go. There was some things there that happened that transpired that shouldn't have happened. The FBI has always been and remains an institution that is very conscious of not falsely arresting people. They've made mistakes in the past. Everybody does. It's a judgment call. But we did not that night want to violate any of his civil liberties, his civil rights. And so we aired on the side of caution. It was my decision and let him go. What wasn't my decision is when I asked them, I said where is these things you found in the car? And they went, we didn't keep any of it. And I went what? You didn't what? I said what about the gloves in the rope? I'm thinking that that's probably part of the crimes that have been committed since the people have been killed from ligature strangulation. But somewhere we dropped the ball. I was in charge so I went ahead and took the hit for it. I said, oh, that's the decision you guys made and I'll back you. I don't agree with it right now, but as far as official word goes, then we made that decision and that's that's the way it goes. Did anyone ever see Wayne toss anything over the bridge? No, never did, but there wasn't another car on that bridge. He was the only car there. They saw the headlights approach, they heard the splash, and then they saw what, like I described earlier, as him appeared to just be starting out again at two or three miles an hour. - Did you guys ask him that night if he tossed anything over the bridge? - Yes. And he, I ask him, you know, there'd been a splash, and I think I ask him if he tossed anything, and I don't remember if he said he was throwing trash out or something, I can't remember that part. I don't remember what his answer was, but he did say, I think he said he was throwing trash away or something that he had some trash, he need to get rid of and he threw it in the river. - That night, no one ever saw or found what caused the alleged splash that was heard in the water. - We let him go, and at 6 a.m., we packed up, and I went ahead and went home, and home was down in South of Atlanta, lived in Marl, Georgia. I drove up to East Tennessee because it was my my moiled day weekend, it was a long weekend to see my mother, and basically crashed, I was totally exhausted. I slept for, I think I got there, it's about a three hour drive, and I got there about noon on Friday, went to sleep, woke up at noon on Saturday, ate, went back to sleep. - Though police had a strange encounter with the man on the bridge, they decided to let him go. They had no reason to hold him in custody. The bridge stakeout operation was now officially over. And Mike McComis went home to rest for the weekend. But meanwhile, investigators were still hard at work, suspicious of the man they stopped on the bridge. And by the time McComis woke up again, big things were happening. - Sunday morning I got a call from Bill McGraph. He was one of the administrative supervisors on the case, and Bill called me and he said, "Did you interview Wayne Williams?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, do you have any notes?" I said, "Oh, yeah, I got a lot of notes." Well, we just found a body about 500 meters down, a string you need to call in and do your report right now. And he said, "Get yourself back to Atlanta." And we think we got him. - A few days later, a body washed up in the river, just a few miles down a stream from the bridge. - The body was found around 11 this morning in the Chattahoochi River, just south of the I-285 bridge, where the river forms the border between Cobb and Fulton counties. The body was nude, and medical examiners estimated it had been in the water a couple of days. It was found by a fisherman. The body was on the Fulton County side of the river, but it was difficult for police to get to that part of the river. Boats were launched from the Cobb County side. Members of the special task force poured in. About two hours later, the body was brought out. A medical examiner said it was a young black man in his early 20s. - The body was of 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater. The FBI now had their first real suspect. The man they had stopped on the bridge. That man was Wayne Williams. - The man who has been questioned was stopped late at night on May 21st after arousing the curiosity of police on a river's stakeout. The investigators heard a splash in the water underneath the Jackson Parkway bridge. No arrest was made then, and no one inspected two bags of clothes, the pair of men's shoes, or the gloves seen inside the station wagon. For two days, the task force quietly dragged the river not finding anything. Three days later, two people in a canoe did. The nude body of Nathaniel Cater a mile downstream from the South Cobb Bridge. Within a matter of minutes, news stations swarmed the river where Nathaniel Cater's body was found. And it wasn't long after that the media discovered the name Wayne Williams. Though no arrest had been made, news stations released his name anyways. - To anyone who's been anywhere even close to the non suspects' home, it's obvious he doesn't have any privacy anymore. In spite of his pleas to remain anonymous, and in spite of the police begging the media to use restraint, most have released his name anyway. - Reporters and camera crews from all around the nation lined up outside the home of Wayne Williams, anxiously awaiting for something to happen. A hoard of police, news reporters, and photographers smothered this quiet neighborhood. The media didn't want to miss any arrest that so far hasn't happened. - And with this man now under the national spotlight, the FBI's investigation was sent into overdrive. Two FBI agents and two detectives with the Atlanta Police Department sat perched on their cars, guns visible. Never taking their eyes off the modest home in Northwest Atlanta. The mother, father, and son inside became a family under siege in their own home. At around 10 this morning, the man's father came out of the house, pushed the cameras away with his commanding presence and silently walked toward the police. Without saying a word, he signaled them to follow him into the house. - Are they asked you to leave? - Do they have anything? - A confession. - The nation was glued to their TVs. As reporters scrambled to find more information on the man in question for the murder of Atlanta's children, everyone wanted to know who was Wayne Williams. Wayne Williams is an Atlanta born and bred 23 years old a product of the city's public school system. He wants to Anderson Park