Atlanta MonsterPayne explores theories of Klan involvement within the case.
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Thank you for using the curius. You may start the conversation now. One of my attorneys, Lenn Whatley, received a package on his doorstep of his anonymous package. He opened the package and found out that it contained hundreds of GBI files about the classified investigation that the agency had been doing into quite supremacist involvement in the Atlantic killings. It also contained, to our surprise, several tape recorded confessions some of the clansmen. They admitted and they were involved in the murder of some of the miscan murdered cases.
And at another body was discovered today the twenty third.
At Voice Task Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces on the wall, twenty six murdered, one missing.
We do not know the person or persons that are responsible. Therefore, we do not have the money.
From Tenderfoo TV in house TOI forks in Atlanta.
Like eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently.
Was a sphyxia victor.
Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless he keeps on killing.
This is Atlanta monster.
This was the first time Wayne Williams has been photographed since his trial almost two years ago. Jail officials say he has gained forty pounds since he's been behind bars, but he didn't look heavier, just a little older. Sheriff Leroy Stinchcombe allowed him to hold this unusual news conference today because he says he thinks Williams deserves a chance to speak his peace before he has moved from the county jail into the state prison system. And predictably, Williams began by denying he's a child killer.
I have been wrongly accused and connected with the series of peneous crimes, and all I ask is a chance to see justice.
Police officials have insisted that since William's arrest, the murders of young Atlanta blocks have stopped, but william says he has evidence that at least forty murders fitting the pattern of the child murderers have been committed since he's been in jail.
Wayne tried to get his case reopened. If you look at it, if you go back in history, of course, a lot of this is archive. This is long before the Internet, back in nineteen eighty one and eighty two. But if you pull old records. I mean there were people dying well after Wayne got convicted. For Wayne's attorneys, that's a good argument.
Since my risk. Summer nineteen eighty one, the decomposed body of a young teenage black female found strangled on I twenty. Summer of nineteen eighty one, fifteen year old black male found shot on West Lake Avenue in front of home, no further information. Summer of nineteen eighty one, the twenty one year old uncle of murder victim Curtis Walker was found did no further information. As you can see, there are definitely homicided to need to be investigated, and all we're saying is that we want the chance to get in court and deal with this information.
Will Jail officials say there have been threats on William's life almost daily since he's been behind bars. He will probably be moved into the state prison system sometime in January, but Sheriff's Stinchcombe warrens if he is put into the general prison population, he won't last a day. But William says he's not afraid.
I have some reservations about it because it will be a change, as he said of address, but no I don't fear from my life. I just put him a faith in God and trust.
William's attorneys have just two more days to ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to uphold his two murder convictions. If the court denies that request as expected, william says he's prepared to appeal his case all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary. Although today's news conference was greatly anticipated, there were certainly no surprises. Instead, Williams continued to play off the long standing public doubts that the wrong man may be in jail, but once his case is kicked up into the federal courts, the only thing that matters are very complicated legal issues and public doubts, no matter how strong, probably won't do anything to set him free.
That may be right, especially after all these years, the public doubt has persisted. Tyrone Brooks, civil rights advocate and acquaintance of Wayne Williams, started his own petition to reopen the Atlanti Shaw murder cases.
Representative Tyrone Brooks says he is now demanding that all twenty eight murder cases blamed on Wayne Williams be reopened. Brooks claiming several police task Force investigators have long doubted Wayne Williams involvement.
They pretty much were dissatisfied with the way things were going. They did not believe that Wayne Williams was the right suspect. They didn't believe that the investigators were really on the right track, and really that the pressure was coming from Washington, from the Vice President's office down to Governor Busby, through the GBI, through the District Attorney, and on down to the Atlanta Police Bureau.
Pressure to do what, pressure to.
Find somebody, to find a scapegoat.
