United States

In Atlanta, Georgia In 1979, the bodies of two young boys were found in a remote wooded area. Both had been brutally murdered, for no apparent reason. Over the course of the next year, the death toll would climb to 29, leaving a city paralysed with fear and a nation shocked by a murder spree that seemed to know no limit. As the victims multiplied in number, racial tension began to escalate: All [sic] of the dead were blacks from poor families, and many claimed this to be the reason the killer had not been apprehended. The word 'genocide' could be heard all over Atlanta, which was fast becoming known as the "murder capital of the world". As time went by, the killer diversified: Victims [sic] now ranged in age from children to young adults, with the cause of death attributed to strangulation, shooting or stabbing. The only constant was the killing itself. When Wayne Williams was charged with two of the murders, the subsequent trial was as controversial as the crimes themselves, and often more baffling.