Wayne Williams: Trial, Fiber Evidence, and Reopened Investigation

Wayne Williams is the Atlanta man convicted in 1982 of murdering two adults during the string of killings known as the Atlanta child murders, in which at least 29 young, mostly Black Atlantans were abducted and killed between 1979 and 1981. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms and remains in prison. Although Atlanta police attributed 22 of the killings to him after his conviction and closed those cases, he was never charged with any of the child murders, and he has always maintained his innocence in them.¹²

The Killings That Terrorized Atlanta

The murders began on July 21, 1979, and continued for 22 months. The victims were overwhelmingly young African American males, most between seven and seventeen, though several young adults were killed as well. Bodies were found in desolate places around the city: behind dumpsters, under bridges, and eventually in the Chattahoochee River. Atlanta imposed a curfew on children, parents kept kids home from school, and fear settled over the city’s Black neighborhoods.¹²

City officials were slow to connect the disappearances, initially saying there was “no common denominator.” A formal investigative task force was not established until July 17, 1980, nearly a year after the first identified victims were found and after eleven children had already been killed.³

Investigators eventually saw a pattern. Victims were young Black males who vanished from public places during daylight, and their bodies turned up in remote areas with no clear motive. A CDC epidemiological study found the victims were often alone on streets or in shopping centers, frequently ran small errands for money, and had histories of running away from home.⁴

How Williams Became a Suspect

By late April 1981, bodies had begun surfacing in the Chattahoochee River, so investigators staked out the fourteen bridges crossing the river in the Atlanta area. At 2:52 a.m. on May 22, 1981, a surveillance team of an FBI agent, an Atlanta police officer, and two police cadets heard a loud splash near one of the bridges. They pursued and stopped a car driven by Wayne Williams, then a 23-year-old freelance photographer. Officers released him at the scene, lacking probable cause to arrest. Two days later, the body of Nathaniel Cater was recovered downstream. Williams was arrested on June 21, 1981.¹

Williams grew up in northwest Atlanta and lived with his parents on Penelope Street. He worked as a freelance news cameraman and described himself as a talent scout, performer’s manager, and record producer, though a 1981 New York Times profile noted he had no finished recorded product despite auditioning thousands of young people.⁵

The Trial: Two Adult Victims, Not Children

Williams was charged with the murders of two adults: Nathaniel Cater, 28, and Jimmy Ray Payne, 21. He was not charged with any of the child killings. His trial began in late December 1981 in Fulton County Superior Court before Judge Clarence Cooper. The prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on forensic fiber and hair evidence, an approach unprecedented in scope at the time.⁶⁷

On February 27, 1982, the jury found Williams guilty of both murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms.¹

The Fiber Evidence

The central piece of physical evidence was a distinctive green carpet fiber found on multiple victims. Investigators traced it to a carpet made by the West Point Pepperell Corporation of Dalton, Georgia, in its “Luxaire” line. The carpet used a fiber called Wellman 181-B, a nylon polymer with a trilobal cross-sectional shape that was manufactured only between 1967 and 1974. West Point Pepperell used the fiber for the Luxaire line for a single year, December 1970 through December 1971, and the exact color found in Williams’ bedroom was “English Olive.”⁸

Using the manufacturer’s sales records, investigators calculated the probability of randomly finding a home in the Atlanta area with this exact carpet at one in 7,792. Across the victims linked to Williams, examiners identified 28 different fiber types tying them to Williams’ home, car, and German Shepherd, only one of which was considered common.⁹

FBI agent Harold Deadman testified that fibers and dog hairs found on nine murdered youths could be traced to Williams’ home or automobile. Violet and green fibers consistent with Williams’ bedspread appeared on nearly all of them. Yellowish-green fibers consistent with the rare Luxaire carpet appeared on ten victims. Yellow fibers matching a blanket from the Williams home were found on six. For the two victims Williams was charged with killing, examiners identified seven fiber and hair associations linking Payne to Williams’ environment and six linking Cater.¹⁰⁶

The Uncharged Child Murders in the Case

Although Williams stood trial only for the two adult killings, the prosecution introduced evidence from ten additional uncharged homicides under Georgia’s “similar transactions” rule. That rule allows evidence of uncharged crimes when it serves a purpose beyond showing criminal character, such as identity, motive, plan, or modus operandi. Prosecutors used fiber and hair matches from those uncharged victims to argue that the same person was responsible for all the deaths, helping identify Williams as the killer of Payne and Cater.⁶

