Atlanta

Lawyer: Reopening Atlanta child murder case won't link his client to more crimes

ATLANTA — Atlanta's decision to reopen the notorious child murders case has sparked renewed interest in the decades-old murder spree and debate about whether new tests will reveal new evidence.

At least 31 African-Americans were killed -- most of them children -- between 1979 and 1981. Atlanta native Wayne Williams was convicted in the deaths of two adults and linked to the deaths of at least 22 of the children, but has never been tried in their deaths.

On Friday, an attorney for Wayne Williams said he doesn't think a new look at the evidence will link his client to more crimes.

Channel 2's Kristen Holloway was at our sister station V103 Friday morning as host Frank Ski talked to Lynn Whatley, Williams' lawyer.

"If the city and the GBI are going to retest evidence, they need a third party," Whatley said. "Their hands are not clean. I'm not convinced this case based on political reasoning supercedes justice."

Holloway spoke to Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who maintains that reopening the case is important to the city. She hopes new DNA evidence could shed new light on one of the darkest periods in the city's history.

"I remember my grandmother, my paternal grandma, calling my mother and begging her to send me to Chicago to live because they were killing black children in Atlanta," Bottoms told Holloway.

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Bottoms and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced Thursday that the city is initiating a new push to re-examine evidence in the case to try to bring closure to the families of the victims.

"I think it's important for families to know that we continue to remember these children and we continue to do all we can to provide them with closure," Bottoms said. "These children still matter. They mattered in 1979 - 1981, and they still matter to us in 2019."

The youngest victim in the killing spree was a 7-year-old girl taken from her home. Her body wasn't found until four months later, and police never figured out how she died. Most of the victims were strangled, police said.

Williams was arrested after police heard the splash of a body hitting the Chattahoochee River in 1981 and they were able to link him to the crime.

Cox Media Group

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