Atlanta child murders

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Official victims

Ed Smith

Alfred Evans

Milton Harvey

Yussef Bell

Angel Lenair

Jefferey Mathis

Eric Middlebrooks

Christopher Richardson

LaTonya Wilson

Aaron Wyche

Anthony Carter

Earl Terrell

Clifford Jones

Darron Glass

Charles Stephens

Aaron Jackson

Patrick Rogers

Lubie Geter

Terry Pue

Patrick Baltazar

Curtis Walker

Joseph Bell

Timothy Hill

Larry Rogers

Eddie Duncan

Michael McIntosh

Jimmy Payne

William Barrett

Nathaniel Cater

Excluded victims

Timeline

Early murders

Federal involvement

Williams located

Trial of Williams

Subsequent investigations

Investigators

Atlanta police

  • Lee P. Brown: Public Safety Commissioner of Atlanta (1978-1982) who oversaw the investigation
  • ...

Federal

George H.W. Bush showed up in Atlanta at one point to manage the investigation, telling local authorities that if they couldn't handle the case, the FBI could step in. After the phone call claiming that Earl Terrell was in Alabama, the FBI did enter into the case. The agents who were involved included:

  • John Douglas: Profiler who insisted that a black serial killer was responsible
  • ...

Perpetrators

Wayne Williams

Main article: Wayne Williams

Child sex ring

Numerous murder victims were known to be involved in child prostitution. A lot of the murdered children had sexual encounters with adults, and in some cases were last seen near or with these pedophiles. None of the pedophiles who got identified were seriously considered as suspects in the murders. Astoundingly, some of them even admitted to having sex with children but were never charged. Other murder victims were adults who appear to have been in the business of procuring children as prostitutes for other men. Why these children and adults were murdered is often unclear, but their shared involvement with a pedophile underground suggests their deaths were somehow tied to this loosely-knit network of predators. The fact that the pedophilia aspect of this case was suppressed indicates that the Atlanta political establishment was protecting this underground ring. It is quite plausible that Atlanta political and business elites partook in sex with many of the children involved in this pedophile underworld, necessitating a cover-up of the true circumstances behind the murders. Some of the murders themselves, particularly of the adults, may have even been "cleanup" operations to prevent the exposure of this network.

A pedophile ring run by John David Wilcoxen was linked to Earl Terrell, Darron Glass, Lubie Geter, and perhaps others. Two of the other members were Frank Hardy and Lionel St. Louis. Police dismissed the men as suspects despite witnesses who confirmed that the aforementioned children had been associated with these pedophiles. It was claimed that the child pornography seized from Wilcoxen (who was white) only contained photos of white children, but multiple police officers insisted they had seen photos of black children as well, which later vanished.

Clifford Jones was evidently raped shortly before his murder. Three witnesses at a laundromat saw the manager James Brooks strangle, beat, and dispose of Jones. One of them, who the police dismissed as "retarded", witnessed Brooks and two other men anally rape Jones before strangling him with a yellow rope, washing his body with soap and a rag, and re-dressing it. Two other witnesses saw a black man carry a large item out to beside the dumpster while wearing a hooded robe, and another witness claimed that he had seen the robe at Brooks' house, where Brooks had previously taken Jones and another man. According to CORE public information officer Al Starkes, the laundromat managed by Brooks was known to be a location for homosexual encounters.

Timothy Hill was connected to multiple pedophiles who were acquainted with each other. A family member saw him leave his backyard and get in a taxi, where a man put mud on his face. Hill was known to frequent the house of Thomas Terrell, nicknamed "Uncle Tom", who admitted to having sexual encounters with Hill and owned a drug that looked like mud. Frankie Mealing said that he had sex with Hill and another boy at a house owned by Terrell, and they subsequently went to Terrell's house next door, where Hill subsequently returned and asked to stay the night. According to Mealing, at least 10 victims on the official list had been to one of Terrell's houses. Mealing's roommate was a man named Larry Marshall, real name Larry Hill, and one 15-year-old witness acquainted with Yussef Bell said that Marshall took him and Hill out for sexual encounters. Marshall later left for Connecticut, where Atlanta police ultimately extradited him from on robbery charges. In police custody, he claimed that Hill had delivered a note to him from "Rev. E.C." telling him to leave Atlanta. Marshall tried to arrange for witness protection.

It is quite likely that Wayne Williams, while not directly involved in the murders, did play a role in the Atlanta pedophile underground. He passed himself off as a music promoter looking for talented youth, indicating that he might have been involved in recruiting children for pedophiles. Williams was also an amateur photographer, taking after his father Homer Williams, a professional photographer. Shortly after the alleged bridge incident, Williams and his father were observed burning photographic negatives and prints on the outdoor grill. Though unproven, a logical inference to draw is that these photos were child pornography.

Ku Klux Klan

Satanic cult

In April 1981, Miami cocktail waitress Shirley McGill claimed that the murders were committed by a Satanic cult run by a former boyfriend of hers. This boyfriend, identified as Parnell Traham (which may be a pseudonym), was a Vietnam veteran who subsequently became involved in the drug trade. He started a drug trafficking operation that would transport drugs from Miami to cities like Atlanta and Houston (both cities, coincidentally enough, in which Lee Brown was the top law enforcement official during his career). This operation evolved into a Satanic cult involved in ritual sacrifices and child abuse as well as "business murders" for profit purposes. McGill claims that she worked as a bookkeeper for the drug operations but avoided the more brutal Satanic activities. She also identified Wayne Williams as a photographer involved in making snuff films of rituals, but not somebody who partook in the rituals himself.

[Criticism of McGill as not being credible]

A couple months before McGill came forward, there was a bizarre discovery which also hinted at Satanic involvement in the murders. On January 3, 1981, acting on an anonymous tip, searchers discovered an abandoned house in the Adamsville area of southwest Atlanta that had once been an abandoned church. Two rooms inside the house smelled like decaying flesh, which one searcher compared to the odor of LaTonya Wilson's body. Inside the house were children's shoes and clothing, axes and shovels, as well as two Bibles nailed to the wall, both open to passages on murder and children. One Bible passage talked about children dying "grievous deaths" and not being "buried" but lying "as dung upon the face of the earth" with "their carcasses" as "meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth". Some wondered if this was a parallel to how all of the previous victims of the Atlanta child murders had been found out in the open rather than being buried. Another item found in the house was a letter from a woman to the house's resident, telling him that he was sick and a pervert. David Westbrook, the owner of the house, said that he had rented it out some time ago but the tenant abruptly vacated, leaving his possessions behind in the house. Neighbors reported having seen a black man and a black child use the house two months earlier.[1]

McGill's allegations are also bolstered by the links between the cult perpetrators she names and the well-substantiated pedophile underground that formed the backdrop for many of the murders. According to McGill, Traham (who was black) delivered some of the children to white men where they were eventually killed, suggesting he had a role as a supplier of children for abuse purposes. Annie Hill, the mother of Timothy Hill, recognized Traham from a photograph as having been in her neighborhood multiple times, walking up the street and visiting the local boys club.[2] Interesting enough, Traham was a taxi driver and Timothy Hill was last seen getting into a taxi. Also in the taxi was a man who rubbed mud on hill's face, most likely adult pedophile Thomas Terrell. McGill also identified Larry Marshall, another pedophile connected to Terrell, as someone who knew Traham. Altogether, it appears that Traham was acquainted with the local pedophiles who were linked to the murdered children just before their deaths. The Satanic cult allegations by McGill fit into the facts of what is already known about the murders.

US intelligence

Rumors circulated through Atlanta during the time of the killings that the FBI and CIA were involved. With drugs and pedophilia forming the backdrop of the murders, and a purported Satanic cult that integrates both aspects, there are indeed fingerprints of intelligence. A couple people with proven or suspected links to US intelligence have strange connections to the Atlanta child murders.

Wayne Williams claimed in a 1992 journal entry that he had been trained to kill by the CIA at age 18 or 19 just after graduating high school. This training took place at a camp just outside of Atlanta under the supervision of a former World War II spy. Mitch WerBell III, an OSS operative with a subsequent career as a mercenary linked to right-wing causes, fits that description perfectly. He ran a paramilitary training camp in Powder Springs under the purview of the Cobray company known as "The Farm". What is curious about WerBell is that he was a supporter of the Lyndon LaRouche movement, which was the most influential promoter of the Satanism allegations by Shirley McGill. So it is quite possible that one of the allegations -- a Satanic cult run by Parnell Traham or Williams being trained by WerBell -- is a piece of disinformation meant to distract from the other.

John Ramsey, the father of murdered 6-year-old girl JonBenet Ramsey, was a former US Navy officer who lived in Atlanta at the time of the murders. He joined the Navy in 1966 just after finishing college, served in the Philippines for 3 years, then served in an Atlanta reserve unit for 8 years before retiring, about 2 years before the child murders started. Ramsey continued living in the Atlanta area until 1991, when he moved to Boulder CO to manage Access Graphics, formed out of a merger involving one of the companies he had founded 2 years prior. The Boulder police chief at the time, who later resigned in the midst of the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation, was Tom Koby, previously second-in-command of the Houston police under none other than former Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner Lee P. Brown. Some Boulder police detectives criticized the upper-level leadership of the Boulder Police Department as being too friendly to the Ramseys. John Douglas, the famous FBI profiler who promoted the dubious idea of a single black serial killer being responsible for the Atlanta child murders, was hired by the Ramsey defense team to implausibly absolve them of all blame in their daughter's murder. Obviously, there is no evidence that John Ramsey had any role in the Atlanta child murders, but the coincidental linkages between him and the Atlanta killings coupled with the indications of pedophilia in the Ramsey case are eerie.