Elementary School and graduated from Frederick Douglass High School on High Tower Road, Northwest. People who know Williams say he is a highly intelligent young man, a good student when he was in school. That opinion is echoed by William VII's great teacher, Archie Wilson, who Williams continues to list as a personal reference on his resume. - Those who knew Wayne Williams were completely shocked. - As a student, he was extremely bright. Fair and tell, young man, quiet, very respectful, honest student, very dependable, just an idea student. - Williams Resume lists a number of clubs and organizations he says he belonged to in high school, National Honor Society, ROTC Rifle Team. But his high school class yearbook does not show him in any of the organization pictures. Williams acquaintances say he is one who tends to exaggerate his accomplishments and his contacts. His resume list of professional references includes many familiar names in the local media. Most of those references say they knew Williams only briefly and not very well. But it is clear Wayne Williams is a bright and ambitious person. He started a radio station in his parents' home when he was only 12. In his teens, he spent time hanging around many of the city's radio stations, doing odd jobs, mostly as an unpaid volunteer, and talking to the people he met about broadcasting. - He was a bit old for his age, so to speak. I'm saying that to talk to a kid that age about something that you're doing as an adult, and he's talking on your level, it's really amazing. And as I said before, he was a likable type of individual, maybe because of the knowledge of the industry as far as I'm concerned. - Several years ago, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer and for using police emergency lights on his car. The charges were reduced and handled in traffic court. In 1977, Williams began offering his photographic services to the Atlanta TV stations. Williams would drive the city streets through the night, listening to police monitors in his car, racing to the scene of accidents, fires, and homicides, then peddling film of what had happened to the news departments. But the freelance photography business was never very successful. And most recently, Williams says he is acted as a talent scout, helping young people get ahead in the entertainment industry. Williams has always lived with his parents in this house on Penelope Road, Northwest, a quiet neighborhood that has suddenly become a constant subject of interest for the police and news media. Neighbors say they never knew the family very well, the typical wave as you go by type of thing. - He'd been such a good boy, a good boy, a good old. I haven't seen nothing that makes me suspicious of him. - If he has really surprised me, really shocked me. - Why would you think it would be a shock to you? - So close, and I got sergeant, that sergeant, one of them used to go in, wait with him in his radio station. Right, intelligent, not terribly close to a lot of people, a news and police, groupie of sorts. That is how Wayne Williams is described by those who know him. And as his neighbor said, there is shocked that this quiet and promising kid is now a major suspect in the Atlanta child murders. - He was described repeatedly as someone who was intelligent and docile. The last person he was suspect in a murder. But the FBI was convinced otherwise. They continued their investigation in search Wayne Williams house. - On Wednesday night, June 3rd, action news learned that FBI agents and a representative of the special task force had executed a search warrant and had collected potential evidence from Williams' home and car. - They found an eight by 10 sheet of paper that basically was a flyer that said if you're, if you're between the ages of six and 10, and you think you can sing or dance, I'm a talent scout. - Wayne Williams called himself a talent scout, and he had passed out flyers throughout the city in search of young kids to form a music group. I recently found a copy of that flyer. The same one that FBI had found in his home. The flyer reads, in bold letters, can you sing or play an instrument? If you were between 11 and 21, male or female, and would like to become a professional entertainer, all interviews, private and free, no experience necessary. The FBI found this very interesting. The flyer suggests that Wayne was putting contact with young kids. Probably more than one. - So he put himself out there as a talent scout, and that's how we surmised that he was getting the kids into the car. 'Cause when you're having that many kids and getting that much worldwide publicity, you would think somebody would have enough brains to not get in the car with somebody, but he was pretty good at what he did. - It could be, be a huge coincidence, a line of work with the best intentions, or it was the perfect way to get children alone. Investigators were now more certain than ever that they'd found their man, and it was time they spoke to Wayne Williams again, so they brought him in for questioning. They went out picking him up and brought him into the FBI office, took him in the back and there was a massive scene of city dignitaries in the state and everybody in the world wanted to get involved in it. They brought him in and gathered he agreed to take a polygraph test and we talked for him and then went downstairs and I did the testing downstairs in my office. Just you two? Just the two of us. The full past force everybody's on the 10th floor, press them, news all around the entire building and we were kind of on the 9th floor just the two of us. This is Richard Racklev, former special agent with the FBI. He sat down alone in a room with Wayne Williams to conduct a polygraph test. We had this very interesting interview for about two hours. I said you're very intelligent. So what's your IQ and he said I don't believe in IQs. The phonograph, you have to have confidence in it. I think he was totally confident he could beat it. He said that. He was just totally confident he could beat it. And what you do, you ask a series of comparative questions, this series of about 10 questions or some of them are very simple. It's everything we've discussed. All yes and no answers. It's not really confusing. It's really clear, very pretty simple and no surprises. And at that time I ran what's considered to be the most valid format in the polygraph research and that was the zone comparison test. I've formed a set of questions, about 10 questions. I'll go through that and record the