It began in the summer of 1979 when Atlanta, Georgia, police discovered the decomposing bodies of two boys, aged thirteen and fourteen, less than fifty feet from one another in a small wodded area of the dity. Nobody could predict that by the time the killings had stopped and a suspect was in custody, the "Atlanta Child Murders" would snowball into a political and investigative nightmare that still persists to this day.

The killings of young black children, mostly males, almost immediately became a nationwide media frenzy as Atlanta police struggled to keep up with an ever-mounting number of victims. Adding to the confusion were doubts about the links between many of the killings. The children had not all been killed in the same manner, though police felt certain that the ones slain by strangulation were definitely related. Also, a small minority of people would not let go of their certainly that a white man or the KKK might be responsible, a rather flimsy premise that nonetheless gathered steam as the investigation faltered.

With over twenty-five children dead or missing by May of 1981, police finally caught a break. On the 22nd of that month, a patrolman staking out a section of the Chattahoochie River, where many recent victims had turned up, heard a splash directly underneath a nearby bridge. A man named Wayne Williams, a local 23 year-old black musician, was driving the only car on the bridge at the time and was pulled over and questioned, but released. When the body of Nathaniel Cater was pulled from the Chattahoochie near the same bridge two days later, Williams was put under surveillance and eventually arrested for Cater's slaying on June 21. Forensic evidence had linked Williams with a dozen of the child murders.

Though suspected in most or all of the child murders, Williams was tried in only Cater's killing and the homocide of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne, who's body was found in the Chattahoochie not far from the site where Cater was later discovered. The evidence was mostly circumstantial in both cases, but forensically compelling and when Williams, confronted on the stand by a prosecutor, slipped up and answered "No" when asked if he panicked while killing his victims, the case was essentially over. He was convicted of both killings on February 27, 1982, and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

Controversy continues to rage in the Atlanta Child Murders case, however. A group, featuring some victims' parents, refuse to believe the mild-mannered Williams is responsible for any of the killings, and some still cling to their suspicionsof KKK involvement in the string of murders. FBI profiler John Douglas, who worked the series almost from the beginning, doubts Williams committed all, or perhaps even most, of the slayings, but believes evidence points to Williams in at least eleven child killings. He also claims that authorities have a good idea who committed many of the remaining homocides, though it is very unlikely that mysterious suspect will ever be identified.

Regardless, Wayne Williams' arrest brought an sudden halt to the string of sad killings in Atlanta, and doubtlessly jailed a dangerous murderer no matter how many the exact number of his victims may be. Williams continues to deny his guilt to this day and will likely never confess to the gruesome Atlanta Child Murders.