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The List
The killings that happened in Atlanta, Ga. 1980's. During this time 29 boys made the list of murdered and missing children. In The List three American institutions, the police, the courts and the press failed in one of the biggest murder mysteries in the annals of American crimes.It is a true story of many unsolved murder mysteries that didn't make "The List" (at least 63 and 22 occurred after Wayne Williams went to jail.
516 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 17, 2016
An excellent, if incredibly disturbing read. The authors were there, actively investigating the Atlanta Child Murders as they happened, and discovered what appears between these covers. It's not what we were led to believe at all. This is a must-read if you are interested in these murder cases, in police incompetence, in racist public administration, or in forensic medicine. What made me especially sad was the way the authors listed so many victims who were never given any attention by the police -- but many of their stories and all of their pictures were left out.
December 4, 2023
Best true crime book I ever read. I grew up during the Atlanta murders. There is so much information the public was never told. I’m not sure I believe Wayne Williams is guilty anymore. A MUST read for anyone who remembers!
February 8, 2016
My favorite true crime book. The author leaves no stone unturned as he covers every detail of this gripping and at times baffling case.
March 4, 2023
In 1983, LA Times reporter, Jeff Prugh, and former police officer and public safety commissioner, Chet Dettlinger, published "The List" -- certainly the most compelling book written about the Atlanta Child Murders of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in that year's competition but disappeared from print immediately following publication -- no doubt due to the trial results of presumed perpetrator Wayne Williams. "The List" is so rare that copies of this first and only print edition are currently selling on Amazon and ebay for $120, with stock limited to one or two copies on each platform.
I grew to adulthood in the late 1970s. The Atlanta Child Murders were an ugly story interlaced through much of my college education, with reports of new murders surfacing every couple of months it seemed. Although the Atlanta Child Murders did not preoccupy my interest during college, they slowly came to do so in the years that followed graduation. As a result, I have read "The List" no fewer than eight times, and every time I've read it, I've come away with the same belief: that Wayne Williams was rushed to judgment by an Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County Sheriff's Office and Federal Bureau of Investigation eager to close a case that had become a national black eye for all three organizations -- even if it meant convicting an innocent man and letting a guilty one (or more) go free.
In February 1982, Wayne Williams was found guilty of the murder of two adults inexplicably included in The List of Atlanta's Murdered and Missing Children (three adults appear on The List of murdered and missing children). Following the guilty verdict in these two adult murders, 20+ children's murders were appended without proof to the Williams verdict. Astonishingly, three of the victims added actually had other perpetrators implicated in those crimes -- implications which neither the Atlanta Police nor Fulton County Sheriff's departments bothered to further investigate.
Adding insult to injury, Williams was found guilty of the two adult murders based on highly specious FBI fiber evidence found in his car and parents' home, and on the bodies of the two adult victims dragged from various Atlanta-area rivers. Amazingly, test dummies dumped into and dragged from those same rivers months later were found to have had the same incriminating fiber evidence on them. It is worth noting here that prosecutors never claim evidence "is" proof, but rather that it is "consistent" with proof: a distinction that could very easily be extrapolated as reasonable doubt. The rush to judgment becomes more evident when one considers lies told by Atlanta police officers who claimed to have seen Wayne Williams driving across a bridge shortly after stopping on the bridge, and after a loud splash rousted the onsite surveillance officers from suspected on-duty slumbers. It is worth noting that several of the victims' mothers do not now believe Wayne Williams is guilty of the Atlanta Child Murders -- or even guilty of the two adult murders for which he was actually charged.
"The List" questions the entire course of investigation taken by both the Atlanta City Police and Fulton County Sheriff's departments; openly condemns the insufficient evidentiary claims made by the FBI; and criticizes the unorthodox guilty verdicts in the 20+ child murder cases appended to the two adult cases litigated by County prosecutors. And still, Wayne Williams remains imprisoned for these crimes, with every appeal for retrial quelled by justices unwilling to assign the murders back to the unsolved category they richly deserve. It is worth noting that murders in DeKalb County related to the Atlanta and Fulton child and adult murders (and on The List) are still listed by that department as unsolved: DeKalb investigators found no compelling evidence to charge Wayne Williams with these crimes.
