Of brown shorts. he got to the store. he bought the snuff. he started back home. less than half a block from this store, yusef 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 yusef 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. camille hid her own fear from her children. and you ve got to hold them
children were dying on the streets of atlanta in the daytime. among them, jefferey mathis, only 10. like yusef 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 jefferey mathis body was found in the woods, miles from his home. his mother would join camille bell in forming a committee to confront the city s leaders. the reaction of the police was that we were overreacting and that there was no serial
in the spring of 1980, no one 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. yusef 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 elderly lady downstairs. he went barefooted in a pair
Know, to buy stuff at the store 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 saw him leave the game. 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, laster would identify wayne williams as the driver. lugene laster pretty much an eyewitness said you gave a ride to jo-jo bell in your station wagon. okay. did you? no, i did not.
Coin laundry operator kill clifford jones. detective welcome harris said the boy was not believable. he exaggerated stuff. he could in other words, he was open to suggestions. and if you said that mickey mouse was up there and if he sensed that you wanted him to say that, he d say yeah. wayne supporters point out the laundry manager failed two police lie detector tests. but few are aware of a third test given by the fbi examiner, richard radcliff. the result in layman s terms, he passed. he wasn t involved in killing jones. only days after wayne williams was convicted of killing two adults, atlanta s police commissioner closed the books on 21 other murder victims, declaring they too were killed by williams. most were children. among them, clifford jones and yusef bell.