When is a serial not a serial killer? When you’re just not 100% sure…!
The conventional wisdom among those who hunt serial killers is that you have to have killed at least three people with some amount of time in between the murders in order to be considered a serial killer. Which puts Wayne Williams in an interesting position.
See, Wayne was only convicted of two murders, committed in Atlanta in 1981. So that would seem to exclude him from the serial killer club. But Wayne was credibly believed to be responsible for TWENTY-FOUR murders of children in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, a series of crimes dubbed the Atlanta Child Murders.
No one could ever prove it, but then again, no one else was ever convicted of those crimes. So we’re going to let him in on a technicality.
The Wayne Williams case is interesting for many reasons, but I first came across it while reading John Douglas’s memoir, Mindhunter. Williams was the case that helped profilers understand that serial killers tend to hunt within their racial group. Wayne Williams is Black, and so were his victims. Initially, police assumed that the killer was white, figuring the murders were committed by a racist. But Douglas and his team realized that the murders took place in a majority Black neighborhoods. A white dude would stand out. And no witnesses said anything about a white guy in the areas in question.
So it made sense, then, that the killer was Black. Someone who wouldn’t be noticed as out of place in the neighborhood.
I find the notion that serial killers tend to go after their own race fascinating and I used it a few times in I Hunt Killers. Billy, of course, was sort of an exception to that rule.
There is a metric ton of media out there about Wayne Williams. If you’re interested in more information about him, his Wikipedia page is a good place to start.
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