Dettlinger and Prugh do a masterful job of rebutting all of the claims made by Fulton County prosecutors. Much of this work was undoubtedly due to Dettlinger's refined investigative skills -- skills which included an early foray into geographic profiling (Chet's "map") years before this became standard operating procedure for the FBI. But where "The List" truly excels is in its macroscopic view of policing in America, and in the critique of its failures -- many of which were endemic to the Atlanta Murdered and Missing Children investigations. Regarding bad police, Dettlinger describes the situation as "not so much a case of one rotten apple in a bunch, but rather as a rotten barrel into which perfectly good apples are thrown." This rotten barrel philosophy has never become so apparent to me as in the recent instances of police malfeasance in Minneapolis, New York, Ferguson, New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles. . . .
I grew to adulthood in the late 1970s. The Atlanta Child Murders were an ugly story interlaced through much of my college education, with reports of new murders surfacing every couple of months it seemed. Although the Atlanta Child Murders did not preoccupy my interest during college, they slowly came to do so in the years that followed graduation. As a result, I have read "The List" no fewer than eight times, and every time I've read it, I've come away with the same belief: that Wayne Williams was rushed to judgment by an Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County Sheriff's Office and Federal Bureau of Investigation eager to close a case that had become a national black eye for all three organizations -- even if it meant convicting an innocent man and letting a guilty one (or more) go free.
In February 1982, Wayne Williams was found guilty of the murder of two adults inexplicably included in The List of Atlanta's Murdered and Missing Children (three adults appear on The List of murdered and missing children). Following the guilty verdict in these two adult murders, 20+ children's murders were appended without proof to the Williams verdict. Astonishingly, three of the victims added actually had other perpetrators implicated in those crimes -- implications which neither the Atlanta Police nor Fulton County Sheriff's departments bothered to further investigate.
Adding insult to injury, Williams was found guilty of the two adult murders based on highly specious FBI fiber evidence found in his car and parents' home, and on the bodies of the two adult victims dragged from various Atlanta-area rivers. Amazingly, test dummies dumped into and dragged from those same rivers months later were found to have had the same incriminating fiber evidence on them. It is worth noting here that prosecutors never claim evidence "is" proof, but rather that it is "consistent" with proof: a distinction that could very easily be extrapolated as reasonable doubt. The rush to judgment becomes more evident when one considers lies told by Atlanta police officers who claimed to have seen Wayne Williams driving across a bridge shortly after stopping on the bridge, and after a loud splash rousted the onsite surveillance officers from suspected on-duty slumbers. It is worth noting that several of the victims' mothers do not now believe Wayne Williams is guilty of the Atlanta Child Murders -- or even guilty of the two adult murders for which he was actually charged.
"The List" questions the entire course of investigation taken by both the Atlanta City Police and Fulton County Sheriff's departments; openly condemns the insufficient evidentiary claims made by the FBI; and criticizes the unorthodox guilty verdicts in the 20+ child murder cases appended to the two adult cases litigated by County prosecutors. And still, Wayne Williams remains imprisoned for these crimes, with every appeal for retrial quelled by justices unwilling to assign the murders back to the unsolved category they richly deserve. It is worth noting that murders in DeKalb County related to the Atlanta and Fulton child and adult murders (and on The List) are still listed by that department as unsolved: DeKalb investigators found no compelling evidence to charge Wayne Williams with these crimes.
Dettlinger and Prugh do a masterful job of rebutting all of the claims made by Fulton County prosecutors. Much of this work was undoubtedly due to Dettlinger's refined investigative skills -- skills which included an early foray into geographic profiling (Chet's "map") years before this became standard operating procedure for the FBI. But where "The List" truly excels is in its macroscopic view of policing in America, and in the critique of its failures -- many of which were endemic to the Atlanta Murdered and Missing Children investigations. Regarding bad police, Dettlinger describes the situation as "not so much a case of one rotten apple in a bunch, but rather as a rotten barrel into which perfectly good apples are thrown." This rotten barrel philosophy has never become so apparent to me as in the recent instances of police malfeasance in Minneapolis, New York, Ferguson, New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles. . . .
January 8, 2009
Very Interesting
April 17, 2018
terribly written and also very biased but it is the main book on the atlanta child murders and it brings up lots of good points
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews