Echo Of Murder

Between 1979 and 1981, 31 African American children were murdered in or around the city of Atlanta, GA. When the murders began, they were not thoroughly investigated by the police, who could not have realized that what started out as two seemingly unrelated deaths would turn into something much worse. Throughout 1980 and 1981, a number of different teams of investigators tried to track down the killer, often doing work that the Police neglected to do themselves, and, after an extensive search, found a suspect named Wayne Williams who became the center of one of the most controversial trials of the 1980s. A flaky young man who was a well known pathological liar, Williams was prosecuted, even though there was no hard evidence linking him to the crime, and found guilty.

This film is the story of two journalists from Spin magazine, Pat Laughlin and Ron Larson (Belushi & Hines), who return to Atlanta four years after the trial to uncover what went wrong during the investigation of the case and the conviction of Wayne Williams. The two dig up a host of troubling facts including proof that investigators altered evidence, abandoned leads, and were generally incompetent. During their stay in Atlanta, Laughlin and Larson endure the animosity of some locals, cagey police officers, and numerous dead ends as they try to learn the truth behind one of the most troubling murder cases in American history.