Welcome to the new summer series of Atlanta Monster, where we will uncover new stories around the Atlanta child murders.

I'm your host, Jason Hope, and in our first episode, we talked to the men and women that reported on the case that gripped Atlanta and the nation nearly forty years ago.

The time has healed old wounds.

One thing is clear.

The nightmare of that traumatic time sticks with many even to this day.

You don't want to believe that you've given anybody an opportunity to do anything to harm anybody, because it means that you could have been a part of fueling what may have happened.

In other words, if he wasn't an overnight photographer, maybe he wouldn't have had the opportunity to do this.

To think that you have come face to face with someone who could potentially kill that many people and be that close to where you shake their hand, You've hugged them, you have laughed with them, that's the hard part.

You don't want to think that he was so wrong in judging somebody.

I don't want to believe that he did that because somehow I feel that I may have had some role in helping in Atlanta.

Another body was discovered today there at Police Task Force headquarters.

There are twenty seven faces on the wall, murdered, one missing.

We do not know the person or persons that are responsible.

Therefore, we do not have the moody from Tenderfoot TV and how still works in Atlanta.

Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, rogers apparently was ASPHIXI victor.

Atlanta was unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps on killing.

This is Atlanta Monster.

I'm Joscelyn Dorsey.

I'm Director of Editorials and Public Affairs at WSBTV, which is now Cox Media Group Atlanta, and I've been there for forty five years.

I started out as a street reporter in nineteen seventy three and worked in the newsroom from nineteen seventy three to nineteen eighty three, and after that became the director.

Jocelyn Dorsey was the first African American television news anchor in Atlanta, arriving from Ohio in nineteen seventy three.

During her career, she has reported on numerous happenings in and around Atlanta, including the Atlanta child murders, with reporting on the psychics and community efforts to help local kids who are highly distressed at the time.

Through the central character art the Art Institute in Atlanta, Police hope to teach children about safety in a way that can be fun.

The four primary messages are don't get into a car with strangers, don't take candy, money, or gifts from strangers, play in groups, and if you need help, go to a police officer, firefighter, or bus driver.

They're your friends.

Art Institute Community Relations director Liz get says besides the basic themes, teachers can use the book as a teaching tool.

The coloring book, produced by students of the Art Institute on a volunteer basis, is being donated to the Atlanta Police Bureau later this week.

The printing costs for the fifty copies were donated by Diggler Brothers, a local firm, and officials say you'll be seeing a lot more of Artie in public service announcements soon.

Joscelyn Dorsey Action News, but that's not the only part of her involvement with this story.

Jocelyn was one of the first to discover Wayne in his teen years, where he was already hard at work at the radio station he had built in his house.

I first met Wayne Williams as a street reporter.

We got the story of this young whiz kid who had started a radio station in his basement, so I covered the store.

He was fascinated with media, and normally I mentor young people who are interested in the business, and he was very interested and wanted to come and see the station.

From there, we maintained a relationship because he asked questions and wanted to shadow me and all of that.

Paul paula Celli worked in the newsroom at WSB.

Also he saw firsthand and for the first time in his life, a new world when he wasn't entirely prepared for.

I went to WSB is the executive producer and assistant news director.

Atlanta was a very aggressive news community who was a hot growing city at the time.

We were calling these kids street kids.

The Omni is a complex of amusement arcades, theaters, restaurants, shops in the heart of Atlanta.

It's a meeting place for the city.

Is Footloose Young Blacks, a place which many of the missing and murdered children used to visit.

Most of them were what the locals called street wise, coming often from broken homes.

They hustled for money, did odd jobs, sometimes had trouble with the law.

They were tough.

I mean, I remembered my father said, what in the world is going on down there?

And I said to him, Dad, I got to tell you something.

I would have known more about what was on the surface of the moon then I knew about how people lived in public housing in Atlanta, Georgia.

I was totally unprepared for the world that I walked into.

I didn't know that there were children who had no one with primary responsibility for those children.

I didn't know that there were children who would be out at two and three o'clock in the morning being a mule for a drug dealer or selling homosexual favors.

It was a world that was totally separate and apart from the caudal world that I grew up there.

I had no concept that people lived like that.

I had no concept that there was that level of child abuse in society.