physiology. And then I'll ask you if there's any problem with anything, anything you need to explain or correct or no. Then you run a second time. You ask the same set of questions and record a second chart. You run the same set of questions the third time. And after the third time, then you score each one of those and compare the responses to the other responses. And then you add those scores up and it would show either either deception or no deception. And that's human nature to want to believe people. So I'm assuming he's going to pass the test. He stayed pretty much composed at the whole time. He was composed and he's not really fair to say relaxed because the whole situation is not one where you're relaxed. He was very engaged and he was very much cooperative and participated willingly. We had this very interesting conversation and then about what happened wise on the bridge. And one of his things that made him suspect was that every time he was asked about the bridge he gave a different story. So he'd already given two or three different versions by the time I talked to him about what he was going and what he was doing. He didn't stop on the bridge, this top on the bridge. There were some boxes in the river, didn't throw anything in the river. So I mean he had variations of his story. He's a talent scout and he had this girl's name, Cheryl, whatever name was. He's supposed to meet her next morning at 7 a.m. and so he went to see if he could find the apartment. And I said, "Are you interviewing young girls at 7 in the morning and their apartments?" And then he put you coming to an awkward position. I said, "I wouldn't do that." He said, "I'm not homosexual." He just made a point. I'm not homosexual. He argued that that he wasn't homosexual. I was asking about being alone with this girl in her apartment at 7 a.m. in the morning. I was asking him, "Why would you do that? Why would you set up an area at 7 a.m. in the morning in the girls' apartment?" That would make him heterosexual. Making heterosexual, right? Yeah. And that's why I was asking him. But his argument was he wasn't homosexual. People, I guess, were suspicious of being homosexual. I said, "Well, I'm not accusing you of being homosexual." But we had that discussion. So I said, "Do you have a girlfriend?" I said, "Can you?" He said, "Not right now." So I said, "Have you ever had a girlfriend?" He couldn't name one. After a long conversation, Racklifaz had asked a big question that had brought him there in the first place. Did you cause a death in the Thanokator? Did you throw the Thanokator's body into the Tedduzor River that night? What do you say? He said, "No." He just denied it. I don't know the Thanokator. I didn't have any conduct in the Thanokator. I didn't know him. I'd never been able to have a body. I didn't throw anything into the river. Wayne Williams denied any involvement in the murder of the Thanokator, claiming that he never even knew him. But the results of the polygraph told a different story. The test showed he's deceptive. And that's a first indication in two years on who did it. Wow. So you're the guy we're looking for. I mean, that's how I kind of how I reacted when I got through and graded it all out. When I got through and said, "This shows deception. I've been learning you're the guy that we've been looking for. You're the one killing these kids." He said, "That's not me." He said, "Let me see that." So then he spread out the charts. Well, the charts, you wouldn't know from what I just saw. Would you look at that and tell me that somebody's landed to kill the kids. So he spread the charts. Look at all the tracings. So he points on, he says, "What's that question right there?" I said, "That's pretty good. Did you cause the death in the Thanokator?" So he picked out that question, which is where his reaction was. You know, and then I make my call. I go out and tell him the whole world. You know that he's deceptive and it indicates that he's the one that killed him. It's kind of cater. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. He plays stupid games. You get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that. I'm Anasin Field. And in this new season of the Girlfriends, "Oh my God, this is the same man." A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, "How could this happen to me?" The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. They said, "Oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target." He's going to get ready to serve. Trust me, babe. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Farrell. I went and had lunch with him one day. I was like, "Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent." He said, "If it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you." Which is really sweet. He goes, "But there's so much luck involved." And he's like, "Just give it a shot." He goes, "But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fine anymore, it's okay to quit." If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of the cat just hanging there. It would not be. There's a lot of luck. Listen to ThinkStat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. "You doctored this particular test twice in soons, correct?" "I doctored the test once." It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. "I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for." "Some lights the greatest disinfectant." They would uncover a disturbing pattern. "Grega Westby and Michael Marantini." "My mind was blown." "I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap." "Lora, Scottsdale Police." As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. "Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at America, Pocounty, as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges." "This isn't over until Justice is served in Arizona." Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was the fall of 2016 and girls were disappearing from Newark, New Jersey, one after another. "He looked nice. You don't look at him and think he's a serial killer." This is Someone's Hunting Us, a podcast from ng.com and the star ledger. It's the story of a serial killer you've never heard of and the woman who took him down. "Including the one woman who escaped." "They didn't even believe it. I feel like they let him get away." But these women saw what he really was. "I didn't know what I was doing but I felt like I had to do something." Imagine your sister or your best friend just disappeared and the police say they can't locate her. Hey, Ernest, what's up? Look, money is something we all deal with. The financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth. On each episode of the podcast's Earn Elegia, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing and entrepreneurship. From stocks and real estate to credit, business and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand. Because the truth is, most people will never talk how money really works. But once you understand the system, you can start to build within it. That means ownership, smarter investment, and creating opportunities not just for yourself, but for the next generation. If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the markets, and think like an owner, earn your leisure is the podcast for you. Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. - Though Wayne appeared to show deception in his polygraph test, investigators let him go, and no arrest was made. - After 12 hours of interrogation, public safety commissioner Lee Brown told waiting reporters that the man had been released, and no arrest made. - In terms of our efforts tonight, we have not ended up with the information that would result in an arrest. - A late night press conference was held outside the building, building questions from reporters. But as it turned out, this was a distraction. - What the reporters on hand did not know was that Brown was creating a diversion for the man and his father to leave the building. Soon after, the media rushed to Wayne Williams' home in hopes of a statement from the man, and what happened next shocked everyone. Wayne invited all the reporters into his living room and held his own press conference for the nation to see. - At 7 a.m., three and a half hours after returning home, the young man conducted a news conference, setting the condition that he would not be shown and that his name not be used. You will hear him, but you will see reporters and photographers. He contended that he was being harassed prior to his detainment, intimidated during his custody, and pressured to confess to crimes he says he did not commit. - They openly said, "You killed Nathan Yucater, "and you know it, and you lied to us." They said that. And they said it on a number of occasions. They said it on that night. One of the task force captains on the scene pointed his finger at me and said it, and said he was tired of all the BS about working the long hours, working the stakeouts, and that he was ready to pull the thing to an end. - They put a tail on me starting last week. I made them probably in the first hour or two. And in the process of tailing me, a couple of the guys apparently weren't very good drivers and I caused them to have a minor accident. And I think they were just pissed. - After claiming his innocence and expressing frustration with law enforcement, he began to elaborate on his role as a talent scout, detailing his involvement in music groups. - It's our job to take some entertainers who say basically from the street, polishing them up, getting professional and trying to shop a record deal for them. And we had a young group that we've been putting together since 1977, a group called Gemini. And what we're trying to do is just capture the market, place basically the Jackson Five head. - He mentioned recruiting kids to form music groups. Nany won in particular that he was currently working on. The heat called Gemini. - Williams himself did not exactly go into hiding. He did on several occasions call local reporters. He led police surveillance on some wild goose chases passing by Commissioner Browns and Mayor Jackson's houses. - Was this the man who was killing Atlanta's children? Or just a local talent scout who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time? The FBI gone through countless leads over the past two years. But in their eyes, the one that made the most sense was Wayne Williams. - When you work a case that long with that many people, there's gonna be a lot of theories, a lot of names, a lot of people that you have to check and wash out. I mean, it's quite an ordeal. So there were a lot of theories out there, but none of them had the substance of Wayne Williams. - What they had on Williams was almost entirely circumstantial. - I'm not sure that we had a gigantic case when it comes to physical evidence, but we had an overwhelming wave of circumstantial evidence. - Except for one key piece of physical evidence. - They do have numerous fibers from the man's house that match those found on several victims. - The fibers. The fibers are of different colors and texture, something that's good enough. Others including prosecutors disagree. - But even the fibers they found weren't convincing enough for the district attorney to press charges. - Public Safety Commissioner Brown, FBI head John Glover and Task Force head Morris Redding, met with district attorney Lewis Slayton for an hour this morning. Slayton's office took out the search warrants to search the house of the man police question. And Slayton decided last night there was not enough evidence to charge the man. - So he didn't press charges? - No charges filed. You might have missed that fact if you read The New York Post. It's headline this morning with sensational. - But The New York Post had already run their morning paper with a very conflicting headline that read Atlanta Monster seized. - But investigators here are worried about sensationalism only to the extent it affects their investigation. - Key was a freelance photographer for WSB-TV. - So that was the shocker for our newsroom. - As the media dove deeper into Waym Williams background, history became even more interesting. In addition to being a talent scout, he had also worked as a freelance photographer for the local news station in Atlanta, WSB-TV. Monica Pearson, who worked at WSB-TV, was also anchor at that time. Her calls us very well. - I was just an anchor, but I can tell you from our viewpoint, it was what? You know, this is somebody we all worked with who was a photographer, but a freelance photographer, not on staff. And I did not know him, but 'cause he worked mainly on weekends, but other people did. And it was kind of a matter of not Wayne, he is so mild-battered. And, you know, what do you mean? He couldn't hurt a fly. But then there were others who said, well, maybe. - In the weeks following the bridge incident, America was gripped by the ups and downs of the FBI's investigation into Wayne Williams. But on June 21, 1981, everything would change. - Suddenly, late in the