The Atlanta Child Murders

Wayne Williams, born on May 27, 1958, was the only child of schoolteachers Homer and Faye Williams. The Williams family lived in Dixie Hills, a neighborhood where many of Atlantas murder victims had once lived or from where they had disappeared.

His parents doted on him and spent every cent they had supporting his entrepreneurial ventures. From a young age, Williams dreamed of making it big in the broadcasting and entertainment industry. A talented and motivated young man, Williams began his own radio station at the age of sixteen from his parents home. He graduated from Fredrick Douglas High School with an honors degree and attended Georgia State University for one year before dropping out. In his late teens he worked for a popular radio station and appeared in [Jet] magazine along with his employer, Benjamin Hooks, an influential black leader at the time who eventually headed the NAACP. Williams spent much of his time marketing his own station and promoting local musical talent, performing odd jobs to fund his ideas and experimenting with electronics, which was his hobby.

Williams had also sold video footage and photographs of area accidents, such as fires, car accidents and even one plane crash, to local television stations to earn money. He would hear about many of the accidents from his police radio scanner, which allowed him to make it to scenes of accidents sometimes before the police had even arrived.

His dream was to find the next Jackson Five or Stevie Wonder and ride that talent to fame and wealth as their promoter and manager.  He spent much of his time talent scouting among black youth and recording the works of the boys he believed had promise.  Unfortunately, he did not have the ear to select musicians with enough talent to make it commercially.  Nonetheless, he continued to spend his parents into bankruptcy creating expensive demo recordings of boys with mediocre abilities.

Wayne was known around town as a pathological liar and a bullshitter, suggesting that he had major record deals cooking and knew the right people to make it big.

Socially, Wayne lived with his parents and had few friends.  Bernard Headley tells of an interesting aspect of Wayne's life that is typical behavior of serial killers: "He had acquired, for instance, an uncanny ability to impersonate a police officer. The practice got him into trouble back in 1976, when he was arrested in the city (but never convicted) for "impersonating a police officer and unauthorized use of a vehicle."  The vehicle had been illegally equipped with red lights beneath the grille and flashing blue dashboard lights.

There were rumors that he was homosexual, but nothing to substantiate them.

Dettlinger says that in the days immediately following the event on the bridge, Wayne and his father "did a major cleanup job around their house.  They carried out boxes and carted them off in the station wagon. They burned negatives and photographic prints in the outdoor grill.