The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta child murders, are a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, United States between July 1979 and May 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 28 African-American children, adolescents, and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested, tried, and convicted of two of the adult murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Police subsequently have attributed a number of the child murders to Williams, although he has not been charged in any of those cases, and Williams himself maintains his innocence, notwithstanding the fact that the specific style and manner of the killings, which was by chokehold-strangulation, ceased after his arrest.
In March 2019, the Atlanta police, under the order of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, reopened the cases in hopes that new technology would lead to a conviction for the murders that were never resolved. As of November 2025, no results have been made public.
The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta child murders, are a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, United States between July 1979 and May 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 28 African-American children, adolescents, and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested, tried, and convicted of two of the adult murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Police subsequently have attributed a number of the child murders to Williams, although he has not been charged in any of those cases, and Williams himself maintains his innocence, notwithstanding the fact that the specific style and manner of the killings, which was by chokehold-strangulation, ceased after his arrest.
In March 2019, the Atlanta police, under the order of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, reopened the cases in hopes that new technology would lead to a conviction for the murders that were never resolved. As of November 2025, no results have been made public.
Timeline of murders
1979
In the middle of 1979, Edward "Teddy" Smith, 14, and Alfred "Q" Evans, 13, disappeared four days apart. Their bodies were found on July 28 in a wooded area, Smith with a .22-caliber gunshot wound in his upper back. They were believed to be the first victims of the putative "Atlanta Child Killer".
On September 4, the next victim, 14-year-old Milton Harvey, disappeared while on an errand to the bank for his mother. He was riding a bike that was found a week later in a remote area of Atlanta. His body was not recovered until November of that year.
On October 21, 9-year-old Yusuf Bell went to a store to buy Bruton snuff for a neighbor, Eula Birdsong, at Reese Grocery on McDaniel Street. A witness said she saw him near the intersection of McDaniel and Fulton getting into a blue car before he disappeared. His body was found on November 8 in the abandoned E. P. Johnson Elementary School by a school janitor who was looking for a place to urinate. He was found clothed in the brown cut-off shorts he was last seen wearing, though they had a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had been hit over the head twice, and the cause of death was strangulation. Police did not immediately link his disappearance to the previous killings.
1980
On March 4, 1980, the first female victim, 12-year-old Angel Lenair, disappeared. She left her house around 4pm wearing a denim outfit and was last seen at a friend's house watching the sitcom Sanford and Son. Her body was found six days later, in a wooded vacant lot along Campbellton Road, wearing the same clothes she was wearing when she had left home. A pair of white underwear that did not belong to her was stuffed in her mouth, and her hands were bound with an electrical cord. The cause of death was strangulation.
On March 11, one week after Lenair's disappearance, 11-year-old Jeffery Mathis disappeared while on an errand for his mother. He was wearing gray jogging pants, brown shoes, and a white and green shirt. Months later a girl said she saw him get into a blue car with a light-skinned man and a dark-skinned man. His body was found in a "briar-covered patch of woodlands", 11 months after he disappeared, by which time it was not possible to identify a cause of death.
On May 18, 15-year-old Eric Middlebrooks disappeared. He was last seen answering the telephone at home and then leaving in a hurry on his bicycle, taking with him a hammer to repair it. His body was found the following day next to it in the rear garage of an Atlanta bar which was located next door to what was then the Georgia Department of Offender Rehabilitation. His pockets were turned inside out; his chest and arms had slight stab wounds, and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head. A few weeks before he disappeared, Middlebrooks had testified against three juveniles in a robbery case.
On June 9, 12-year-old Christopher Richardson went missing on his way to a local pool. He was last seen walking towards the DeKalb County's Midway Recreation Center in Midway Park. He was wearing blue shorts, a light blue shirt, and blue tennis shoes. His body was not found until the following January, clothed in unfamiliar swim trunks, along with that of a later victim, Earl Terrell. The cause of death was not determined.
On June 22, 7-year-old LaTonya Wilson disappeared from her parents' apartment. According to a witness, she appeared to have been abducted by two men, one of whom was seen climbing into the apartment window and then holding her in his arms as he spoke to the other man in the parking lot. On October 18, her body was found in a fenced-in area at the end of Verbena Street in Atlanta. By then, it had skeletonized, and no cause of death could be established.
The next day, June 23, 10-year-old Aaron Wyche disappeared after having been seen near a local grocery store, getting into a blue Chevrolet with either one or two black men. A female witness says she saw him being led from Tanner's Corner Grocery by a 6-foot-tall 180-pound black male, approximately 30 years old, with a mustache and goatee. The witness's description of the car matched a description of a similar one implicated in Jeffrey Mathis' disappearance. At 6pm he was seen at a shopping center. The following day, his body was found under a bridge; the official cause of death was asphyxiation from a broken neck suffered in a fall.
In July 1980, two more children, 9-year-old Anthony Carter and 10-year-old Earl Terrell, were murdered.
Clifford Jones, aged 13, disappeared on August 20. He was found dead from strangulation. His body was found on August 21 behind a dumpster in the rear of the former Hollywood Plaza shopping center.
Darron Glass, aged 10, was reported missing on September 14. His body has not been recovered.