afternoon, authorities arrested Williams. - As you know, we meet on this on a day-to-day basis as a result of the meetings we've had today, the decision was made to issue the arrest warrant, which was done, and he was taken into custody as a result of that. - Williams was taken to the Fulton County Jail. He was booked on a charge of murder, the murder of 28-year-old Nathaniel Cater. - Despite his initial hesitation, the district attorney suddenly changed his mind. And Wayne Williams was charged with the murder of Nathaniel Cater. - An indictment for the Cater murder was almost predictable. But the surprise came when district attorney Louis Slayton made the announcement. - The grand jury had returned an indictment in two counts, charging Wayne Bertram Williams with the murder of Jimi Ray Payne in one count and Nathaniel Cater in the second count. - Wayne was also charged with the second murder on April 27, 1981. The body of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne was also found in the Cheta Hucci River. The cause of death was its fixation. - That announcement came as a very big surprise like this afternoon. Not only did the attorneys for Wayne Williams think any indictment wouldn't come until next Tuesday, they never thought their client would be indicted for the murder of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne. - The police have arrested and charged him, but he still has to be judged by his peers in an accord of law. - So until he is found guilty, we have to say a lie. There was still the question, is he guilty or is he not? - In a brief statement, William stood in front of Judge Clarence Cooper and said, "I plead not guilty to both counts." - The trial was underway. In Wayne Williams' defense attorney, Mary Welcom was ready to fight back. - There has been a serious effort on the part of the government, the law enforcement agencies, to convince the country, even the world, that Wayne is implicated in all of the murders. So on reflection, I shouldn't be too surprised that they would try to tie at least one more in. - She implied that law enforcement was ganging up against Wayne in an effort to close the case and felt very strongly about her client's innocence. - From the beginning, many people thought the state's case against Wayne Williams was as suspect as the suspect himself. Prosecutors had no eye witness to the crimes, no confession. But on December 28th of last year, the state went ahead with its case. Its main ingredients, fibers and animal hair that allegedly matched. - Larry Peterson of the Georgia State Crime Lab began analyzing fibers found on the bodies of victims. The fibers collected were dog hairs and green, violet, yellow and red material fibers. In particular, some of the green fibers reportedly came from unique carpeting that was found inside Wayne Williams family home. - We came up with three types of fiber. Some of it was microscopically found. The green fiber, I have personal knowledge of because my partner and I tracked that down. These to have an old green carpet, it was a shag carpet. Did you guys ever see any little shag? - Yeah, it's quite old, very dated. And it was a green color. And when Harold Deadman told us, when he finished with his, he took a microscopic fiber and found out that this was manufactured in South Carolina. And it was transported by West Point Pepperel to Dalton, Georgia. At Dalton, there was like 200,000 square yards of it. It went to 10 or 12 different distributors in Atlanta. And then we came down from Dalton and we contacted those 10 or 12 And we found the paperwork where Wayne Williams' parents. had purchased that carpet like 15 years before. So we traced a microscopic fiber from it, it's very beginning all the way to Wayne's house, and it was the same fiber that we were pulling off of the bodies. Now that, my friend, is a piece of investigation, okay? The second major part of the prosecution's case was the bridge incident, but the prosecution had no eyewitnesses. The bridge incident was the closest investigators could put their suspect to a dead body, a legal necessity called corpus delac die. Although prosecutors had most of the pieces that night in May, a splash and a ledge slow-moving car, a body downstream just two days later, it still lacked the essential part of the puzzle. Someone actually seeing Williams' car stopped on the bridge or better yet, the suspect throwing a body from the structure. No one who actually saw would allegedly happen on the bridge that night. The defense argued in the courtroom that Wayne Williams was five foot seven, and Nathaniel Cater was six foot one, claiming that it was impossible for a man of Wayne's size to pick up his body and throw it over a bridge. I asked Mike McComus about this. Wayne wasn't a great big guy, but he was round, and he was putchy. I don't know if you ever had a real rush of adrenaline. People do amazing things when they've got a rush of adrenaline. And when you're not trying to be careful and hurt somebody, you can drag them, pick them up. It's no problem. Another point the prosecution argued was the sound that a car would make when driving across the bridge. What was interesting, there was an expansion plate on the bridge, and if a car goes over the, we've laid a determined, if a car goes over the bridge, fast it in five miles an hour, the expansion plate will make a loud clank. Under five miles an hour, there's no sound. That sound that offense claims is the key to their proof. Police recruit Bob Campbell, part of the Steakout team says, Williams' car did not make that sound, indicating the vehicle was traveling at a slow rate of speed. But a sound expert hired by the defense says that's impossible. That even at four miles an hour, the family station wagon makes the joint rattle loud enough for someone underneath the bridge to hear it. Suggestion, that recruit Campbell was fast asleep on the job the night Williams was stopped. And the prosecution surprisingly went along with the theory, asking Mark Oviott if allowed splash would wake the recruit up. The expert said, yes, the state contends that loud splash was the body of Nathaniel Cater heading the water. Williams bluntly stated the police version of the now famous bridge incident was wrong. A lie, he claimed he wasn't driving slow, that he didn't turn around in a parking lot next to the bridge, that he did not throw anything into the river. He tried to persuade the jury, he really was out near a bridge that night, looking for a Cheryl Johnson, who still remains a mystery to