Chief Reopens 5th Unsolved Case
Reported By: Karyn Greer
Reported By: Alicia Barnes
DeKalb County Police Chief Louis Graham said Tuesday he will reopen a fifth case considered among the more than two dozen included in the quarter-century-old slayings known as the Atlanta Child Murders. The deaths between 1979 and 1981 led to one of the most intensive investigations of the century.
Last week, Graham -- who was an assistant police chief in neighboring Fulton County at the time of the killings -- announced he would look into four of the deaths. On Tuesday, he added to the list Aaron Wyche, 10, whose body was found on June 24, 1980. The other deaths that DeKalb County police are looking into are those of 11-year-old Patrick Baltazar, found Feb. 13, 1981; 13-year-old Curtis Walker, found March 6, 1981; 15-year-old Joseph Bell, found April 19, 1981; and 17-year-old William Barrett, found May 12, 1981.
“There are too many unanswered questions and we’re trying to answer those questions as best we can,” Graham told 11Alive News. “We’re using young detectives, fresh minds, fresh ideas, fresh eyes to take a look at it.”
Graham says no new evidence prompted his decision to assign five officers to re-open the cases, but instead he did it because he believes Wayne Williams -- the man convicted in two of the deaths and suspected in most of the others -- is innocent.
Graham told 11Alive News he talked to Williams five years ago and the conversation convinced him of Williams’ innocence. “I had been convinced for a long time, even before I talked to Wayne, that I thought the cases needed to have a second look,” he said. “It was until I talked to him that I was convinced of his innocence, so I wondered what the end result would be if I opened the cases.”
Williams, a freelance cameraman, was convicted of the murders of 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater and 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne, and blamed for 22 others, but was never charged in those deaths. Williams, now 47, is serving a life sentence.
Evidence of a pattern of conduct in 12 of the murders was used against him at his trial. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1984 and later rejected an appeal for a new trial. Evidence against Williams included tiny fibers found on some of the bodies that were matched to rugs and other fabrics in the home and cars of Williams' parents.
Graham contends the fiber evidence was not conclusive. “If you go back and look at the trial transcripts, what they will say is similar and I don’t know what that means,” Graham said. “I never put a lot of faith in the fiber [evidence].”
Williams, who is black, has contended that he was framed and that Atlanta officials covered up evidence that the Ku Klux Klan was involved in the killings to avoid a race war in the city.
Williams told V-103’s Frank Ski, “The Wayne Williams that you see sitting right here today is just as much a victim of what happened, as anyone else involved in this tragedy.”
"I probably made the most viable and common sense. If they didn't arrest a black person, Atlanta wasn't going to be a city that had many buildings standing after while,” Williams said.
Ruby Frazier, Jimmy Ray Payne’s mother, told Ski she does not believe Williams killed her son. “I never believed it and I do not believe it,” she told Ski. “My son is huskier, and when I came to court and seen Wayne Williams for the first time, I looked up there and saw him, this little old fella. I couldn’t believe that he did it.”
A former Fulton County prosecutor who was involved in Williams' trial -- now Atlanta Solicitor Joseph Drolet –- told CNN that reopening the cases might reveal that others also took part in the killings He, however, remains convinced Williams was guilty.
"I'm not sure it's going to change anything in regard to the evidence against Wayne Williams,” he said in a CNN interview.
Jack Mallard, also a former prosecutor in Williams' trial, echoed Drolet's sentiments. "I am certainly satisfied in my mind without any equivocation that the man who murdered those children, that he’s the right one, and he’s where he should be,” he said.