I mean, you had George Bush coming in and saying, we need these murders solved. The first black mayor of Atlanta, he was under a lot of pressure to get these solved. There were black kids dying in the city of Atlanta. That's not a good look for the first black mayor. You had a lot of pressure from Washington to get this solved. So, I mean, it looks like that's what happened, because you can't go from we don't have enough evidence to prosecute to oh my god, we have all of these patterns and Wayne is our guy.
Brooks alluding to a secret June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one midnight meeting at the Georgia Governor's mansion, a meeting in which Fulton District Attorney Lewis Slayton was reportedly pressured by former Governor Busby to arrest Wayne Williams, despite Slayton's reluctance to do so at the time. Two days later, on June twenty first, Slayton did move against Williams, arresting him at his house.
If the arrest was backed by pressure from higher authorities, what else was in those case files that didn't get enough attention?
One box more than sixty two hundred documents twenty homicide files containing information never before revealed publicly on one of the most explosive criminal cases in the nation's history. The files don't paint a pretty picture. Instead, they sometimes paint the troubled city scape where some of the victims came from. One file explorer's possible ties between a group of homosexuals and three victims. The files revealed that at some points during the investigation, suspects in at least two of the killings had included close relatives. There are mentions of drugs, persons with criminal record surface, often one victim's mother allegedly admitted to investigators she was a prostitute, but most of that had little to do with the end of the investigation that came with a conviction of Wayne Williams in two of the cases.
Oh my god, it was everything but Wayne Williams. I mean, there was so many other suspects in Wayne was not one of them at all.
The newest defense rest and revolves around the murdered case of Lubageta and the supposed involvement of some unnamed members of the q Klux Klan. The new appeal resting as it does on the Lubijita case and the Klan involvement may be too fragile.
Well, there was always speculation even before Wayne got arrested about some clan involvement.
I do believe that there's an element of the Ku Kluk Klan embedded in the law enforcement community and still is today. I do believe that wiping out young black men was a part of the overall legitimate to weaken the black community.
The KKK. When you were a kid, that's what we talked about, I mean, because it was strange for me. I mean when we were in middle school. You know, they still burned cross on Stone Mount. I mean that was the rallying point for the KKK. I mean it was just our ways to things.
That you know that you heard.
So there were a lot of theories right that people developed that because they were all black, because they were mostly male, this is you know, this was a KKK conspiracy.
Some people in the black community thought it was the Ku Klux Klan that was grabbing these black boys. That whole theory around it being the clan came up because people in the black community did not believe a black person would do that to another black person, particularly a black child.
How do you feel about the people who think that the clan is involved in the Atlanta chap murders.
That was a joke. That was an absolute joke. The Klan number one is not smart enough to commit twenty five perfect crimes. Number two. If they did do it, they were taking an ad out in the newspaper. They were toothless. But again, the Bureau insisted on keeping watch on them, so we just had informants monitor them meetings, make sure nobody was going to do anything crazy plans just not smart enough. A bunch of rednecks who hate blacks and they weren't bright enough to commit this crime, and if they did, they would have taken out an ad in the paper. Plus, how do you go into a black neighborhood dressed in a hood.
The Klan wanted to take credit for it. I mean, they're racist. It would have been a feather in their hat if as group they could have said, yeah, we killed twenty eight kids and got bye with it. But they couldn't find anybody that would say, yes, I did it, and they didn't know enough of the facts to convince anybody.
That they did it.
There was a guy named Charles Sanders who was known to be a clan member. I think his brother or uncle was pretty high up in the Klan at that time, and there was speculation, there was talks that he was the one that actually killed Louby Jeter.
For years, selling things on streets and in shopping centers has been a prime way for children to earn extra money. Fourteen year old Chuck Jeter was no exception.
We didn't see any pattern. We didn't see anything, and then January third, after we came back, Louby Jeter happened.
On January third, he went to the Stuart Lakewood mall in southeast Atlanta to sell cans of zep Gel, a cardiotorizer.
Luby.
Jeter was fifteen years old. He was selling zepp products at a outdoor mall in down in Southwest at once Sat. The afternoon he disappeared. So they organized a search on the ninth of January, and I remember a cold, rainy Friday, and they told us APD told us it gave us various areas in the city areas they thought that a body might be dumped.
