DNA From Victims Of '80s Atlanta Child Murders Flown To Salt Lake City For Testing

ATLANTA — Atlanta Police investigators are taking evidence to a private Utah lab to study DNA likely connected to a missing victim of the Atlanta Child Murders of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the Police cooperation with a Salt Lake City crime lab over “evidence from the Missing and Murdered children case” on Twitter Monday evening.

“It is my sincere hope that there will be concrete answers for the families,” Bottoms tweeted.

Atlanta Police confirmed the collaboration, saying only that “APD works all murder cases until they are solved,” and that there was more news to come.

More than 20 children and teens went missing across Atlanta between 1979 and 1981. Wayne Williams, who was 23 at the time, was arrested and convicted of murder in two unrelated cases and remains in prison serving two life sentences, according to authorities.

Williams was never charged for any missing child cases, although authorities say evidence links him to several cases.

Bottoms had police reopen some of the cases in 2019 with the plan to use modern technology to review the old evidence, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Earlier this year the police department announced that it had the funding necessary to begin retesting evidence, WAGA TV Fox 5 reported.

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