At Last, at Least a Suspect

Authorities in Atlanta put some heat on

Wayne B. Williams, 23, was standing in an Atlanta phone booth one afternoon last week when FBI agents approached him and, he says, "insisted" he go downtown for questioning. As word of Williams' interrogation began to spread, many Atlantans expressed hope that the long search for a killer of many of the city's 28 young black victims might be over. Yet twelve hours later Williams, a former TV cameraman and part-time talent-booking agent, was released. Publicly, law enforcement officials said they did not have enough evidence to hold him. Privately, they insisted he was still a suspect. Said one: "The sense is that we've got our man. It's just a matter of time. The question is not whether this is the guy. The question is do we have enough proof."

Williams first came to the attention of investigators in the early morning hours of May 22, after driving across a bridge on the Chattahoochee River. FBI agents observing the bridge had heard something fall into the water where the bodies of six of the 28 victims have been found. According to Williams, the authorities stopped and questioned him about the splash, asking, "Who did you throw off the bridge?" Williams' reply, according to police: "Garbage." The suspect's version: "I told them I had dropped nothing in the river."

Officers interrogated Williams for several hours near the bridge. He was in the area, he later explained, to use a telephone and had stopped momentarily to check the address and phone number of a woman he was planning to audition as part of his talent business. Given permission to search his 1974 Plymouth station wagon, officers found a four-band, two-way radio. Williams, an electronics and short-wave radio buff, had been arrested (but not convicted) in 1976 for impersonating a police officer, having equipped his car with red lights beneath the front grille. This time nothing was confiscated, and Williams was let go. He was, however, placed under surveillance and, according to some sources, an electronic tracking device was placed in his car. Investigators have suspected that Atlanta's youthful victims may have been lured to their deaths by someone impersonating a policeman.

It was the fear that Williams knew about the surveillance and might destroy suspected criminal evidence that prompted FBI agents to approach him last Wednesday. Indeed, the suspect did know he was being tailed. "They apparently weren't very good drivers," he observed. "I caused them to have a minor accident." Williams characterized his twelve hours of questioning at Atlanta FBI headquarters as "accusations and threats the whole time." He submitted to three lie-detector tests and said he was told that "all my answers were deceptive." This, he explained, might be attributed to his nervousness. Other evidence was sought after authorities obtained a search warrant for Williams' home. They confiscated a yellow blanket, purple robe, dog hairs and fibers from a carpet and bedspread. Some of the evidence is said by police to be "encouraging," though final laboratory tests comparing it with trace evidence found on victims are not yet complete.

At 3:15 a.m. Thursday, Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown told a crowd of waiting reporters: "We have not ended up with the information that would result in an arrest." The suspect, he said, "is free to go." Williams, who continues to be trailed by police, held his own press conference later that morning at the Atlanta home he shares with his parents, both retired schoolteachers. There he professed his innocence and protested his treatment by police and his exposure to press harassment. The authorities, he said, "were trying to pin the murders on someone as soon as possible."

On Friday Williams avoided the throng gathered outside his home, but his father stepped out to photograph newsmen, as well as their license plates. At a news conference that evening, Williams' lawyer Mary Welcome urged the media to "cease staking out" the home of Williams' parents, "who are advanced in years."

Her client's life and "the lives of his family and friends have become a virtual nightmare," she said. Welcome also complained that "the unauthorized, premature release of information [had] irreparably jeopardized" Williams' Sixth Amendment rights to a fair and impartial trial.

For their part, Atlanta authorities are concerned about the possible effect of the extensive publicity on their ability to continue to gather evidence against Williams.

To say that the coverage has been damaging, said one official, "is probably the greatest understatement since Ted Williams said he could hit." Warns Wayne Williams himself in a curious subjunctive formulation: "If all this boils out to be nothing, I have been slandered by the police and the news media.'' -

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