by Tricia Psarreas Murray

Created on: June 12, 2009   Last Updated: June 15, 2009

In most cases, fibers are only used in a murder trial to help support stronger physical evidence. That was not the case in the Wayne Williams Trial, held in Fulton County, Georgia fourteen years ago. In this trial, the primary evidence used to convict Williams was the multitude of fibers that originated from his environment, but ended up being discovered on the bodies of two young boys who were murdered. Williams became a suspect in this case, when he was caught by a surveillance team at the James Jackson Parkway Bridge over the Chattahoochee River in northwest Atlanta, at 2:00 a.m. The following day, the body of a murdered boy, Nathaniel Cater, was discovered approximately a mile downstream from the area in which Williams was spotted by the police. When his reasons for being in that location at that hour could not be confirmed, search warrants for his home and his vehicle were granted. During those searches, associations with the fibers found on Nathaniel Cater and other murder victims, were discovered on Williams' carpet, bedspread and dog.

Upon inspection, it was noted that the fibers that matched those from Williams' carpet, were not at all common. They were made of a very coarse material and had an unusual lobed, cross-sectional appearance. In order to eliminate the possibility that Williams was being unfairly judged by a carpet that could have belonged to any number of people, an attempt was made to develop the numerical probability of the carpet belonging to somebody else in the area.

During this process, it was determined that the specific carpet was only in production for one year and it was estimated that approximately 82 rooms in Georgia, were covered with this carpet. That meant that there was only a 1 in 7,792 chance of finding an identical carpet in the metropolitan Atlanta area. As if the figures were not low enough to begin with, those estimates were running under the assumption that nobody had discarded their carpets in 11 years, even though that specific rug had a typical life span of only four or five years.

Along with the unique fibers from Williams' carpet, were unusual violet-green fibers from his bedspread, dog hairs from his family dog, fibers from a yellow blanket in his bedroom, blue rayon fibers from his home and the fibers from inside the trunks of three vehicles Williams used. The evidence that matched up with Williams' environment was undeniable an amazing feat for the forensic world. This was a case of good luck combined with a superb job of keeping evidence intact. If the police officers who discovered the bodies had not followed protocol and gathered evidence in such a manner, it is quite possible that this murderer would have never been found. It was the collection of head and pubic hairs, the examination of the victims' clothing and the preservation of all of the fibers, that made it possible for justice to be served.

Learn more about this author, Tricia Psarreas Murray.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.