Is Wayne Williams one of the most evil men to have ever walked the earth, or are the Atlanta child murders the cause of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the judicial history of the United States? It is a tough question, and one to which we are even further from answering today than we were back in the early 1980s. That was the time when Williams was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. It also marked the closure of the files on at least twenty-nine, arguably unsolved, homicides. Of these crimes twenty-two, incredibly, were against children. Two girls and twenty boys. Can it be imagined that if these children were white, and middle class, their cases would have been so readily abandoned?
Many-and the numbers are increasing-argue that these crimes are shrouded under the fug of racial prejudice, of political cover-up, of fear about what might emerge. They were blanketed away quickly before they could spark even more racial unrest in the southern city. Before riots and demonstrations might ensue, and vigilante groups attempt to do the police's job for them. It seems painfully ironic that the two deaths for which Wayne Williams was ultimately convicted were from the small group of adult victims.
And, we say 'murderer'; there is plenty of doubt about whether the use of the singular noun is correct. Was Williams really the culprit in all of these cases?
