29 Kids, 1 Convict — and Decades of Doubt

NEED TO KNOW

At least 29 children, teens and young adults were killed in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981

Wayne Williams was convicted of murdering two adults but never charged in the children’s deaths

The city reopened testing in 2019 and built a memorial to honor victims still awaiting justice

Between 1979 and 1981, children vanished from Atlanta’s streets — boys who never made it home from the store or to the bus stop — and soon their bodies began turning up in woods and rivers. The killings of at least 29 young people shocked the city and terrified families, who kept their children inside for years.

According to the FBI’s publicly released case files , roughly 29 children, teens and young adults — mostly boys — were killed during that span; the bureau joined a multi-agency task for