Controversy
Williams's guilt has been disputed by some. Others, most notably the author James Baldwin in his essay The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), have raised questions about the investigation and trial of Williams. Some people in his community, and several of the victims' parents, did not believe that Williams, the son of two professional teachers, could have killed so many. On May 6, 2005, the DeKalb County Police Chief Louis Graham ordered the reopening of the murder cases of four boys killed in that county between February and May 1981, which had been attributed to Williams. The reopening of the investigation was welcomed by some relatives of victims, who believe the wrong man was blamed for the bulk of the killings and they hoped a new police investigation will uncover the real killer.
DeKalb County Police Chief Louis Graham, formerly an assistant police chief in neighboring Fulton County at the time of the killings, said his decision to reopen the cases was driven solely by his belief in the innocence of Williams. Also former DeKalb County Sheriff, Sidney Dorsey, spoke out stating he believed, Williams was wrongly blamed for the murders, elaborating that "if they arrested a white guy, there would have been riots across the U.S". Dorsey was an Atlanta homicide detective at the time of the Atlanta child killings. Both men investigated the Atlanta child murders in the early 1980s and have also previously spoken out publicly of their belief of Williams' innocence.
However, the legal authorities in the neighboring Fulton County, where the majority of the murders occurred, have not moved to reopen any of the cases under their jurisdictions. Williams has always vehemently denied the charges, however it is common for prison inmates to deny they did anything wrong.
On August 6, 2005, it was revealed that Charles T. Sanders, a white supremacist affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, who had been investigated for a role in the Atlanta child killings, once praised the crimes in secretly recorded conversations. Although Sanders did not claim responsibility for any of the deaths, Williams' lawyers believed the evidence would help their bid for a new trial. Sanders told an informant for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the 1981 recording that the killer had "wiped out a thousand future generations of niggers." Police dropped the probe into the KKK's possible involvement after seven weeks, when Sanders and two of his brothers passed lie detector tests. The case was once again closed on July 21, 2006.
Former FBI profiler, John E. Douglas, wrote in his book Mindhunter, that while he believes that Williams committed many of the murders, he doesn't think that he committed all of them. Douglas added that he believes that law enforcement authorities have some idea of who the other killers are, and that "It isn't a single offender and the truth isn't pleasant."
Read more about this topic: Wayne Williams
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