(2 of 2)
The prosecutors tried to portray Williams as having a pathological loathing of his sexual companions. Witnesses spoke of him as a man bristling with racial self-hatred. According to Sharon Blakely's husband Eustis, an electrical engineer, Williams called black youngsters "street gruncheons." Denise Marlin, a bookkeeper for an ambulance service, said, "He used to call his own race niggers." Ambulance Driver Bobby Toland claimed that Williams even cited high black birthrate statistics to denigrate his race. Williams once asked him, Toland said, "had I ever considered how many niggers could be eliminated by doing away with one nigger child."
On Friday, the defense aggressively began its counterattack. A Baptist minister and a former Atlanta police recruit damaged the credibility of Nellie Trammell, an important prosecution witness, who claimed she had seen Williams with one of the ten victims who have been linked to him by prosecutors. Dr. Daniel Stowens, a widely known pathologist who has been involved in 90,000 autopsies, startled the courtroom by declaring that he did not believe that Payne and Cater had necessarily been murdered. Said he of Cater's autopsy report: "There is no indication of any criminal activity at all." Defense lawyers will argue that authorities, desperate for a conviction, trumped up evidence against the defendant. The trial is expected to last four more weeks before the case against Wayne Williams is finally settled. -