Atlanta police to team with lab to review child murder cases
ATLANTA — A Utah lab known for work with aged DNA evidence will soon examine materials from the decades-old Atlanta child murders cases.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the development this week on Twitter, more than two years after she announced that investigators would review evidence in hopes that advances in technology could bring closure to cases that have haunted the city. Between 1979 and 1981, nearly 30 Black children and young adults were abducted and killed around the city.
Wayne Williams, then a young Black freelance photographer, is serving life at Telfair State Prison for the murders of two adults and has long been accused — but not charged — by some authorities of committing all the murders. Doubt lingers in the community and in victims’ families.
“It is my sincere hope that there will be concrete answers for the families,” the mayor tweeted Monday, not naming the lab.
The Atlanta Police Department, which like the mayor’s office has released scant information about the review in the last two years, confirmed the testing.
“We identified a private lab in Salt Lake City, Utah, that specializes in analyzing deteriorated DNA,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday. “As with all murder cases, our investigators dedicate countless hours of time and energy to successfully solve cases and bring some sense of closure to victims’ relatives.”
Investigators are hand delivering evidence to the lab this week, police said, adding that no further details would be released.
News of the testing comes after the mayor announced in July that investigators had recently “methodically reviewed” about 40% of evidence from the cases. She declined to give specifics, saying she didn’t want to compromise the investigation.
For Bottoms, the child murders are close to home. She recalls living through the terrifying chapter in Atlanta’s history as a 9-year-old.
She announced the renewed investigation in 2019 at a news conference attended by loved ones of some victims and a few detectives who had worked the cases. Bottoms said the point wasn’t to undermine the original investigation. Instead, the fresh look at the case was meant to assure the families that “we have done all that we can do to make sure their memories are not forgotten and, in the truest sense of the word, to let the world know that Black lives do matter.”
When the murders shook the city, DNA testing, as well as other advanced testing, wasn’t an option because the technology wasn’t there yet. DNA testing wouldn’t become ubiquitous in criminal investigations until the late 1990s.
Since then, technology has improved dramatically, allowing scientists to extract DNA samples from very old evidence. “There’s been DNA obtained from mummies from thousands of years ago,” said John Butler, a DNA expert at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Doubts about the child murders cases have been persistent through the years largely because authorities closed some cases without bringing charges. In 1987, Lewis Slaton, the Fulton County district attorney, declined demands by relatives of 13 victims to either charge Williams or reopen the cases. Slaton said he didn’t have enough evidence for convictions, though he believed Williams was guilty.
Catherine Leach-Bell, who has never believed Williams killed her son Curtis Walker, 13, has praised the mayor for reopening the cases.
“I am so happy to hear what I heard today,” Leach-Bell said during the 2019 news conference. “It’s brought a little comfort in my heart. I have been let down for many, many, many, many, many, many, many years.”
Leach-Bell, along with Curtis’ brother, couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.
Danny Agan, a retired Atlanta police detective who stood behind the mayor during her 2019 announcement, said he still sees no problem with going back and reexamining the cases, though he doesn’t expect it to change much.
“My feeling from the beginning was regardless of how much in depth reinvestigation they do, the results aren’t going to change: You’re still going to end up with Wayne Williams a convicted murderer,” Agan said Tuesday.
Agan said evidence and witness testimony convinces him that Williams killed nearly all the children. Agan said he knows of no evidence to suggest Williams killed Darron Glass, 11, who was never found after disappearing in 1980. Agan also doesn’t think Williams is a good suspect for the deaths of Angel Lanier, 12, LaTonya Wilson, 7. Unlike the boys, who went missing from public places, the girls were taken from their homes.