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. 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 wanted to believe a serial
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. why was 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
the city announced a $100,000 reward, soon to grow to $500,000. the task force was swamped with sketches of suspects, none of them alike, many suggested by psychics. at the state crime lab, larry peterson was sifting through thousands of fibers, nylon, rayon, acrylic, acetate. is it like looking for a needle in a haystack? like looking for multiple needles in multiple haystacks. then in january of 1981, a breakthrough. peterson realized they were seeing one green carpet fiber with a unique shape. this is a cross-section of the fiber magnified many times. this particular fiber had two very, very large lobes and one short lobe. the lobes are the three ends of the boomerang shape. the shape was the most distinctive part of the fiber. he showed me a slide taken from another carpet.
patrick baltazar, the 20th victim, would be the last child to turn up in a wooded area. a day or two later an official would tell reporters fibers and dog hairs were being collected from the victim s clothing. the next child to die would be found in a river wearing nothing but underpants. fewer clues now for larry peterson. we re talking maybe a dozen or dozens of fibers as opposed to hundreds or potentially a thousand fibers. the 13-year-old victim was found beneath this bridge over the south river in atlanta s suburbs. a driver crossing that bridge earlier in the week saw a man leaning over the railing. it turned out to be the same afternoon jo-jo bell disappeared. at trial, the witness said the man was wayne williams. jo-jo s body would not be found for seven more weeks, until easter sunday.
figure of a young black boy. on the seventh day a maintenance man spotted a body tossed down into the woods behind a parking lot at a suburban office complex. the bank was fairly steep. medical examiner joseph burton had to hold on to a rope to get down to the scene. he had a ligature mark on his neck like if somebody had a ligature and they were behind you or off to the side behind you, and they closed their hands or fists together and pulled the ligature, basically. in other words, killed from behind. most likely, yes. all right. let me place another sample on this side. state crime lab scientist larry peterson attended the autopsy. i can recall at one autopsy pulling a fiber off of one of the victims. it was a green carpet fiber and mounted the sample on the slide, went over and looked under the microscope and it s the same one. you knew right then? knew right then. apparent it s another victim of atlanta s child killer or killers. local television carried