The Atlanta Child Murders

Reasonable Doubts

From the time that Wayne Williams was convicted, doubts arose about his guilt. Many black Atlantans felt that the government had manufactured the evidence just to get the case closed. While there are a number of issues in the government's case that are controversial, the fact is that the prosecutors, especially the FBI, believed that Williams was guilty.

Did the government play fair and square during the trial? No, but that does not seem to be unusual, because prosecution is about winning, not about justice or fairness in the abstract. The facts are that no one ever witnessed Wayne Williams killing or abducting anyone.

The most important evidence against him was highly technical fiber evidence that only experts could judge. Any jury presented with the huge amount of fiber evidence in the Williams case and the government's experts testifying to its veracity would be likely to give it credence.

Unfortunately, Wayne Williams was his own worst enemy. He never came up with a credible reason for being on the Jackson Parkway bridge in the early hours of the morning and his alibis were easily destroyed, but it didn't mean that he was guilty of murder.

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1. Setting the Stage
2. The Looming Crisis
3. Ominous Beginning
4. Two More Boys
5. End to the Lull
6. Jefferey
7. A Murderous Rampage
8. STOP
9. Ransom
10. Witnesses to Murder
11. The List
12. Making Sense of the Crisis
13. No End In Sight
14. Links
15. A Murderous Change of Pace
16. The Jo-Jo Connection
17. Chaos
18. A Deadly April
19. The Last to Make the List
20. Dettlinger and His Map
21. A Splash From the Bridge
22. Wayne Bertram Williams
23. Up to No Good
24. Building the Case
25. Pulling it Together
26. Gearing Up
27. The Trial
28. Patterns
29. Damaging Testimony
30. Mounting Evidence
31. On the Stand
32. Going Down!
33. Fiber Analysis
34. Under a Microscope
35. Challenging Evidence
36. Probability
37. Reasonable Doubts
38. Unfair Trial?
39. Race War?
40. More Than One
41. A New Investigation in 2005
42. New Chapter 2006 — Ku Klux Klan Connection
43. New Chapter 2006 — The Child Molester Theory
44. Bibliography