Chapter Two
During the seven months leading up to the arrest, unaware I had actually met the man the manhunt was for, I feverishly followed every step of the investigation––all the media coverage, every report of a missing child, every discovery of another dead body.
Dad fed me what information his friend on the task force was feeding him, and I ate it like a crazed starved thing.
All through the Christmas season, I observed and obsessed, studied and stewed, but no children disappeared and no other bodies were discovered in December.
The holiday break ended and I returned to school.
Then Lubie Geter went missing on January 3rd.
He was last seen at the Stewart-Lakewood Shopping Center selling Zep Gel car deodorizers outside the Big Star Food Store. He was wearing a purple coat, a green shirt, blue jeans, and brown loafers.
From the moment I heard he was missing until his body was discovered on February 5th, I vividly imagined the horrors he was subjected to and then pictured his lifeless brown body decaying in the woods of Decatur every time I closed my eyes.
While Geter’s family and the nation waited for news of his fate, a friend of his, Terry Pue, disappeared on January 22nd. When I heard this I lost even the tiny broken fragment of hope I had that Lubie might still be alive.
Terry Pue was last seen spending the night in a fast food restaurant on Memorial Drive and trading bottles for money at a nearby shopping center.
The next day, his body was found off Sigman Road in Rockdale County. He had abrasions on his elbows and bruises on his head and died of asphyxiation by ligature strangulation.
On February 5th, Lubie Geter’s body was found by a dog off Vandiver Road. He was wearing only his white jockey shorts. His Levi’s blue jeans and brown belt were found a short distance away inside a brown paper bag three feet deep in a creek. He died of asphyxiation by manual strangulation and his body had been mutilated by animals.
During this time, I was living an uneventful small-town life. School. Basketball. Birthday parties. Sleepovers. Chores. TV. All the while preoccupied by Atlanta, the slaughter of the susceptible, the woeful wails of the inconsolable, the citywide search for a seemingly supernatural serial killer.
Mom and Dad argued about how much he should share with me about the case. Mom and Dad argued about everything.
The world kept spinning and Atlanta’s children kept disappearing. And dying. Two in February. Two more in March.
So much death. So much decay. So much despair.
And then it stopped. Or seemed to.
On May 22nd at three o’clock in the morning, Wayne Williams was pulled over by an Atlanta police patrol car and a second unmarked car with federal agents in it. This was after his 1970 Chevrolet station wagon was spotted turning around and driving back across the James Jackson Parkway/South Cobb Drive bridge immediately following an officer staked-out beneath the bridge hearing a loud splash in the water of the Chattahoochee River.
Later that same day, Williams was questioned by FBI agents at his parents’ home where he lived.
Two days later, on May 24th, the naked body of Nathaniel Cater was found floating downriver just a few miles from the bridge.
On June 3rd, Wayne Williams was questioned again by FBI agents at their headquarters about discrepancies in his statements. He was also administered a polygraph examination that showed he was being deceptive. Later that same day, his home and vehicle were searched.
On June 4th, Williams called a press conference, addressing what was happening and answering questions from the media.
When I saw him on TV, I told my family about what had happened in the Omni arcade back in November.
“Are you sure?” Mom had asked.
Dad nodded his certainty and support. “You realize,” he said, “you may have very well saved that little boy’s life––him or another kid he could’ve picked up there that day.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“Do I need to give a statement?” I asked Dad.
“I don’t want him involved,” Mom said.
“I’m already involved.”
“I doubt it’ll be necessary,” Dad said, “but I’ll call Frank and ask him.”
Late that night I found my dad dozing in front of the TV and gave him a handwritten statement I had worked all evening on.
“I’ll get it to the task force,” he said.
I nodded and turned to walk out of the room.
“Proud of you,” he said, squinting at the sheet of notebook paper I had just given him.
On June 21st, Wayne Williams was arrested.
That evening I was reading in my room when Nancy’s best friend and my secret crush, Anna, had come in.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
I dropped the book onto the nightstand and sat up, making room for her on the bed beside me.
I had fallen in love with Anna when she wasn’t looking.
She hadn’t been looking, but I had. I had watched her closely, studied her carefully, seen what no one else had, what no one else could have.
As her best friend’s younger brother I had been in the utterly unique position to see her soul.
I said I had fallen in love with Anna but that’s not right.
I hadn’t fallen in love with her at all. I had grown to love her. Or rather love had grown in me for her, while observing her during a million different unguarded moments––moments in which her kindness and goodness, her fierceness and ferocity, her wit and wisdom, had been made manifest.
“Nancy told me what happened to you in Atlanta,” she said. “I’m so glad nothing bad happened to you.”
“Thanks.”
She was wearing the green ribbon I had given her. It was a sign of solidarity with the children of Atlanta. People all across the nation were wearing them––including Robert De Niro when he had won his Best Actor Oscar for Raging Bull a few months back––but we were the only two people in Pottersville wearing them and it meant more to me than she would ever know.
“How’re you feeling?”
I shrugged.