The defense challenged that evidence on due process grounds, arguing Williams’ expert had been denied meaningful access to fiber samples from the uncharged cases. The Supreme Court of Georgia later rejected those claims, finding Williams had failed to make a timely request for access and had declined opportunities to inspect the fibers when they were offered.⁶

After the conviction, the law enforcement task force concluded there was sufficient evidence to link Williams to an additional 20 of the 29 deaths in the series. Police closed 22 of the cases by attributing them to Williams, but no charges were ever filed against him in any of those killings. Four cases remain officially unsolved: Edward Smith (14), Milton Harvey (14), Jefferey Mathis (10), and Darron Glass (10), whose body was never found. Two early cases initially investigated as part of the series, those of Angel Lanier and LaTonya Wilson, were later determined to have insufficient evidence linking them to a serial killer.¹¹

Appeals and Parole

The trial court denied Williams’ motion for a new trial on December 16, 1982. He appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia, which affirmed his conviction on December 5, 1983, rejecting his challenges to the fiber evidence, his claims about restricted access to physical evidence, and his objections to the similar-transaction testimony. A petition for rehearing was denied on January 18, 1984.⁶

He has been denied parole repeatedly. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he was denied four times between 1988 and 2005. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied him again in November 2019, citing the “nature and circumstances” of his offenses. His next parole consideration is scheduled for November 2027.¹²

Doubts About the Conviction

The conviction did not settle the case in the public mind. Because Williams was convicted only of the two adult murders while the child killings were attached to him through similar-transaction evidence and administratively closed by police, questions have persisted about whether he was responsible for all the deaths.

Camille Bell, a co-founder of the Committee to Stop Children’s Murders whose son was among the victims, was one of the most prominent skeptics. After the trial she called Williams the “thirtieth victim of the Atlanta slayings” and organized a defense committee for his parents.³

Alternative theories have circulated for decades. One held that the Ku Klux Klan was involved as part of a plot to instigate a race war. Another alleged the involvement of a network of child pornographers. Critics of the official conclusion have pointed to the range of victim demographics, locations, and causes of death as evidence that a single perpetrator could not account for all 29 killings.¹³

Writer James Baldwin developed those doubts in his 1985 book The Evidence of Things Not Seen, drawn from reporting he did for Playboy before and after Williams’ arrest. Baldwin questioned the fiber evidence, doubted whether Williams was capable of the planning the serial killings would have required, and argued the focus on a single suspect was a way to end media scrutiny rather than achieve justice. He wrote that it was “perfectly possible that Wayne Williams must be added to the list of slaughtered black children,” and reported that most of Atlanta’s Black community did not believe Williams was responsible for the child murders.¹³¹⁴

The Reopened Investigation

In March 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced that the city was reopening the investigation and submitting evidence for new DNA testing. Investigators widened the scope beyond the original 1979–1981 window, reviewing the period from 1970 to 1985 to check whether additional victims may have been missed. New DNA samples were sent to a private laboratory experienced with deteriorated genetic material, and authorities planned to reanalyze fiber evidence from all 30 cases.¹⁵

Progress has been slow. By late 2022, families of victims reported that DNA testing had been ordered more than a year earlier but that no lab results had been shared with them. The Atlanta Police Department confirmed at that time that the investigation remained ongoing.¹⁶

Williams remains incarcerated on his two consecutive life sentences, with his next parole consideration set for November 2027.¹²

1
FBI. Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Murders
2
The New York Times. Atlanta Child Murders
3
New Georgia Encyclopedia. Atlanta Youth Murders
4
CDC. Story of CDC – Violence
5
The New York Times. Suspect in Atlanta: Young, Big Ideas but a Career of Limited Achievements
6
Justia. Williams v. State, 251 Ga. 749
7
Office of Justice Programs. Fiber Evidence and the Wayne Williams Trial, Part I
8
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. Fiber Evidence and the Wayne Williams Trial, Conclusion
9
Office of Justice Programs. Fiber Evidence and the Wayne Williams Trial, Conclusion
10
The New York Times. FBI Fiber Expert Links Hairs to Wayne Williams
11
CNN. Atlanta Murders Victims
12
GPB News. Atlanta Child Murders Suspect Denied Parole
13
The New Yorker. When James Baldwin Wrote About the Atlanta Child Murders
14
Studs Terkel Radio Archive. James Baldwin Discusses His Book The Evidence of Things Not Seen
15
Fox 5 Atlanta. New DNA From Atlanta Child Murders Being Tested, Fibers Being Retested
16
Atlanta News First. Families of Atlanta Child Murder Victims Call on City to Release DNA Testing Results