The FBI were in Atlanta by this stage, and the Missing Persons Bureau (originally with a staff of four) had been belatedly expanded into a thirty-seven-member Task Force, working in the showrooms of the old Leader Lincoln-Mercury dealership in the centre of town. A reward of $ioo,ooo was established. ‘That ought to smoke them out’ was the general view. ‘That’ll shake the trees.’
But it didn’t. And then the supercops hit town: from Manhattan, Detective Charles Nanton, who worked on ‘Son of Sam’; from Los Angeles, Captain Pierce Brooks, the man who caught the cop-killers in the ‘Onion Field’ case; and several other crack enforcers from all over the States. The supercops left Atlanta a fortnight later, quietly.
Epidemiologists from the Centre for Disease Control set up their computers. Advice was sought from the anti-terrorist training school in Powder Springs. The Guardian Angels from New York are the latest in a long line of feted hopefuls. Two $io,ooo-apiece German Shepherd dogs, so high-powered that they respond only to German commands, contributed their hunting skills. Someone with tracking experience in Africa offered to …
‘It made a lot of people mad,’ said one old Atlantan. ‘Hell, it was all PR. They all just wanted to look good.’ Since the Killings in Atlanta are now world news, everyone wants to look good in the glow: George Bush, Burt Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan.
The supercop circus didn’t find what it was looking for. But it found something else: more crime. Quotidian lawbreaking doesn’t stop while massacres take the headlines; and the intense investigations in Atlanta were uncovering whole new layers of transgression and turpitude.
An officer searches an abandoned building for clues: in a stairwell he finds the skeleton of a forty-year-old man. A tracking dog returns to its master — with the skull of an adult female in its jaws. The weekly citizen area-sweeps routinely turn up caches of guns and stolen goods. Peaceable burglars panic at road-blocks.
Late last year three kids in their mid-teens were arrested for robbery. A health-check revealed that they had all contracted syphilis. Soon afterwards a forty-one-year-old man was arrested for sodomy; several other under-age boys were involved. A nine-year-old girl was picked up off the street by the police, for her own protection. She turned out to be an experienced prostitute. She had been giving ‘head and hand’ since she was five.
There is certainly a childish underworld lying beneath the surface of Atlanta life. But the murder victims did not belong to it. Several of . the boys were street-wise; they hustled for work, for tips, for errands, but they were not delinquent. One boy, Aaron Jackson Jnr, aged nine, used to break into houses, but only for food and warmth. A woman woke up to find Aaron asleep on her sofa. The refrigerator had been raided. Little Aaron was last seen on November 1,1980, at the Moreland Avenue Shopping Center. His body was found the next day, under a bridge. The cause of death was asphyxiation.
5. The ‘Invisible Man’ Theory
‘Theories — that’s one thing we’ve got plenty of,’ said the DA. ‘Me, I still think it’s sex’n’drugs.’
I mentioned that the bodies of the boys showed no sign of sexual interference.
‘Don’t have to be no sign of it. They get the kids, smoke a little marijuana, try some sex stuff. The kid might just be an onlooker… Or maybe some of the kids are pushing a little dope, and need teaching a lesson by the Man. Or maybe it’s their parents who’re being warned. Has to be money involved. Bottom line for a whole lotta stuff is money.’
On one of the early clue-sweeps,, police entered a recently abandoned house. They found an axe, a hatchet, a shovel, and some children’s clothing. They also found two Bibles — nailed to the wall. The Bibles were open, one on Isaiah 1:14 to 3:15, the other on Jeremiah 15:4 to 18:4. Back at the Atlanta America Hotel, I picked up the complimentary Gideon and read through the passages: ‘Bring ‘no more vain offerings — your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves — /I have brought against the mothers of young men/a destroyer at noonday;/I have made anguish and terror/fall upon them suddenly.’