the lieutenant made a big joke out of it and told the rest of the squad that if i went over to the lieutenant s house and cleaned out the lint trap in his dryer we could probably clear out all the cases in the city of atlanta. still, buffington sent the fibers to the state crime laboratory. a young forensic scientist, larry peterson, took a look. so why was the a fiber that was stuck in the crack of a shoe, why was that important? because it was somewhat loosely there. people normally don t have tufts of carpet fibers stuck loosely in their shoe. from those few thin threads, peterson would begin to build a case to try to catch a killer. how many fibers across the board did you look at every day in this case, when the case really started getting busy? 100? 500? 1,000? literally there s going to be hundreds if not thousands of
fibers there, depending upon the case. in the spring of 1980, no one wanted to believe a serial killer was loose in the city even when bob buffington spotted a disturbing pattern. there had been a sharp increase in the number of children under the age of 14 who had been killed. when he told his boss at homicide, the major threatened to transfer him. and i truly think that they were afraid that there would be a panic. it was this mother, after the loss of her 9-year-old son, who finally forced police to listen but not until almost a year after her boy died. camille bell and her children lived in these project apartments, poor to the eye but rich in mind and spirit. yusef bell was an honor student
there is still debate and some doubt. this time you can be the judge and the jury. we ll lay out the evidence on both sides, and you ll hear from wayne williams at length. then we ll invite you to reach your own verdict, guilty, innocent, or a third choice, not proven. the first clue was found on a dead boy s tennis shoes. the victim was eric middlebrooks, his body left here in a rainy alley. a foster child who rode his bicycle away one night on an errand and was dead by dawn. detective bob buffington saw something red stuck to eric s tennis shoe. and i noticed in the flap of the edge of this shoe this tuft of what, to me, appeared to be wool. and that was it. we could find no other evidence. back at homicide, buffington showed the fibers to his superiors.
wanted to believe a serial killer was loose in the city, even when bob buffington spotted a disturbing pattern. there had been a sharp increase in the number of children under the age of 14 who had been killed. when he told his boss at homicide, the major threatened to transfer him. and i truly think that they were afraid that there would be a panic. it was this mother, after the loss of her 9-year-old son, who finally forced police to listen, but not until almost a year after her boy died. camille bell and her children lived in these project apartments. poor to the eye, but rich in mind and spirit. yusef bell was an honor student in the gifted program at school. on a warm october sunday in 1979 he walked away on an errand to
of the squad that if i went over to the lieutenant s house and cleaned out the lint trap in his dryer, we could probably clear out all the cases in the city of atlanta. still, buffington sent the fibers to the state crime laboratory. a young forensic scientists, larry peterson, took a look. why was that a fiber that was stuck in the crack of a shoe, why was that important? because it was somewhat loosely there. people normally don t have tufts of carpet fibers stuck loosely in their shoe. from those few thin threads, peterson would begin to build a case to try to catch a killer. how many fibers across the board did you look at every day in this case, when the case really started getting busy? 100? 500? 1,000? literally there s going to be hundreds if not thousands of fibers there, depending upon the case. in the spring of 1980, no one