OMG!!!

The Atlanta Child Killer: Postscript or Rewrite?
Will the story of the Atlanta Child Killer get a shocking new ending? Well, we're about to be handed an epilogue in the form of DNA testing.

This week, an Atlanta judge ordered that tests be conducted on human hair and other forensic evidence that was used to convict Wayne B. Williams.

Williams was convicted of two murders and suspected of many more. The strongest proof against him came in the form of fibers matched to his home, bedspread, and his dog. Twenty murder victims were tied to Williams based on this fiber evidence.

The 1979-1981 murders made headlines across the world. The coverage was so intense because of the sheer number of victims, the panic they caused, and because "the original assumption was that the Atlanta child killer was a white redneck or a Klan-like group" (John Douglas, Anatomy of Motive).

Even after Williams was convicted, many people believed -- even to this day -- that the Ku Klux Klan was involved in the murders.

From the Brockton (Mass.) Enterprise, March 1982:

Soviet propagandists have been making hay out of the trial and conviction of Wayne B. Williams in the Atlanta child murder case.

According to Tass, the official Soviet news agency, poor Williams has been made a scapegoat by white racists, who are not only persecuting an innocent man but are also allowing the real mass murderer -- a white racist -- to remain at large while black children cower behind locked doors.

Tass does not, of course, tell its readers that Williams was run to ground and convicted after the most intense and costly criminal investigation in the history of Georgia and after one of the most expensive trials in the state's history.

Was he a black patsy? Or are his supporters misguided? I'd put good money on confirmation of the verdict. But DNA evidence has made a jackass of many a judge and juror, not to mention true crime author, so prudence dictates testing whenever a claim of innocence is made, regardless of the degree of plausibility. Some questions are best settled, so let the chips fall.


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