The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (19 page)

We were even more incredulous when the Atlanta staff admitted to us that there was a task force of over 150 FBI agents working the case in a separate facility and not one of them had been invited to this consultation. The FBI didn’t even know we were in town because no one had told them. Each one of us was aware of the problems
created when the necessary personnel are not informed of what was important in the cases. But an FBI task force with separate headquarters in the same city investigating the same case was unprecedented. This fact caused us to believe that little or no sharing of investigative information was taking place.

The Eric Middlebrooks murder, the seventh case on their list, was an example of the difficulty the command staff had answering many of consultants’ questions about the facts of the investigations. Middlebrooks, a 14-year-old black male, was last seen at midnight on May 19, 1980, at his home. He was not officially reported as missing. His fully clothed body was found on May 20, 1980, off Flat Shoals Road Southeast. He died of a head injury.

Again, the consultants inquired about any previous indications of a history of child abuse. The Atlanta police officials did not know the details of the autopsy report or family history of the victim. I noticed that Middlebrooks was lying at the base of a tree. I asked whether he had suffered a coup-contracoup injury, an indicator that the victim’s head was in motion at the time the blow was struck. If Middlebrooks had fallen out of a tree, his head would have been in motion, causing a blow to the exterior of one side of his head and subdural hematoma on the opposite side on the interior of the skull from where the blow was struck. Unbelievably, the presenters couldn’t answer. Their lack of knowledge about information that was crucial to forming the characteristics of a profile would prevent intelligent decision making. It would be months later before I learned that Middlebrooks also sustained two stab wounds, confirming that his death was no accident.

While the Atlanta area had seen the disappearances of five black males, ages 9 through 13, and one 7-year-old black female during the four months from May through September 1980, the Atlanta authorities increased the resources dedicated to the investigative effort. Several innovative investigative strategies were tried. The combined assistance of Dr. Lloyd Baccus, a psychiatrist from Emory University, and Dr. Nicholas Groth of Connecticut State Prison was enlisted to develop offender profiles.

Several experts in the area of homicide investigation were individually consulted. Captain Robbie Robertson, commander of the Michigan Child Murders Investigative Task Force, whose opinions I would grow to respect, advised the task force on follow-up techniques.
Investigators interviewed all previous runaway children in the same age group as those who were missing or slain. Someone may have escaped from or developed a friendship with the killer. Quite possibly, one of these children could have been recruited to lure in victims for the killer. FBI Special Agent Roy Hazelwood, an expert in developing sex offender profiles, provided analysis of taped and printed evidence. Other experts gave assistance to police management personnel on how to conduct investigations of this sort and to develop computer programs for sorting data. By the end of September, the task force was expanded to 25 full-time investigators, who included detectives from areas where the Atlanta Child Killer had dumped bodies—Atlanta, Fulton County, East Point, and Dekalb—and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Only three bodies of the six missing children were found before the discovery of the remains of Charles Stephens on October 10, 1980, the day after he disappeared. He was a 12-year-old black male whose cause of death was listed as probable asphyxiation. Stephens’s body, missing its T-shirt, belt, and socks, was dumped off Normandary Drive in East Point, five miles from his home. Unlike the other bodies dumped by the killer to this point, Stephens’s body was openly displayed and laid out next to the road. It was intentionally placed to ensure discovery.

There were only two more victims found before January 1981, according to the task force list of victims. It seemed like there should have been more, based on the frequency of previous discoveries. Had the investigators’ search of missing and runaway children, focusing as it had on exact matches to the killer’s modus operandi, been too quick to dismiss other possible victims? Those missing and runaway children complaints filed with the Atlanta area police jurisdictions should have been aggressively pursued in light of the ongoing murder cases. Checking on the circumstances leading to the disappearances of any children may have developed suspect information in the form of someone who was last seen with a child.

