The Atlanta Missing And Murdered Children Case

1764 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Fibers atlanta child murders

Synopsis The Atlanta missing and murdered children case is a series of murder cases which took place in Atlanta, Georgia between the periods of 1979-1981 during which 29 African- American children were murdered as well as young adults. The victims, mostly black Americans were found asphyxiated; some were believed to have been sexually abused. This terrifying string of murders left the city of Atlanta astonished and on high alert. Newspapers and TV reports about the case rattled the nation and reminded parents to keep a close eye over their children. Green ribbons, “symbolizing life” and green-lettered buttons reading, “SAVE THE CHILDREN,” appeared everywhere. Celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, and Burt Reynolds came from all over the country to show support and donate money. President Ronald Reagan enabled a $1.5 million grants to help fund the investigation. Over the three years when victims started disappearing and later found murdered, the police questioned suspects without success. With leads in the case dwindling and no arrest in sight, Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson enforced a 7pm curfew on the city of Atlanta’s children. The murderer at that time was referred to as “the child killer”. Most people believed the killings were conducted by racial hate groups such as the KKK. It was not until 21 June 1981 when a 23 year old, black man was charged for the first degree murder of two adults, 27 year old Nathaniel Cater and 22 year old Jimmy Ray Payne. Wayne B Williams was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment as he was also linked to the murder of the other victims (Nickell and Fischer 1999). The evidence against him was strong and it was used to link him to be the suspected perpetrator of the other At... ... middle of paper ... ...ebrooks, Chris Richardson, Latonya Wilson, Aaron Wyche, Anthony Carter, Earl Terrell, Clifford Jones, Darren Glass, Charles Stephens, Aaron Jackson, Patrick Rogers, Lubie Geter, Terry Pue, Patrick Baltazar, Curtis Walker, Joseph Bell, Timothy Hill were all victims of this ruthless killing. Regardless of who was behind this killings, each one of them got their lives cut short due to someones cruelty. In conclusion, the Atlanta Missing and Murdered case, a major breakthrough to an investigation which had seen 29 African- American children and adults murdered in a series of killings came with the arrest of 23 year old Wayne B. Williams, who was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. This was one of the darkest moments in the history of Atlanta, a period of darkness which will forever live in the minds of both the victims and the people of Georgia.

Show More
Related

  • The Case of Casey Anthony's Disappearance

    1874 Words  | 4 Pages

    On July 15th 2008, Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother, Cindy, who claimed that she had not seen her granddaughter in 31 days. Cindy called the police after picking up her daughter Casey’s impounded vehicle, which smelled strongly of a decomposing body. Cindy found a bag of garbage in the trunk of Casey’s car but no trace of a body. Cindy had attempted to contact and visit Caylee over the past month, but Casey Anthony refused visitation, claiming that Caylee was with a nanny named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez, or at the beach or parks. Casey had given Cindy various explanations as to Caylee’s whereabouts before finally telling her mother that she had not seen Caylee for multiple weeks.

    Read More

  • The Unsolved: The Jonbenet Ramsey Case

    664 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Jonbenet Ramsey case has remained unsolved for twenty years now, and I realize, it might not ever be solved, but I do have a theory. My theory involves three different things, the build up, the murder and the cover-up. In the end, I do not think that there was an intruder that broke in the house, the evidence just doesn’t add up to that. I feel as if somebody in the family killed her, and the Ramseys covered it up. If you go even deeper, John Ramsey could have compensated John Mark Karr to take the blame, and to get some of all of the post-murder weight off of his chest. In order to find who killed J.B.R., we have to look into the Ramseys’ lives first. We know that the Ramseys had money, a lot of it. And the odd amount of money in the ransom note just doesn’t make any

    Read More

  • Book Review For Hair's Carnival Of Fury

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...s aimed at blacks. I was horrified while reading the fate of Georgia resident, Sam Hose (or Holt), and believe that that occurrence alone would motivate Robert Charles to murder. I was also disgusted with the South's lack of justice. Some whites were tried for murder, and although clearly guilty, received no punishment.

