Between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1981, 28 Black children and young adults went missing or were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia. For nearly two years, a city — and an entire country — failed to stop it.
This is Episode 1 of Dark Cities: the full, unfiltered story of the Atlanta Child Murders. One of the most disturbing, most contested, and most under-told criminal cases in American history.
We cover it all: the victims, the neighborhoods, the mothers who fought back when no one else would, the FBI investigation, the arrest of Wayne Williams, the fiber evidence that convicted him — and the questions that have never been answered.
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What happened in Atlanta?
It started July 21, 1979. Edward Hope Smith, 14 years old, disappeared from his neighborhood and was found shot dead in the woods. Four days later, Alfred James Evans, 13, was found dead in the same area. Atlanta homicide said there was no connection.
They were wrong.
Over the next 22 months, 28 names were added to what became known as the Atlanta Child Murders list — boys and girls as young as 7 years old. The victims were Black. They were poor. And the national media was largely silent until the body count became impossible to ignore.
The mothers who wouldn’t be quiet.
Camille Bell — mother of 9-year-old victim Yusef Bell — formed the Committee to Stop Children’s Murders and forced the story into the national spotlight. Their pressure led Mayor Maynard Jackson to create a special task force in 1980, with a $100,000 reward. But by then, 14 children were already dead.
Wayne Williams and the conviction that closed 23 cases.
In May 1981, police staking out the Chattahoochee River bridges heard a splash at 2:17 AM. A car was stopped on the bridge — driven by Wayne Bertram Williams, 23. Two days later, a body surfaced from the river. Williams was arrested, tried, and convicted of two adult murders in 1982. The city then closed or reclassified 23 of the 28 child cases, attributing them to Williams — despite him never being charged with a single child murder.
The questions that remain.
Williams has maintained his innocence for over 40 years. In 2005, the Fulton County DA reopened cases after former KKK members described a terror campaign targeting Black children in Atlanta. In 2019, the city ordered the cases reopened again citing new DNA technology. As of today — no new charges. No new suspects. Twenty-eight families still waiting.
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Dark Cities is a documentary series telling the true stories that America tried to forget. New episodes drop regularly — subscribe so you don’t miss Episode 2.
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 — Cold Open
00:45 — Chapter 1: Atlanta 1979 — The City
02:24 — Chapter 2: The Pattern Begins
04:19 — Chapter 3: The Mothers Fight Back
05:18 — Chapter 4: Atlanta in Terror
06:29 — Chapter 5: Wayne Williams
08:14 — Chapter 6: The Questions That Remain
09:38 — Chapter 7: The Legacy
10:16 — Outro
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