this trial. According to Wayne Williams, the night he was stopped in the bridge, he was going to find a young woman named Cheryl Johnson, who wanted to do an audition for him. Earlier that day, Cheryl Johnson had called his home and Wayne's mother answered and wrote down her name, phone number, and address. According to Wayne, that night, he was going to verify her home address, so he would know where to go for the morning appointment. But the major problem was, investigators never found a Cheryl Johnson. When they went to the address on the piece of paper, there was no Cheryl Johnson who lived there, and the phone number didn't work. So who was Cheryl Johnson? And where was she? The prosecution claimed that she wasn't real. But Wayne stuck by a story. The state implied he fabricated the story, but Williams didn't budge from it. Claiming the woman simply gave him a wrong number and wrong address. After a grueling two-month trial, it was time for a verdict. After several days of testimony, three experts summed it up in two sentences. Fiber and hair from Williams' home in car, matte fibers in hair, taken from the bodies of cater and pain. They also painted him as a possible homosexual who hated poor young blacks. The defense, steered by a Mississippi lawyer, fought back better than many had predicted. Their goal placed out in these people's minds, as Binder said throughout the trial, Wayne Williams is not a killer. He countered with former police recruits who charged members of the stakeout team that night in May were drinking and asleep. A loose-fitting fiber expert from Kansas came in and showed that fibers may not be as unique as the state had claimed. (upbeat music) For 12 hours, the jury deliberated. You know, on February 27th, 1982, the jury returned their verdict. (upbeat music) Guilty. When the verdicts were read, Williams' father stood before the court and said, "I feel this is very unjust. I don't see how anyone could find my son guilty of anything. I just don't see it." Williams' mother called the judge and uncle Tom. The 23-year-old freelance photographer this morning only a suspect was optimistic. Tonight, as he left the courthouse, his mood had changed. He is now painted as the mass murderer. Wayne Williams was filmed guilty for the murder of the Thane locator in Jimmy Ray Payne. But in addition, the FBI essentially closed all other cases of Atlanta's murdered children, attributing them to Wayne Williams. The question of race popped up a lot tonight. Mrs. Williams remarks about uncle Tom. Binder even said a white man would have been treated differently. And the mother of victim Yosuf Bell, a woman who prodded police into forming a task four several years ago, was very disappointed with the outcome. Camille Bell, mother to victim Yusuf Bell, acted as a voice for the parents of the missing murdered children. And she wasn't very happy with the verdict. If I believe that Wayne Williams killed the other 12 that they claimed, the same fibers that were found on those bodies were also found on Yosuf's body, then I must believe that Wayne Williams killed my son. But since I don't believe that Wayne Williams killed anybody, I can't believe that Wayne Williams therefore killed my son. What it all boils down to is now we have Wayne Williams, 23, the 30th victim of the Atlanta Slanes. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. We always say that. I'm Anasin Field. And in this new season of the girlfriends. Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discovered they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. They said, oh, hell no. He's going to get what he deserves. Trust me, babe. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodham. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the big money players network, it's Will Farrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. You don't know what that means. But I just know the groundlings I'm working my way up through. And I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fine anymore, it's OK to quit. Yeah, it would not be-- Right, it wouldn't be that. Listen to ThinkStat on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You doctored this particular test twice in selling, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Some likes the greatest disinfectant. They would uncover a disturbing pattern-- two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scott's down police. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at America, Papacownia's Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice has served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trap podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He looked nice. Like, if you look at him, you don't look at him and think he's a serial killer. This is Someone's Hunting Us, a podcast from NJ.com and The Star Ledger. It's the story of a serial killer you've never heard of, and the woman who took him down, including the one woman who was escaped. I didn't know what I was doing, but I felt that's what I had to do something. Imagine your sister or your best friend just disappeared and the police say they can't locate her. Listen to someone's hunting us wherever you get your podcasts. WheelFairls Big Money Players and I Heart Podcast presents Soccer Moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah, this is my best friend Janet. Hey, and we have been joined at the hips in high school. Absolutely. Now a redacted amount of years later. We're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips wider. This is a podcast where recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar. Why? Did you get hard-seltzer instead of beer? Well they had a bogey. Well then you got it. Do you want a white clatter stuff here? Just say, "What are y'all doing?" Microphones are you making a rap album? I would buy it. Cuts through the deep ends like a flat knife through sponge cake. That sounds delicious. Oh you're lucky I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not a killer. I love this team and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From that day forward Wayne Williams was in history books as the Atlanta child murderer. A lot of people think he's innocent. Believe it or not. I think they're viewing this someone who got caught up in it and end up getting blamed for it. I mean I'm gonna be honest with you right you know I've never spent a lot of time paying attention I was happy when they was like, "All right we off-coal red now. Everybody can go out and play again." So