Posted Friday, January 5, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
The Atlanta child murders still resonate nearly four decades after a serial killer paralyzed the city. Thirty-year-old Atlanta documentary filmmaker Payne Lindsey, in collaboration with Atlanta's How Stuff Works, has debuted a new podcast today called "Atlanta Monster."
Here are a few takeaways:
1- For those who are too young to remember, the case helped turn "It's 10 p.m., do you know where your children are?" into an ominous catchphrase. The City of Atlanta police pinpointed 28 children, mostly black and poor between the ages of 8 and 13, to the murderer between 1979 and 1981.
2- Although Wayne Williams has been in prison for more than three decades and is often tied to the child murders, he was actually prosecuted for two murders of adults. He has claimed he had nothing to do with the child murders.
3- The podcast will explore multiple facets of this complicated case, including how it has impacted victims' families, the racial/class angle, how Atlanta investigators handled the case at the time and Williams' guilt or innocence. Plus, Lindsey will explore other possible culprits.
4. Lindsey in 2016 created the "Up and Vanished" podcast focused on the 2005 disappearance of Ocilla teacher Tara Grinstead. The exposure from his podcast, which generated more than 150 million downloads, helped bring new light to the case and may have contributed to the police capturing two culprits arrested last year.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
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