Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Murders
A Murderous Change of Pace
Dettlinger and Prugh stated in The List, that after the death of Jackson, "no more preteen 'little boys' were added to the List. The geography changed, too." Furthermore, the murders seemed to move away from the center of the city to the outlying suburbs.
Lubie Geter disappeared in January of 1981. He was fourteen-years-old. Even though he fit all the parameters required by the authorities at the time to make the List, it took two days before the police began their investigation of the crime scene after Geter's body had been found in February of 1981. The body of Geter was extremely decomposed when happened upon by a man walking his dog through the woods. When he was found, he was only wearing his underwear. The medical examiner believed that Lubie died from asphyxiation from manual strangulation.
Geter had been connected with two white male pedophiles — the child molester connected with earlier victim, Earl Lee Terrell and another unidentified man, who would be later connected to List victim William Barrett. An acquaintance of Geter had seen him with the molester linked with Terrell on several occasions. The convicted child molester that had been linked with Terrell was also never a suspect in the murder case of Geter.
Terry Pue was fifteen when he had disappeared in January of 1981. He had been last seen at a hamburger restaurant on Memorial Drive and was a friend of List victim Lubie Geter who had gone missing the same month. An anonymous white caller had phoned the police and informed them where they could find the boy's body. Pue was found near interstate 20 on Sigman Road, in Atlanta. He had been strangled by some sort of ligature. The same caller had also indicated that the remains of another victim could be found on the same road. Years later, those remains were finally located but never identified. Some suggested they were the remains of still missing Darron Glass. The unidentified remains were never added to the List, even though Pue's were.
Patrick Baltazar was eleven when he had disappeared on February 6, 1981. A man cleaning up the grounds one week after he had gone missing found Baltazar's body in an office park. The boy had been strangled to death and the rope thought to have been the murder weapon, lay close to the body. Before his death, the Task Force had received a call from the boy; saying that he believed the killer was coming after him. Unfortunately, the Task Force failed to respond. One wonders if Baltazar would still be alive today if they had responded. After Baltazar had gone missing, his teacher had claimed she had received a phone call from a boy she thought to be Baltazar. The boy never said who he was, he merely cried into the receiver of the phone.
That same month, thirteen-year-old Curtis Walker disappeared and was immediately added to the List. Curtis had lived with his mother and uncle at the Bowen Homes housing project in Atlanta. Both he and his uncle, Stanley Murray, would be murdered. Curtis would make the now infamous List, but his uncle would not. His body was found on March 6, 1981 in the South River. His death, like many of the other List victims, would be documented as caused by asphyxia, probably strangulation with a cord or narrow rope. That same day, FBI agents found the remains of Jefferey Mathis, missing almost a year. His funeral was captured on national news.