References

  1. ↑ UPI, "Eerie, abandoned house may furnish link to identity of Atlanta child-killer", 1981/01/05 (pages 1 OCR)
  2. ↑ CBS broadcast on 1981/04/23 about the cult story promoted by Roy Innis

External links

  • Chapter 21 ("Atlanta") in Programmed to Kill
  • "Atlanta's Missing & Murdered" website
  • Crime Library, "The Atlanta Child Murders" by Marilyn Bardsley and Rachael Bell: chapters 1, ..., 6, ..., 20, 21, ... 42, ...
  • "MORE DOUBT ON WAYNE WILLIAMS' CONVICTION (ATLANTA CHILD MURDERS)" by Jim Romenesko
  • Jeff Wells, "Welcome back to Atlanta", 2005/05/12
  • William Scarborough, Reclamation, 2006 - at 29:24 it mentions Charles Stephens, abducted on October 9, 1980 and found dead October 10, 1980, whose body had many fibers linking him to Wayne Williams including those from the trunk liner of a Ford LTD owned by the Williams family; notes that the car, however, was at a dealership during the murders; the fiber examiner claims that one of the rental cars that the Williams family got during that period, which was a Ford Fairmont, did have matching beige fibers (ed. note: inadvertently revealing how non-unique fiber evidence really is); at 32:03 Jeff Prugh discusses the claim that another set of fibers found on Stephens's body matched a white throw rug fiber from the rear floor of Williams's station wagon, which was not owned by the Williams family until October 21, 1980 when they picked it up from a relative in Columbus GA (120 miles southwest of Atlanta); notes that Stephens's body was found at the East Point trailer park; at 33:21 former assistant DA Jack Mallard says that the fiber evidence was stronger than any case he had seen before or since; at 58:30 Jeff Prugh mentions John David Wilcoxen as another strong suspect in the murders who should have been pursued; there is TV footage of Wilcoxen in court, with the news anchor saying the ring may have existed for 17 years (ed. note: since 1964); besides the three ringleaders, there was a fourth sodomy arrest; at 59:58 there is a news report about the theory that one of the person responsible for the murders was homosexual: shows a house on Gray Street that the FBI had been watching for 10 weeks, interviews owner Tom Terrell who says he is homosexual, Terrell says that Larry Marshall knew Timothy Hill, mentions how Larry's former roommate Jerry Thornton / Frankie Mealing was interviewed by the task force, Thornton said that he identified 10 of the 22 victims by photograph as being over at Larry's house, says that Larry got out of jail in July and then started hanging around children, says that Larry had been arrested for running a house of prostitution; at 1:02:40 Jeff Prugh names another suspect, Robert Lee Hutchens (street nickname Wyatt Erp), with whom a teenage eyewitness was riding in a car on the night of October 9, 1980 and saw a dead or sleeping child with a blanket over his body (ed. note: this is the story from p.137-140 of The List); at 1:07:44 Chet Dettlinger said that the robe Jamie Brooks wore was called a glory robe (ed. note: is it this occult robe?); at 1:13:13 these is a TV interview of schoolteacher Theresa Swindall saying that she received two phone calls late Monday night on which she heard her student Timothy Hill crying, which ended up disconnected suddenly; at 1:15:38 it relates a private conversation Wayne Williams had with the filmmaker: "He claimed that he was set up as a suspect of opportunity due to his previous associations with the CIA, to eliminate the risk that intense media attention surrounding The Atlanta Child Murders presented to a cover CIA operation - The Iran Contra Affair"; at 1:15:58 it begins discussing the 8100 file which mentioned FBI and GBI wiretap recordings of KKK members as part of the child murders investigation; says that the Klan member above Charles Sanders was Dr. Edward Fields, editor of the racist e-zine The Truth At Last and publisher of the Aryan supremacist newspaper The Thunderbolt; Sanders and Dr. Fields led a Klan splinter group called the New Order of the KKK; the informant Billy Joe Whitaker said he visited a KKK training camp stocked with a large weapons cache funded through drug trafficking profits; one news article indeed said "GBI records link The Order to allegations of murder, drug trafficking and illegal weapons sales"; Whitaker had helped set up a drug sting operation in Banks County GA with 893 pounds of marijuana that led to the arrests of five people on July 30, 1981; according to a news article the weapons cache "had been stolen from the U.S. Army [...] with the help of an army major"; the informant said that the weapons were delivered in stolen trucks to Hartsfield International Airport in Clayton County GA and placed on airplanes; it is suggested that the Klan's involvement in arms and drug trafficking might be linked to Iran-Contra, given the unneeded level of sophistication of the weapons for starting a race war and the weapons being flown in airplanes to undisclosed locations; at 1:21:37 Wayne Williams says he believes that once his name entered the FBI radar, it went through the NSA's Vortex / Echelon surveillance program which dug up his "past connections and things that I've done versus my father and all", leading to a White House decision to prosecute him; at 1:22:14 Williams names Kenneth Starr as a White House official in charge of one of the investigations into the child murders; at 1:22:30 Williams says that in college he was approached to be part of the Junior Officer Training (JOT) program, a minority recruiting program for the CIA, and even took two trips to Camp Peary in Williamsburg VA; says they wanted him due to his photography and electronics background for missions in African countries such as Angola; claims he was the young black reporter under surveillance in Project Shamrock and Project Minaret exposed in the Church Committee hearings; at 1:24:23 it starts playing a recording of attorney Lynn Whatley who says there was "high political movement" in the child murders case, that he and others were endangered for defending Wayne Williams, and that a Georgia Supreme Court justice called him to say that they were threatened away from reversing Williams's conviction; meanwhile text scrolls onscreen citing off-camera discussion from Williams about his CIA role: his program was "Umbra Gamma", his clearance level was "Royal Umbra", in 1979 he flew to Angola to photograph victims of Marburg disease which resembled AIDS and Ebola, his CIA contacts were Mitch WerBell, former US Air Force Major Michael Glean (a known drug dealer incarcerated at the Georgia State Prison), and Joseph Sumbia
  • "Programmed To Kill/Satanic Cover-Up Part 123 (Serial Killer Conspiracies 15)", 2019/01/04
  • Contemporaneous news stories

Books

Federal investigation

  • FBI files on the "ATKID" case (Internet Archive copy)
  • Meeting at the Georgia governor's mansion
    • Miami News, "Atlanta suspect on the fringes", 1981/06/22 (pages 1, 8): "The Atlanta Journal reported today that top law enforcement officials met last Friday for seven hours at the Georgia governor's mansion at the request of Vice President George Bush. Bush telephoned Gov. George Busbee on Thursday after reviewing an FBI report on the investigaton and asked Busbee to meet with local FBI and Justice Department officials for a briefing, according to the Journal."
    • Atlanta Constitution, "Busbee, Mayor Wanted Action On Slayings", 1981/06/23 (pages 1, 10): "Officials said that last Friday Atlanta FBI Agent-in-Charge John Glover and acting U.S. Attorney Dorothy Kirkley argued forcefully for the arrest and prosecution of Williams during a meeting called by Busbee at the Governor's Mansion in Atlanta. Glover argued that Williams might escape police surveillance and pose a threat to public safety, officials added. His warning was echoed, they said, by GBI Director Phil Peters, who also attended the meeting. [...] "It was clear that he (Busbee) was pressuring him (Slaton) to move," another participant in the meeting said. "The governor was not pleased with the inaction." The governor called the meeting at the request of a high-ranking federal official in Washington acting on behalf of the FBI, which had been pushing for Williams' arrest for several weeks. Busbee, Vice President George Bush and Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown Monday denied published reports that Bush had called Busbee and asked him to set up the meeting. However, other officials privately said that an unidentified federal official called Busbee on Thursday with the request. [...] According to participants, Georgia Attorney General Arthur K. Bolton and three of his deputies attended the meeting Friday at the mansion but did not take an active role in the discussions. One participant said an "implied threat" was made that Busbee might direct Bolton to prosecute Williams if Slaton refused to take action. [...] The Friday meeting at the governor's mansion came on the heels of a conversation between Busbee and Jackson Thursday in which the two agreed that Williams should be arrested and prosecuted. Slaton, officials said, was aware of the pro-arrest sentiment but probably not aware of any agreement between Busbee and Jackson about a special prosecutor."
    • The Militant, "Is Wayne Williams cops' scapegoat?", 1981/07/03: "The June 22 Atlanta Journal says, "the decision to arrest Williams was not prompted by the discovery of any major piece of new evidence linking Williams to Cater's death. What prompted the arrest was a seven-hour meeting at the Georgia governor's mansion June 19 of George Bush, Gov. Busbee, Fulton County District Attorney Lewis Slaton, and other officials." Williams was picked up on June 3 and questioned for twelve hours by the FBI. Slaton, however, had refused to arrest Williams, saying there was not enough evidence linking him to the slayings. According to the Journal, "the FBI and the local U.S. attorney's office continued to pressure Slaton to arrest Williams over the next two-and-a-half weeks. Finally the local FBI office sent a voluminous report on the case to Washington, to be reviewed by top FBI and Justice Department officials." It was information based on that report which prompted the June 19 meeting between Busbee and Slaton."
    • Washington Post, "Boy Testifies That Atlanta Suspect Picked Him Up, Then Fondled Him", 1982/01/27: "Meanwhile, in a move that may indicate its future strategy, the Williams defense team is trying to subpoena participants in a June 19 meeting of high-level law enforcement officials that led to Williams' arrest two days later. The defense has subpoenaed Georgia Gov. George Busbee, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and a former acting U.S. attorney in the Atlanta area. The defense also is trying to subpoena former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, his press secretary and former Georgia attorney general Arthur K. Bolton. During the seven-hour meeting at the governor's mansion in Atlanta the FBI briefed Busbee on the evidence it had accumulated against Williams and argued for his arrest. The group included Fulton County District Attorney Lewis Slaton, the FBI agent in charge of the Atlanta office and members of Busbee's staff, but did not include Jackson or any other city officials."
  • Baltimore Sun, "The FBI's John Douglas spends his days profiling criminals", 1991/03/11 (pages 1, 2): "Back then, he says, "profiling was so new that this was something akin to bringing in a psychic." But the Wayne Williams case, which brought national publicity to his efforts, changed all that. Mr. Douglas was brought into the Atlanta investigation, reviewed the evidence, observed the autopsies, visited the crime scenes and created a stir -- among the police and even the FBI -- by telling Atlanta police they should be looking for a black, as opposed to a white, male. Although historically there have been few black serial killers, Mr. Douglas concluded, "You had to be black to move around in this community, to get a black child, abduct a black victim out of that community." His profile proved to be correct, even up to the suggestion that bridges be staked out since victims were found in bodies of water. And indeed, Williams was caught on a bridge. During the trial, Mr. Douglas coached the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Jack Mallard, guiding him through his cross-examination of the composed Williams."

