Wayne Williams' house

This is Wayne Williams' former house.

It is situated at 1817 Penelope Road NW in Atlanta, Georgia.

Williams is a convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who is believed to be responsible for the "Atlanta Child Murders" during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

At the time of his arrest, the 23-year-old was living at this address with his parents.

In 1982, Williams was sentenced to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of the murders of Jimmy Ray Payne (21) and Nathaniel Cater (27). The authorities also believe that he murdered at least 22 victims between 1979 and 1981.

Many of his suspected victims were young boys and teenagers.

Because the victims were all African Americans, many people assumed that the murders were hate crimes. However, investigators were of the opinion that they were dealing with a sexual predator.

Profilers from the FBI registered their belief that the "unsub" was a black male, as serial killers in the 1960s and 1970s tended to stay within their own racial lines. They also reasoned that a white killer operating in Atlanta's black neighborhoods would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

As the manhunt heated up, the FBI theorized that the killer would try to avoid detection by dumping his victims' bodies in local rivers instead of wooded areas. Acting on this theory, the police decided to put a number of bridges in the area under surveillance.

Williams became the prime suspect in the case after a surveillance team spotted his car on the James Jackson Parkway bridge.

Just moments before his vehicle crossed the bridge, the team heard a loud splash in the river below.

When they questioned the 23-year-old, he claimed that he was on his way to meet a woman. However, it soon emerged that the woman in question did not exist.

The police arrested Williams after they determined that the rare nylon fibers found on the victims' bodies were a match with a carpet in his home.

Although the authorities believed that he was responsible for the serial killings, they decided that the best way to put him behind bars was to focus their efforts on prosecuting the strongest cases.

As a result, they only charged him with two of the murders.

Following Williams' arrest and subsequent incarceration, the sexual homicides of young black males in Atlanta suddenly stopped.

He remains in prison to this day.

Photos

Photos of the house and other related images.

2020

This Google Street View image is from March 2020.

The photograph of Williams on the right was taken in 1999. To this day, he still proclaims his innocence.

During the investigation, it was discovered that the yellow-green fibers on some of the victims' bodies matched up with the carpet in Williams' house.

The task force determined that the odds of such a match were 1 in 7,792 (0.0128%).

To put that number into perspective, the odds of a high school basketball player being drafted into the NBA are 1 in 3,333.

Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater

On February 27th, 1982, Williams was found guilty of the murders of Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater.

The police believe that the splash they heard in the early hours of May 22nd, 1981, was the sound of Cater's body being thrown into the Chattahoochee River.

Two days after the incident, Cater's body was discovered one mile downstream.

Following his conviction, the "Atlanta Monster" was sentenced to life imprisonment. Although he sought retrials in 1998, 2004, and 2006, all of these requests were denied.

Williams is currently serving his sentence at Telfair State Prison in McRae-Helena.

James Jackson Parkway bridge

This Google Street View image of the James Jackson Parkway bridge was taken in February 2022.

This is the location where Williams reportedly stopped to dump the body of Nathaniel Cater.

Fortunately, a four-man surveillance team on the other side heard the splash and spotted his vehicle driving over the bridge shortly afterwards.

He quickly became the prime suspect after investigators learned that he had been lying about where he was headed that night.

This bridge is roughly 8 miles away from the house at 1817 Penelope Road.

Coordinates: 33.817549, -84.480328

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