Reader Blind: A number of decades ago, there was a series of horrific serial crimes committed in this large American city.

Someone was eventually arrested and found guilty of some of the crimes but even the prosecution acknowledges that it would have been physically impossible for him to have done it all.

The case has been reopened a couple times through the years and is currently reopened now. There are those (including the convicted criminal who maintains his innocence) who insist that race played a part in all of this.

As part of the investigation of a much discussed much televised event that occurred earlier this year, a search warrant was issued for someone who lives in the same city.

Evidence was found connecting him and others to this other case.

This involves a lot of potential defendants.

There will likely be an announcement on this before year’s end.

Atlanta Child Murders

Atlanta

Wayne Williams

Retired deputy chief says Wayne Williams is guilty as decades-old DNA is retested

This week the Atlanta Police Department hand-delivered more than 40-year-old evidence from the Atlanta child murders cases to a private lab in Utah specializing in analyzing deteriorated DNA.

That technology for DNA testing was not available in 1982—when a jury found 23-year-old Wayne Williams guilty of two of the killings. But to this day, some remain skeptical that Williams was responsible for all the deaths of dozens of Black children across Atlanta.

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was nine years old when the first child went missing in 1979. In 2019, Bottoms announced the reexamination of DNA evidence in the cases and told WABE that she “wanted the families to know that we care—that their children still matter. As we wait for the outcome of the evidence testing, it is my hope that we can bring some sense of peace to so many of the families still searching for answers.”

Lou Arcangeli is a retired Atlanta Police Department deputy chief who worked to solve the crimes. He says he wants the same closure for families who lost a child. – Source

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