Investigators were literally beating the bushes looking for any trace of fourteen year old Chuck Jeter. Trained dogs sniffed the area around the mall today but turned up nothing. This weekend, volunteer searchers will be on the lookout for Jeter, but police say so far they're stumped.
The roll call was impressive. Officers from the SWAT Team, the Task Force, the Motorcycle Squad were here, so were recruits who have yet seen much action. Even agents from both the federal and Georgia Bureaus of Investigation were helping out. This was the first ever massive search conducted by the Atlanta Police Bureau. The more than two hundred officers would look for anything that could help find fourteen year old Luby Jeter.
My partner and I were walking up and down the side of that road trying to see if we can find any evidence, with no hope of finding anything. And I looked down in the creek and I said, there's a pair of jeans. The creek was overflowing its banks. He held my arms while I leaned over into that creek. Found those jeans and Louby's school schedules in the back pocket the pants. We took the pants and the belt, and one of the females in the family, I remember she identified the belt as being his because he was in such a state of deterioration that I did and identify him was.
Kind of hard.
I remember driving out there. The agent that had his case assigned was Frank Pickets. Heck of a guy. He's still around, hell of a man. And he came out of that woods with tears in his eyes. He was crying.
Looby Jeter just broke my heart. Outstanding kid, I mean, just a phenomenal kid.
Landover Road was still blocked off this morning. Only a few people could venture near the site where Jeter's body was found. Dozens of Atlanta, police and FBI agents gathered.
At the site.
The discovery of Jeter's body here now lends weight to the theory that one person could be responsible for several of the murders. The way Jeter died by strangulation fits into a pattern. Three of Atlanta's other murdered children died the same way. Two others died by suffocation. His discovery yesterday fits into another pattern. Location. Within the last year and a half, six children black males between the ages of seven and fifteen have all been found within a five mile radius.
Either the pattern doesn't exist, there is no pattern, or we got a much bigger problem. There was an independent witness that said, this guy, Charles Sanders, said he killed Louby Jeter. What is your evidence to say Wayne killed Loubis Jeter. They have none.
Wayne Williams is being represented in this healing for a new trial by his former attorney, Lynn Watley and two of his country's most prominent attorneys, Bobby Lee Cook of Somerville, Georgia, and William Kuntler of New York.
We were at Avieu's Corpus court in Butts County.
The defense is trying to show that the police were investigating that the Ku Klux Klan may have been responsible for some of the child murders, but that that file was never turned over to help with Williams's defense.
Apparently, what we found out after we got in the Avieu's corpus court and the source source within the GBS, was that they had a confidential informan I believe his name Whittaker.
The first witness today, Billy Joe Whittaker, says he worked as a police informant during the missing and murdered investigation.
Whittaker says he told police.
Detectives that a klansman from Mountain View, Charles Sanders, told Whittaker he killed.
One of the child victims, Louby Jeter.
And we were able to contact Whittaker and he did appear in court and testify under old force stating that one of the families I believe they were mounted viuekbas Panders families was indeed responsible for that. When I told you that, I believe Charles Sanders the clok clerk Kilder this one.
Jail Robby Lee Cook and William Huntlers say they have a letter from Atlanta Police Major Herman Griner. They called Sanders the klansmen, the prime suspect in the murders four months before Wayne Williams was arrested in charge with two of the murderers.
In nineteen ninety one, Wayne's attorneys called for a court hearing were police informant Billy Joe Whittaker testified for Wayne Williams. This man, Billy Joe Whittaker, was in jail during the early eighties, but when he heard that Louby Jeter had become one of the victims, he contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Whittaker stated that a man named Charles Sanders made threats against Louby Jeter's life. Whittaker claimed he wore recording equipment, went to Sanders home and got him to admit to the child's murder. If that was true, then Wayne Williams was not responsible for Luby Jeter's death.