The truth was I was feeling everything––excited, relieved, scared, confused, disappointed, unsatisfied.
“I still can’t believe you saw him,” she said. “Stood up to him. Looked him in the face and . . . your dad’s right. You saved someone’s life.”
I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything, just looked at how beautiful she was.
“I’m just so relieved,” she said. “So glad you didn’t get hurt. But I’m also so proud of you. Standing up to him like that. You’re . . . just . . . so . . . Do you mind if I hug you?”
I didn’t. Just the opposite, in fact, but she didn’t wait to hear it from me.
Suddenly, I was being hugged by the girl I most wanted to be hugged by in all the world.
I could feel the heat emanating from my skin.
She held me for a long time, her developed body pressing into mine, our cheeks touching, her hair falling onto my face.
She smelled and felt even better than all my imagining told me she would.
In a little while, when she had let go of me and life wasn’t as rich, as sweet, as good as it had been a few moments before, she said, “It’s hard to believe he killed nearly thirty people.”
“He didn’t,” I said with the conviction and certainty of a child. “He didn’t even kill most of ’em.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said. “It’ll be a while before we know. Hell, we may never know, but I’ll bet you a . . . another hug . . . that he did as few as ten and at most maybe thirteen or fourteen.”
“You don’t have to wait that long for another hug,” she said. “And you don’t have to bet me for it. I’ll give you another anytime you like.”
“Then how about a kiss,” I said.
She smiled and blushed a little herself.
“It’s a bet,” she said. “Now let’s hug on it.�
�
We hugged again.
“I’m so glad you’re in the world, John Jordan. The world needs you. So glad.”
I hugged her harder.
She had no idea of the effect of those words on me or how for the rest of my life they would ring in my ears as I recalled this moment over and over and over again.
“Wait,” she said, pulling back. “Who killed all those other people?”
“I have no idea,” I said, “but I intend to find out.”
Chapter Three
In one of the greatest ironies in criminal history, the Atlanta Child Murderer wasn’t arrested, charged with, or tried for killing a single child.
Wayne Williams was indicted and tried for killing Nathaniel Cater, the twenty-seven-year-old victim pulled from the river two days after Williams had been stopped near the James Jackson bridge, and Jimmy Ray Payne, a twenty-one-year-old young man who went missing on April 22nd after leaving home en route to the Omni. He was found five days later on April 27th, his body pulled from the Chattahoochee River two hundred yards south of the I-285 bridge.
No one––not Wayne Williams, not anyone––was ever charged with the murder of any children.
Not a single one.
This bothered me more than anything else, except the fact that they were killed in the first place.
My frustration and obsession and anger and confusion continued, intensified.
So much was happening, both in my small world and in the wide world beyond it––I became a teenager, my parents split up and eventually divorced, Anna got a boyfriend and broke my heart, Mom’s drinking increased, I had a spiritual awakening, Bob Marley died, the CDC reported five cases of homosexual men with weakened immune systems, Charles and Diana had a wedding in front of the whole world––but all of it, everything happening everywhere, dimmed a bit, receded into the background, overwhelmed by the foreground light of the case against Williams and the trial intending to bring him to some sort of justice.
Jury selection started on December 8, 1981. After six days, the twelve people––eight black and four white––selected and charged with delivering a verdict consisted of nine women and three men.
“He’s not even being tried for a single child’s death,” I said to Dad.
I had just come in from basketball practice and found him watching the news coverage of the case.
I was sore from the brawl-like scrimmage I had just participated in. I was raw-bone weary from not sleeping and the mental, emotional, and psychological fatigue that resulted from obsessing over Wayne Williams and what was happening in Atlanta.
“I know, but––”
“It’s not right.”
I was supposed to be at home by now. Mom was expecting me for dinner, but my new routine was to have Coach drop me at Dad’s after practice to talk to him about the case before walking the mile or so to Mom’s.
When the coverage concluded, Dad asked me to step over to the TV and turn down the sound.
I did.
Dad’s new bachelor pad had very little furniture, but he did have a brand new big television hooked up to cable, which had only recently arrived in Pottersville.
“Some of them will be admitted as evidence,” he said.
“Whatta you mean?”
“Prosecutor will introduce them as pattern cases to show Williams had a pattern.”
In fact, ten pattern cases were ultimately used––more than any other case before or since.
“But if they’re part of the pattern and are going to be used, why not charge him with them too?”
“It’s a strategy,” he said. “That’s all. Frank says the prosecutor’s trial plan is built around what happened on the James Jackson Bridge on May 22nd because he can actually place Williams at the scene. And he’s got an eyewitness who says he saw Williams holding hands with Cater earlier that night. He’s using Jimmy Ray Payne because he can tie him to the same location. If he overcharges and brings in all the others, he runs the risk of them being insufficient in law to sustain a conviction. By doing it this way he can still use some of the others to prove identity, bent of mind, knowledge, intent, course of contact—things like that. He wants to get a conviction the surest way possible. And he doesn’t want to overwhelm or confuse the jury. Williams only has one life to serve.”
