wayne said she probably didn t see him come in. prosecutor jack mallard. he was out that night, no question in my mind. he was not at home. he was out and about. less than six hours after henry said he saw williams and cater here, police heard a splash under this bridge. cater s body washed up downstream two days later. 30 years ago, there was no dna testing. now there is. and so new evidence. remember those two human hairs found inside 11-year-old patrick baltazar s shirt? in 2007, the hair fragments were sent to the fbi s dna laboratory in quantico, virginia. the result? the lab said it found this dna sequence in only 29 out of more than 1,100 samples of african-american hairs in its database. less than 3%. most important, wayne williams
but chet dettlinger, an investigator for the defense, said wayne told him long ago this was a lie. he told me he had the car if daddy didn t have the car. but wayne said, i had the vehicle and i didn t want to corrupt the my dad s testimony in the eyes of the jury, so i lied about it and said i didn t have it on the stand. what makes this important is what time robert henry says he saw wayne and nathaniel cater together. it was about 9:15 to 9:30. it was on luckie and forsyth street in downtown atlanta. so at the trial you said that you were in bed until 10:00 p.m. you were so sick that your mother said she had to help lie your body out on the bed you were so sick. this is where the confusion with all of us came in. i got back from hotlanta records probably about 9:00, 9:30. but there s no one to corroborate that, even if his mother were still alive.
what was he like when you met him? a most unlikely killer. yeah? why? because he just didn t appear to be the kind of person that could strangle anyone or have the strength to. to her, wayne williams seemed gentle, child-like. one day i left him in jail. i said, wayne, is there anything i can bring? would you like anything? he said, would you bring me some bubble gum. williams was charged with and tried for only two murders nathaniel cater and jimmy payne, both adults found in the same area of the chattahoochee river. cater s body was nude, but his hair was caked with mud. digging through that silt, i was able to recover dog hair and fibers that were close to his scalp. the dog hair was consistent with sheba, the wayne williams family dog.
the second day after wayne williams was seen on the chattahoochee river bridge, the body of nathaniel cater washed up downstream. he was a down on his luck drunk, 28 years old, but small, weighing under 150 pounds. again, the medical examiner said cater could have been killed, quote, with a choke hold, trapping the neck in the crook of the arm. his would be the last body found in the atlanta murders. the 27th male victim. at cater s funeral, wayne williams father, homer, took this photo for the atlanta world newspaper. on june 3rd, the fbi brought wayne in for a long night of questioning. wayne agreed to a lie detector test. he was as composed and calm as you can get. got 26 bodies out there in the woods and rivers and he s sitting there in total control.
quite simply in our vernacular, a drop shot is a guy who is not worth much of anything. just drop him and shoot him and get him out of the way. in other words, you re useless. we reminded wayne he also called poor black children on the streets the same thing, drop shots. that does not make me a murderer simply because i said somebody was a drop shot or because i called him a drop shot. that does not make wayne williams a murderer because i said somebody is a street urchin. come on, we re talking about murder. the fact is, i didn t kill anybody. the jury didn t come back until late the second evening. the verdict, guilty on both counts of murdering the two adults, cater and payne. wayne williams was sentenced to serve two life terms. people only wanted to look at the negative side because they wanted in their heart for this case to be over and for wayne to