It definitely makes you question. Okay, first, not enough evidence to convict Wayne. Now there's these tapes from this clans member which is mind boggling, and I've actually heard in.
The way chap recordings at all, and they talk about openly and brazenly about saying, yes, I killed a little black be yes, I'm going to black black black with him, and we went to court trying to get this in but however, the court in Budson County Block just refused it and they put the tape recordings under seal and not Judge Craggs Court. And we attempted to bring this up at Feneral Higgs Quarters Court and that was where the issues started the appeal. So we've been trying for decades to getting this information out because the GBI did not want it out because they issued in one of the documents that the statement saying that they were fred and prop Releasing this information was got a race war in Atlanta.
As in certain county District Attorney Joe J. Lay prosecuted Wayne Williams.
He says he was never told about the plan file.
Do you think you should have known about it?
Not? Particularly, It wasn't right about at the time.
The GBI had it, The police department had it, two prosecutors had it, two judges had it.
If Lewis Slayton didn't have it, means he didn't want it.
After Whitaker testified, Williams was still not granted a retrial. The strangest part is that now the tapes are nowhere to be found.
So this was information that the TBI had, but like I say, they kept it suppressed because they weren't a piece of worried about a racial war instead of trying to solve the killing in Atlanta.
You didn't want a race war in nineteen eighty one or eighty two.
You just didn't.
I mean, we weren't that far removed from the civil rights. You had your first black mayor, You had all of these elected officials because of the mayor that were black. So it wouldn't look good for the city at all. I liken it to Rodney King when those officers got off, look what happened in that city. And then I likened it to O. J. Simpson. Now say what you want, I believe the evidence should it was that OJ killed Ron and the colet, But there was talks in the city. Well, if he's convicted, there's gonna be riots, It's gonna be a whole racial thing. If you look at that case, that was right down the middle, black and white. You know, had OJ been convicted, we would have saw another nineteen ninety two Rodney King. I think that would have happened here in Atlanta back in nineteen eighty one eighty two. If it would have been a klansman, there's no doubt, no doubt in my mind.
We are saying, you know that the white suspects declared was responsible to allow them, but we know that they were responsible for this particular group of killers.
Here.
We had a confidential informant that was black Eyed Canton. We had a GVI source I can't reveal his name. The agent then enough to box some lens George Stiff Litterally, it had several real real Kate recorders of wire gather jail as doctuments on their on their file stared to widecat disappers admitted to killing the movie cheter had been involved in several of the other cases. And we've got that all white.
When you have a name like Charles Sanders and you have a witness who knew Charles saying that yes, Charles is the one that said he killed Luby Jeter. Way back when there were secret recordings, there was some incident supposedly around the Star Wars theater where Luby Jeter hit his car with like a shopping car to a go cart.
Apparently there was a go cart accident in which he collided with Sandra's car according to the information we had, and that Sanders made a thread against him that he was killing and he reiterates the threat in the Wildcat that we heard. I'm para raised him down to the visit my rememory. He said, I basically, yeah, I killed a little black beat black, black black Jim. And then he said, yeah, I'm going to get sport.
And he had made the comment he was going to kill that little black kid for hitting his car and he was going to strangle him to death, and of course that's how Luby Jeter was killed.
In nineteen eighty six, Spin magazine published an article titled A Question of Justice. The article's authors, Barry Michael Cooper and Robert Keating, raised doubt about way William's guilt and brought the idea of the KKK involvement to mainstream news. It was a hugely popular article, and really it was the first time the Atlanta child murders KKK theory was given any legitimate credence by the media.
It's from a publication, so of course people can argue that it was slantt you know, argue that it's fake news. That's the new term nowadays. But what's interesting is not only is it in the Spin article, but the FBI talks about these recordings. Yeah, so I don't think the tapes were made up. I definitely don't think the transcripts were made up.
I asked Vincent what Charles Sanders said in those transcripts that alluded to him being the Atlanta child murderer killing more than one person.
In one of those conversations, there was talk, and I believe it came from Charles Sanders that he was going to go out and drive around and look for another black kid, another victim.
