Using the Internet research the Wayne Williams case. What role did fiber evidence play in his conviction; be detailed.
FIBER EVIDENCE AND THE WAYNE WILLIAMS TRIAL
Harold A. Deadman
Special Agent of Microscopic Analysis Unit, Laboratory Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C. On February 26, 1982, a Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court jury returned a verdict of “guilty as charged” on two counts of murder brought against Wayne Bertram Williams by a Fulton County grand jury on July 1981. Williams was on trial since December 28, 1981, for the asphyxia murders of Jimmy Payne and Nathaniel Cater in April and May of 1981. During the 8-week trial, evidence that links Williams to those murders and the murders of 10 other boys or young men was introduced. Another essential part of this case was presented by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office that involved the association of fibrous debris removed from the bodies of 12 murder victims with objects from the everyday environment of Williams. Fiber evidence has often been an essential part of many criminal cases, but the Williams trial was different from other cases.
However, fiber evidence has not played a significant role in any case involving a large number of murder victims.If we talk about the victims whose deaths were charged to Williams included 2 of 30 black children and black young men. These were reported missing or had died under suspicious circumstances in the Atlanta area over 22 months beginning in July 1979. During this trial, fiber as an evidence was used to associate Williams with 12 of those victims.
Fiber evidence is often used to corroborate other evidence in a case. It is used to support other testimony and validate other evidence presented at a trial. Although, this wasn’t the similar in the case of Williams. Additional evidence and other aspects that were included in the trial were important for the case but were used to support and complement the fiber evidence, not the usual order of things. The “hair and fiber matches” between Williams’s environment and 11 of the 12 murder victims discussed at the trial were so significant that, in the author’s opinion, these victims were positively linked to both the residence and automobiles that were a major part of the world of Wayne Williams.
Another most important difference between this case and other cases was the huge amount of publicity surrounding both the investigations of the missing and murdered children and the arrest and subsequent trial of Williams. Few other murder trials have received the attention that the Williams case received. It is often difficult to get an accurate picture from press reports of the physical evidence introduced at a trial and the significance of that evidence. This article will also set forth in some detail the fiber evidence that linked Williams to the murder victims. By discussing only the fiber evidence introduced at the trial, many other aspects of the case against Williams are being neglected. Additional evidence dealing with Williams’s motivations-his character and behavior, his association with several of the victims by eyewitness accounts, and his link to a victim recovered from a river in Atlanta-was also essential to the case.