Wayne Williams

  • Trial proceedings
    • Washington Post, "Boy Testifies That Atlanta Suspect Picked Him Up, Then Fondled Him", 1982/01/27: "A 15-year-old boy testified today that murder suspect Wayne B. Williams picked him up in a car, drove him to a wooded area near a public housing project and fondled him through his trousers in August, 1980. The testimony from the black youth, identified only as Darrell, was the first suggestion in court of a motive for 12 murders of young blacks prosecutors contend that Williams committed. Darrell also testified that he saw Williams drive away from a shopping center with Lubie (Chuck) Geter, 14, on the weekend in early January, 1981, that Geter disappeared. [...] Darrell also testified that he saw Williams leaving the funeral of Terry Pue, 15, whose body was found Jan. 23, 1981. [...] Darrell told the jury that although he did not know Pue he went to Pue's funeral because his counselor at a school for juvenile offenders was organizing pall bearers. Darrell said he pointed out Williams to Eric Thompson, 15, as "the man who grabbed me." Thompson, who had known Pue, took the witness stand later to confirm Darrell's account."
    • Washington Post, "Williams Talked About a Confession, Prosecution's Final Witness Testifies", 1982/02/05 - under cross examination, prosecution witness Sharon Blakely (a "one-time business associate" of Williams) testified that Williams had a "split personality"
    • Sun Sentinel, "ATLANTA MURDERS; MINISERIES CREATES A STORM OF PROTEST", 1985/02/10: "[Abby] Mann attempted to discredit two prosecution witnesses -- Daryl Davis, who said Williams tried to fondle him, and Robert Henry, who said he saw Williams holding hands with a man in drag. Davis, said Mann, was later killed while attempting an armed robbery, and Henry has been arrested since Williams' trial for violent rape."
  • Recruitment of children (most likely for a pedophile ring)
    • From p.240 of The List:

          On the morning after he would be questioned at the FBI field office in Atlanta, Wayne Williams called a press conference. One question he was asked was to explain his associations with younger children. Williams produced a contract which showed that his relationship with children was completely professional. The address listed in the contract for his Gemini singing group was 325 Georgia Avenue—astonishingly, the same address as Cap’n Peg’s.
          A reporter later sensed a “smoking gun” and called this to Wayne Williams’ attention. Williams said the address typed on the contract was a mistake made by his attorney. He showed where he had penciled in the “correct” address, he said, “in my attorney’s presence.”
          Not so, said a representative of the attorney to Paul Crawley and me. The attorney would stand by the address typed on the contract. It was, he said, the address furnished by Wayne Williams. There had been no mistake, as far as the attorney was concerned. He knew nothing of a penciled change.
          Jo-Jo Bell’s sister said she had seen Wayne Williams in Cap’n Peg’s watching her as she danced with Jo-Jo. The manager of Cap’n Peg’s at first denied ever having seen Wayne Williams. But as the media attention mounted, he said that Wayne Williams had been a regular customer.
          Wayne Williams would tell me that he had never been to Cap’n Peg’s. “I don’t like fish,” he said, wrinkling his face.
          “I don’t, either, but I’ve been to Cap’n Peg’s several times during this investigation,” I reminded him.
          I was astonished that, like the “Pat Man connections” and other startling revelations yet to come, not a single mention of any of these Cap’n Peg’s connections was made—or asked for—in the Wayne Williams trial, even though Jo-Jo Bell’s is one of the 10 “pattern” cases. The prosecution brought witnesses to try to place Wayne Williams with Jo-Jo Bell. But ignoring the Cap’n Peg’s connections made it appear that the prosecution had neglected to do its homework.
       
    • From p.345 of The List:

          Still another published report stated that Wayne Williams used to take his Gemini recording group (named after the astrological sign of Williams, who was born on May 27, 1958) to the Apogee Recording Studio on Simpson Street. The posh studio—complete with grand pianos, Jacuzzi whirlpool and sauna—had been owned by Mike Thevis, 52, who had turned the 25-cent peep show, among other things, into an estimated $ 100-million pornographic enterprise. With Thevis in federal prison, the Internal Revenue Service auctioned away the studio in June of 1981 for $370,000. The new owner said he had been threatened by an anonymous male telephone caller before the auction. The caller, he said, told him: “You bid, you die.”
          At both the studio formerly owned by Thevis and another studio where Wayne Williams reportedly had worked, vandalism occurred after Williams was implicated in the Atlanta murders. Expensive equipment was smashed, and recordings were destroyed. Some investigators asked a valid question: Were the voices of any of Atlanta’s young murder victims on those recordings that had been destroyed? Or was there something else of interest? One recording studio owner claimed that it was the police who had broken in.
       
      • Atlanta Constitution, "IRS Sells Thevis Firm's Property", 1981/04/23 (pages 1c, 6c): "The Internal Revenue Service, attempting to satisfy a tax assessment of $11 million, auctioned on Wednesday property In six states of the Atlanta-based Fidelity Equipment Leasing Corp., which was once the central company of Michael Thevis' nationwide multimillion-dollar pornograpy business. Not sold Wednesday were between 12 and 15 tons of sexually explicit movies, books and magazines seized by the IRS last month. An IRS spokesman acknowledged the "sensitive" nature of what would be a federal agency selling material that in some localities would be obscene and unlawful to possess. The present official position of the IRS, said spokesman Giles Hollingsworth, is that "no decision as to the disposition of the 'adult' material has been made." [...] Also, on May 13, Fidelity's professional audio recording studios at 125 Simpson St. NW will be auctioned, Hollingsworth said. Formerly called The Sound Pit, Apogee recording studios have complete facilities for making Auction master tapes from which records are made, he said."
      • Atlanta Constitution, "IRS Caused Us To Default, Thevis Studio Buyers Claim", 1981/06/13: "The high bidders on an Atlanta recording studio formerly owned by convicted pornography king Mike Thevis have blamed the Internal Revenue Service for their being declared in default on the full purchase price. John Kimbal Adams and James Thomas Ginn have sued the IRS in federal court here to prevent the agency from auctioning off the property again. [...] The suit contends that the studio property was burglarized on May 19 and that as a result the two men were unable to show the property to their investors and thus could not make their final payment to the IRS on time. The plaintiffs contend that after the burglary, the IRS would not allow them to enter the building to show it to their investors. The suit does not speculate as to why the IRS allegedly would not allow the plaintiffs to enter the building. [...] Ginn, in a separate affidavit said he formerly was employed at the studio and was familiar with the burglar-alarm system. He said he called the company that operates the system and was told the system "had not been activated in the three days immediately preceding the break-in." [...] The plush studio, located at 123-125 Simpson St. N.W., was sold with all of its contents, including a Jacuzzi whirlpool and sauna and grand pianos."
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Thevis Studio Auctioned", 1981/06/26: "A high bid of $370,000 was offered Wednesday when the Internal Revenue Service auctioned off an Atlanta recording studio belonging to convicted nomographer and racketeer Michael Thevis. The bid was $58,000 lower than the high bid made on the property at an auction May 13. The IRS held a second auction Wednesday because the two men who offered the high bid last month were unable to scrape together enough cash to pay the IRS in time. The high bidder Wednesday was Rod Kinder of Kinder Music Corp. The studio, Apogee Recording Studios near downtown Atlanta, was seized by the IRS, along with other Thevis, property, to pay off an $11 million tax debt. John Kimball Adams and James Thomas Ginn, the two men who offered the high bid May 13, did not bid Wednesday but said they would ask the courts to force the IRS to accept their offer in light of the lower bid Wednesday."
    • From p.228 of Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker (1995): "The evidence was compelling. Not only did they get fibers linking the bodies to Williams's room and house and car, Larry Peterson of the Georgia State Crime Lab matched fibers from clothing some of the victims had worn on occasions prior to their disappearances. In other words, there was a connection to Williams before some of the murders."
    • It has been claimed that some of Williams's talent scout posters mentioned Adam Starchild, a money launderer for the North Fox Island pedophile ring
  • Alleged CIA training
    • CNN, "Alleged Atlanta child murderer: Trained to kill?", 2010/06/11 - reveals that "Finding Myself", a 1992 autobiographical text written by Williams, refers to him receiving CIA training at age 18 or 19, during the summer after high school, from an old World War II spy living in the Atlanta area
    • kidkenoma, "LAROUCHE ATLANTA CHILD MURDERS", 2010/12/05 (cites "TRAINED TO KILL" by Dennis King) - claim that Williams was trained by the infamous Mitch WerBell III at the Cobray company (a.k.a. "The Farm") outside Atlanta in Powder Springs
    • Joseph Cannon, "The Atlanta child murders (Added note: A mystery man identified!)", 2015/08/30 - includes transcript of the CNN interview
    • Involvement of WerBell in the Atlanta child murders investigation
    • Michael Glean background
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Cyclist Runs Over Girl Twice", 1971/01/16: "Specialist D. R. Russell of the DeKalb traffic division said Cathy Glean, daughter of attorney Michael Glean of 2208 Allaire Lane NE, was struck twice when youths on a gold and white motorcycle drove into Glean's driveway. "I think they backed over her in an attempt to get out of the yard," Russell said. He said that four teen-aged youths on three motorcycles were involved in the incident, but that apparently they live in the northeast area of the city and are not bikers from downtown Atlanta. Glean is offering a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the culprits. The attorney said his daughter suffered internal injuries and broken teeth, and was treated at DeKalb General Hospital and released."
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Man's attorney called 'key figure' in slaying", 1992/05/07: "A Cobb County man's attorney was "the key figure" in the murder of the man's wife, who was found stuffed in an airplane tool box, prosecutors charged Wednesday as the attorney's trial began. Michael Glean, a lawyer from the northeast Georgia town of Farmington, is the first of four men to go on trial in the strangulation of Kimberly Wallace, 28. Her husband, Jack Ray Wallace, is also among those charged. Mr. Glean was representing him in the couple's divorce at the time of her 1990 death. Prosecutors contend Mr. Glean was piloting the small plane when it landed at Waycross-Ware County Airport the night of Dec. 14, 1990. Police, thinking the plane might be carrying drugs, searched it and found Mrs. Wallace's body."
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Tests reveal Wallace was strangled, examiner testifies", 1992/05/12
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Lawyer given life term in slaying of his client's wife", 1992/05/19: "Three of Glean's children, an ex-wife and a friend testified that Glean was kind and deeply religious until he began taking prescription drugs for severe back pain. Daughter Michelle Simoneau said Glean became addicted."
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Attorney: Victim helped spur death", 1992/09/10: "Dr. Jack Ray Wallace's new attorney told a jury Wednesday the Powder Springs chiropractor's young wife "somewhat co-authored her own death" because of a secret relationship she had with his former lawyer. [...] "I'm going to show you that Michael Glean was a strange bird," he said, beginning with the fact that he rented the airplane at the Winder airport under the name of A J. Birdman. "Michael Glean was a dopehead. "Michael Glean was connected with extremist organizations," he said. "We'll show that Kimberly Wallace knew something about Michael Clean's connection with these anti-black, anti-Jew, anti-American activists up there in Gilmer County, and that he was also involved in drug dealing up there." [...] There has been no previous connection made between Glean, who lived in Farmington, Ga., and Gilmer County, nor any identification of him with extremist groups. He admitted at his trial that he was a drug addict."
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Wallace denies having role in estranged wife's death", 1992/09/18: "Two other defense witnesses -- Mrs. Wallace's close friend Linda Curly and Dr. Wallace's son Michael -- told the jury about claims that Mrs. Wallace was having an affair with Glean, and had threatened to expose him and his illegal drug habits if she did not get a good divorce settlement. Glean admitted during his trial that he was a drug addict. Mrs. Curly testified that Mrs. Wallace told her weeks before her death that she had met Glean in a chance encounter along a secluded road in Cobb County and "gave him the best [oral sex] a man had ever had" in order to get more in the divorce. Michael Wallace told jurors that he overheard a conversation between Glean and Mrs. Wallace a couple of days before she was killed in which threats were exchanged. "She said if she didn't get what she wanted from the divorce she was going to expose his drug dealings and their sexual relationship," the younger Mr. Wallace said."
  • Connections of Wayne and his father Homer Williams
    • From p.351 of The List:

          The scenario inside the house at 1817 Penelope Road on the evening of June 4 took on the air of both an inquisition and a pep talk.
          While plainclothes cops and members of the news media were encamped outside, two Georgia state legislators—Representatives Hosea Williams (DAtlanta) and Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta)—were inside, questioning Wayne Williams far into the night.
          Neither legislator was a stranger to Wayne Williams, who, like convicted killer John Wayne Gacy of Chicago, knows an extraordinary number of politicians and public officials, to say nothing of members of the media. Hosea Williams said that Wayne used to be engineer for his Sunday broadcasts on radio station WIGO. Brooks said he had been interviewed by Wayne on Southern Christian Leadership Conference and civil rights activities, back when Wayne operated his own radio station.
          [...]
          For his part, Hosea Williams said he told Wayne: “If you are guilty, give yourself up and I’ll arrange for your family to receive every nickel of the $500,000 reward money.” He added that he told Wayne that he had tentatively arranged for Atlanta lawyer Ed Garland (counsel for pornographer Mike Thevis) to represent Wayne—at no charge. “I told him that Ed Garland is one of the very best lawyers in the Southeast,” Hosea Williams said. “I also said that if Wayne would give himself up, we would see that his story would be told in the national news.”
       
    • 2017 discussion thread on The Coli where it is suggested Wayne Williams was a procurer of children (who might have been murdered like the other adults if he wasn't chosen as the fall guy) and his father was connected to black elites: pages 1, 2
    • 2018 discussion thread on The Coli continuing the same thread from 2017, suggesting that there were several unrelated killers/rings operating in Atlanta and pointing out some of Wayne's father's connections (Tyrone Brooks, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, etc.): pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Pedophile networks

  • Assorted news articles
    • UPI, "A 15-year-old runaway, who officials had considered listing among...", 1981/02/09: "A 15-year-old runaway, who officials had considered listing among Atlanta's dead and missing black children, Monday identified 'a man in my neighborhood' as the kidnapper in a series of December child abductions. Lee Gooch, who left his Atlanta home Jan. 5, had been jailed in Tallahassee, Fla., under the name of Lee Kendell -- his mother's maiden name -- between Jan. 14 and last Saturday. [...] He was asked if he knew anything about the Atlanta mystery, and responded that 'a man in my neighborhood snatched some kids in December. It's a kidnapping deal.' He said he only knew that the man was black, but he added, 'there's a lady in the neighborhood who knows who he is, but she's scared to tell.' Gooch said the first known victim, Edward Hope Smith, 14, was 'a close friend,' but he said he knew none of the other children. Smith, who disappeared on July 20, 1979, was found shot to death eight days later. [...] Dr. Robert Stivers, Fulton County Medical Examiner, said he believed three other children's deaths not being investigated by the special police task force should be added to the list. Stivers said he believed the deaths of 10-year-old Aaron Wyche, 15-year-old Patrick Rogers and 14-year-old Cynthia Montgomery ought to be made part of the 18-month-long investigation."
    • UPI, "Some of the 22 black children murdered in Atlanta...", 1981/04/03
    • UPI, "Some child killer victims may have visited homosexual haunt", 1981/04/04
    • New York Times, "BODY OF 23RD VICTIM IS FOUND IN ATLANTA found", 1981/04/10 - has this interesting statement: "Members of a special police force investigating the deaths and disappearances have said that one person was probably not responsible for all of the deaths, although they strongly feel that many of the killings are related. The force has established no motives or solid evidence in the case."
  • East Point pedophile ring
    • Atlanta Constitution, "Alleged Child-Sex Victims Due At Trial", 1981/05/04: "John David Wilcoxen, 50, of 1980 Compton Drive S.E. and Francis Nathaniel Hardy, 49, of 2969 Grand Avenue S.W., indicted last month on charges stemming from a continuing investigation of alleged child-molestation activities, were scheduled to go on trial Monday. The two are accused of operating a child-molestation ring from their homes, in which boys allegedly were paid $5 a "trick" to perform unnatural sex acts with them or with one another, and $10 to pose for nude Polaroid snapshots. [...] The operation involved only white boys, according to police and agents for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who have said that it does not appear to be related to the deaths or disappearances of 27 black children and young men. But it appears to have been part of an operation of "staggering" proportions, involving hundreds of white youths from several metro counties for as many as 17 years, police said. A third man, Lionel St. Louis, was convicted last month and sentenced to 12 years in prison on a variety of drug, sodomy, child-molestation and stolen-property charges. Attorney Bill Brooks, representing Wilcoxen and Hardy, denied at a pretrial hearing two weeks ago that their cases were related to St Louis'. But Assistant District Attorney Wallace Speed said that each case involved the alleged sodomy or molestation of teen-age boys, that all of the episodes listed in the indictments took place in the three defendants' homes, that the defendants knew and had dealings with one another, and that the "sexual idiosyncrasies" were the same down to the nude snapshots allegedly taken by all three."
    • Atlanta Constitution, "Wilcoxen Gets 30 Years In Child-Sex Case", 1981/05/22 (pages 1c, 4c): "The jury also heard testimony Thursday from a 22-year-old black man, Samuel Gresham Jr., who said that while strolling in Grant Park nine years ago, he was approached by Wilcoxen. The first black identified by prosecutors in connection with the predominantly white sex ring, Gresham testified that Wilcoxen seduced him when he was 13 years old by offering him a ride on a "fancy motorcycle." Wilcoxen paid him from $5 to $30 to submit to sodomy once a week for more than six years thereafter, he said. Speed declined to say whether other blacks had been identified in connection with the operation, which is believed to have involved hundreds of Atlanta-area youngsters and is still under investigation. However, there is still "no evidence linking" the operation to the deaths and disappearances of 28 young blacks, Speed said."
    • John David Wilcoxen a.k.a. Dave Wilcoxen
    • Francis Nathaniel Hardy a.k.a. Francis N. Hardy a.k.a. Frank Hardy
    • Lionel St. Louis
      • ...
    • Victims Earl Terrell and Lubie Geter were both abused by this ring and both were allegedly threatened by KKK member Charles Sanders, suggesting a possible connection between this pedophile ring led by white males and the KKK
  • Murderers of Clifford Jones
    • James Brooks / Jaime Brooks / Jamie Brooks / James E. Brooks / James Edward Brooks
      • Atlanta's Missing & Murdered, "13. Clifford Jones": "3 youths at the laundromat at Hollywood Plaza witnessed (through the window in which a fan was in) the manager, a James "Jaime" Edward Brooks, and a man named Calvin [Smith as well as possibly Rick Hawkins] strangle, beat and carry his body to the trash. One witness named Freddie [Cosby], 19, whom the police called "retarded", said the manager fondled and anally raped Jones before strangling him with a yellow rope. Then he said he washed him with soap and a rag and re-clothed his body. Two more witnesses saw a black man in a hooded robe walk from the manager's home and place a large item in plastic next to the dumpster, then make a phone call. Police had responded to an anonymous call.

        A fourth witness claimed the manager took Clifford and another man to his residence. He saw the hooded robe in the manager's home.

        The other man said he spent the night with the manager. He had met him at the Silver Dollar Saloon in November 1980. He also met "Nate" Cater there, and had met Michael McIntosh at the Cameo Lounge."
      • Topix post claims that Jaime Brooks was a Satanist
    • Calvin Smith
      • ...
    • Rick Hawkins / Ricky Hawkins
      • Yesterday's Shame: The Atlanta Child Murders by Cisco Streetlove (2012) claims that Hawkins "was a former martial artist and Wackenhut security guard"
    • It is stated in Cisco Streetlove's book that Chet Dettlinger made an online post in 2005 claiming that Terry Pue worked at the laundromat and was on hand the day that Clifford Jones was murdered
  • Gray Street pedophile ring
    • Thomas Terrell / Tom Terrell / "Uncle Tom" Terrell
      • From p.261 of The List: "“Uncle Tom” Terrell was a lean, weathered, 63-year-old black man. He had two houses on Gray Street. One was vacant, and youngsters used it as they liked. Larry Marshall’s roommate, Frankie Mealing, insisted that he had seen at least 10 of the victims on The List go in and out of the vacant house at one time or another."
      • From p.264 of The List:

            Tom Terrell, according to police reports, said he had met Timmy Hill in the summer of 1980. Timmy, he said, often visited and would smoke pot with him and Terrell’s niece. Terrell said that on the morning of March 12, he gave Timmy 50 cents to catch a bus to school. He and Timmy boarded the same us, Terrell said, but he got off at the Omni—and Timmy rode on.
            Tom Terrell’s roommate told him that Timmy had returned later in the afternoon, but Terrell said he did not see him. Terrell also told police that Timmy Hill had sex with him.
         
    • Frankie Mealing / Jerry Thornton
    • Larry Marshall / Larry Hill / Ted Washington (as Shirley McGill allegedly knew him in Miami)
      • ABC broadcast on 1981/04/09 about Larry Marshall and the two other pedophiles (one of them Tom Terrell) he was acquainted with - for whatever reason, Lee Brown denies that sex was a likely factor in the murders
      • From p.260-261 of The List:

            Frankie Mealing told Paul and me that Timmy Hill had come to visit Larry Marshall and himself on many occasions. Mealing’s sister also was there and verified Timmy Hill’s visits. They also told us that Timmy Hill and Larry Marshall hung out at “Uncle Tom’s” house (Tom Terrell, no relation to 11-year-old victim Earl Lee Terrell) in the 500 block of Gray Street.
            We drove the few blocks of Haynes Street until it crossed Simpson and changed names to Gray Street. In another block, we passed the tiny house of the Reverend Earl Carroll, the man in the clown suit. Could this be the same “Reverend E.C." in the note that Larry Marshall says he received from Timmy Hill?
         
