The Atlanta Child Murders

The Atlanta Child Murders is a TV miniseries that aired on February 10 and 12, 1985 on CBS. Inspired by true events, the miniseries examines the so-called "Atlanta child murders" of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1981, twenty-nine African American children, adolescents and adults were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia. The killings gained nationwide attention, with many suspecting that they were the work o... more

The Atlanta Child Murders is a TV miniseries that aired on February 10 and 12, 1985 on CBS. Inspired by true events, the miniseries examines the so-called "Atlanta child murders" of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1981, twenty-nine African American children, adolescents and adults were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia. The killings gained nationwide attention, with many suspecting that they were the work of the Ku Klux Klan or a similar white supremacist group. However, in June 1981, a 23 year-old African American named Wayne Williams (Levels) was arrested for first degree murder in the deaths of 27 year-old Nathaniel Carter and 29 year-old Jimmy Ray Payne. Eight months later, Williams was convicted of both killings and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment. Some parties speculate that Williams was not the true killer, and that local law enforcement officials used him as a scapegoat to bring a seemingly unsolvable case to a... less