And Atlanta was having an epidemic of child abuse at the time, and it was particularly impactful and harmful to the minority kids at the time, and that was the big subject that never got addressed out of this.

You know, they wanted to get this problem out of the way as fast as they could.

And I'm not sure that Atlanta ever looked into that talk about a child being vulnerable.

A nine year old on the street at three o'clock in the morning, and then you've got people prowling those streets looking for god knows what.

Back in those days, we had what we called stringers.

We were shooting sixteen millimeter film and we would give a camera to a freelancer, especially on the overnight crew, and he decided he wanted to be a photographer.

He kept shadowing them, would come in all the time volunteer and I told him, I said, you know, we can't pay people to volunteer here, but if you want to try out to be a stringer, you could be a stringer.

And that's what he did.

He was freelancing for us as a photographer.

Wayne's world, his world was the world of the stringer.

His world was the world of going around looking for trouble with night and taking pictures of it.

He was a component of that very world.

He was just a young kid, and I mean he was right out of high school.

I think when he first started working with us, I didn't know much about his home life.

I knew his parents, and he was a child that was born later in their lives because they had had problems having a child.

And I remember his mom telling me that he was a very special child because you know, she thought she wouldn't be able to have children.

His father was in the business.

I think he was a freelancer.

He may have actually worked for a newspaper, but um he was a photographer, so I imagine his interest came from his dad.

Jocelyn got to know Wayne and Wayne's family.

But what was Wayne really like.

He wasn't charming, and a lot of people didn't like him.

He was kind of what people would call a nerd.

You know, he's very nerdy, very bright.

So I never thought that there was anything strange because I knew a lot of nerdy kids growing up, and you know, I just thought that he was different.

He did have a way about him that rubbed some people the wrong way.

We heard this over and over again.

Wayne was nerdy, pudgy, highly intelligent.

He is a highly intelligent young man, A good student.

When he was in school, he was a very intelligent young man.

I said, you're very intelligent.

I said, what's your a cue and he said, I don't believe in accus and I said, well, you must have done well, and they just seem to be educated in articulate or whatever.

As a student, he was extremely bright.

He was a pretty intelligent guy too.

He had a very high i Q.

Brilliant, asshole, unassuming and cocky at the same time.

He comes across as a nerd.

He's a nerd.

He's a little nerdy.

He is so mild mannered.

He couldn't hurt fly, small, not very threatening at all.

Old kid with the classes, one of those pudgy little guys whose mom made him practice of piano.

A little fat five seven, Wayne Williams, very quick mind mentally, he could just run over the average person.

Wayne Williams quiet, didn't say much, and he got his job done and left.

In our newsroom, there are quite a few guys who would tease him because of the way he looked.

And this is back in the sevenings too, so the times were very different.

But we don't know what impact had had on Wayne.

You really didn't have a lot of involvement with people because you were so busy trying to get that story on the air.

I didn't know him enough to know what was inside of his head.

I knew it was different from most people.

I guess.

I defended him because I have known people like him, and um, I felt sorry for them because I know that they've been bullied or people have said unkind things to them.

So I have a a soft spot in my heart for people like that, and so I got to be a bit more defensive because I felt as if they thought he was nerdy or something was wrong with him.

He kept to himself a lot because of that.

But he worked a different shift too.

That's maybe the other reason he decided to work overnight so he wouldn't have to come in contact with people all the time.

When the time came, Jocelyn Dorsey ended up having to fire Wane because he was taking footage and selling it to the other stations.

On the side, you'll recall that Monica Coppan also said that strange things were happening.

This man was a freelancer for WSBTV, and that's not something you hide.

So the part of the story was, yes, someone has been arrested in connection with this case, but this person also has worked here as a freelance photographer, so that put us in a different vein from the other stations.

Then there was still the question is he guilty or is he not.

I can remember Don McClellan, who was the reporter then and it since has retired.

He had a huge file on the Missigan murdered children.

Don did that story that night, and I can remember him being as a good reporter should be.

I'm just going to give you the facts, but this still is alleged.

Wayne's departure from WSB did not end well.

I distanced myself from him after he left the station.

Um, we did not leave on great terms.

So UM, I think he knew that he had done something wrong and regretted it, but it was it was not something that could be repaired easily.

And then he left and decided that he was going to go into the music business.

And he would call me and ask me if I knew any young people or if I could help him in this music business, and I told him I really didn't know anything about it, and so I really felt that this was not my place to give him any a dies and suggested, you know, maybe he talked to somebody else.

And after that our relationship kind of drifted.

The city struggled to find the killer, and the body count only grew larger.

How would they know when they found him.

Dr Alvin Passant was an African American psychiatrist with the Harvard and he became a regular that we touched with because the story had all of these racial overtones to it that again puzzled us, why is this happening?

Why are all these kids minority kids?

It became this gigantic crossword puzzle that just engrossed all of it.

I've been doing interviews since nineteen Of all of them, that was the most chilling one I ever did.

We were sitting in the snack room of WSP and I was doing an interview with him because his contention was is that this perpetrator had to be African American because where these crimes were committed and at the times that they were committed, a white man would have stood out like a sore phone.

So the question then became, why would an African American male be doing this to young African American primarily males.

And he had a theory on that that he wanted to cleanse the race.

He was embarrassed by these guys, and while we were doing the interview, I looked up at the camera and I planted to the lens and I said, whoever is doing this might be on the other side of that lens right there.

What do we say to him?

And he looked at me and he said, well, not much we could say to him directly that I'm going to tell you this much.

When they arrest him, you're going to know him.

Hmm, So you're gonna know him.

Phrase literally was found my spine with the children.

I remember getting a call Mark Picard too thirty in the morning and Mark called me and said, you will never believe what has just happened.

He said, they just arrested Wayne Williams and I dropped the phone.

I couldn't believe it.

I was in such a state of shock.

I just could not believe what I was hearing.

And then, of course all the events started to unfold, with him being arrested on the fiber evidence and then going to trial.

The home of the man taken into custody by the FBI has from time to time this evening taken on the aspect of a reporter's convention.

His mother maintains her vigil inside, waiting by the phone, waiting to hear from her son who was down at FBI headquarters and his father who has now joined them, to say that the police actions of the past several hours were a shock to the family that lives here and the neighborhood is an understatement.

The neighbors I spoke with say that the family more or less kept to themselves, and that the young man who was being questioned by the FBI was friendly, but only friendly enough to say hi.

They really didn't know much more about him.

This episode began on Thursday May when the man was stopped by the Task Force at the Chattahoochee River.

He was questioned about the possibility of dropping something into the river, which he was denied, and then he was let go for any lack of reason to hold him.

But surveillance on him continued until he was taken into custody by the FBI around three o'clock Wednesday.

The man was most recently involved in a company which he formed the search out talented local youngsters singing, dancing, acting, and so forth.

It is reported that he told his family that he was trying to set up an audition on the night that he was questioned by the Task Force at the Chattahoochee River, and that he had a friend in his car, supposedly also for an audition when he was taken into custody on Wednesday.

The FBI apparently had a pretty good idea of what they were looking for when they executed the search warrant here at the home.

Among the things that it removed, it took pieces of blankets, robes, human hair, and dog hair.

We understand that this material has been taken to the State crime Lab where it is either being processed now or will be processed first thing in the morning.

That should determine whether the people here can finally rest in peace or whether they're nightmare and a possible solution to some of the murders is at hand.

Mark Picard, Action News.

Mark Picard was also a reporter at w SPTV on the front lines during the case.

In fact, he was there the night Wayne was taken downtown.

Much to the surprise of the rest of the media.

Picard was inside the house with Wayne and his parents that night.

When he returned from his interview with authorities, I got a phone call from a police source who said that the task force were searching Wayne's house and uh I should get over there with the crew.

And I got there and for a while we were the only crew.

They're reporting on what was going on.

I guess Wayne either saw us outside or was watching television, and he did ask me to come inside.

He put in a cassette in an old cassette recorder and recorded our conversation.

The rationale behind it, I think was to offer a defense for himself.

At the end of the conversation, he gave me the cassette and said, hold on to this.

This is going to be valuable.

It was a crazy night.

I went back to the station and immediately turned over the cassette to my news director and that was the last I ever saw it.

Early that next morning, Piccard was inside the house again, this time at the hastily called press conference thrown together by a still unnamed suspect in Wayne Williams.

