Lis­ten: One seg­ment

From July of 1979 through June of 1981, a string of mur­ders of African-American youths ter­ror­ized Atlanta’s black population.

Blamed on Wayne Williams, a “lone nut” black man who was con­victed of the mur­ders, the killings have receded in the pub­lic con­scious­ness in the two decades since they began.

This pro­gram presents evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the killings were the result of a well-organized con­spir­acy by Atlanta Ku Klux Klan ele­ments, aimed at trig­ger­ing a race war.

Based on infor­ma­tion from a 1986 arti­cle in Spin mag­a­zine, the broad­cast high­lights the activ­i­ties of the Sanders fam­ily, sev­eral of whose mem­bers belonged to the Atlanta Klan. The Sanders con­nec­tion was called to the atten­tion of the Atlanta police by a reli­able infor­mant. When Charles Sanders tried to recruit the infor­mant into the Klan, he allegedly told him about the plot to start a race war by killing black chil­dren and sought the informant’s help in com­mit­ting more killings. The source reported that Sanders swore to sodom­ize and kill 14 year old Lubie Geter Geter was sub­se­quently murdered.

Cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence pointed toward the Sanders fam­ily and a tap was put on Charles Sanders’ phone. That phone tap yielded more ref­er­ences to the Klan killing black chil­dren. Other cred­i­ble sources con­tributed infor­ma­tion about the killings. Jo Jo Bell was the next black youth to dis­ap­pear. The restau­rant where he worked received a call shortly after­ward say­ing ” ... They’re about to kill me....” Tim Hill (Jo Jo’s best friend) dis­ap­peared twelve days later.

The next night, a woman called the same restau­rant and said that she was try­ing to get Tim Hill released. (The woman sounded white.) Like Jo Jo, Tim still would be found in a river. Amid indi­ca­tions that a racial explo­sion was brew­ing, pres­sure was build­ing to bring the inves­ti­ga­tion to a close.

In June of 1981, Wayne Williams (an Afro-American) was charged with the killings. Although the evi­dence against him was almost non-existent, Williams was pros­e­cuted and con­victed. In order to obtain the con­vic­tion, pros­e­cu­tors per­mit­ted tes­ti­mony to be changed, phys­i­cal evi­dence to be dis­re­garded and then extrap­o­lated from the cases in which Williams was charged to 29 mur­ders. How­ever, no one could con­nect him to the other killings. (Recorded on 7/25/99.)