If this was true, then why wasn't this a bigger deal? From all the records I've seen, that's the closest to a confession that law enforcement ever had.
Time affects any investigation or any case, because you know, memories get skewed and a lot of stuff gets lost or destroyed. You know a lot of people along the way pass away, like Charles Sanders is no longer here, so we could never go back and question him. Here we are thirty plus years removed, and time actually allows any false narrative to become true, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah, there were a bunch of kids that died and this guy did it. That's the narrative. Pretty much everyone knows. That's the narrative that they know, but they don't know the ins and outs of Well, this person could have been a suspect. This person, this person, this person, you know, they just know Wayne Williams, you know, which they were deep into a lot of people, right They were deep into the guy in the Blue Nova. They were deep into the Sanders, they were deep into the Klan. They could have known that they were plotting something that the public wasn't privy to. You know, if you look at some of these terror groups that are investigated now that you hear about later the FBI says, oh, we halted a terror threat because we are investigating you know, this person, which no one heard about besides Charles Sanders, who admitted to killing Louis Jeter.
What started as a joke one hundred years ago when a group of men donned bed sheets for a romp, has over the years attracted to it persons charged with acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence throughout the South. Even though the nation has been outraged for many years, the Ku Klux Klan persists with its bizarre ritual and trappings, but one hundred years is a long time for a joke.
I talked to Felix Harcourt, author of the book Ku Klux Culture, for some more historical background on the KKK.
The Ku Klux Klan effectively operates as a white supremacist terrorist organization founded after the Civil War, during what we commonly refer to as the Reconstruction period. It's founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, and it's not super popular to start with. It lies fairly fallow through the First World War. If you're looking at the Reconstruction Clan, they stand for white supremacy and the maintenance of white power. If you're looking at the Civil Rights era, they largely are standing for the same thing. If you're looking at the twenties, they achieve this much much larger success in the twenties because they effectively diversify their hatreds. They say, hey, you know, if you hate African Americans, we are there for you. But also if you hate Catholics, we.
Are there for you.
If you hate Jewish immigrants, we are there for you. If you hate immigrants of all kinds. We are there for you. If you're worried about prohibition, we're there for you. By the time you get to the Clan of the late seventies early eighties, the Klan is all in on immigration and our staging stunts on the Mexican border. So there is this kind of this fundamental racist tenet and then these variations over time as to what draws people to the clan and what people see the clan standing for. To some extent, the Clan of the eighties sets the model for what we see with white supremacists now, particularly through what David Duke does. David Duke really comes out in the late seventies and tries to remake the public image of the clan to some extent, and effectively, what he tries to do is bureaucratize hate. It's a methodology that we're seeing being used to great effect by the alt right now. And David Duke is really astute at using the media to get this message out, saying that there is a new Clan, whatever that may mean, and in doing so effectively spearheads a clan revival in the late seventies early eighties. And this doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is a big upsweep in white supremacism in the late seventies early eighties in the United States, and so you do see a very active and very visible white supremacist movement on the March by the early eighties. I will say that certainly that is a period when we are seeing a rise in clan activity, and it's a period in which we are seeing an uptick in white supremacist activity. More generally, all clan members are white supremacists, not all white supremacists are clan members, and so we have always seen significant white supremacist activity that fundamentally is not linked to the clan as an organization. Most of the anti civil rights violence is being carried out not by clan members but by average white supremacists, if that's a term we can use, and to some extent, that's what we see today. The clan as an organization is weak, it is diffuse. Still, there is no single clan. There are all these individual organizations kind of battling for the title of who is the legitimate clan, But they are part of a much broader tapestry of white supremacism that we can see operating very clearly. I think white supremacists have always been ordinary people. That doesn't mean that we should normalize them. It means that we should look at ourselves and say, what is it that is giving cover to these people to exist within our society and to exist very comfortably within that society. Just because they are dapper, that word that kept getting tagged to Richard Spencer, doesn't mean that they are not still subscribers to a hateful ideology of racism and white supremacism. The fact that the clan is on the rise in the late seventies early eighties, the fact that racial violence is on the rise to the extent that congressional hearings are being held into anti black violence at the time, and the fact that Atlanta holds this significant position within the history of the clan makes it understandable why someone would link these child murders to clan members. It is an entirely reasonable assumption to believe that white supremacist violence is touching your community in this way.
