The Atlanta Child Murders

A Deadly April

Michael McIntosh

Twenty-three year old ex-convict, Michael McIntosh, was last seen on March 25, 1981, by a shop owner who said that the young man had been beaten up. The storeowner had said McIntosh told him two black men had roughed him up. He was never seen alive again. McIntosh had lived across the street from Cap'n Peg's Seafood Restaurant, where Jo-Jo had worked. He had, in fact, known Jo-Jo Bell. Like Jo-Jo, McIntosh had been known to hang around with homosexuals and it was believed he was one himself. He had been seen several times at Tom Terrell's house, a house that both Jo-Jo Bell and Timothy Hill had often frequented.

McIntosh was pulled from the Chattahoochee River in April 1981. He too had died from "probable asphyxia," according to the medical examiner. McIntosh had known another List victim named Nathaniel Cater, who would disappear a month later.

John Porter

John Porter, like McIntosh, was an ex-convict. He spent much of his time with his grandmother with whom he lived with on and off. She had kicked him out of the house on several occasions because of his strange behavior. He had been suffering from severe mental problems and had spent a length of time in a mental hospital. He was kicked out shortly before he had disappeared because his grandmother had found him fondling a 2-year-old-boy she was caring for in her home. He was twenty-eight when he was found dead in April 1981. He had been stabbed six times and left on a sidewalk in an empty lot. Porter originally did not make the List, until the Wayne Williams trial when he and Williams were linked through fiber matches.

Jimmy Ray Payne

Twenty-one-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne had also disappeared the same month as Porter. Police reports stated that his sister last saw Payne the day before his disappearance. He had shared an apartment with his sister and mother. His sister told police that he was on his way to sell old coins at a coin shop. However, Payne's girlfriend had claimed to see him the very day he had supposedly disappeared. She told to jurors that he had walked her to the bus stop the morning of April 22. She had become worried when he did not pick her up from the bus stop, as they had planned to meet there. Payne had been known to suffer bouts of depression, especially during his incarceration while serving a sentence for burglary. Payne, at one time, had attempted to hang himself with his bed sheets, yet failed to succeed when a social worker found him. He had survived that one brush of death, but would not live for long afterwards. Payne was found a week after his disappearance floating in the Chattahoochee River. His cause of death was reported as "undetermined," according to the county medical examiner. It was believed that he had been in the water almost the entire length of time he had been missing.