camille hid her own fear from her children. and you ve got to hold them together so you can t act as scared as you are. the body of yusuf bell was found in an abandoned schoolhouse. his body would not turn up for another month. yusuf bell had been strangled. all of the what could have been, should have been and probably would have been was taken away, and we ll never know now, because somebody decided that it was all right to just kill a little kid because they wanted to. for a long time, the 3-year-old would look for yusuf every time it was a foggy day. and we d go out into the fog and she would go as far as she could into the fog. and i d say, come back here. and she d say, i got to go find my brother. and she said, the clouds came down, so yusuf can come down!
wanted to believe a serial killer was loose in the city, even when bob buffington spotted a disturbing pattern. there had been a sharp increase in the number of children under the age of 14 who had been killed. when he told his boss at homicide, the major threatened to transfer him. and i truly think that they were afraid that there would be a panic. it was this mother, after the loss of her 9-year-old son, who finally forced police to listen, but not until almost a year after her boy died. camille bell and her children lived in these project apartments. poor to the eye, but rich in mind and spirit. yusuf bell was an honor student in the gifted program at school. on a warm october sunday in 1979, he walked away on an errand to buy snuff for an
show or get money to you know, to buy stuff at the store or something like that. jo-jo bell, unrelated to yusuf 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, and 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 jo-jo and said he saw him leave the game and he said he 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 that you gave a ride to jo-jo bell in your station wagon. okay.
elderly lady downstairs. he went barefooted in a pair of brown shorts. he got to the store. he bought the snuff. he started back home. less than half a block from this store, yusuf bell stepped off this curb and vanished. and nobody saw anybody do anything or anything. but they did see him come back across the street. and that s the last that we saw him. camille bell called the police. they came and said they d write a report. that s all. days went by. camille waited with two older children and yousef s 3-year-old sister. and so she is terrified. if he can go to the store and they can steal him, then she doesn t want to leave the house. she doesn t want to do anything.
police were still reluctant to listen to camille bell. children were dying on the streets of atlanta in the daytime. among them, jeffrey mathis, only 10. like yusuf bell, he walked down the street on an errand to this gas station to buy cigarettes for his mother. she never saw him again. what we had here was a predator. and what he was looking for was somebody who was cut off from the herd. and if you don t realize you re in trouble until you re in trouble, then you have no way of getting out. it would be another year before jeffrey mathis body was found in the woods, miles from his home. his mother would join camille bell in forming a committee to