during the trial, medical examiner robert stivers told the jury there had been very few strangulations of black males in the years before these murders began, and none at all with bodies left in rivers or by the 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
these fibers? the chances would be just astronomical. this witness, robert henry, did place williams with the very last victim, nathaniel cater. henry worked with cater. he said he saw him leave this theater with wayne williams on the night of the bridge incident. henry has no doubt even today about what he saw. they were holding hands, you know, like male and female. well, if you re holding hands with one of my co-workers and both of you are males what am i supposed to do turn my head? the next time i saw him, he was in the courtroom. when wayne williams took the stand, he swore he never met nathaniel cater. on the evening henry said he saw them, wayne testified he was home, sick and asleep in bed. his mother and father, now deceased, backed him up. homer williams said he had the white station wagon until almost midnight.
shorts, fibers consistent with the blanket under wayne s bed. i personally took the cutting from the yellow blanket that was under the bed. this evidence slide contains the yellow blanket fibers that dedman clipped that night, magnified by our own video camera. but when larry peterson had returned that june for a second search a couple weeks later there was no yellow blanket to be found that i could find. there are a lot of things in your case that disappeared. a lot of disappearances. yellow blanket. yes. disappeared. in the first place, there was never a yellow blanket. there were fibers of a yellow blanket.
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. richard radcliff was the fbi polygraph examiner. i said i don t care what you threw in the bridge, i don t care what you threw in the water, you won t defy this test. he said what he would ask. did you kill him that night that you were on the bridge and did you throw nathaniel cater into the river? when i ran that test, i was like, wow, this is it. wayne williams flunked all
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 be the atlanta monster. they wanted closure at any cost. leaving court, homer williams walked by the prosecutor s table. he looked at us and called us sons-of-bitches. still to come, no verdict in the deaths of any of the children. even if it takes 30 trials, i don t care, you know. prove it. [vet] two yearly physicals down.