more of these nigger kids.” He specified a particular location along Sigmon Road where he said police would find the next body.
As soon as I heard the tape of this call, I was sure this was an impostor, a lowlife satisfying his own racial hatred by anonymously claiming credit for a series of crimes he did not commit. But knowing how the press was following the case, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to test a theory.
I suggested that the police make the call public and make a great display out of looking for the body, but on the
opposite
side of the street from where he told them to look. I figured the impostor would be watching, and if police got lucky, they might be able to grab him right there. If not, he should at least call again and tell the police what idiots they are, at which point they’ll have a trap and trace ready to nab this guy. And that was exactly what happened. They got him right in his own house. And I thought that would be that.
But the press had covered the Sigmon Road episode heavily, and shortly thereafter, another body
did
show up there, that of fifteen-year-old Terry Pue. Only this body showed up where the police were looking, not the side of the street the impostor had specified, which signified that our real guy was closely following the press and now wanted to show that he was superior to everyone—that he could manipulate, dominate, andcontrol the police and press just as he had his young victims. That was the message he was giving us: he and the police were communicating with each other through the media.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place one murder later, when twelve-year-old Patrick Baltazar’s body was found along Buford Highway, strangled as Terry Pue’s had been. As part of the official response, someone in the medical examiner’s office announced that hair and fibers found on Patrick’s body matched those found on five of the previous victims.
Then I knew: the next body is going to turn up in the Chattahoochee River, because he knows the hair and fiber evidence will be washed away by the water and he can once again prove how superior he is to all of us law enforcement jerks. And that, essentially, is what happened. Three more bodies showed up in the river. It took a while to get organized with all of the federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies involved, but Atlanta police staked out several bridges across the Chattahoochee. Nothing happened for some time, but around two-thirty in the morning on the last scheduled day of the surveillance operation, a police officer staking out the Jackson Parkway Bridge heard a splash in the water after seeing a car drive across the bridge and stop in the middle. The car turned and came back across the bridge, at which time another officer stopped it.
The driver of the car was Wayne Bertram Williams, a black male in his twenties who fit the profile perfectly. When he was arrested, hair and fiber evidence found at his house matched those of twelve of the young victims—the same twelve we had linked behaviorally to a single killer. Wayne Williams is currently serving a life sentence for murder of two of the victims.
When the UNSUB doesn’t communicate with us eitherdirectly or indirectly, we have to speculate, based on our research and past experience. But unless or until we find him, we can’t be sure.
The case that almost killed me was the Green River Murders, whose tally has now probably topped sixty. I left that investigation early, not because I wanted to, but because I had no choice. As readers of
Mindhunter
will recall, I collapsed in my Seattle hotel room in December of 1983 while working on the case. I was a thirty-eight-year-old victim of viral encephalitis, brought on by the tremendous stress of not only that investigation, but the 150-odd other active cases that obsessed me at the same time. I would have died in that hotel room if the two special agents I had brought along, Blaine McIlwain and
As soon as I heard the tape of this call, I was sure this was an impostor, a lowlife satisfying his own racial hatred by anonymously claiming credit for a series of crimes he did not commit. But knowing how the press was following the case, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to test a theory.
I suggested that the police make the call public and make a great display out of looking for the body, but on the
opposite
side of the street from where he told them to look. I figured the impostor would be watching, and if police got lucky, they might be able to grab him right there. If not, he should at least call again and tell the police what idiots they are, at which point they’ll have a trap and trace ready to nab this guy. And that was exactly what happened. They got him right in his own house. And I thought that would be that.
But the press had covered the Sigmon Road episode heavily, and shortly thereafter, another body
did
show up there, that of fifteen-year-old Terry Pue. Only this body showed up where the police were looking, not the side of the street the impostor had specified, which signified that our real guy was closely following the press and now wanted to show that he was superior to everyone—that he could manipulate, dominate, andcontrol the police and press just as he had his young victims. That was the message he was giving us: he and the police were communicating with each other through the media.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place one murder later, when twelve-year-old Patrick Baltazar’s body was found along Buford Highway, strangled as Terry Pue’s had been. As part of the official response, someone in the medical examiner’s office announced that hair and fibers found on Patrick’s body matched those found on five of the previous victims.
Then I knew: the next body is going to turn up in the Chattahoochee River, because he knows the hair and fiber evidence will be washed away by the water and he can once again prove how superior he is to all of us law enforcement jerks. And that, essentially, is what happened. Three more bodies showed up in the river. It took a while to get organized with all of the federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies involved, but Atlanta police staked out several bridges across the Chattahoochee. Nothing happened for some time, but around two-thirty in the morning on the last scheduled day of the surveillance operation, a police officer staking out the Jackson Parkway Bridge heard a splash in the water after seeing a car drive across the bridge and stop in the middle. The car turned and came back across the bridge, at which time another officer stopped it.
The driver of the car was Wayne Bertram Williams, a black male in his twenties who fit the profile perfectly. When he was arrested, hair and fiber evidence found at his house matched those of twelve of the young victims—the same twelve we had linked behaviorally to a single killer. Wayne Williams is currently serving a life sentence for murder of two of the victims.
When the UNSUB doesn’t communicate with us eitherdirectly or indirectly, we have to speculate, based on our research and past experience. But unless or until we find him, we can’t be sure.
The case that almost killed me was the Green River Murders, whose tally has now probably topped sixty. I left that investigation early, not because I wanted to, but because I had no choice. As readers of
Mindhunter
will recall, I collapsed in my Seattle hotel room in December of 1983 while working on the case. I was a thirty-eight-year-old victim of viral encephalitis, brought on by the tremendous stress of not only that investigation, but the 150-odd other active cases that obsessed me at the same time. I would have died in that hotel room if the two special agents I had brought along, Blaine McIlwain and
Similar Books
