roadside since that night wayne williams was stopped leaving this bridge. they were convinced that the crimes had stopped because wayne had been arrested. and i think what happened is people stopped looking and stopped counting. murders have continued in atlanta. shootings of black men, stabbings of black women. but not strangulations like before, not black youth dumped far from where they were killed. detective welcome harris would stay on the police force another 25 years. we asked him how many more children were killed the way they were in the 80s. none that i can recall. none that i can recall. wayne williams appeals would drag on for years. he almost won the first one. georgia supreme court justice george smith helped a colleague write a ruling that would have reversed the verdict. he would have found the evidence didn t support a conviction. that s what he did find originally. but the five other justices
or something like that. jo-jo bell, unrelated to yusef bell, came by cap n peg s one last time. around 3:30, 4:00 monday he came by and stuck his head in the door. said, richard, i m going to shoot basketballs, i ll see you later. throwed his hand up, went on up the street. to a school yard basketball court like this. this witness, lugene laster, knew him and said he saw him and left in a station wagon that looked like this. lester testified he got in the car, got in wayne s car. in court lester would identify wayne williams as the driver. lugene laster pretty much an eye witness said you gave a ride to jo-jo bell in your station wagon.
no apparent motive. now, remember, you re the jury guilty, innocent or not proven. this time the verdict s yours. mary welcome was wayne williams defense attorney. good morning. good morning. how are you? this was her first murder trial. 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
the building, trying to get a scoop on the suspect? and he said, no, that s my son. i thought, oh, geez. homer told him. they detained him and impounded my car for littering. they detained him for littering is what he said. i said that doesn t he said at night. i said littering? he said, yeah, he was driving over this bridge and stopped to throw some garbage and they rushed him and stopped him. at that point i said, homer, i don t think you need to talk to me anymore. we asked wayne williams about throwing garbage off the bridge. he denied his father ever said that. your father said you stopped to get rid of some trash. no, he my father never said that. i never said that and my father never said it. while father and son were inside the fbi, evidence technicians were combing the williams home. the fbi s top fiber expert, harold dedman, led the search. in wayne s bedroom he took
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. in cater s hair was one of those unusual green carpet fibers. under a microscope, peterson could see the boomerang shape just like those in the williams family carpet. this is a piece of that actual carpet which the fbi s harold dedman said was quite rare. it s got an unusual carpet fiber. it was manufactured for a limited amount of time. it was a ten-year-old carpet. on jimmy payne, the other victim, dedman found yellow rayon fibers stuck to his cotton shorts, fibers consistent with the blanket under wayne s bed. i personally took the cutting from the yellow blanket that was under the bed.