In the eyes of Vincent, it was nearly impossible that there was only one killer involved. Of course, there is a pattern, but according to Vincent, it doesn't match up in each and every case.
Where was this Atlanta monster that everyone was so in fear of for two years? There were several monsters. All of these victims, they had different suspects other than Wayne Williams, other than Wayne Williams. So there, Yeah, there were several monsters, but there wasn't just one monster going around killing these kids. Is there a conspiracy going on here? You have to You can't not question that, you know, So.
Is there a conspiracy at play here? The term conspiracy tends to immediately incite ridicule. Many people will equate conspiracy with total fantasy, unbelievable stories to explain away historical events.
A conspiracy theory and a nactual conspiracy are two very different things nowadays.
To gain some perspective, I talked to one of the guys from How Stuff Works, who has his own podcast on this very topic.
My name is Ben Bollen, and along with my co host Matt Frederick and Noel Brown, I produce and host a podcasts called Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, which applies critical thinking to what we would call conspiracy theories. So government cover ups, unsolved crimes, various allegations of that sort. So are you a conspiracy theorist, I would say, I find them interesting, but the term gets kind of problematic. So a conspiracy at its most basic level is a situation where in two or more people or entities work together to deceive or manipulate a third party.
When I even hear the word conspiracy theory, I'm already tuning out, and I wanted to talk to you about just sort of the origin of conspiracy theories to begin with. Obviously there are some true ones, right, I mean, where did this all come from?
So what tends to happen when people hear a phraser term, especially the the phrase of the term conspiracy theory is, as you said, kind of shut out and sort of the idea that, oh, okay, anything that happens after I hear this phrase is going to be utter hogwash. Interestingly enough, the reason that's the case in the United States today is because shortly after the jfk assassination, most Americans did not believe the official government explanation, and so intelligence agencies spread memos to newspapers media outlets of the time saying this is what happened. The Russian government is attempting to spread propaganda. So if you hear anything else other than this official story, be sure to dismiss it and call it a quote conspiracy theory. We do know that certain things that were once considered conspiracy theories are true. It did turn out that banks were laundering money for international drug cartels, and it turns out that it is somewhat disingenuous to group that kind of phenomenon along with CIA drug spunkling in the same bucket as the idea that what the British Royal family is a bunch of evil, half alien lizard people. You know, those are both called conspiracy theories, but they're very different, and there's one incredibly important difference, and that's that the first stuff is true. The second stuff, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say is not true.
I asked Ben to outline the most prevalent conspiracy theories for the Atlanta child murders case.
One would be the idea that law enforcement did not have a clue who the real killer was and they wanted to close the cases, so they pinned them, or they pen many of these child murders on Wayne Williams in court just to get them off the books. Another would be the idea that there was some sort of clandestine sex trafficking ring at play, and that again law enforcement for some reason or another assisted in covering up this information and keeping it from the public. And then the third idea would be that the KKK or other white supremacist groups were committing the murders with either tacit assistance or approval by sympathetic law enforcement officers. A great deal of it does come from the conversations relayed by Sanders, and in the excellent Spin article from the time, there's some top notch journalistic investigation. They had one of the journalists who I think broke the first Spin story on crack cocaine, who was writing this and exploring this angle, and they had an informant named b. J. Jones that they thought was a solid guy who came to them and said that there was proof that the KKK, specifically the Sanders, and possibly not just this individual, but members of his family or his close associates were involved in these murders with the goal of killing one black child a month or something of that nature. And there's a further aspect here that we have to remember, and that's the context or the cultural ecosystem in which this occurs. Distrust of a largely white police force is already incredibly high. If there were a doomsday clock for race relations in Atlanta at this time, it would be about three minutes to midnight.