    Read More

  • Who Was To Blame For Justin Patterson's Murder?

    512 Words  | 2 Pages

    The killings of unarmed black men have increased tremendously with different races to blame for. In January 2011, the life of Justin Patterson was snatched from him and his family by Mr. Neesmith, who only served in prison for one year. How do you think the community of Toombs County and Justin's family feel about him only serving one year in a detention center? Many people protested that the racial issues behind his travesty caused an upstir in the world, including the murder of Trayvon Martin that just recently happened in Florida during that time. However, Justin Patterson's murder did not make national news or even in the papers because most people thought he was just another dead man.

    Read More

  • Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    ‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.

    Read More

  • Stories of Scottsboro by James E. Goodman

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    On March 25, 1931 nine African American youths were falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of two white girls. Over the next six consecutive years, trials were held to attempt to prove the innocence of these nine young men. The court battles ranged from the U.S Supreme court to the Scottsboro county court with almost every decision the same---guilty. Finally, with the proceedings draining Alabama financially and politically, four of the boys ...

    Read More

  • Furman v. Georgia: The Death Penalty Case

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    “William Henry Furman, a twenty-six-year-old black man with a sixth grade education, was not what most people called a “bad” man,” (Herda 7). Furman was just laid off of his job and was struggling to find work. But there was none. Every job did not pay enough, or was a short term job. Eventually, depressed, hungry, and broke, Furman turned to breaking and entering and to petty thievery by means of survival. Furman was caught a few times and was given a light sentence. He was also examined by a psychiatrist and was determined to be mentally impaired, but not enough to go to a mental institution. But on August 11, 1967, Furman went to rob the house of twenty-nine-year-old William Joseph Micke, Jr. with his wife and five young children. When searching through the house, Furman made too much noise, which alerted Micke. Furman heard Micke walking down the stairs and pulled out his gun that he used for scaring people away. But Micke kept walking downwards. Not wanting to be caught, Furman tried to run away and tripped over an exposed cord. His gun discharged. The bullet ricocheted to the back door. On the other side, a body fell to the floor. William Joseph Micke Jr. was dead. “The police responded to the call quickly and, within minutes, they had apprehended Furman just down the street from the scene of the crime. The murders weapon was still in his pocket,” (Herda 9). Furman tried to plead guilty by insanity and the psychiatrists described him as legally insane. But then, several days later one of the psychiatrists revised their medical opinion. Because he was not insane, the case would go on. The state of Georgia charged him with murder and issued the death penalty. This was because Georgia state law stated that any form of murder is...

    Read More

  • The Murder of James Byrd Jr.

    468 Words  | 1 Pages

    In June of 1998, a sadistic murder of a middle-aged black man from Jasper, Texas, rekindled memories of lynching practices from the blood stained American past. James Byrd, Jr., 49, was beaten savagely to the point of unconsciousness, chained to the back of a pickup truck by his neck, and dragged for miles over rural roads outside the town of Jasper. It is believed that Byrd survived through most of this experience, that is, until he was decapitated. Three white men, John William King, 23, Shawn Berry, 23, (both of whom had links to white supremacist groups) and Lawrence Brewer Jr., 31, were arrested. Brewer and King were sentenced to death for a racial hate crime that shocked the nation. Berry was sent to prison for life.

    Read More

  • The Casey Anthony Case

    2178 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Casey Anthony case was one that captured the heart of thousands and made it to the headline of national TV talk shows, newspapers, radio stations and social media networks for months. The root of the case was due to a clash between the parental responsibilities, the expectations that went with being a parent, and the life that Casey Anthony wanted to have. The case was in respect to the discovering the cause of Casey’s two-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony’s, death; however the emphasis was placed on Casey and her futile lies, which resulted in a public outcry. The purpose of this essay is to delve into the public atmosphere and inquire about why the media and social media collectively attacked the case by uncovering the content of the case, the charges that were laid, and later dismissed, the “performers” of the trial and the publics reaction. It will further discuss how it defies universal ideologies and how the media represents this. The discussion of the complexities of the case and its connotations will incorporate Stuart Hall’s Representation and the Media, Robert Hariman’s Performing the Laws, What is Ideology by Terry Eagleton, The Body of the Condemned by Michael Foucault, and a number of news articles, which will reveal disparate ideas of representation in the media, and the role of the performers of the law and their effect on the understanding of the case.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Murder In The Bayou