By mid-February 1981, three more young black males had been found murdered. Lubie Geter, 14 years old, had last been seen in the vicinity of Stewart Lakewood Shopping Center in
southwest Atlanta on January 3, 1981. His remains were found on February 5 in a wooded area 70 feet off Vandiver Road in Fulton County. That road runs off Campbellton Road, where the bodies of Angel Lanier and Jeffrey Mathis had previously been recovered. The cause of Geter’s death was asphyxiation, probably by a chokehold.

Terry Pue, 15 years old, was missing from the Krystal Restaurant on January 22, 1981. Pue, like many of the others, had no car and hung out at the Omni, a place that Geter was also known to frequent. The next day at 7:30
A.M.,
Pue’s body was discovered in yet another police jurisdiction near Atlanta, Rockdale County. It was almost like the killer was dumping victims in as many different police jurisdictions in and around Atlanta as possible. Pue’s fully clothed body was located near Interstate 20 on Sigman Road, laid out as if the killer had wanted it to be discovered. Pue had apparently suffered manual strangulation.

Another juvenile known to hang out near the Omni was Patrick Baltazar, 11 years old. Baltazar was last seen on Courtland Street in the early evening hours of February 6. His body was found on Friday, February 13, 1981. It was behind the Corporate Square Office Park, off Buford Highway, three blocks from Interstate 85 in Dekalb County. He was fully clothed, but his clothing was unbuttoned. Probable asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation was the cause of his death.

Through the end of March 1981, five more young black males went missing and were found either in the South or Chattahoochee rivers. They ranged in age from 13 to 23 years old and all of them had died of some form of asphyxiation. In February 1981, an Atlanta newspaper carried a story that revealed that several different types of fibers were found on two of the murder victims. It seemed no coincidence that following the publication of the fiber story, five bodies, clad only in undershorts or nude, were subsequently deposited in rivers in the Atlanta area instead of being dumped on land. It appeared to police investigators that the victims were being disposed of in rivers without clothing so that the water would wash away any fibers that might otherwise be left on their bodies.

The next body found in the series, that of Larry Rogers, was dumped in a vacant apartment on Temple Street, less than a mile from Bankhead Highway, on April 9, 1981. He, too, was clad only
in undershorts but was wearing his tennis shoes. Asphyxiation due to strangulation, possibly by chokehold, was determined to be the cause of death. Rogers was last seen on March 30, 10 days prior to his discovery date, at his residence in northwest Atlanta. Less than a month later, at 3:30
P.M.
on April 27, 1981, the body of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne was found snagged on a tree limb in the Chattahoochee River, one quarter of a mile downstream from the Interstate 285 bridge and between it and the Bankhead Highway bridge in the city of Atlanta. He was clad only in shorts and died from asphyxiation by unknown means.

The last murder victim on the task force list was William Barrett, age 16. Barrett was last seen by his court services officer on May 11, 1981, in the Kirkwood area of Dekalb County. His body was found dumped on the road at one
A.M.
the next day in the vicinity of Winthrop Drive, just off I-20 in Dekalb County. Even though his cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation due to strangulation, the medical examiner discovered five knife pricks in his body but only two holes in his shirt. His clothing was unbuttoned and his pants were loose. Also, Barrett’s body had two horizontal post-mortem stab wounds.

On the day following the first meeting, our consultation group gave its first response to the Atlanta task force senior commanders. We believed that at least 23 of the 27 murder victims on the task force list were connected and committed by the same person. The cases of Jimmy Payne, William Barrett, Larry Rogers, Patrick Baltazar, Lubie Geter, Terry Pue, Charles Stephens, Eric Middlebrooks, and Alfred Evans were linked to each other. The same fibers and animal hairs were present consistently from one case to another. Because other young black female and male victims were discovered, probably strangled, in the same rivers or along the same roads in close proximity to the main nine victims, they could not be excluded from the investigation. We didn’t have any direct evidence that tied their deaths to the nine primary victims, but it was too soon in the process to throw them out on that fact alone. We conceded that with very few or no similar fibers and animal hairs identified, an absolute
connection from the other victims to the nine linked victims could not be made. However, there was still a very high probability that 23, if not all 27, murdered children were killed by the same person. Moreover, we reported, we were unable to develop a strong rationale for connecting all 27 murders into one series because of either an incomplete investigation into the murders of the early victims or insufficient data given to us by the Atlanta task force. The more information available for analysis, the more effective we would be in attempting to link these crimes. Some assurance that friends and family members were not responsible for some of the murders was necessary before connections to other cases could be made.