The only publication that pushed this out there was the Spin story, and you can't go find these original recordings, but these guys at Spin were able to get their hands on some transcripts. But besides that, there's nothing out there that publicly exists that says Charles Sanders was a part of the Atlanta child murners.
Yeah, and that's one of the frightening, tantalizing, and I would say a base frustrate things for anyone investigating this. We're really in a situation where and if we want to prove or disprove this sort of connection, we would need someone to go speak directly to a primary source to.
Get to the bottom of this theory. I would have to find someone who is close to Charles Sanders, still alive and also willing to talk. It seemed pretty unlikely, but after weeks of searching, I got a strange email that led me to one of Sanders's old friends.
I don't want to tell anything because my wife right now, as you're a nervous we've been through this before my name was put out there and it was a scary ordeal. Family spent a few weeks in a hotel just out of being scared. And I don't know you from Adam. It's a story that I've held home to for a long time that I've known about. I don't know how you want to go about this pain.
You can always come here to the office that we have at part rather or not.
I first met him back in nineteen eighty. We would hang out and sit around and shoot the shit and drink beers and smoke pot and you know, after working hours and whatnot. Him and his brothers were in the KKK. When I met him up here in this sleep little town I live in, he was not involved. He had gotten out. He was a nice guy, good old Redeck had a few teeth missing, you know, had a beard and a small stature, and you know, you wouldn't think here in this little sleepy town anything different that he was any kind of a monster. He certainly didn't act like it until we drank and then he got the eyes of Charles Manson that would look right through deil. It was scary. It was real scary. It scared all of us. But it wasn't that often. He stopped in one day with this copy of Spin magazine. He had that look in his eyes. He obviously had been drinking some hard liquor. He said, I got something for y'all to take a look at. And you know, we didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Pulled out the magazine and we started reading. It was jaw dropping. Somebody asked him if it's real and if the article was true. He told us it was. He said it was, it was true. He told us about certain situations that where was he The FBI or the ATF would come in and read their house in the middle of the night and shake him down. They were come in. I remember him talking about them coming in all the time and trying to shake him down and try to find some kind of evidence. And I remember Charles saying that he was lucky because his carpet matched Wang Williams carpet and as well as the white German shepherd Hares match. He owned a white German shepherd. Wang Williams also owned a white German shepherd It just so happens that the person Wang Williams that they penned all these murders on had so many similarities with the Sanders as far as the dog and the carpet.
Here.
Again, I haven't read the Spin magazine since the eighties, but I remember situation Charles told us about. They were hanging outside his home and there was a black kid on a go cart. He accidentally ran into their car. They didn't appreciate that. They were pissed, which get to this Cheeter I believe that's his name, and I remember him saying, we got him, we took care of him. He told me they got him, they got the boy for doing that. I don't remember him ever saying that KKK was involved with this. I only remember him talking about him and his brothers being involved in this, So I don't know to what extent the brothers were involved. I do you know they had a cash of weapons because they were expecting a huge revolution to come out of this. And he basically told us that he did it and everything that's being magazine was true. I don't know. I don't really know why he decided to come out to us and tell us that he trusted us, I guess, but it certainly blew us away. But he really never went into any details of any of the other killings besides the fact that there were other killings that him and his brothers did. And what kind victims were they They were black children, they were children, they were of adults, they were children. I don't know what was on their mind, if they were going to commit genocide in Atlanta and try to do away with you, or if he was trying to cause a race a race riot of some sort. I know that's why they had that cash weapons, was because they expected some type of a race riot.
Who do you think is responsible for the Alanche Homers?
Well, I know who's responsible for some of them, you know, and Wayne Williams may be responsible for some as well. He let it be known that it was Spin Magazine was right on that they took care of those boys.
You know.