    1407 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?, written by independent journalist and private investigator Ethan Brown, tells the horrific true story of the bayou town of Jennings, Louisiana located in the heart of the Jefferson Davis parish. During the four year duration between 2005 and 2009, the town of Jennings was on edge after the discovery of the bodies of eight murdered women were found in the filthy canals and swamps. The victims became known as the “Jeff Davis 8.” For years, local law enforcement suspected a serial killer, and solely investigated the murders based on that theory alone. The victims were murdered in varying manors, but when alive they all shared many commonalities and were connected to

    Read More

  • negroes with guns

    528 Words  | 2 Pages

    -     on June 23, Williams was driving when a heavy car came up from behind him and tried to force his car off the embankment and over a cliff with a 75 ft. drop off. The bumpers of the two cars were stuck and the cars had to pass right by a highway patrol station, which was a 35 mile and hour zone, but the car was pushing his at 70 miles per hour. Williams started blowing his horn hoping to attract the attention of the patrolmen, but when they saw they just lifted their hands and laughed. He was finally able to rock loose from the other car’s bumper and make a sharp turn into a ditch. He went to the police about it, but they would not do anything because he was black. The police in Monroe never did anything to help blacks

    Read More

  • The Conflict Theory Of Crime In The Central Park Five

    1457 Words  | 3 Pages

    On April 19th, 1989, Trisha Meili was the victim of violent assault, rape, and sodomy. The vicious attack left her in a coma for 12 days and The New York Times described it as “one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980’s.” The documentary, The Central Park Five, reveals the truth about what happened the night of April 19th, and how the subordinate group of young black boys were wrongly convicted. Analyzing the conflict theory of crime in association to the case of the central park five, understanding the way they were treated based on setting, why it was so easy for the law enforcement to pin the crime on the young black boys, and how wrongly convicting someone has great consequences along with relating it

    Read More

  • Atlanta Child Murders

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981, at least twenty-eight people were abducted and killed during a murder spree in Atlanta, Georgia; these killings would come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. While the victims of the killings were people of all races and genders, most of the victims of the Atlanta Child Murders were young African-American males. These murders created great racial tension in the city of Atlanta, with its black population believing the murders to be the work of a white supremacist group. (Bardsley & Bell, n.d., p. l) However, when police finally apprehended a suspect in the case, they found it was neither a white supremacy group, nor a white person at all; it was a 23 year-old African-American man named Wayne Williams. (“What are”, n.d.)

    Read More

  • The Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham Alabama

    2813 Words  | 6 Pages

    To understand the why these youths were killed in Alabama, one must come to understand the events that led up to their death. Birmingham, Alabama was a very unstable area during the 1960’s, and this instability stemmed from pure racial hatred brewing within this city. Bombings started as early as the 1940’s and gave a section of Birmingham the nickname dynamite alley. The resulting civil unrest caused a man to step forward to stop it, a man by the name of Fred Shuttlesworth. Mr. Shuttlesworth was a part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and he organized many events and demonstrations but the only result that came from them was more violence.

    Read More

  • The Cincinnati Riots of 2001

    2338 Words  | 5 Pages

    Cincinnati riots were precipitated by a wide range of events that saw massive discrimination of blacks in a manner that reflected flashbacks of slavery. Between 1995 and 2001, Lan (2009) report that about fifteen people were executed by police or lost their lives in the hands of the security agents. As a result, the black community became alarmed about being targeted by security agents and ultimately being executed or dying in their hands. With the fifteenth execution of Thomas Timothy taking place in the streets of Cincinnati, David (200...

    Read More

More about The Atlanta Missing And Murdered Children Case

Open Document