Charles Stephens, aged 12, was reported missing on October 9. His body was found the next day on Norman Berry Drive near the entrance to a trailer park. Though he was still wearing dark blue pants, his T-shirt and one of his shoes were missing. Police determined that the cause of death was asphyxiation. Rub marks were also identified on his nose and mouth. Dog hairs and two Caucasian head hairs were found on it along with two pubic hairs, which did not belong to him or Williams, and which were found on his boxers 950 feet away. The state considered this a "pattern case" in Williams's trial.
Aaron Jackson, aged 9, went missing on November 1. His body was discovered the next day strangled, lying face-up on a river bank.
Patrick Rogers, aged 16, knew several of the previous victims. He went missing on November 30. His body was found on December 7 in the Chattahoochee river. Police speculated that he was dropped from the bridge above.
1981
The murders continued into 1981. The first known victim in the new year was 14-year-old Lubie Geter, who disappeared on January 3. His body was found on February 5.
Geter's friend, 15-year-old Terry Pue went missing in January. An anonymous caller told the police where to find his body. He lived in the same apartment as Edward "Teddy" Smith, who was killed in 1979.
In February and March 1981, six more bodies were discovered, believed to be linked to the previous homicides. Among the deceased was the body of 21-year-old Eddie Duncan, the first adult victim.
In April, 20-year-old Larry Rogers, 28-year-old John Porter, and 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne were murdered. Porter and Payne were ex-convicts and had just recently been released from Arrendale State Prison after serving time for burglary.
On May 12, 1981, FBI agents found the body of 17-year-old William "Billy Star" Barrett on a curb in a wooded area near his home. A witness, 32-year-old Harold Wood, a custodian from Southwest High School, had run out of gas about a mile from the scene. He described a black man standing over and observing the location where the body was found before driving away in a white-over-blue Cadillac.
During the end of May 1981, the last reported victim was added to the list: 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater. He was last seen by gardener Robert I. Henry at the entrance of the Rialto Theatre in Atlanta, reportedly holding hands with Wayne Williams. His body was discovered two days later.
Investigator Chet Dettlinger created a map of the victims' locations. Despite the difference in ages, the victims fell within the same geographic parameters. They were connected to Memorial Drive and 11 major streets in the area. Author Ginger Strand links the murders to freeway racism and Atlanta's massive urban renewal program that disrupted African American neighborhoods.
Investigation and arrest
There were significant delays in beginning an investigation. During the murders, more than 100 agents were working on the investigation. The city of Atlanta imposed curfews, and parents in the city removed their children from school and forbade them from playing outside.
As the media coverage of the killings intensified, the FBI predicted that the killer might dump the next victim into a body of water to conceal any evidence. Police staked out nearly a dozen area bridges, including crossings of the Chattahoochee River. During a stakeout on May 22, 1981, at around 3 a.m., detectives got their first major break when an officer heard a splash beneath a bridge. Another officer saw a white 1970 Chevroletstation wagon turn around and drive back across the bridge.
Two police cars later stopped the suspect station wagon about a half-mile from the bridge. The driver was 23-year-old Wayne Bertram Williams, a supposed music promoter and freelance photographer. The Chevrolet wagon belonged to his parents. During questioning, Williams said he was on his way to audition a woman, Cheryl Johnson, as a singer. Williams claimed she lived in the nearby town of Smyrna. Police did not find any record of her or the appointment. Police who stopped Williams on the bridge noticed gloves and a 24-inch nylon cord sitting in the passenger seat. According to police investigators, the cord looked similar to ligature marks found on Cater and other victims, but the cord was never taken into evidence for analysis.
Two days later, on May 24, the nude body of Nathaniel Cater, 27, was found floating downriver a few miles from the bridge where police had seen the suspicious station wagon. Based on this evidence, including the police officer's hearing of the splash, police believed that Williams had killed Cater and disposed of his body while the police were nearby.
Adding to a growing list of suspicious circumstances, Williams had handed out flyers in predominantly black neighborhoods calling for young people ages 11–21 to audition for his new singing group that he called Gemini. Williams failed an FBI-administered polygraph examination, though polygraph results are not admissible as evidence in criminal courts.
Fibers from a carpet in the Williams residence were found to match those observed on two of the victims. Additional fibers from the Williams's home, vehicles, and pet dog were later matched to fibers discovered on other victims. Furthermore, witness Robert Henry claimed to have seen Williams holding hands and walking with Nathaniel Cater on the night Cater is believed to have died.
On June 21, 1981, Williams was arrested. A grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder in the deaths of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, aged 22. The trial date was set for early 1982.
When the news of Williams' arrest was officially released (his status as a suspect had previously been leaked to the media), FBI Agent John E. Douglas stated that, if it was Williams, then he was "looking pretty good for a good percentage of the killings." Douglas had previously conducted an interview with People magazine about profiling the killer as a young black man. This was widely reported as the FBI effectively declaring Williams guilty, and Douglas was officially censured by the Director of the FBI.
Trial
Jury selection began on December 28, 1981, and it lasted six days. Nine women and three men comprised the jury, among which were eight African Americans and four Caucasians.
The trial officially began on January 6, 1982, with Judge Clarence Cooper presiding. The most important evidence against Williams was the fiber analysis between the victims he was indicted for murdering, Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater, and the 12 pattern-murder cases in which circumstantial evidence culminated in numerous links between the crimes. This evidence included witnesses who testified that they had seen Williams with the victims, and some witnesses suggested that he had solicited sexual favors.