The Murdered Children of Atlanta: What They Say to Us Today. Finally they were heard by a panel of experts.

“The bodies were saying, 'I am a murder victim. Look at me.'  We all squirmed in our chairs, said Detective Keppel, at the gruesome sights. There is nothing worse than knowing a sex-crazed killer is on the loose.”  

I was shocked, because Dr Rappaport and I certainly did not have this information while brainstorming the case; thus our conclusion one week previously of “asexual necrophilia”? Hardly the case! - one who redressed victims, washed at least one’s feet and dumped them with careful planning! Hardly 'asexual".  His dumping them, exposed and in sexually degrading positions, was a death ritual – the signature killing. It was also an omnipotent message to the police; he exercised complete control over bodies of victims and them – police - too. 

The task force now had 63 investigators and was prepared to present actionable evidence of a pattern to top experts in the country. The gathering of consultants was like the who’s who of nationally high profile homicide detectives that included the following experts on pursuing serial killings without knowing the perpetrator:

                       Sidney Smith and David Millican from the sadistic slayings of 17 found in boat storage in Pasadena, Tx

                       Frank Braun of Gacy Serial Murders

                       Robert Keppel of Ted (Bundy) Task Force

                       Joseph Borelli of Son of Sam serial killing

                       Ed Henderson and Phillip Sartuche of Hillside Strangler case from LA to Bellingham, WA

                       Jeff Bosch of Zebra Killlings of SF

                      Pierce Brooks of the Onion Field Case

                       George Mayer of Parkway Bar Murder Case, Stamford, CT

                       Gill Hill, Browning Gang Murders, Detroit

                      Al Smith, of Oakland, for Symbionese Liberation Army. 

                       Charlie Nanton, Lower East Side NYC Homicides

Keppel stated, “After profiling the offender, we were asked to develop strategies for catching him. Inasmuch as the FIB had been investigating long before we came in, our profile wasn’t likely to fit their profile. Moreover, because they hadn’t caught the guy, our strategies for apprehending him, we thought, might be likely to raise a few official eyebrows..... the presentation started with a slide show of crime scenes and bodies, many left in sexually degrading positions. (Riverman by Robert Keppel)

The Task Force had already determined that 23 of 27 List Cases were by one and the same killer – not killers. This decision had either been made before Dr Rappaport and I had met with Lee Brown to psychologically profile the killer(s) and merely confirmed it in our brainstorming session - or as a result of it. Here were the signature cases gleaned from my list that the task force had linked by the same fibers and animal hairs from the killer’s dog:    

# 2 Evans

# 7 Middlebrooks

# 15 Charles Stevens

# 18 Lubie Geter

# 20 Patrick Balthazar

# 25 Larry Rogers

# 28 Payne

# 29 Barrett                                 

 I believe that they all could have been linked to Wayne Williams or his murder network and Capt’n Pegs restaurant, but there was as yet no suspicion of somebody like Wayne Williams, who still had access to the schools, because, despite his solicitation of Pat Man Rogers, he was not considered a threat - his parents respected teachers. His father, Homer William, was a prominent and dominant welcoming figure for celebrities like Sammy Davis Jr showing up in Atlanta to support the cause.  I don’t know whether a meeting place was ever considered or staked out, but it had to have been Cap’t Pegs near the Omni. There was no fiber evidence linking the other 20 listed, but similarities of dump sites and chronology weighed more towards ruling them in, rather than ruling them out. The task force rightly, I believe, had ruled out females but considered 23 of the 27 from my list linked; four of them could not be ruled in or out because of incomplete evidence. Family and friend homicides had to be ruled out, as was my experience in the investigation. 

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In reviewing Keppel’s accounting of this high level consultation, the missing from areas popular with black kids – the Omni and Captain Pegs – had to have ruled out white racist theory. Agent Hazelwood from the FBI recognized that soon after his own search of the crime scenes. So did the style of killings by asphyxiation – not in my experience, or from my knowledge the MO of lynchings. The evidence pointed to one person, a black male, with aggressive hands on experience, both before and after killing them; there was likely, as with Bundy and Gacy, far more engagement with the body, both before and after capture, aggressive assault and post-mortem acts of intimacies and recurrent assaults on corpses. The killer could move around freely in the community and have easy access to the victims. He would not have been considered out of ordinary in the community. He would be trusted by the victims, and, like Ted Bundy, would not be perceived as a threat. He was a chameleon, as I suspected, who could change colors as needed to seize and kill his prey. He was, in fact, a psychopath, a sexual psychopath and a lust killer, little different than Jeffrey Dahmer and very similar to John Gacy; that, in my opinion, was the consultative message from these experts to the task force. It aligned with both Dr Rappaport’s conclusions and mine; there was a preponderance of evidence now directing the task force to catch a black man, apparently never before considered a person of interest.   