      • Yesterday's Shame: The Atlanta Child Murders by Cisco Streetlove (2012) claims that Marshall worked for Wackenhut
        • From p.258 of The List: "Larry Marshall had worked as a security guard. Among other locations, he guarded a telephone company facility near the East Lake Meadows housing project."
        • From p.264 of The List: "The young man said that he, too, participated in oral sex at the house on Gray Street [at 522 Gray Street owned by Tom Terrell] and that many black males visited there. He added that Larry Marshall had taken him and Timmy Hill with him on March 9, 1981. They planned for Larry Marshall to let Timmy Hill into the Salvation Army store on Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta, where Marshall worked as a security guard. The object was to let Timmy steal, the boy said. Timmy, he said in interviews with the police, went inside and emerged crying and complaining that someone had anal sex with him. There was no more talk of stealing from the Salvation Army after that. The young man went on to say that he had known another victim, but only slightly. The victim: 9-year-old Yusuf Bell."
  • From p.259 of The List:

        But Larry Marshall now was a real suspect that the press knew of and could find out things about. I thought it significant that on March 20, 1981—the very day that Larry Marshall was arrested in Connecticut—the first adult to make The List disappeared in Atlanta.
        His name: Eddie (Bubba) Duncan, 21. Duncan lived at and disappeared from, of all places, Techwood Homes—and on, of all days, the very day that the Techwood Homes “bat patrol” took to the streets.
        After that date, no one but adults would make The List—unless you consider a 17-year-old just home from the prison system. By March 20,1981, the child murders—as understood by the world—were over in Atlanta. The last child had disappeared on March 13.
     
  • Cap'n Peg's seafood restaurant
    • From p.239-240 of The List:

          Jo-Jo worked for a fast-food restaurant on Georgia Avenue, on the edge of the McDaniel-Glenn housing project. Its name was Cap’n Peg s. It sat right down the street from so many of the pertinent locations in these cases. Soon it would be a focal point itself.
          It would be at Cap’n Peg’s that a man would be arrested with the prison identification card of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne in his pocket only a few days after Payne’s disappearance.
          The man said he had found the card at the liquor store on the corner of Georgia and Stewart avenues, close to where 9-year-old Anthony Carter was found stabbed and where 16-year-old Angela (Gypsy) Bacon was killed. This is the same liquor store where 22-year-old Faye Yearby had purchased an occasional bottle of booze.
          Across the street from the back door of Cap'n Peg’s was the home of another ex-convict—23-year-old Michael McIntosh. A block away from Cap’n Peg’s lived 17-year-old Kenneth Johnson, who worked part time at the fast-food restaurant. Also down the street is the grocery store where 9-yearold Yusuf Bell was sent to buy some snuff. In back of Cap’n Peg’s is the McDaniel-Glenn community center, where Pat Man danced and where “Billy Star” (William Barrett) would go to pay a bill for his mother on his last day alive.
          [...]
          Richard Harp, the manager of Cap’n Peg’s, would report to police that another employee, Jerry Lee, took a phone call on March 3, 1981. It was, he said, Jo-Jo Bell asking for help and moaning, “I’m almost dead.” Police were able to run a partial trace on the call, but it yielded an area far too large to be of much benefit. The general area was in northeast Atlanta, not germane to any of the known suspects. Jerry Lee would say that the call came on March 4. He added that Jo-Jo called him by name, “Jerry."
       
    • From p.300-301 of The List:

          Earlier on April 27, a man named Fred Wyatt was arrested at Cap’n Peg’s on Georgia Avenue. He was accused of simple battery. Unexpectedly, the arresting officer’s search of Wyatt yielded Jimmy Ray Payne’s identification from a state prison in Alto, Georgia. Also found in Wyatt’s pocket was the business card of FBI Agent Len Carroll.
          Fred Wyatt described himself as a scavenger. He said he had picked up the picture and the card on Georgia Avenue in the vicinity of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Later, he would say that the exact location was the trash bin at the liquor store on the corner of Georgia and Stewart avenues. Several victims on and off The List died, or turned up dead, at or very close to this intersection.
       
  • Jimmy Ray Payne as a procurer of children
    • From p.300 of The List:

          With regard to Jimmy Ray Payne, a prisoner in the Suffolk County Jail in Massachusetts told Boston authorities:
          “I met Jimmy Ray Payne in October of 1979 and then again in March of 1980. I had met him at the Peach [sic] Street, ah, hustling area book store in Atlanta and he was hustling. At that time we got to be good friends, and so forth and formed [sic] kind of trust relationship with him. I later then was asked to take some pictures by this black heavy-set guy at the book store... he would pay me money for the pictures that I brought him of Jimmy and then . . . he gave me $60 for the two pictures.
          “In one, Jimmy was lying on the bed nude and in another, standing up at the bathroom door of the bedroom at the hotel . . . And there was another one, a Darrin [sic]—I believe his last name is Glass—that hung around the Peach [sic] Street book store and was getting paid for sex by these older guys..."
          The prisoner in Massachusetts went on to name names, and to detail the operations of a nationwide pornography ring, which he said was headquartered in Troy, New York.
       
  • Sexual exploitation of William Barrett
    • From p.303 of The List:

          But the suspect who interested me most was a man whose phone number was found in the pocket of William Barrett’s trousers. One witness who would not be called to testify in the Williams trial identified the man as someone who picked up boys at the Omni and at the Five Points MARTA station, in the heart of downtown Atlanta. The suspect is white. The witness said he saw Barrett with the man in March of 1981, two months before Barrett died.
          Still another witness who would never testify in the Williams trial would tell police he had visited the white man’s house and had sex with him. Later, he said, the man left to pick up someone — William Barrett. The witness said he saw Barrett at the man's house one week before he disappeared. The man, he said, had given Barrett’s brother a bicycle. The jury in the Wayne Williams trial would hear none of this. But the jury would hear a so-called eyewitness testify that Wayne Williams had been at the house of a cousin of William Barrett on a day unknown, at a time unknown, and with other people who were unknown.
          As if this weren’t enough, the witness who said he had seen Barrett at the white man's home also said he had seen 14-year-old victim Lubie (Chuck) Geter at the white man’s apartment on five different occasions. Remember, other witnesses had placed Lubie Geter at another white man’s house on other occasions, and that the man was convicted of child molestation.
       
  • Nathaniel Cater as a procurer of children
    • Atlanta's Missing & Murdered, "9. LaTonya Wilson": "Wilson was abducted by two men from a second floor window of Apartment 7 in 2261 NW Verbena Street of the Hillcrest Heights apartment complex in Dixie Hills, wearing a slip and white panties, where she lived with parents Clarence and Ella Wilson. Gladys Durden saw a man climb into the window 4 times, who would've then had to climbed over her brother's bed and past her parents' room. He left out the back door, leaving it ajar. She then witnessed him talking to another black male in the parking lot, with LaTonya in his arms. Nathaniel Cater once lived upstairs from her apartment, and was suspected to be one of the men speaking in the parking lot."
  • Charles Watson a.k.a. Vincent Watson whistleblowing
    • From p.493-494 of The List:

          Lee Brown also was greeted in Houston by another of those coincidences from the Atlanta murder cases. Before the arrest of Wayne Williams in 1981, Charles Watson, a 23-year-old street hustler and ninth-grade dropout from Atlanta, was serving time for a robbery conviction in a Georgia prison. However, records show that the inmate was using his teen-age brother’s name—“Vincent Watson.” “He had his brother’s driver’s license with him and I guess nobody checked things out,” a Cobb County, Georgia, detective said.
          From his cell, Watson convinced the authorities that he had information about Atlanta’s killings and could help find the killer. Watson had written letters to the police and several prominent black leaders, contending that he knew two of the victims and possibly the person who had killed them. One detective said Watson had described himself, in his letters, as a homosexual who knew some child molesters.
          [...]
          In May of 1981, Watson went to work as an undercover informant for the Task Force, with Lee Brown ultimately approving the decision to allow him to participate in the investigation.
          Watson rode with plainclothes officers who took him to the vicinity of several bars, including homosexual hangouts. The officers would stay in their unmarked car, and Watson would go inside a bar to await a contact. One night in June of 1981, Watson went into the Marquiett Club on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and didn’t come back.
          We later learned that Watson mostly sneaked out the back door and visited his girlfriend at her apartment late at night—before reversing his field and rejoining the police through the front door. Atlanta authorities had a felony escape warrant on Watson. Some detectives thought he had been abducted from the bar and killed.
          Months later, Watson’s girlfriend would tell reporter Jonathan Dahl of the Houston Chronicle, Watson—“Chuckie,” she called him—followed her to her new residence in Houston. There, Watson was arrested in September of 1981 for driving without a license and for two other minor traffic violations. He told authorities his real name—Charles Watson—and spent one night in jail before paying a $150 fine.
          [...]
          On April 5, 1982, Charles Watson was found by his girlfriend lying in a pool of blood on the floor of her apartment. Another woman friend of Watson told police that three men broke into the apartment and beat him. A gun also went off, the bullet wounding Watson in the back of his head. He lapsed into unconsciousness.
          Authorities in Georgia said they doubted that Watson’s shooting had anything to do with Atlanta’s murders. Lee Brown, when contacted by the Chronicle reporter, refused comment.
       