is Wayne Williams the Atlanta child murder? Absolutely without a shadow, a doubt Wayne Williams was the child murder. I'm not saying he did all of them. He was convicted on two because we didn't have enough evidence to take him on the rest of them. We attributed the the line share of him to him. I mean he definitely did more than just two but that was the only two that we had enough to take him to court and convicted him on. I didn't have any problem with the way it was concluded. You know it's like if you catch a guy with 100 vancrabbers he's not gonna get any more. I mean you can only sense a guy so many times so much. So two life sentences is the same as 10 life sentences. Life is life. It really wasn't over. Today it's not over. Wayne Williams says he didn't do it. The families don't believe he did it. Law enforcement says he did it. The court said he did the adults but no one has ever convicted him on killing the children, the boys who were found suffocated. I still think it's a story that needs to be investigated. I would love and I'm glad you're doing this to open up the case again and see what you can find all these years later. Remember Russell Boltzor whose brother Patrick was found brutally murdered? I asked him about this. I think he got taken as an ex-gate goat to shut down the problems we had. I don't believe that he was tried with all evidence and said you're guilty for killing all of those kids. I think it was a way for them to slow it down. Somebody better find somebody to put in the jailhouse so make a lot of these people start being quiet. [Music] Wee the jury find the defendant Wayne Bertram Williams guilty on count number one. The arrest of Wayne Williams appeared to solve one of the biggest multiple murder mysteries in American history. The closing of the cases effectively branded Wayne Williams, the Atlanta Child Murderer. On nearly every list of American serial killers, you'll find the name Wayne Williams. Wayne Williams remains in jail and may well be there for the rest of his life. In 1985, they made a movie about it starring Morgan Freeman. Was this the man who choked the life out of shot, bloodied and drowned 28 human beings? The coach hereby sentences the defendant is to Wayne Bertram Williams to the custody of the State Board of Corrections where he is to serve two life sentences. In over the next three decades, it continued to make its way into pop culture, especially in the hip-hop community, being so closely linked to Atlanta. [Music] Andre 3000 from Outcast even has a verse on Travis Scott's 2016 album. [Music] But a lot of people think he didn't do it. Russell Boltisort doesn't. He has his own story to back that up. Russell heard about a strange incident involving his brother Patrick and it made him doubt that Wayne Williams was the killer. Spoked to several people out there and one of the police officers, the story was told to me that they had him on tape, that he was running him in two kids from individuals, more than one person, and they ran into a phone booth. He picks up the phone and dial, I guess 911, a call to police department and they supposedly had it on recording that he said that someone was chasing him. Did he describe the person? He said it was two white people that was chasing him. That's all I've ever heard about that story. I did try to call the police department and talk to someone about that tape and all of a sudden no one knew what I was talking about. So pretty much just left that alone up until now you mentioned it to me, I'm telling you the story about it. I think most of us like myself, if I knew in my heart that they proved that he killed those kids and that would be a lot of relief forced, but I don't think they did. I realized that Russell Boltisort was probably not the only person related to a victim that doesn't believe it was Wayne Williams. I started scouring the internet for other stories like this and one day I found a YouTube video from 2015 under the user name Injust Us. It's a video of a guy named a manual, brother of Clifford Jones, one of the victims. Okay and your brother's name was Clifford Jones. Basically it was one early morning, I lived in 20 of 1980. My brothers and I basically walked up to a grocery store for my grandmother. People had kidnapped my brother, man named Jamie Brooks, Horace Hopgut, Freda Kost, these guys held my brother's captive in a larger mat right on the corner, Hollywood Road. They raped him and beat him all day long. One of the people stood in the doorway watching my brother get raped, crying, screaming, saying he wanted to go home and saying that he was going to tell his grandmother and said that the dude Jamie Brooks put a rope around his neck and pulled on the rope. And the man told the police this and the police had all this information and they still, they still blame someone else for Clifford murder and knowing why William didn't kill Clifford. So who made this? Who was Injust Us? Who was the man behind the camera? Whoever it was, they had been doing their own research on this case decades later. Someone I definitely wanted to talk to. After a little digging, I found him. The man who made the video was a guy named Dwayne Hendrix. I tracked him down and I gave him a call. And within the first 30 seconds, it was already getting interesting. When they said you know, "Ha ha ha!" So be how deep do you want to go? To get to the bottom of this, we're literally change American history. I mean, it wouldn't do so many things. When we just get into this, you get into like all the layers of it, the corruption you deal with, the cover up, the actual murders themselves, or it's responsible for a lot of that. There are people in high places that want this shit to come out, and then there are some people that wanted to come out, but there are free of how it's going to come out. And then there are some people that don't want it to come out at all because there's going to be some other fuckers that are going to have to lay on the floor. It depends on how deep you want to go, so this right at the whole is very, very, very deep. Dwayne Hendrix told me that he wanted to meet in person, but he lived in Texas, and I was in Atlanta. So the next weekend, I hopped on a flight. I just found running to the park. I should be a wild shedder on the next couple of minutes. I wanted to hear his whole story. He was so invested, so personally involved. It popped up in the news. I just knew it wasn't right. And I remember saying out loud, they lied on that man. When I grew up, I'ma help him