Everybody then was hoping it wasn't a white guy or the KKK because they didn't want a race riot to take place in Atlanta. And I believe they geared their investigation towards Gwyn Williams, and once they found out he had possibly killed some of the adults, it was easy pickings to throw all the other children on him too. Did you ever consider going to the police with this information back then? No, No, I was too scared. No, I wouldn't have gone to the.
Police back then.
Can you tell me about why you were scared? Scared from alife? I mean, I scared for my life, and at that time I had had a wife. Didn't have a daughter then, but I had a wife. And you know, I saw that look in his eyes when he was crazy. I believe he could have done anything anything. I did. Go god By m a rural black guy that used to do TV connotations and in Atlanta. He did a gig on the missing and murdered children of Atlanta one time, and I called in and told him what I knew, and he knew about the Sanders brothers. But my my name was brought up, and that scared me. I never spoke to anybody after that. And that was in nineteen ninety four. So once I found out that my name had brought up, we moved into a hotel for a couple of weeks. Stay clear of you know of anything. I believe. Not only was my name brought up, my town was brought up who did you fear? In particular Sanders brothers, And I don't know how many of them there are, there's like four or five.
You them.
I feared them more than anything else. I feared them, you know. For some reason, I'm thinking that these acts of murder were perpetrated by the Sanders brothers, not necessarily by the KKKA. To my knowledge, there was no other members. There was no other people involved with the murders except of Sanders brothers and in them alone. I never heard him talking about the KKK being necessarily involved with the murders. It was always him and his brothers.
You know.
Uh, the wrong's been done that needs to be righted. But I'm still the aera of of anybody who was involved with the Sanders. Obviously, I know what they can do. Once it was panned on Wayne Williams, they were thrilled. That was their way out. He it was being pinned on him, and that was their way out.
What do you think should happen now?
I don't know, you know, I really don't know. I don't know. I don't know where it should go from here. I know that there were some wrongs that should probably be righted. Charles is dead, he's gone. There's family still suffering, you know, and there's families that I think Wayne Williams did it, and there's others that think he didn't do it all. And I can't tell you he didn't do it all. I know who killed those kids, and I'm sorry that I did not come come forth sooner, but I felt my life was in danger as well. But justice has not been served. If it would have been my daughter, I would want the truth reveal. Can't change the past, but at least it would answer questions. You had children that were brutally murdered for no reason, completely innocent children. And if indeed you think it was somebody other than Wane Williams, you're most definitely correct. You know, anybody out there he thinks that Wayne Williams didn't do all this by himself is correct. This wasn't all on him. And I only know that from the mouth of the devil himself.
Next time on Atlanta Monster, The Clayton.
County woman and her husband were driving on this narrow cemetery road when they saw a green car coming straight at them at a high rate of speed.
The driver was tall, and he's light colored, A light colored black man and he had on a wig. I know it was a wig because he was losing it because it was a child in the front struggling. He was struggling with that child.
You're sure you saw a child.
In the criss Yes, I saw it because it was just back and forth like that and like that was trying to hold hang on to that child. It was a boy between ages of the bat ten and twelve, and he had a short haircut.
You think you could identify these two and the one with the.
Week handle glasses, I could identify.
The Atlanta Child murders is one of the largest and most complex cases in US history. As a team, we've spent months digging through police records, court documents, and media archives. Through all this research, we've uncovered stories you've never heard before, and next week we're going to dig deeper into some of these stories. Atlanta Monster is an investigative podcast told week by week, with new episodes every Friday. A joint production between How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film and Videotape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries For the latest updates, please visit atlantamonster dot com or follow us on social media. One last thing, We've set up an Atlanta Monster tip line. Anyone with information, leads, or personal accounts pertaining to the Atlanta child murders can call us and leave a message. The number is one eight three three two eight five six sixty sixty seven. Again, that's one eight three three two eight five six six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.
Let's bring it to a human level here in the United States. The first conspiracy that many people encounter occurs when they're kids. It's the story of Santa Claus. And you can't really blame people for being distrustful of authority after that. I mean, it's a conspiracy that everyone participates in. Oh and I should have put a warning in there for parents, But Santa is real.