You will hear him, but you will see reporters and photographers.

Did they ever call you a suspect?

They ever used words they did as strong in a suspect.

They openly see it.

You Kio, Nathan U Cat and you know it, and you land to listen.

I just remember it was a circus.

It was the center ring in the three wing circus.

All of it was surreal.

In my reporting career, I was relatively young and fresh, and this was crazy to me.

I was trying to keep perspective and not let the events overtake me.

At that press conference, Wayne passed out as resume to the media.

The FPI kept a copy of this resume and we found it in their case file.

Despite Wayne being a mere twenty two years old, the resume was already five pages long.

FBI records indicated that this resume was also one of the items found in the white station wagon when they searched the vehicle on June three.

Though we worked as a stringer and freelancer at WSB for approximately three years, Wayne's resume indicated he was employed at WSB from January ninety nine to March ninety nine.

The murders began in June of nineteen seventy nine.

The resume listed an extensive set of positions and accomplishments, and personal and professional references from NBC News, CNN, Arista Records, the City of Atlanta Public Safety, and Jocelyn Dorset.

His resumes 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 twelve, and his teams you 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.

This was a surprise to Jocelyn.

Why would he list her as a professional reference when she had been the one to fire him from WSP.

Shockingly, the defense team from a Williams even reached out to Dorsey.

Before the murder trial, his lawyers had called and asked if I would testify in his defense, and of course our lawyers said, no, we're not.

We're not doing that, um because there have been some personnel issues that we had had with him, and you know, we told them that that would not be something that they would want us to have to reveal.

You know, they wouldn't want me to because we had to dismiss him and it may not look good.

I mean, that's certainly not a great character reference to say you got fired.

I actually had to go down to the courtroom, and it was very awkward because our lawyers were arguing right up to the point where they thought I might have to testify, And so it was really awkward because I was down at the courtroom and some of my peers were wondering what I was doing there, and I couldn't say anything.

So they took me off into a room and made me sit and just wait until they could figure out what the lawyers were going to do.

His lawyer decided not to call me to the stand.

It was pretty nerve wracking.

You can imagine what I was going through during that time period of us wondering, you know, who could have done this.

I was reporting a lot of the homicides at the time, and um, there were so many humors that were going on that that was probably the worst thing.

Newsrooms were hearing rumors and stories constantly.

Questions arose in many of the reporters heads, including Captain Dave Folk, who wondered what was happening at the Williams home.

Captain Dave and others questioned the role of Homer Williams, Wayne's father, a topic that came up over and over at the time.

Both the news media and officials investigating the case.

We're also curious as to the role of Homer and his wife Faye.

I'd like to know more from him.

He seemed like his mother was a shot caller.

She was the spokes version for it all when he was happening.

See he has been tried and me as well say his vision had been convicted long before by the media.

The Williams claimed that police, desperate for a break in the case, set up their son's arrest.

They didn't have and don't have enough evidence.

Not on to indicted, but to the rest.

I'd just like to give them a warning that when don't they believe it or not, the killer is still at large.

He's out there.

I'm on the parting in Atlanta.

Gotta gimen kevinn.

Are you going to try the owner put at Lama, gott bring confid on my phone.

My house is not the thing.

I have faith.

I have faith in there and and all the homofectual stuff.

They're talking about paying from those street curing what they called cure stat Williams made the call to w g s T news radio last night during a live interview with Dr Joseph Lowry, President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference where from But I did a lot of cover up and we are going to expose a lot of it tomorrow morning.

But when tomorrow came, a very subdued Homer Williams and his attorney Lynn Whatley had little to say.

It is our conclusion at this time that no statements will be made.

I think that's a conspiracy.

Um.

I definitely feel that have the wrong place that pl that, and I say a game that's weighing his vvus as skate.

I don't know about his ties.

I don't know about who he knew or what he knew.

He's very quiet, who would not talk.

And if so many victims were linked to the fiber evidence originated from the carpet and blankets in the Williams house, how did this all tie together?

What happened at the house, And if they were killed at that house and loaded in the car, who helped kill them?

Who helped load him up?

Is not a logical question, Veenelope wrote him, because that's where the carpets were, what the dog was You don't take your dog to kill somebody.

What was going on in the house, fiber or fiber there, It's it's you know, not enough questions asked, but enough to honestly send him to prison.

But who else needs to be in prison?

Wayne William's parents, who wouldn't talk if somebody was killed in your house?

Don't you think you'd know?

The carpet has been messed up, the floor and there was some hollering or something.

I didn't see it, but I heard that the police found some burned film in the backyard of the house.

I'd like to know what was on that film.

Maybe it was enough film or pornography.

Maybe he did take and photographic evidence.

It was destroyed.

Mrs Williams was outspoken in the defense of your son.

I wanted to hear more from Homer.

He was an accomplished photographer.

But what did you know about that case?

The FBI noted changes in the house from the time they visited one and when they executed a search warrant on June three.

When they went back to the house, FBI special agents observed a number of changes.

Furniture from Wayne's bedroom had moved to other rooms.

Business papers and unidentified documents previously observed have been removed.

New indoor outdoor carpeting have been added to a room since the may visit.

What exactly was happening in the Williams house as investigators were closing in on their suspect.

Was Williams family removing items from the house?

And if so, why I'd like to know what they found?

It didn't burn.

Wouldn't you like to go to the evidence locker and just have everybody lay these pieces out, lay out the autops report, the crime scene information?

How were the bodies placed?

Why was that such a secret?

Captain Dave wasn't the only one that wanted it no more.

I heard from people on the task force and my police sources who didn't believe Wayne or his dad were responsible.

That was one of the threads that was out there, a suspicion that he may have been involved.

But he's not around for anybody to pursue that, and I'm not sure anything was done in that regard.

Many reporters continued to hear from Wayne during but also after the trial.

I would hear through people from him occasionally when he was in jail, and um, it was it was just quite shocking.

The first time he reached out, I was in the radio station and he called me.

We had this long talk on the tape that, of course I don't have anymore we write.

I haven't written to him in a while, but he used to write me.

He'd write and criticize stories, tell me problems in the prison, that kind of thing.

The story is headlined on the cover, but it's what is inside that is bound to raise a few hackles.

And 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 Pay.

The magazine promises a second installment in the interview they say was conducted at the jail.

But how did that interview happen?

Fulton County Sheriff Leroy Stinchcomb told me tonight no jail personnel let anyone interview Williams, and he wants to know how it happened to He told me he isn't pointing fingers, but says the only people allowed to see Williams are the d a's office, William's parents, Williams attorneys, and people working on the defense who were approved by Williams attorneys.

Stinchcomb says they're about six of them, and he's giving those names to Judge Clarence Cooper.

This morning, Cooper is hearing the case and he told me he'll have no comment until later.

If then Attorney Mary Welcome would only say she knew about the article, which he wouldn't see.

The impact of this case still sticks with those who covered it, triggering a surprising range of emotions then and now.

There was a certain exhilaration actually to be honest, not to in any way see any advantage in the suffering of the families who have lost their children.

Just as a news story.

It was probably the biggest that I'd ever been involved with, and so I felt an exhilaration at that point, but I also felt an obligation to be fair and to get it right.

Literally wake up in the middle of the night.

It just flash awake, and I remember seeing in my mind, you know, the nightmares that I would have.

I would be in one of those projects and a killer would be stocking me.

It affected me to that level.

I'm Becky Leaf was the ABC reporter at the time who would report it on Ted Bundy.

She had the exact same experience reporting on Ted Bundy.

She said, I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would see Bundy in my room, and it was that kind of thing with the Atlanta child murders.

For me, I'm glad that I never had to deal that much with that kind of story again, the incarnate evil that can live in then.

The only thing that I really felt was why he was working an overnight shift, and I always wondered why he was so interested in covering homicides or breaking news.

I guess the hard thing for me is to think that I would have been such a poor judge of character.

We've had enough.

I mean, it was, it was very tense, and I think people breathe the collective sigh of relief and buried it.

Thank you for joining us.

We hope you enjoyed the first of our special summer series of Atlanta Monster.

Be on the lookout for more new episodes in the coming weeks.

Atlanta Monster is a joint production between How Stuff Works and Tinderfoot TV.

Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film and Video Tape Collection, Round Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries.

For the latest updates, please visit Atlanta Monster dot com or follow us on social media.