Home / Full timeline / Wayne Williams, a twenty-three-year-old Black entertainment talent scout, is convicted of murder in the slaying of Jimmy Ray Payne, age twenty-one, and Nathaniel Cater, age twenty-seven, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Wayne Williams, a twenty-three-year-old Black entertainment talent scout, is convicted of murder in the slaying of Jimmy Ray Payne, age twenty-one, and Nathaniel Cater, age twenty-seven, in Atlanta, Georgia.

1982 (Feb 27)

Wayne Williams, a twenty-three-year-old Black entertainment talent scout, was convicted of murder in the slaying of Jimmy Ray Payne, age twenty-one, and Nathaniel Cater, age twenty-seven, in Atlanta, Georgia. Payne and Cater were two of the twenty-eight young Blacks, mostly males, who were slain in Atlanta in a twenty-two month period beginning in 1979. Most of the victims were strangled. The serial murders became known as the "Atlanta child murder cases," since most of the victims were under twenty-one years of age. The case began on July 27, 1979, when the first two bodies were found, but it was July 1980 before the police publicly linked the two cases. By that time, eleven Black children had disappeared or were found slain. The police action came after an organization of parents, the Committee to Stop Children's Murder (STOP), led by the mother of one of the victims, was formed in May 1980 to show linkages in the cases. During the twenty-two months when Black children's bodies were being found periodically in the metropolitan Atlanta area, President Ronald Reagan committed $1.5 million in federal funds and scores of FBI agents to the case. Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali pledged $400,000, and hundreds of thousands in additional dollars were donated by other athletes and celebrities or raised in benefit concerts. The state of Georgia and citizens throughout the nation gave thousands of dollars to help with the investigation or for a reward fund. Some of the donations went to STOP or directly to the mothers of the slain youths. The Guardian Angels, a group of New York City citizens who patrolled the subways of their city to deter crime, went to Atlanta to teach local youths how to defend themselves. A vigilante group of Blacks armed with baseball bats in the Techwood housing projects formed a "Bat Patrol" to protect Black children. In addition, psychics, writers, civil rights activists, and others offered theories on the motives and identities of the killer or killers. Many were convinced that Ku Klux Klansmen or other white supremacist groups were responsible for the murders. And since most of the victims were young Black males, the theory that a homosexual committed the crimes also emerged. On May 22, 1981, law enforcement officers on stake out along the Chattahoochee River in north Atlanta heard a loud splash. Shortly thereafter, other officers questioned and detained Wayne Williams after he was noticed driving slowly with his headlights dimmed across the James Jackson Parkway Bridge over the Chattahoochee. Two days later, the body of twenty-seven-year-old Nathaniel Cater was found floating in the river. On June 21, 1981, Williams was arrested and charged with the murders of Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne. Williams, who took the stand in his own defense during the trial, vigorously denied that he had committed the murders. He and his attorneys refuted suggestions of a homosexual motive and denied any acquaintance with most of the seven victims in whose company prosecution witnesses had placed him. The prosecution, however, had also presented fibers taken from clothing and other fabrics and bloodstains found in Williams's car as evidence. On February 27, 1982, after eleven hours of deliberations, a majority Black jury found Williams guilty of two counts of murder. The presiding judge, Clarence Cooper, also a Black American, sentenced Williams to two consecutive life terms in prison. The defense promised an immediate appeal. The "Atlanta child murder cases" involved one of the largest searches for a killer in the nation's history, and Wayne Williams was convicted as America's first Black major serial murderer.