A Break in the Investigation?

The police and the feds are at odds in Atlanta

It seemed in part the news Atlanta had been waiting for. In a statement that brought banner headlines and modest hope to the city's residents and their green-ribboned sympathizers around the country, FBI Director William Webster announced that four of the 23 murders of Atlanta children committed since mid-1979 had been "substantially solved." Webster said that these slayings were not related to the twelve to 16 believed to have been committed by one mass murderer. But, in the case of four, he said: "We're satisfied we know the cause and the persons responsible."

That was news to Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown, coordinator of the local investigation. Not so, said he: "If we had a case that was solvable, you can be assured that we would have made that arrest." If the commissioner was annoyed about that possibly careless FBI disclosure, his boss, Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, was incensed. In a letter to the FBI director, Jackson suggested that Webster "consider the impact of your casual press statements, [which] undermine the public's confidence in our investigation and create a great deal of misdirected media speculation and invective." Added Jackson: "We need Washington's help, not more problems."

But there were more to come. The following day, after addressing a civic club in Macon, Ga., FBI Agent Michael Twibell not only endorsed Director Webster's statements as "right on target" with "full facts behind him" but went on to finger one category of suspects. "Some of those kids were killed by their parents," Twibell remarked. The motive: the children had been "nuisances."

This latest FBI disclosure widened the rift between the agency and Atlanta authorities. Branding such a statement as "irresponsible," Brown said that "if I find anybody who works for me who gives out information that jeopardizes the investigation, I will see the person never gets another job in law enforcement."

The FBI, however, does not work for Brown. The agency has dutifully been coordinating its investigation with local authorities, but it does not have an agent assigned full time to the Atlanta task force, as do state and county agencies. The FBI'S inquiry is separate and, judging from last week's exchanges, perhaps sufficiently competitive to turn the race to solve the murders into a race to solve them first. Observed one investigator close to the case: "All of these agencies have big egos."

Despite the controversy they provoked, the FBI statements appear to be consistent with some of the findings in the investigation so far. TIME Atlanta Bureau Chief Joseph N. Boyce has verified that family members have indeed been suspects in at least three of the murders (although evidence is still insufficient to warrant an indictment in any of them), and that some of the 23 victims were involved with adult homosexuals. Timothy Hill, a slain 13-year-old, reportedly told an adult confidant that he had had such liaisons. At least three other victims may also have had homosexual relationships, possibly for money. Police are now using computers to compare the addresses of homosexual ex-convicts with the home addresses of victims and with the locations where their bodies were found. They are also searching for a middle-aged black man with a false-looking mustache. An individual of that description was the last person seen with Larry Rogers, the boy whose body was the 23rd and most recent one found.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.