KKK involvement

  • New York Times, "KLAN LINK IS CITED IN CHILD KILLINGS", 1991/10/10
  • FBI report from April 1981 (the 12th or the 14th) about a hitchhiker who bragged about committing the murders and said he was going to Connecticut, incidentally just like Larry Marshall (found on p.45-46 of part 4a of the FBI files / p.dcccxcix of Atlanta Child Murders - Wayne Williams FBI Files):

    COO001 1012159
    PP HQ
    DE CO
    P 122159Z AOR 81
    FM COLUMBIA (7-749)
    TO DIRECTOR (7-18251) PRIORITY
    ATLANTA (7-1835) (P) (SQUAD 7) PRIORITY
    CHARLOTTE PRIORITY
    NEW HAVEN PRIORITY
    BT
    UNCLAS
    ATKID; MAJOR CASE NUMBER 30; 00 : ATLANTA.
        ON APRIL 11, 1981, [REDACTED] TELEPHONE [REDACTED] WAS INTERVIEWED [REDACTED] AND SHE ADVISED AS FOLLOWS:
        AT APPROXIMATELY 2:00 PM ON APRIL 11, 1981, SHE LEFT CHARLESTON, S. C. AND WAS TRAVELING NORTH ON U.S. HIGHWAY 17 WITH [REDACTED] SHE WAS TRAVELING FROM CHARLESTON, S. C., TO HER RESIDENCE AND STOPPED AT MT. PLEASANT, S. C. FOR GAS. UPON LEAVING SERVICE STATION, SHE NOTICED A HITCHHIKER ON U.S. 17 AND THOUGHT HE WAS A YOUNG BOY NEEDING A RIDE FOR A FEW MILES. SHE STOPPED AND THE HITCHHIKER GOT INTO THE BACK SEAT. SHE THEN REALIZED HE WAS A GROWN MAN AND HE STATED HE WAS GOING TO CONNECTICUT. THE HITCHHIKER MADE VARIOUS STATEMENTS WHICH DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONNECTED IN THOUGHT. HE ASKED "YOU SMOKE" AND THEN STATED "WANT A DRINK, BUY ME SOMETHING TO EAT AND DRINK".
        AFTER SAYING HE WAS GOING TO CONNECTICUT, HE STATED HE HAD JUST LEFT ATLANTA. HE STATED HE WAS A KILLER AND "KILLS CATS". HE CONTINUED THAT HE "HATED NIGGERS". ADDITIONAL STATEMENT MADE, "YOU KNOW I AM A KILLER DON'T YOU. YOU KNOW I AM THE ATLANTA KILLER, DON'T YOU. I HAVE KILLED 23, BUT THEY HAVE ONLY FOUND 21. THE LAST ONE I KILLED, I PUT HIM IN A DRUM."
        [...]
     

Satanism allegations

  • EIR, "Child murder in Atlanta", 1990 (source questionable, but corroborated below)
  • Abandoned house with the smell of rotting flesh and two Bibles nailed to the wall
    • UPI, "Eerie, abandoned house may furnish link to identity of Atlanta child-killer", 1981/01/05 (pages 1 OCR): "Police hope an abandoned house where searchers found children's shoes and clothing — as well as axes, shovels and two Bibles nailed open to a wall — will provide clues to the slayings and disappearances of 15 black children. A source close to the investigation indicated Sunday that an arrest would be made soon in connection with at least one of the cases of missing or dead children. Volunteers who have turned out for 10 Saturdays to look for clues in the children's deaths were sent during the weekend to the house in a black residential area in southwest Atlanta, called Adamsville, after search organizers received a tip. One volunteer searcher who entered the house, converted from an old abandoned church, said the white frame building "smelled like decaying flesh." City Councilman Arthur Langford, organizer of the weekly searches, described the situation insides as "really strange." Besides the children's shoes and clothing, searchers found two Bibles, both King James translations, pinned to the wall with nails driven into the upper-center of each open page. The larger Bible was opened to the passages from Isaiah 1:14 to 3:25, the smaller to Jeremiah 15:4 to 18:4. Both sections made frequent references to children and death. John Bascom, another search leader, said volunteers also found a letter in the house. "It was a letter written from a lady, I guess, to the man who was living there telling him he was sick and a pervert," Bascom said, refusing to discuss the names in the letter. David Westbrook, owner of the house, said he had rented it but did not know where the tenants had gone. He said they left behind their possessions. Tracker Don Laken said his two German shepherds had found the house two weeks ago but he did not go on the property because it was posted. Laken came to Atlanta two months ago to help search for clues in the deaths of 11 black children and the disappearances of four others. A source close to the investigation said an Atlanta television station "wasn't far off" when it reported recently that an arrest in at least one of the children's cases would be made "soon after the first of the year." Cult involved? The source also said investigators suspect that a cult was involved in some of the cases, citing Saturday's discovery of the abandoned house and a find on an earlier weekend search. Several weeks ago, volunteers found olive oil and a slow-burning candle "sitting on some religious material" in an area under some railroad tracks in southwest Atlanta — indicating a cult ritual may have been performed, the source said. Langford said he had also heard reports that a cult was involved. "I can't rule anything out," he said. "I don't think any of us can rule out anything until there are some arrests." Although Langford said there was no solid evidence that any of the four missing black children had been at the house, a search leader said neighbors reported seeing a black man and a black child using the house about two months ago. Katherine Whetson, who lead the search at the house Saturday, said it had an odor similar to what she recalled from the area where the body of 7-year-old Latony Waison was found last October. "Two rooms smelled like decaying flesh and one had several mattresses in it," she said. Ms. Whetstone said one of the Bibles in the house was open to a passage that was "about mixing blood and murderers." Another passage, Jeremiah 16:2 through 16:4, said, "Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shall thou have a son or daughter in this place. "For thus saith the Lord concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning their fathers that begat them in this land: "They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth; and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth." A striking similarity in all 11 slayings that has baffled investigators has been the placement of the bodies, which have all been discovered out in the open, unburied." (The Pantagraph (Bloomington IL), "Strange Atlanta clues", 1981/01/05; Detroit Free Press, "Grim, vacant mystery house checked in Atlanta slayings", 1981/01/05; Journal Gazette (Mattoon IL), "House may provide key to killings", 1981/01/05)
    • The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre PA), "Volunteers dwindle in vain search for clues of missing Atlanta children", 1981/01/05 (pages 2 OCR): "Searchers, aided by tracking dogs, called police after discovering an abandoned building that raised their suspicions in the Tatum Lake area of southwest Atlanta. Volunteer searcher Barbara Whetstone said there were "strange paintings" on the walls of one room and a pair of Bibles nailed to the wall of other. The building was permeated by an offensive odor, but searchers could not find the source, she said, adding that police soon arrived on the scene to investigate. Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown could not be reached for comment on the discovery." and an image of the Bibles is also visible
    • Martin Amis (for The Observer), "The Killings in Atlanta", 1981: "On one of the early clue-sweeps, police entered a recently abandoned house. They found an axe, a hatchet, a shovel, and some children's clothing. They also found two Bibles — nailed to the wall. The Bibles were open, one on Isaiah 1:14 to 3:15, the other on Jeremiah 15:4 to 18:4. Back at the Atlanta America Hotel, I picked up the complimentary Gideon and read through the passages: 'Bring 'no more vain offerings — your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves — / 1 have brought against the mothers of young men/a destroyer at noonday;/! have made anguish and terror/fall upon them suddenly.’"
    • From p.81 of The Atlanta Youth Murders and the Politics of Race by Bernard D. Headley: "Three days into 1981, another black Atlanta child disappeared. The Saturday searches continued; the latest one turned up an abandoned house filled with children's shoes, clothing, and macabre display of drawings and two Bibles nailed to the wall. The Bibles were opened to pages referring to children and violent death."
    • Atlanta's Missing & Murdered, "Locations & People of Interest": "Abandoned house in Adamsville A house at the intersection of Bakers Ferry and Dollar Mill Rd was found by searchers on 03 January 1981 looking for missing children because of an anonymous tip to look in the area. The house reportedly smelled of rotting flesh. The house was owned by a David Westbrook, who rented it out to tenants who had left their possessions there. Neighbors had seen a black man and black child use the house two months before. Inside was bibles nailed to the wall opened to passages about children and murder. Also found inside was adult clothing (including a burnt jersey), children clothing, furniture, and bikes. No body was ever found here, however the remains of a young adult female were found in the "Adamsville section of Atlanta" on 19 Jan 1981."
  • Shirley McGill claims
  • From p.60 of Painted Black by Carl Raschke: "In Atlanta, Georgia, where a series of ritualistic murders of black children captured headlines earlier in the decade, similar slayings continue. Apparently the killings did not cease after the arrest of reputed mass murderer Wayne Williams, who was convicted in two of the deaths. Over twenty black children have been murdered in much the same fashion since Williams was put behind bars. But the incidents have gone unreported by the general media. A number of children have told police about satanic sex abuse in which, they insist, they were compelled to drink both animal and human blood."
    • Possible source: Atlanta Constitution, "Teen Fascination with the Occult Linked to Crimes Across Georgia" by Kathy Scruggs, 1988/02/08
    • "Teen fascination with the occult linked to several crimes across Georgia" by Kathy Scruggs, 1988/02/08
    • "Teens' interest in occult linked to crimes in Ga." by Kathy Scruggs, 1988/02/08
    • "Satanism linked to string of crimes, is attracting teens" by Deborah Scroggins, 1988/02/11
  • Process Church connection
    • From p.1086-1087 of The Ultimate Evil: The Truth about the Cult Murders: Son of Sam & Beyond by Maury Terry (1999):

          My opinion is buttressed by one disturbing fact: the Process still exists. It has changed its name several times, and today it hides behind its most recent "socially acceptable" cover. But beneath this benign mask, it is still the Process. It has accumulated millions of dollars in extensive real-estate holdings, and from a remote enclave far from New York, it continues to solicit not only a naive celebrity set, but also an unknowing general public.
          The original British faction of the group, which has remained almost entirely intact since the 1960s, abandoned New York shortly after Berkowitz's capture. Records show that the cult next infested Atlanta. Curiously, within a year, that city's infamous string of child murders began.
          In a tableau similar to the Son of Sam investigation, the group's main body exited Georgia after Wayne Williams was charged as a lone killer and convicted of the slayings of two adults. However, without any subsequent trial, authorities also conveniently closed the books on more than twenty child murders, blaming the protesting Williams for all of them.
          Recently, a few of Atlanta's top investigators changed their minds. In 1998, they told NEC's Dateline that they believed Williams was innocent of the children's homicides. But there is another official appraisal no one has ever sought—that of a prominent former assistant U.S. attorney, a man who has been a Process member since the early 1970s.
       
    • Wayne Williams owned a German shepherd, a species of dog that was both worshiped and sacrificed by the "Four P" cult
    • Don Laken, a volunteer from Philadelphia who helped police with their searches, was a dog trainer who owned a number of attack dogs, particularly German shepherds (New York Times, "ATLANTA LABORS TO FIND WHO IS KILLING ITS CHILDREN", 1981/02/22; Washington Post, "Body of 20th Victim Is Found In River in Atlanta Suburb", 1981/03/07; Santa Cruz Sentinel, "Atlanta Mothers Draw Criticism For Taking Cash", 1981/03/25). The EIR article alleges that Laken admitted to Williams' defense team that he was involved in Satanism.