The style of killings, with victims missing from areas popular with young blacks and asphyxiation being the most predominant cause of death, didn’t fit logically with the most publicized theory that a white racist person or group was eliminating the black children of Atlanta to create fear in the community. These were not terrorist murders in the political sense of the word. The Atlanta child murders were more than likely committed by a black male whose method of operation reflected a personality with a need for hands-on activity with each victim before and after death. This would be a killer who could move about freely, who had relationships within the community, and whose presence in the area on any day he chose would not be considered out of the ordinary. This would be a killer who was trusted by his victims. Thus, we concluded, the killer was part of the community and, like a Ted Bundy, was taking victims who had no idea they would ever be in danger.

Probable asphyxiation was the cause of death in a number of cases. A lack of telling marks of death or signs of a struggle were indicative that the killer more than likely got the victims into a sleepy stupor by using drugs or alcohol. Then he quietly strangled or suffocated the children. Getting the victims to the point of drowsiness took patience and a plan. That meant that the killer spent considerable time with each victim from the point of initial contact until the induction of the state of drowsiness and subsequent murder. To accomplish all that meant that the killer was deceptively cunning in his approach and the victims had complete trust in him.

Some of the boys who had been murdered hung out in the fringe areas of Atlanta, neighborhoods populated principally by the unemployed drug users and hustlers. This was the killer’s primary trolling
ground, and we figured that he had something these young victims wanted. This was how he lured them into his trap. The killer’s line of approach was most likely the offer of a short-term job to make quick money. This was the ploy that John Wayne Gacy used to entrap his young male victims and that Jeffrey Dahmer would use 15 years later. This is a typical serial killer lure. The job offer might have been for prostitution, posing for photos, or running drugs. To the younger victims, the killer may have looked like a role model or big-brother figure, and the victims probably hoped that their association with him would eventually develop into something long term. To the older victims, the killer was nothing more than a very short-lived employment opportunity for the evening, such as a “john” or a drug dealer in need of an on-the-spot carrier. The killer, we believed, was able to change his approach according to the victim. He might have been able to lure his younger victims with money and his older victims with money and a job offer. Whatever the case, the killer was able to get those male victims from 9 to 28 years old under his complete control.

What added to his ability to attract those boys was that each one of them was a clone of the murderer’s own self-image. Even though his choice of victims was purely random, they were a ready pool of handsome boys just like him. He looked, thought, and talked just like his victims, and that is what appealed to them the most—he was someone with common threads. He identified with them so well, the victims probably were never afraid of him, nor was he frightened by them. But his common ground was seductive because he probably presented himself as educated, well-integrated into the community, and always having a good job. The major obstacle for each victim—primarily because they were young—was that they were unable to see through his mask of superficiality.

Based on the killer’s ability to mingle across a spectrum of elementary school boys, older teenage victims, and adults, you would expect to find the killer comfortable in each of those atmospheres. He could have been or still was a volunteer or employee of a boys’ service group, such as Boy Scouts, the YMCA, or other types of boys clubs or community groups. He might have been a frequent volunteer, substitute teacher, or vendor around the elementary-school scene. He might have frequented boy prostitutes and, at the same time, been part of the gay disco scene. He was not likely to have been an out-of-the-closet homosexual. In fact, he might have
been known to hate gays in some circles and be superficially heterosexual with his own family of origin.