← All Cases / Episode #525
The Case of Willie "Pete" Williams
📻 Episode #525
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 May 15, 2025
About This Episode
On April 5, 1985, around 11 p.m., a woman exiting her car in her apartment complex parking lot just north of Atlanta, GA was approached by an African-American man. The man asked her if she could help him find "Paul." He then pulled out a gun and told her to move into the passenger seat.…
Case status as carried in this site's original 2026 profiles. Independent record verification is rolling out episode by episode — statuses are being re-checked against court and registry sources and date-stamped as verified.
The Case
On April 5, 1985, around 11 p.m., a woman exiting her car in her apartment complex parking lot just north of Atlanta, GA was approached by an African-American man. The man asked her if she could help him find "Paul." He then pulled out a gun and told her to move into the passenger seat. He drove to a nearby dead-end street where he raped the victim. After the attack, he drove her back to the parking lot and left on foot. She reported the attack to the police and helped them draw a composite sketch of the perpetrator.
Five days later, another woman exiting her car in her apartment complex was approached by an African-American man. This parking lot was on the same street in the same area as the other crime. The man asked her if she could help him find "Carol." He then put a razor blade to her throat and got in the car. He demanded sex and tried to pull off her clothes. She was able to talk the man into leaving her car. The police showed the second victim the first victim's composite sketch, and the second victim immediately identified the sketch as resembling her attacker.
Later that month, Willie “Pete” Williams, a 23-year-old part-time painter, was in a car pulled over for a traffic violation when police noted that he resembled the composite sketch of a serial rapist in a nearby neighborhood. The officers included Pete in a line-up, and two victims and a witness identified Pete as the perpetrator. The actual rapist was not included in the line-up.
Based solely on faulty eyewitness identification, and despite arguments Pete’s attorney made about an alternate suspect, a jury convicted Pete of rape, aggravated sodomy, and kidnapping. The judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
https://nacdl.org/
https://www.georgiainnocenceproject.org/
In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:04:05“Speaker 2: about because it's so common. But can you take us Speaker 2: back to I mean, this is a long time ago, right, Speaker 2: because you were exonerating in two thousand and seven, yes, Speaker 2: but the help of the Innocence Project. So this crime Speaker 2: goes all the way back to the mid eighties.”
00:15:55“Speaker 2: threatened to blow the whistle on his illegal and the Speaker 2: various activities, but instead of turning his life around, he Speaker 2: plotted to have her kidnapped and killed in front of Speaker 2: their four and six year old boys. Ricky and Mike. Speaker 2: I mean, what the actual buck. He was convicted of”
00:27:52“Speaker 5: the rural South, the smaller communities in Mississippi and Alabama Speaker 5: and Tennessee, sadly so a lot of Pete Williams that Speaker 5: are serving life sentences from prosecutors that were as misguided Speaker 5: and as corrupt as the one in his case. Speaker 2: And that's why it's so important for people to get”
Listen to the Episode
🎧 Listen on Omny / the podcast's platforms
Resources & links from the episode:
Share this case, follow the organisations working on it, and support the podcast's fight for the innocent at lavaforgood.com.
← #524 Clemente Aguirre #526 Ben Bowlin with Sonny Bharadia →
Also on the podcast: #60 Pete Ouko · #153 Willie "Pete" Williams · #290 Carl Williams