I shook my head.
His phone rang.
“That’ll be your mom looking for you,” he said. “Better get goin’. Need to get out of those wet clothes anyway. I’m sure she’s got supper ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’re things at home?”
I shrugged.
“She drinkin’?” he asked.
“She breathin’?” I said.
“Hey,” he said. “I know it’s . . . I know it’s not easy sometimes . . . but always show respect to your mother.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And as far as Williams goes . . . He’s guilty and they’re gonna get him. Don’t forget that’s what matters most.”
“But––”
“Remember, there are no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses who ever saw Williams hurt or kill anyone. It’s a circumstantial case.”
The case primarily rested on transfer or trace evidence––carpet fibers and dog hairs found on the victims, hairs and fibers allegedly from Williams’s environment, his home and car––proving contact between the victims and Williams.
“It’s a thin case,” I said. “They’ve got Williams on the bridge. They’ve got fibers and dog hairs. What else have they got?”
“You don’t think he’s the killer?”
“I think it’s a thin case,” I said. “And yeah, I think he’s a killer. I even think he killed a few of the ones he’s supposed to have.”
Chapter Four
The trial began on January 6, 1982.
It was presided over by Clarence Cooper, the first black judge elected to the Fulton County bench and a former assistant district attorney. The most active member of the prosecutorial team was Jack Mallard, whose nickname was Blood because of the way he went for the jugular. The defense attorney was Mary Welcome, a popular black lawyer and a former Atlanta city solicitor.
For the prosecution it was a splash in the river beneath a bridge, a suspicious station wagon above, a young man out at three in the morning with a dubious story, eyewitnesses connecting that young man with the victims, a pudgy, bespectacled, frustrated homosexual Jekyll and Hyde, carpet fibers and dog hairs, ten uncharged pattern cases.
For the defense it was the wrong man––a good, gentle, soft, weak, harmless guy––refuting witnesses, calling into question evidence, an upstate New York hospital pathologist specializing in pediatrics contradicting autopsy results, a weather service hydrologist claiming Cater’s body would not have ended up where it did had it been dropped from the James Jackson Parkway Bridge, and of course, Wayne Bertram Williams himself, confidently spouting protestations, proclaiming his innocence––a witness for the defense who may have done far more for the prosecution.
The pattern cases became the key factor for evidence to be used by the state against Williams, especially when linking similar fibers. By themselves the Cater and Payne cases were extremely weak, but by introducing evidence from each of the ten pattern cases, the prosecution was able to enter eyewitnesses and fiber connections among many of the victims.
The ten pattern cases used were Alfred Evans, Eric Middlebrooks, Charles Stephens, William Barrett, Terry Pue, John Porter, Lubie Geter, Joseph Bell, Patrick Baltazar, and Larry Rogers.
The characteristics of the pattern cases were that the victims were black males, street hustlers, from poor families, no evidence of forced abduction, from broken homes, no apparent motives for their disappearances, killed by asphyxiation by strangulation. None of them owned a car, their bodies were found near expressway ramps or major arteries and transported before or after death, they were all missing clothing when found, and they all had similar fibers found on them.
The prosecution called a successful black businessman, Eustis Blakely, and his wife because they were friends with Williams. They were asked if they knew Williams to lie and exaggerate. Blakely testified Williams had told him that he flew fighter jets at Dobbins Air Force base––something Blakely knew to be a lie because of how bad Williams’s eyesight was.
Far more incriminating was the testimony of Blakely’s wife. She had asked Williams after he had become a suspect if the police got enough evidence on him would he confess before he got hurt. He told her he would. She also testified that Williams told her he could knock out black street kids in a few minutes by putting his hands on their necks.
When cross-examined, the defense attorney asked if she was implying Williams had killed someone. She answered that she was, that she was sorry but she really did believe that he had.
Lugene Laster testified that he saw Jo-Jo Bell get into a Chevrolet station wagon driven by a man he identified as Williams. Robert Henry, who knew Cater, testified he saw Cater and Williams holding hands the evening of the bridge incident. A couple of youths claimed Williams made sexual advances toward them and a fifteen-year-old said Williams paid him two dollars to let him fondle his genitals.
Two other witnesses, a nightclub owner and a recreational director, discredited Williams’s statements that earlier in the evening on the night of the May 22nd bridge incident he was picking up a tape recorder and playing basketball.
The defense put a number of witnesses on the stand to rebut what prosecution witnesses had said about Williams’s behavior or where he was at a particular time. They even had a college student who had been recruited by Williams for a singing job testify that Williams disliked homosexuals and expected his clients to have high standards and morals, and a woman who claimed to having had what she called normal sex with Williams.
To refute time of death in the Nathaniel Cater case, the defense brought in its own expert who lost credibility when he testified that Cater had been in the water for at least two weeks––far less time than he had even been missing.
Others were called. No one was particularly helpful or even effective.
INNOCENT BLOOD: a John Jordan Mystery Book 7 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 2