Photo: Getty
In 1981, when he was seven years old, Isaac Rogers was walking with two cousins in his Atlanta apartment complex. It was a scary, sad time for him: The previous December, his 16-year-old brother had been murdered.
As the kids walked, they were startled when a stranger emerged out of nowhere — and attempted to block the kids in a stairwell. The cousins scattered, and Rogers approached his neighbor’s apartment door.
Rogers, now 46, says the man quietly followed him and watched as Rogers screamed and knocked on the door.
“I remember vividly how calm he was,” Rogers recounts in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “Like, he was on a mission, which told me he’s done this before.”
But the man disappeared. Rogers says the next time he saw him, it was six months later in a news report about the man’s arrest. “I told my mother, that’s the guy!”
That man, he says, wasWayne Williams.
Patrick Rogers.Getty
At the time, Williams, then a 23-year-old freelance photographer and self-described music producer, was suspected in the slayings of nearly two dozen boys and young men — including Rogers’ 16-year-old brother Patrick — who were found murdered or missing around Atlanta from 1979 to 1981. (The case was the the subject of the 2018 podcast,Atlanta Monster.)
• For more on the ongoing mystery surrounding the Atlanta Child Murders,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
Although Williams was never charged with Patrick’s murder or the killings of the other boys and has denied killing anybody, he was convicted in 1982 for the murders of Nathaniel Cater, 28, and 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne.
Fulton County Police Department
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Clickhereto get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
Over the years, Williams, who is serving two life sentences, has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
“I just want some closure and I want the truth to come out,” he says.
source: people.com
