The Atlanta Child Murders An anthology of True Crime

By Pete Dove

Is Wayne Williams one of the most evil men to have ever walked the earth, or are the Atlanta child murders the cause of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the judicial history of the United States? It is a tough question, and one to which we are even further from answering today than we were back in the early 1980s. That was the time when Williams was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. It also marked the closure of the files on at least twenty-nine, arguably unsolved, homicides. Of these crimes twenty-two, incredibly, were against children. Two girls and twenty boys. Can it be imagined that if these children were white, and middle class, their cases would have been so readily abandoned?Many - and the numbers are increasing - argue that these crimes are shrouded under the fug of racial prejudice, of political cover-up, of fear about what might emerge. They were blanketed away quickly before they could spark even more racial unrest in the southern city. Before riots and demonstrations might ensue, and vigilante groups attempt to do the police's job for them. It seems painfully ironic that the two deaths for which Wayne Williams was ultimately convicted were from the small group of adult victims.And, we say 'murderer'; there is plenty of doubt about whether the use of the singular noun is correct. Was Williams really the culprit in all of these cases?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201173937

Book preview

THE ATLANTA CHILD MURDERS

PETE DOVE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE ATLANTA CHILD MURDERS

MISSING BEAUTY QUEEN

THE MISSING GOOD GIRL

The Wrong Man in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time?

Is Wayne Williams one of the most evil men to have ever walked the earth, or are the Atlanta child murders the cause of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the judicial history of the United States?  It is a tough question, and one to which we are even further from answering today than we were back in the early 1980s.  That was the time when Williams was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. It also marked the closure of the files on at least twenty-nine, arguably unsolved, homicides.

Of these crimes twenty-two, incredibly, were against children.  Two girls and twenty boys.  Can it be imagined that if these children were white, and middle class, their cases would have been so readily abandoned?

Many – and the numbers are increasing – argue that these crimes are shrouded under the fug of racial prejudice, of political cover-up, of fear about what might emerge.  They were blanketed away quickly before they could spark even more racial unrest in the southern city.  Before riots and demonstrations might ensue, and vigilante groups attempt to do the police’s job for them.  It seems painfully ironic that the two deaths for which Wayne Williams was ultimately convicted were from the small group of adult victims.

And, we say ‘murderer’; there is plenty of doubt about whether the use of the singular noun is correct.  Williams may have been the culprit in these cases.  But, perhaps, not all of them.

Atlanta at the end of the 1970s was just over half black, just under half white.  The Hispanic population was growing fast, but still represented only a little more than one per cent of the city’s four hundred thousand plus inhabitants.  Unsurprisingly, the city proved to be a centre for the civil rights movement, not least because it was the birth place of Martin Luther King Jr.  It was also not yet the major tourist destination and ‘big city’ it is today. 

It was in the summer of 1979, as the July sun beat down on the city, that two boys went missing.  Edward Hope Smith was fourteen, and Alfred James Evans a year younger.  One disappeared0 from a skating rink, the other vanished as he was returning home from watching a movie.  Their disappearances were four days apart, and beyond their immediate family and neighbourhood did not spark massive public interest.  The boys were black, and from poor backgrounds.  The nation was more interested in other matters.  Had Jimmy Carter betrayed the US by signing the SALT agreement with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev?  Judging by the landslide won by Republican Ronald Reagan later in the year, most people probably thought so.  An ABC TV news correspondent had been killed by a Nicaraguan National Guardsman, along with his interpreter.  His crew had caught the killing on tape, so it must be true...the head of the Bonanno crime family is assassinated; Carter delivers his fateful ‘national malaise’ speech.  These are tough times, the Cold War is at its height, while ostensibly signing the SALT agreement with one hand, Carter is feeding arms and money to opponents of the Soviets in Afghanistan.  The world is on the edge of annihilation.  The news that a barely known politician, called Saddam Hussein, has become president of Iraq merits barely a mention.  It is only in many years to come that he, like his neighbouring country of Afghanistan, will garner far more columns of newsprint.

Certainly, the disappearance of a couple of black boys in the southern city of Atlanta, Georgia, barely flickers on the deepest horizons of the nation’s interests.  Soon, though, that story will grow.  On the 28th of July the bodies of the two boys are discovered close together on a vacant lot.  Although the boys disappeared at different times and from different places, they are found close by each other.  Again, although one was shot and the other strangled, it seemed that they were tied together by the location of their detection.  It is odd, though, that they should die in such different ways.  Although killers do change the modus in which they operate, this tends to be a slow process, adapted over time.  Still, it is early days.  Nobody expects the police to come up with more than theories at this stage.

But when the killings continue, and police