fear in atlanta. as fbi chief, john glover had moved into this upper class white neighborhood, his 12-year-old son was playing outside one afternoon. some guy in a pickup truck he was out in the yard in our side yard. we were on a corner. we had a corner lot, you know. he said, i m going to get you, nigger, as he was driving by. kasim reed, seen in these childhood photos, was only 10 when the first two bodies were found in the woods close to his home in the summer of 1979. my life did change. how so? not out as late as you used to be. not able to ride your bike unaccompanied. in 2010, reed would become the mayor of atlanta. but back then, as the youngest boy in his family, his teenage brothers were his protectors. and i didn t move without my brothers for about a year.
there s yet another twist in the missing and murdered children case. atlanta is a city of frustrations and fears. as the number of missing and murdered children grow. the body was indeed another victim of atlanta s child killer or killers. patrick baltazar was a kid who was convinced he could catch a killer. he was like, i want to find this killer and get the reward money, and i m going to buy my mom a house and i m going to do this. and i m going to find this killer. his stepmother, sheila baltazar, was worried. for a 10-, 11-year-old child to be talking like that, that was just like, wow, where is his mind at? patrick was a latchkey child living unsupervised with an older brother in a project
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. it had floated far down the south river, almost into another county. he also had nothing on but underwear basically. medical examiner joseph burton went out in a boat to retrieve the boy. we ve got the body wrapped in a sheet. i m the one with the shirt off. dr. burton ruled both jo-jo and the other boy found in the river had been asphyxiated. we didn t have any history of either one of these boys swimming in the south river in their underwear. other bodies were now washing up in the chattahoochee river to the west and the north of atlanta. five victims in that river in the next six weeks. i said, you know, if i was doing that, i d be throwing them
we literally would walk through wooded areas chaperoned and we would walk for a period of time until about an hour before nightfall. but now a new twist in the murders. 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.
ah, now you re talking. now peterson knew what to look for. when i was looking at the fiber at first, i had no idea who had made it. i just knew it was very distinctive and i would recognize it instantly. but he didn t know where to find it. wayne williams was not yet on anyone s radar. he had freelanced as a tv cameraman who shot fires and overnight news. he told us you know, i know the streets of atlanta. i ve been around a while. being an ex-news reporter and all, nighttime is me. that s the time i m out most of the time. now almost 23, a wannabe music producer, he was trying to form a singing group modeled after the jackson 5. in fact, the afternoon lubie geter disappeared williams says this receipt shows he had an alibi, auditioning young singers from 4:30 to 8:30 that evening. the studio was a small demo studio.