Atlanta murders of 1979–1981

The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta Child Murders (although several of the purported victims were adults), were a series of murders committed in the American city of Atlanta, Georgia, from the middle of 1979 until May 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 28 African-American children, adolescents and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested for and convicted of two of the adult murders, and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Police subsequently have attributed a number of the child murders to Williams and closed the cases, although he has not been tried or convicted in any of those cases.

In the middle of 1979, Edward Hope Smith, also known as "Teddy," and Alfred Evans, also known as "Q," both aged 14, disappeared four days apart. (Terry Pue, who later went missing in early 1981, lived in the same apartment as Smith.) Their bodies were both found on July 28 in a wooded area, Edward with a .22 calibre gunshot wound in his upper back. They were believed to be the first victims of the putative "Atlanta Child Killer".

On September 4, the next victim, 14-year-old Milton Harvey, disappeared while on an errand to a bank for his mother. He was riding a yellow 10-speed bike, which was found a week later in a remote area of Atlanta. His body was not recovered until November 1979.

On October 21, 9-year-old Yusuf Bell went to a store to buy snuff for a neighbor, Eula Birdsong. A witness said she saw Yusuf getting into a blue car before he disappeared. His body was found on November 8 in the abandoned E. P. Johnson elementary school by a school janitor who was looking for a place to urinate. Bell's body was found clothed in the brown cut-off shorts he was last seen wearing, though they had a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had been hit over the head twice and the cause of death was strangulation. Police did not immediately link his disappearance to the previous killings.

On March 4, 1980, the first female victim, 12-year-old Angel Lenair, disappeared. She left her house around 4 pm, wearing a denim outfit, and was last seen at a friend's house watching the television program Sanford and Son. Lenair's body was found six days later, in a wooded vacant lot along Campbellton Road, wearing the same clothes in which she had left home. A pair of white panties that did not belong to Lenair were stuffed in her mouth, and her hands were bound with an electrical cord. The cause of death was strangulation.

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