get out of jail. Those are my exact words, and my grandmother goes, "If you don't sit your little nara as the house, then racist has white boys that kill you." And I told her, I said, "Well, they have to kill me then, because that man didn't do it." That's one of the memories from my childhood that was just always etched in my psyche. This case, it was just something so wrong. It resonated in my soul that it's something wrong about this. Dwayne remembers seeing the arrest of Wayne Williams in the news as a child. It was something that stuck with him. We were real close. She had me when she was game ready to go for her freshman year in college. We basically grew up together. We had this bond, and it was almost like, if anything was ever wrong with my mom, she didn't have to say something I could just look at her and I knew. And she's a tough woman. So to see her cry uncontrollably to the point to where, you know, it's like, "Snap all over the place." It was real tough. My mom was crying like every day, not stop for like four days in a row. And she basically didn't want to tell us in my pop, you know, he pulled me to the side and he sat me down and he said, "You know, son, this was about to happen. I'm gonna have to turn myself in." Dwayne told me that he was all too familiar with injustice from a very young age. He talked about his step-datch wrongful conviction, which happened during a pivotal point in his childhood. It was very difficult because those years of your life you're basically becoming a young man. I ended up becoming like so many things in life based on the example that he said. This was my first respectable man that I was around all the time and I could ask for advice and talk to when he would teach me stuff like, "Son, this is what a man does." That type of thing, you know. It was tough, man. It was real tough because you go from just trying to figure out your body and the changes you're going through as a young man and everything else. You have all that wound up in your head and now you got to figure out how you're gonna lie to your homeboy. It's about where is your step-pops? It really psychologically, it does something to you and makes you very angry. For me, it made me hate any authoritative figure. At that particular time in my life, I didn't realize it. But I would just disrespect teachers and class. You know, I would go in class and I would just go to sleep in class. You know, because I just really psychologically didn't understand what I was going through. But it made me very rebellious. All of this together inspired Dwayne to research William's story. I asked him about the YouTube video of one of the victim's brothers, Clifford Jones. When we initially spoke with one another, I cried. In the meeting that we were having, I had to walk out of the meeting a couple of times. His brother was inside being beaten and raped all day before they actually killed him in the suppose of his body. He said he knew that William's and kill his brother. He knew that. It made me even more want to try to do everything in my power. After talking to Clifford's brother, Dwayne reached out to more families. It was slowly piecing together a documentary with one goal in mind. The actual goal was to make sure that we put together a piece that was going to actually highlight everything that needed to be highlighted to give the public the facts that they would need to know to make an informed decision as to whether or not they believe William's is the Atlanta child murder or not. That was the whole goal. Whether or not William was a murderer at all, he was never formally charged or indicted for killing any children. So again, that's another big misconception, right? It comes with the cases that, you know, he's been dubbed the Atlanta child murderer. Dwayne had one main point that I really couldn't argue with. He was only charged with the murder of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne. These are anomalies because these were two adults. This thing is like something that has always been talked about and it won't go away until something is done about it. It will always be the elephant in the room in the city of Atlanta. A few months into making his documentary, you got a random phone call late one night in the studio. I'm in a recording studio and I'm recording a song in my phone rings. It's Wayne Williams. And everybody in the studio is like, everyone was stuck. From that point forward, what transpired, what do Wayne say, what was developing after that? Welcome to the real world, Leo. Next time on Atlanta Monster. So you know Wayne Williams. Absolutely. Describe Wayne to me. What's your name? Brilliant asshole. Very intelligent asshole. That's the best way I could put it. And I don't mean it in a bad way because I'm an asshole at times. This thing is huge. It's huge. Believe me, it was more hands in this shit than me stay high. What are we going to bring? That was the name that the media giving Wayne Williams. They wouldn't use his name, they gave him this name. Atlanta Monster. Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week. With new episodes every Friday, a joint production between House Stuff Works and Tinderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives, courtesy of WSB, News Film and Video Tape collection. Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries. For the latest updates, please visit AtlantaMonster.com or follow us on social media. [Music] Do you keep your hands on this the whole time? You stay like that. And where are you at? Are you behind me? I'm right here. You know what that does? No. It picks up muscle but we didn't have that back then. Oh, you want to squeeze your tail or put it back in your shoe? Oh wow. It's pretty stiff. It's just not that bad. Yeah. He is not going to be the last target. get away with this. He's gonna get what he deserves. We always say that. Trust me, babe. On the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everyone? I'm Aiko Wodum. Yeah. Listen to ThinkStat on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. I doctored the test ones. Regular lesbian, Michael Manchini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap. Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He looked nice. I didn't know what I was doing, but I felt that I had to do something. Hey, it's Edwin Castro, also known as Castro 1021, and I'm Conkey, his best friend and business manager. We also love sports. Listen to the 1021 podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Guaranteed Human.