According to Keppel, the lack of struggle and clean lines of strangulation or suffocation likely meant the victims were drugged or intoxicated before striking. (Remember the desperate pleadings of one victim, probably expiring while talking on the phone.) “Then he quietly strangled the children….The killer spent considerable time with each victim to get them to state of trust, sedation and killing.” It proved an extraordinary cunning. The boys hung out in fringe areas that the killer found fertile for trolling. Most likely he offered short term work or promises of fame in a career. 

As my profile had already speculated, I think he had a network of male prostitutes, later to become victims too - whether because of their knowledge, or simply because of opportunity. For younger ones, it was more big brother and role model. For older ones, it was short term drugs or prostitution in need of an on spot carrier. The killer was street smart and able to change his MO for each targeted victim; hence he had to have been black for these streets. Whatever he did, he got those males from 9-28 under his complete control. The task force was getting the idea, as I explained to Mr Lamb from US Department of Justice before I left Atlanta a week before.  He was similar in image, like Dr Rappaport concluded early in our conference weeks before; namely, he was a black male. He walked the walk and talked the talk. He could ID with them; so, they were never afraid of him. He was able to appear well established and able to deliver the goods; the victims could not see through his BS. That is exactly why I thought he was better educated and not really 'one of them'. Here’s his calling card and invitation to death – just like the crippled Bundy’s cast that appealed or deceived the na?ve or caring young female.  

The experts essentially agreed with my profile that “The killer may have been a part of the gay disco scene. Not likely to be an out-of-the closet homosexual.” He may have shown contempt for homosexuals and be seen as heterosexual. But, the other side was his need for postmortem activities with the victims. He had sex drive with necrophilic motivations and spent a lot of time with the victims. In fact, I think he took them home with him. Although there was no consistent evidence of sexual assault, the sexually degrading posing of bodies was the giveaway for lust murder, as were the officially minimized post-mortem wounds on some corpses. Clearly, the coroner proved insensitive or even unknowledgeable about what he was looking for at autopsy; this was not only his fault, but that of the police, including the earlier profilers, none of whom appeared to have the instinct for the sexually perverted motivation driving this killer -

The inability of the police to comprehend him – all the way up to the day of this writing and the current reopening of the investigation – made the killer, like Bundy after his carnivorous lust killings of sleeping beauties in the Florida State sororities, increasingly helpless and out of control. He became reckless, as if, whatever his master plan was, it would be ending. New victims – older ones would float down the rivers, just like Bundy’s final and fateful hunting trip in the Everglades, where he ambushed a child who was not his ordinary prey and guaranteed his execution. The distribution of the bodies showed mobility – few blocks to 15 miles. Consultants concluded that he had multiple vehicles – probably already described by witnesses - and investigated multiple dump sites, typical for serial lust killers. The pressure to link the murders to some white racist plot or to the occult clearly did not fit the vast crime scene of 15 miles extending over at least a few years. The lust murder theory was never emphasized and still is not; as in all statistics of violence, the numbers are skewed. Lust Murder driven by necrophilia remains the white man’s problem, but, as in the case of Virgil Beard in Seattle, the more likely epidemiology of lust murder with necrophilia, rare as it is, spreads evenly across lines of color, “black, white, brown, yellow and red” - and more likely than not always has. Blacks were relieved to get serial lust killer, Virgil Beard, off the streets of Seattle, although he may have been a secret in the black community, just like Bundy was among the elite of Washington State government and academia. 

It was a huge accomplishment in the history of criminology for this task force to finally hear out the top experts. Fortunately the money for them to do that, despite the alleged waste and fraud with federal monies to quell the growing storm in Atlanta, had to have been a great relief to almost all Atlantans, black and white, although they were likely the silent majority. The conclusion of the task force before this high level consultation was that there was no evidence of terrorism. There were over 100 FBI agents investigating this case; certainly they would have connected the linkages by now, were the rumors of a KKK plot of slightest validity. Only one on The List was shot, and many more could have been expected to be were this a massive conspiratorial Klan-style hate crime with an expert sniper, as hypothesized, or, as Tony Brown theorized, an international conspiracy out of a rogue South African military office. 

Keppel suspects many more missing were not investigated, thus missing important linkages. He found Angel was stabbed and had trauma to her genitalia and Middlebrook was stabbed and bludgeoned on the head; he did not fall out of a tree. Note how different a perspective this is. We are finally exposed to the obvious sexual nature of these killings, and, by then, it is presumed to be a serial killing. That means it was a serial lust killing, a likelihood to this day totally ignored by experts, press and authorities alike, including top level authorities who mentions nothing about lust killing in reports of its profile on CNN. Keppel also raised the question why the Smith and Evans murder were not linked right from the beginning. His colleagues were uncomfortable when hearing this clear exclusionary default line; similarly, Lanier and Mathis’s disappearance at same time with dump sites nearby was an awakening. And, there was no answer re question of Angel and others being murdered by family, when, in fact, I was told by the local beat cop that many from The List had met just such a fate."