Visit the Photo Place

Features:MyLine

By ZAAHIRA WYNE
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 7/16/2002

YOUTH CORRESPONDENT

AFTER YEARS of interviewing criminals and promoting the merits of criminal profiling, FBI agent John Douglas finally met up with a breakthrough--the Atlanta child-killer case.

"It received national and international publicity and was really the turning point," he says.

In 1979, black children started disappearing one by one in Atlanta; police would find their bodies dumped in various parts of the city days later. Because all the victims were black, the press and many experts believed they were dealing with a white bigot. But Douglas knew better.

If this were a hate crime, the bodies would be strung up in highly visible areas to make a statement. But in this case, the bodies were dumped haphazardly.

Second, the criminal probably wasn't white. The murders had a sexual nuance to them, and, from experience, Douglas had learned that sexual killers almost never kill outside their race.

The resulting profile of the murderer was a single black male in his mid- to late-20s. He would be sexually attracted to the boys he killed and, like many criminals, own a police-type dog.

As the investigation proceeded and the media began publicizing examination of hair and fiber evidence, Douglas predicted that the killer would start dumping bodies in the river. After all, that was the best way to get rid of hair and fiber.

"There is something to intuition and gut feeling," he notes. "You kind of have to be a right-brained person."

It turned out that the prediction was right on. Weeks later, a local policeman on surveillance duty was doing final checks when he heard a loud splash. The maker of that splash, Wayne B. Williams, fit Douglas' profile exactly.

A reporter for the Dayton Daily News, Lou Grieco, once said, "Douglas seems to have the true gift of instinct."

Looking at Atlanta, it's not hard to see why.

With Atlanta under his belt, Douglas gained an active role in high-profile cases. Police, prosecutors and the press began to believe that there really was something to criminal profiling.

Follow us on

Date published: 7/16/2002