Photo: Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
Police guarding a bridge over the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia hear a loud splash and begin chasing Wayne Williams while trying to drive away in a van.
After questioning him about his involvement in the unprecedented series of child murders in Atlanta for the previous two years, Williams was released. However, was arrested two days later when Nathaniel Cater’s body was found in the river near the bridge.
On a spree that began in July 1979, 80 black children and youth went missing or were killed in the Atlanta area. The only clue detectives had was that many of the bodies had the same greenish-yellow nylon fiber, leading investigators to believe that all the murders were connected.
While desperately searching for the manufacturer of the fiber, a newspaper reported on the importance of evidence of the fiber. Fearing that he was about to be discovered, the killer began dumping the bodies of his victims into the Chattahoochee River
. This, in turn, inspired the police surveillance that caught Williams on 22 of May.
The rare fiber was eventually identified as a yarn that was sold to a Georgia carpet company, West Point Pepperell, who used it to make a line called Luxaire. The color of the fibers found on the bodies, including Nathaniel Cater, matched Luxaire English Olive; this was the type of rug found in the Williams home.
Experts estimated that one of approximately 8, houses in the area of Atlanta had Luxaire English Olive rug. Prosecutors used this probability, along with fiber and hair evidence from Williams’ car and dog, to establish the fact that there was an extremely small chance that someone other than Williams could be the killer. In addition to the already damning evidence against him, the killings stopped immediately after Williams was arrested.
The 27 February 1982, the jury found Wayne Williams guilty of the murders of Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
After the verdict, the Atlanta Police Department closed others 22 cases, but Williams was never tried or charged for those crimes. Since then, some theorists of the conspiracy have advanced the idea that it was members of the Ku Klux Klan, and not Wayne Williams, who were responsible for the murders in hopes of starting a race war. Although this theory has not been accepted by the courts, in 2005 an investigation was reopened into five of the murders for which Williams was not convicted.
Closed again in 2005 after police launched an unpromising investigation into possible Ku Klux Klan involvement.
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