Wayne Williams — The Atlanta Child Murders

Between 1979 and 1981, at least 28 African-American children and young adults were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia, in a case that caused nationwide panic and led to over $1 million in federal funding for the investigation. Wayne Williams, a 23-year-old music promoter, was arrested in 1981 after being seen dropping something from a bridge moments before two bodies were recovered from the Chattahoochee River. Williams was convicted of two adult murders; police attributed 23 of the killings to him and closed those cases. Families of victims continue to dispute this conclusion, and Georgia reopened the investigation in 2019.