Other curiosities

  • Lee P. Brown subsequent career
    • Houston police chief (at the Houston Police Department)
      • From p.493 of The List:

            When Lee Brown prepared to leave the city shortly after the Wayne Williams trial to become Houston’s new chief of police, a "fact-finding team" of Houston police officers visited Atlanta.
            They were not overjoyed with the prospect of Brown’s arrival in Houston. They have kept Brown embroiled in controversy ever since. The statistics haven't been kind to Brown, either. Houston is bucking a national trend of falling crime rates by posting sizeable increases in violent crimes.
         
  • Michael Thevis pornography networks - a.k.a. Michael George Thevis a.k.a. Michael G. Thevis a.k.a. Mike Thevis
    • AllMusic biography of Michael Thevis by Jason Ankeny
      • "Dubbed "The Scarface of Porn" at the peak of his tabloid notoriety, gangster Michael Thevis was also the mastermind behind GRC, the Atlanta-based label best known for Sammy Johns' 1975 blockbuster "Chevy Van." [...] While balancing the books [of his newsstand], Thevis discovered that Playboy accounted for only ten percent of his total sales, but the magazine was almost the sole reason he turned any profit. From there, he began selling other pornographic titles, and in 1967 founded the black-market imprint Pendulum Press, publishing his own hardcore books and magazines. [...] Pendulum magazines like Lezo and Young Beavers were also steady sellers on the underground circuit, and as the enterprise grew, Thevis partnered with mobster and fellow pornographer Kenny "The Jap" Hanna, whose underworld connections fueled Pendulum's growth into hardcore bondage, rape, bestiality, and even child pornography."
      • "Hanna ultimately introduced Thevis to Roger Dean Underhill, a low-ranking foot soldier in New York City's notorious Gambino crime family. Together Thevis and Underhill founded the corporations Automatic Enterprises and Cinematics to manufacture and distribute peep show machines to bars and sex shops across the U.S., and as profits accelerated Thevis became one of the Gambinos' most valued and influential associates, even attending family summits alongside "made" members. With the growth of Automatic Enterprises and Cinematics Thevis nevertheless ran afoul of Urban Industries founder Nat Bailen, who first developed peep booths in the early '60s as a means to exhibit kiddie cartoons. Bailen publicly assailed Thevis for transforming his brainchild into a vehicle to peddle smut. When the Urban Industries manufacturing site burned to the ground in April 1970, investigators concluded the fire was an act of arson. After Hanna was found murdered that November, Thevis emerged as a prime suspect. The subsequent FBI investigation determined he was by this time responsible for roughly 40 percent of the legal and black-market pornography distributed across the U.S., controlling more than 400 adult bookstores and X-rated movie theaters and generating an annual income in excess of $100 million. Thevis responded to news of the federal investigation by establishing a handful of legitimate businesses as fronts for his illicit pursuits, founding the music distribution firm General Recording Corp. and its attendant record labels GRC, Aware, and Hotlanta."
    • Luke Ford, "Mafia in Porn" (archived copy here)
      • "An inspiration for Mario Puzo's godfather character, Carlo Gambino operated his porno business via his lieutenant, Ettore (Terry) Zappi and Zappi's son Anthony. When the video cassette revolution arrived, Carlo set up companies that handled the new business, which his family soon dominated. "Gambino was much more circumspect about his connection to the extremely profitable field of child pornography. His family dominated that trade, despite the reluctance of some Gambino chieftains; their normally quiescent wives were raising hell about being involved in a "filthy" business.

        "Gambino, a premier criminal capitalist, plowed profits from crime into cash-transaction businesses in which the proceeds of illegal activities could be hidden. Favorites included garbage collection, vending machines, trucking, construction, garment manufacture, restaurants, and assorted restaurant supply companies. All of these specialized businesses were suited perfectly for Gambino's favorite ploy, the "vertical monopoly," in which he controlled the business, it's workers and largest customers. The potential for profit under such an arrangement, a monopolist's dream, were breathtaking." (Goombata, p. 77-78)"
      • "Competition can be deadly when the mob enters the game. Fighting between mobsters over the sex industry killed at least 25 persons in the last half of the 1970s in New York City, Long Island, upper New York State and northern New Jersey. At stake were mob-dominated printing, distribution and sales of X-rated books, magazines, toys, and movies in addition to control of massage parlors and other forms of prostitution."
      • "He [Michael Thevis] began offering pornographic materials at his newsstands in the 1960s, expanding from publications such as Playboy and Oui to magazines and films featuring bondage, sadism and masochism, bestiality and child porn."
      • "After getting paroled in January 1977, Underhill turned FBI informant in exchange for immunity for his crimes. Due in part to his assistance, prosecutors put together an airtight case of racketeering against Thevis. Before the information could be given to a federal grand jury, on April 28, 1978, Thevis escaped from jail and had Underhill murdered. Michael was arrested and confined to a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut where he confessed his crime to a cellmate. Thevis remains in jail to this day. His ex-wife, sons and former secretary Laverne Bowden are thought to control many of the pieces of his former empire."
      • "[Reuben] Sturman's problems with the federal government began in 1964 when FBI agents raided his Cleveland warehouse and seized 590 copies of a paperback called Sex Life of a Cop. Sturman responded to his indictment on federal obscenity charges by suing J. Edgar Hoover and eventually the charges against Reuben (and Hoover) were dismissed. For the next two decades, state, local, and federal officials constantly raided Sturman’s warehouses. Indicted on federal obscenity charges four more times during these years, Reuben avoided conviction on every count and never spent a day in prison. Like John Gotti, Reuben’s stature increased with each victory over the federal government.

        [...]

        How did this son of Russian immigrants build his empire? An FBI report lays out Sturman's methods: "…The strong-arm shakedowns of other dealers, distributors and suppliers throughout the United States, particularly on the West Coast. Sturman has accomplished almost a total takeover with the assistance of Robert DiBernardo (DiBi)."

        Working with DiBi, Reuben earned millions of dollars through the production and sale of child pornography, including the magazine Lolly Tots. Sturman's Parliament News turned out loops featuring sex with children."
      • "DiBi faced a five-year prison sentence for his MIPORN conviction. Moreover, another federal investigation began to focus on his role in child pornography. "Despite his troubles, DiBernardo was known within the Gambino organization as a ferocious money-earner, and he was entrusted with investing the organization's rich cut from the concrete industry bid-rigging scheme. That reputation for making money grow on trees led Gotti to promote him to capo shortly after taking over the family [early 1986], but almost at once, he realized his mistake. The problem was that DiBernardo... was skimming a good portion of the payoff money entrusted to his care, and building his own real estate portfolio, which by 1986 amounted to over four million dollars. Much worse, there were rumbles that DiBernardo had tried to deal his way out of his imminent prison sentence by attempting to become an FBI informant. And to top it all off, he was also reputed to be attempting to forge a secret partnership with the Genovese Family's New Jersey division. In sum, enough malfeasance for a death sentence. On June 5, 1986, DiBernardo and his white Mercedes disappeared." (Goombata p. 247-248)"
    • Washington Post, "'I was the GM of Pornography'", 1978/11/11
      • "Thevis owned X-rated theaters and adult bookstores stretching from Florida to Alaska. But his biggest money-maker was the automated peepshow, where, for 25 cents, the lonely or the curious could lock themselves into stuffy little rooms that smelled of disinfectant and order up two minutes of celluloid sex."
      • "Authorities estimate that he once controlled 40 percent of the American pornography market."
      • "In fact, for the past six months he had been a man on the run. He had been serving 8 1/2 years for interstate transportation of obscene materials and conspiracy to commit arson, when he walked out of a tiny New Albany, Ind., county jail April 28, and disappeared.

        It was not until Thursday, when he walked into a Connecticut bank to try to withdraw a bundle of cash from an account he had opened under an alias, that he surfaced again.There a skeptical banker called police, and Thevis was arrested.

        Government prosecutors say he escaped because he feared an imminent 14-count federal racketeering indictment and a separate state murder charge that be cold-bloodedly shot a competitor and stuffed his body in the trunk of a Cadillac."
      • "He frowned on intraoffice affairs, and banned Playboy from his $3 million mansion in exclusive northwest Atlanta because he didn't want the children to read it. The ex-wife lives there now with the children, amid the private screening room, swimming pool, Chinese antiques and French porvincial furniture. The empire still generates enough to cover a $12,000 a month divorce settlement."
      • "But signs were not auspicious and a 1973 motorcycle crash crippled him. In 1974, a federal appeals court, reviewing his conviction on obscenity and conspiracy to commit arson, dashed his dreams for respectability and ordered him to jail.

        In prison, Thevis appealed to his congressman, Andrew Young, for help in seeking medical treatment, and Young's staff responded by helping arrange his transfer to the federal medical facility in Springfield, Mo.

        In February 1977, after Young was sworn in as U.N. ambassador but while his congressional staff was still providing services to 5th District constitutes here, Young did appeal to prison authorities on U.N. stationery, supporting Thevis' plea for medical leave.

        Two widely circulated letters from Young urged "humane and just" treatment for the convicted pornographer, but an FBI inquiry failed to unearth any wrongdoing."
      • "After the recent ambush-murder here of key government witness Roger Dean Underhill, 50, a former Thevis aide who helped the pornographer make his peepshow machines theftproof and efficient, the search for the fugitive intensified. "This is made for television," said one assistant U.S. attorney here.

        The manhunt had developed into something of a grudge match, for the government had worked hard at converting Underhill, a tough, balding ex-con. In fact, his testimony was days away from being preserved on video-tape, when a shotgun caught him square in the face on the riverfront property he hoped to use to deal himself a new life.

