Inside The Lab That Cracked The Atlanta Child Murders _ The New Detectives

Twenty-nine Black children and young adults vanished from Atlanta’s streets between 1979 and 1981. Police were under immense pressure. The break in the case did not come from a witness or a confession. It came from a carpet fiber and a dog hair examined in a quiet Georgia laboratory.The evidence was microscopic but damning. Investigators discovered fibers on the victims that matched the carpet and furniture in a Chevrolet owned by 23-year-old Wayne Williams. A yellow-green nylon fiber from the car’s carpet was found on several victims, and a dog hair from the Williams family pet was also recovered. This trace evidence, analyzed by the Georgia State Crime Lab, linked Williams to two of the adult victims. Although never charged for the child murders, Williams was convicted in 1982 for the killings of two adults, and police subsequently closed the child cases based on the same evidence.This episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, revisits how forensic science, particularly fiber analysis, can speak louder than any eyewitness. Turn down the lights, put on your headphones, and press play because the carpet in a stranger's car held the answers an entire city was waiting for.