20 Facts About Wayne Williams

Wayne Bertram Williams was born on May 27,1958 and is an American convicted murderer and serial killer who is in life imprisonment for the 1981 killings of two men in Atlanta, Georgia.

Wayne Williams, son of Homer and Faye Williams, was born on May 27,1958, and raised in the Dixie Hills neighborhood of southwest Atlanta, Georgia.

Wayne Williams constructed his own carrier current radio station and began frequenting stations WIGO and WAOK, where he befriended a number of the announcing crew and began dabbling in becoming a pop music producer and manager.

Wayne Williams first became a suspect in the Atlanta murders on the morning of May 22,1981, when a police surveillance team, watching the James Jackson Parkway Bridge spanning the Chattahoochee River, heard a "big loud splash", suggesting that something had been thrown from the bridge into the river below.

Police thought that Wayne Williams had killed Cater and that his body was the source of the sound they heard as his car crossed the bridge.

Wayne Williams held a press conference outside his home to proclaim his innocence, volunteering that he had taken three polygraph tests and all were inconclusive; in any event they would have been inadmissible in court.

Wayne Williams was arrested on June 21,1981, for the murders of Cater and Payne.

Wayne Williams's trial began on January 6,1982, in Fulton County.

Wayne Williams had lied about when the carpet was installed in his home, claiming it was installed in 1968 only for it to be discovered that the company that manufactured the carpet did not even exist until 1971.

Wayne Williams took the stand in his own defense but alienated the jury by becoming angry and combative.

Wayne Williams was never tried for any of the Atlanta Child Murders.

Wayne Williams's lawyers have said the conviction was a "profound miscarriage of justice" that has kept an innocent man incarcerated for the majority of his adult life and allowed the real killers to go free.

Former DeKalb County Sheriff and convicted murderer Sidney Dorsey, who was an Atlanta homicide detective at the time, said he believed Wayne Williams was wrongly blamed for the murders.

Sanders allegedly mused over how lucky he was that he and Wayne Williams had the same carpet and that they both owned a white German shepherd.

The FBI report stated that "Wayne Williams cannot be excluded" as a suspect in the case.

In 2019, two Atlanta men, Derwin Davis and Isaac Rogers, claimed that Wayne Williams had attempted to abduct them in 1979 and 1981 respectively.

Wayne Williams appears as the main antagonist in several media portrayals of the case.

Wayne Williams was first depicted in the 1985 television miniseries The Atlanta Child Murders and was played by Calvin Levels.

In 2019, Wayne Williams was featured in season 2 of the Netflix series Mindhunter alongside others such as Charles Manson and David Berkowitz; Wayne Williams was portrayed by Christopher Livingston.

Wayne Williams is shown picking up Rodney Green, a black teenager who has run away from home, after showing him a fake police badge; in the next chapter, "Sweet Pea", Rodney is said to have become the killer's latest victim.