        His companion, Isaac Galanti, an Atlanta grocer who dabbled in real estate and was along to inspect the property, was also killed. "It was a clean professional hit," according to police, and the Underhill killing has thrown a major kink in the government's case against Thevis."
    • Atlanta Constitution, "Joan Thevis Denies Testimony She Delivered Funds For 'Hit'", 1979/10/09 (pages 1, 8): "Joan Thevis, the attractive ex-wife of Mike Thevis, testified during Thevis's racketeering trial here Monday that she never took $8,000 in cash to Thevis while he was in a hospital recovering from motorcycle injuries to 1973. Her testimony on behalf of the defense was in direct contradiction to that of prosecution witness Leon Walters last month. Walters told the jury here on Sept 20 that Mrs. Thevis did bring that amount to Thevis, and that some of the money was allegedly used to pay for the bombing murder of Atlanta peep-show operator Jimmy Mayes on Sept 13, 1973, while Thevis was in the hospital. [...] Mrs. Thevis, the mother of Thevis's five children, some of whom were in court Monday, took the Fifth Amendment twice Monday outside of the presence of the Jury. She refused on constitutional grounds to answer questions about Thevis during the time be was a fugitive from prison between April and November of last year. When Assistant U.S. Attorney Dorothy Kirkley asked Mrs. Thevis if the FBI had contacted her after Thevis's escape, she leaned over and conferred with her attorney, Morton Blank, and then declined to answer. She again conferred with Blank and invoked the Fifth Amendment which allows a person to refuse to answer if the answer might tend to be self-incriminating when asked whether Thevis had contacted her while he was an escapee."
    • Daily Beast, "The Scarface of Sex: The Millionaire Playboy Who Murdered His Way to the Top of Porn", 2017/06/16
      • "The city [Atlanta] was everything he had hoped for, full of ambition and opportunity. Young and slim, with thick black hair, he studied for his high-school diploma while working nights at a newsstand for $50 a week. At 19, he fell in love with Joan, 16, who worked in a nearby store. They married in 1951 and moved into a cramped apartment in the shadow of the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta. He was too poor to afford antifreeze for his car.

        [...]

        Yet Thevis promised his young bride he would be a millionaire before he was 30, and she believed him. In letters from the Thevis archive, a family friend named Arlene Tate wrote, “Thevis had an hypnotic effect on people... people were drawn to him... he had an evil glint in his eye.” Soon, Thevis convinced his boss to open another newsstand with him as manager. By 1955 he had three of his own."
      • "It was on a business trip to New York in 1967 when Thevis first saw a peep show machine. They had been around since the ’40s, showing cartoons at carnivals, until a former jukebox distributor, Martin Hodas, introduced them to Times Square. The machines were clunky and insecure, but Thevis watched customers fighting to use them. He decided he could make improvements. Back in Atlanta he hired a local locksmith named Roger Underhill to help make his own prototype. A bald ex-con with a genius IQ, Underhill had been caught hacking telephones with an illegal “blue box” machine, and claimed to have worked undercover for what would become the Drug Enforcement Administration. There was something brilliant, yet utterly dangerous about him."
      • "By the time he was 37, Thevis was a millionaire.

        His two corporations, Automatic Enterprises and Cine-matics, were now manufacturing 50 machines a week. He rewarded Underhill by making him a minor partner in the business. Thevis would telephone the factory at 1 a.m. and beg Underhill to go home, but they were both hooked on profit. The two men spent any free time together watching river races, climbing cliffs, riding dirt bikes, and picnicking with their young families. By now Thevis had five children, including twins Tony and Stephanie, and his youngest, Jason. One day, Tony got food stuck in his throat and started to choke. It was Underhill who grabbed him and popped it out."
      • "The Intelligence Division of the Atlanta Police Department leaked to the press a 56-page investigation into Cine-matics. It claimed that Thevis was backed by Mafia money:

        “The fact… is exemplified by a conversation overheard at a pornography convention in Las Vegas in 1969. Thevis was bragging about owning 90 percent of the sex-film vending machines in the United States. Robert DiBernardo, a member of the Sam DeCavalcante LCN [La Cosa Nostra] family, said: ‘Don’t forget, Mike, you manage the machines. The family is in charge.’”

        Thevis’ second son, Tony, told me that “Didi” DiBernardo gifted the Thevis kids a pony.

        Mafia rumors intensified when federal agents raided a Brooklyn warehouse in 1969 and seized $550,000 worth of hardcore pornography. The warehouse was financed by Joseph Colombo, the boss of the Colombo crime family. Discovered in the raid was a note that read: “Mike says don’t ship [any] more films until further [notice].”

        Thevis protested he had nothing to do with the Mafia, but thought it didn’t hurt that people believed he did."
      • "On April 2, 1978, marshals transported Thevis from his cell in Springfield, Missouri, to face a civil trial in Louisville for the Bailen arson. With Patricia McLean watching from the gallery, a jury ordered Thevis to pay $687,000 in damages for burning down the warehouse. During the seven-day trial, Agent King flew to the local jail in Floyd County and warned officers that Thevis was an escape risk. However, the Courier-Journal reported that Thevis received unusual privileges including “unlimited telephone calls, at least one unsupervised trip outside the jail, and sexual relations at the jail with his girlfriend, Patricia McLean.” Deputies at the jail later admitted to taking $50 and $100 “tips” from their millionaire prisoner. A newspaper even reported that deputies watched through one-way mirrors as the couple had sex."
      • "[...] During the ’90s, the Thevis mansion became the home of Whitney Houston, until Tony Thevis, a successful real-estate agent, bought it back with his stepfather and restored it to its former glory."
    • Tony Thevis a.k.a. Anthony Thevis business activities
      • Atlanta Constitution, "Thevis & Talbert", 2000/10/22: "Stephanie Thevis and Charles Talbert, both of Atlanta were married April 22 at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead. [...] Stephanie was escorted down the aisle by her stepfather, Martin Blank and her brother Tony. The bride, who is a native of Atlanta and a paralegal at the law offices of Seacrest, Karesh, Tate & Bicknese, LLP, is the daughter of Mike Thevis of Atlanta, and Mrs. Joan Blank of Atlanta. The groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. James Talbert of Kennet Square, Pa., and Ms. Gay Vaughan of San Antonio, Texas. He is a graduate of Auburn University and received his M.B.A. in finance from Georgia State University. Charles is employed with JDN Realty Corporation as their director of investor relations."
      • David Harbin, "PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA TIES TO THE PORN INDUSTRY..AND MORE…", 2013/12/10 (Baldwin County AL grant from James P. Davis Jr. to Tony Thevis of a property with oil, gas, and mineral interests on 2014/02/18; Baldwin County AL mortgage agreement from Tony Thevis onto Martin J. Blank on 2014/02/18 for that same property; Spanish Fort AL record of a false report filed by Anthony Lloyd Thevis about a process server): "Access Graphics is owned by Innotrac ! Merged with them. Its in those merger docs. Innotrac is owned by Martin Blank and Larry Dorfman. Martin Blank is AnthonyThevis’s step father for those that dont know. You know rest of connection re John Mark Carr."
      • Biography of Innotrac Corp. former board member Martin J. Blank: "Mr. Blank has been a director of Innotrac since 1997. Mr. Blank was a co-founder of Automobile Protection Corporation, or APCO, a company engaged in the design, marketing and administration of extended vehicle service contracts and warranty programs. Mr. Blank served as Secretary and Director of APCO since its inception in 1984 and as Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer since 1988 until his retirement on December 31, 2003. Prior to co-founding APCO, Mr. Blank practiced law and represented and provided financial management for professional athletes. Mr. Blank is admitted to the bar in the States of Georgia and California. Mr. Blank has co-founded and successfully managed a company in the business services industry from its inception through a public offering and to its eventual sale. As such he brings to the Board of Directors leadership expertise and business insight. Additionally, Mr. Blank provides essential insight and guidance to the board on legal matters."
      • SEC filing on Innotrac Corporation on 1997/12/16: "Innotrac is a full-service provider of customized, technology-based marketing support services primarily to large corporations. The Company's marketing support services include product and literature distribution, computerized inventory and database management and customer-initiated ("inbound") teleservices. With the goal of providing turnkey marketing support solutions, Innotrac works with its clients on a consultative basis to create customized programs through which it can most efficiently match its service offerings with its clients' needs. Innotrac's flexible marketing support solutions range from small, specialty projects to larger integrated fulfillment, teleservicing and database tracking programs. The Company has a broad range of clients including BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. ("BellSouth"), Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. ("Home Depot"), National Automotive Parts Association ("NAPA"), Pacific Bell ("Pacific Bell"), Siemens Energy & Automation Inc. ("Siemens E&A"), Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and US West Communications Services, Inc. ("US West")."
      • SEC document on Innotrac Corporation on 2006/04/24 - includes Martin J. Blank (59 years old) as a director of Innotrac since 1997 and Scott D. Dorfman (48 years old) as the founder of Innotrac in 1984
      • SEC document on Automobile Protection Corp (APCO) on 1997/03/28 - includes Martin J. Blank (50 years old) and Larry I. Dorfman (41 years old) as board members and co-founders of the company since 1984
  • Connections to the JonBenet Ramsey murder
    • John Ramsey lived in Atlanta during the 1979-81 child murders, having moved there around 1975 to work for Vidar (based out of Mountain View CA). He was in the Navy reserves from about 1969 to 1977, and while living in the South he drilled at the Naval Air Station Cecil Field (in Jacksonville FL) and the Naval Air Station Atlanta (near the Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta GA), also serving as the Officer in Charge of Construction for the Southeast.
    • Boulder police chief Tom Koby was previously deputy police chief of Houston TX under Lee P. Brown, the Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner in 1978-82 who oversaw the investigation of the child murders
    • On their defense team, the Ramsey family had John Douglas, a prominent FBI profiler who helped steer the Atlanta child murders case in the dubious direction of a single black serial killer being responsible
  • Black man in New Jersey who behaved suspiciously near an elementary school
    • From p.64 of part 4a of the FBI files:

      IKO021 0990100
      PP HQ AT
      DE NK 021
      P 090100Z APR 81
      FM NEWARK (7A-1453) (PL (TRA)
      TO DIRECTOR (PRIORITY)
      ATLANTA (7A-1835) (PRIORITY)
      BT
      UNCLAS
      ATKID; MAJOR CASE NUMBER 30; 00 : ATLANTA.
          ON APRIL 8, 1981, [REDACTED] NJPD, ADVISED [REDACTED] BLACK MALE, DOB [REDACTED] WAS DETAINED AND SUBSEQUENTLY RELEASED UNCHARGED AFTER BEING OBSERVED STOPPING CHILDREN NEAR A ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND ACTING SUSPICIOUSLY. [REDACTED] WAS PHOTOGRAPHED AND FINGERPRINTED BY NEWAWK AGENTS AFTER IT WAS DETERMINED THAT [REDACTED] WAS FROM THE ATLANTA, GEORGIA AREA [REDACTED]
       
  • Involvement of a suspect in Queens NY - see p.110 of part 4a of the FBI files
  • Involvement of a suspect in Washington DC who said he had gone to Atlanta "on business" during the time of the murders and is said to have resembled one of the suspect sketches - see p.148 of part 4a of the FBI files
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