Beginning on a Friday night in July 1979, children started disappearing in Atlanta. Before an arrest would be made in the case approximately 31 had been mutilated, sexually abused and murdered. The entire country was wondering "Who is the Atlanta Child Murderer?" Today, they only think they know the answer: Wayne Williams.

Publicly the case was handled by the Special Task Force on Missing and Murdered Children. Secretly, there was a high level secret investigation going on. Each reached very different conclusions and the correct one was very possibly buried to avert a race war between the blacks and whites in Atlanta.

A reliable source contacted the Atlanta police around February, 1981 with information about the string of murders. According to him, 30-year-old Charles Sanders had tried to recruit him into the Ku Klux Klan around 1978 or 1979. Sanders had allegedly told the informant that they were trying to start a race war in Atlanta by killing black children. He wanted help with future murders. At the time, the source thought it was just boasting.

In the summer of 1980, the informant was with Sanders when Lubie Geter accidentally backed his go-cart into Sanders' car. A few months later, the source was with Sanders again when they saw 14-year-old Geter. Sanders swore "I'm gonna kill that black bastard. I'm gonna strangle him with my dick." On January 3, 1981, Geter disappeared. He was strangled to death. Dog hairs, probably from a Siberian Husky, were found on his body. Sanders owned such a dog. Geter had last been seen getting into a car with a tall white man with a jagged scar on his neck. Sanders' father, Carlton, has a jagged scar on the left side of his neck. Carlton Sanders had a record of 35 arrests since 1951 including one for molestation which was later dropped. The secret committee put a phone tap on Sanders' phone.

In March 1981, another source came forward to say that "he liked kids and did not like what the Klan was doing in Atlanta." Then one of the sources met with Sanders' brother, Jerry, and another Klan member. One of them claimed that after they killed 20 black children, the Klan would start killing black women.

On March 2, Jo Jo Bell disappeared. The following evening a phone call was received at the restaurant he worked at. Jo Jo told the assistant manager "This is Jo Jo. They're about to kill me. I'm about dead. They are about to kill be. Jerry, they're about to kill me." The phone went dead.

Late on March 4, a wiretap recorded a phone call of Charles Sanders, who was working on the sale of of M16 rifles and grenades:

On March 14, Jo Jo's best friend, Tim Hill, disappeared. The next night another call arrived at the same restaurant. A woman said that her man was dangerous. She said Jo Jo was different from the other murdered kids because she liked him. She claimed that she was trying to have him released and warned them not to call police or they'd kill him, too. The woman sounded white. Jo Jo and Hill would both be found dead in rivers later.

On April 1, another phone call was recorded between two of the Sanders brothers:

Meanwhile, two Caucasian hairs were found on the underclothes of Charles Stephens, another victim. His body was found in a trailer park which the Sanders brothers visited frequently. The secret investigation then sent agents to gather hair samples from the Sanders dog and from carpet. Nothing seems to have been conclusive about the results, though.

But in Atlanta, things had gotten nastier. A confidential source attended several meetings in which blacks were encouraged to arm themselves. There were even plans forming to bring truckloads of weapons into Atlanta. The police department knew things were about to explode. The secret committee met and decided to end their investigation and seal their findings rather than turn them over to the police. If news leaked out of the Klan's possible involvement, they knew, a war might start in the streets.

Shortly following this, on June 4, Wayne Williams was supposedly spotted on the Chattahoochee River bridge. The bodies of two men, age 21 and 25, were found in or near the river and Williams was charged with their murders. Rug fibers found on the bodies allegedly matched a rug in William's car.

No one seemed to care that these victims were young men in their 20s and not children like the others. The case was rushed thru the system and the judge allowed the prosecution to refer to the deaths of ten Atlanta boys although Williams was not charged in their cases. Even Vice President George Bush, along with Georgia's governor, pressured the prosecutor to move things fast.

The fiber evidence was the main point of the case, which is a rarity. Suddenly the results of the studies on the hair evidence was changed. It was now said that it might match Williams' German shepherd as well as a husky.

Ruth Warren changed her description of the man Lubie Geter was last seen with (the white man with the jagged scar). She now fingered Williams. Darryl Davis testified to having seen Geter and Williams together shortly before the disappearance, too. The prosecution failed to mention that he had earlier said the man with Geter was six feet tall and had a moustache and goatee. Hardly a portrait of Wayne Williams!

Plus, recall that this was not a trial over the murder of Geter. The trial concerned two murders where there were no witnesses, no recovered weapons and no fingerprints. But the judge did allow evidence to be shown linking Williams to 29 murders in which the prosecution had even LESS evidence! Wayne Williams was not told that there were other suspects in the crimes and that there was even greater evidence against them. He was not told about Sanders comments against Geter ("I'm gonna kill that black bastard...") or the Sanders' brothers comments about going out to look for "another little boy." He was not told that five of the victims (including Geter) had known each other and that Sanders could possibly have known them all, too, since he knew one of them.

I remember when Wayne Williams was arrested. There was a relief in the air that a black man was responsible for the deaths. Yes, a series of riots in Atlanta would have been a terrible event, as Los Angeles has proven, but isn't it even more tragic that our basic rights can be taken away so easily? "Who's next?" you'd be wise to ask.

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