Some mornings, it’s pitifully easy to find something to write about.
Like, this morning. Back in the early 1990’s, a serial killer was stalking women in the Reynoldstown neighborhood in Atlanta. Reynoldstown was, in all senses of the term, crack-infested. There were a lot of drug-related deaths. There were a lot of prostitutes: the two go hand in hand. Men from all over metro Atlanta would drive there to get an extremely cheap woman, or girl. Or boy, I imagine. This was precisely the same area where little boys were disappearing during the Atlanta Child Murders in the 1980’s. It wasn’t a very long walk to some of the body dump sites.
I lived a few blocks east, in Cabbagetown. On Fridays, I avoided gardening in my front yard because the men with Cobb County plates were trolling the streets, picking up emaciated prostitutes. Some of the prostitutes jerked and twitched as they walked from cocaine-induced tardive dyskinesia. Anyone who believes prostitution is a victimless crime is an intellectual buffoon. The wives of the Johns were certainly victims. There was a mother-daughter team jumping in and out of cars on my street corner: the daughter didn’t wear shoes. She looked like she weighed about 75 pounds. Her arms and legs were a constellation of bruises and sores. What were those old men from the suburbs thinking? She could be their granddaughter. She was visibly sick.
By 1990, when I moved in, Wayne Williams had been sitting in prison for nearly a decade. The cameras had gone elsewhere, and the money, too: politicians like Maynard Jackson and Arthur Langford (curious story, that) had sucked up the cash decent people sent to Atlanta to help the murder victims and long ago moved onto the next gravy train. Eight female prostitutes dead in Reynoldstown didn’t attract much attention outside the police, who, contrary to stereotype, were actually the only people who gave a damn about the deaths. Police, relatives, and local people — they knew who had children, and who went missing, and who had been a nice teenager before she got hooked on drugs. On the other side of town, both female and transvestite male prostitutes were getting killed. The transvestites were getting shot in the head: the women were mainly strangled or beaten to death. If I remember correctly, if this particular murder didn’t occur later, one of the female victims was found strung up from a tree in a graveyard. I went looking for more information about the transvestite killings and found only this blog post by “atl-Steve,” who lists nine of the Atlanta transvestite murders, eight between 1990 and 1992, seven shot in the head. There were probably several serial killers preying on people in Atlanta at that time. The drugs and the prostitution gave them extremely easy access to victims. Life was extremely cheap.
One of the stories that circulated was about a Mr. X: in 1994, a woman’s body was found with a note that said: “I’m back in Atlanta, Mr. X.” The woman was a prostitute, and she had been strangled. This morning, in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, there is a story about the upcoming trial of Michael Harvey, who is linked to her murder through DNA.
That’s where the story stops making sense.
Michael Darnell Harvey: Mr. X
The newspaper is reporting that Michael Harvey was linked to the murder through DNA in 2005 and arrested in 2008. It isn’t clear why it took three years to arrest him. Was he on the run? Was he being held on other charges? It doesn’t say. But it seems to me that if the police had been looking for him all this time, somebody would have said that. And if he had been in custody in Fulton county pending charges after the DNA match, somebody would have said that.
Because the alternative is so extremely disturbing. The alternative is that Michael Harvey was identified as a murderer, likely a serial killer, in 2005, and then nobody did anything about it for three years. In the age of DNA, that can’t possibly be true, can it? I hope I am missing something here.
Since 2000, all felons sentenced to state prison in Georgia have had to provide DNA samples to the state, to be added to a DNA database. That law was passed thanks largely to recently deceased feminist activist Vicki McLennon and Lt. Governor Mark Taylor, and it has solved many sex crimes and saved lives.
In 2002 or 2003 (it isn’t clear from the state database), Michael Harvey was convicted of an aggravated assault in Fulton County. The crime occurred August, 2002. He was sentenced to six months and spent February to June, 2003, in state prison. At that time, he should have given the state a DNA sample. He also had a prior false imprisonment and attempted sexual assault conviction on his record. Wouldn’t the DNA from anyone with a sexual assault conviction be carefully checked for other sexual assaults? In any case, if the law was followed, Harvey gave the state a DNA sample no later than June 2003. His DNA was matched to a stranger serial murder in 2005. He was charged with that murder in 2008.
So somebody has some questions to answer:
- If he was in fact released, why was Michael Harvey, a convicted sex criminal, released from prison in 2003 without his DNA sample being entered into the state database?
- Why wasn’t he arrested and charged with murder in 2005, when the GBI linked his DNA to a serial murder?
- Why did it then take three more years to charge him with the crime? Is this a screw-up that should be laid at the feet of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard?
And some larger questions:
- Was he really convicted only of aggravated assault in 2002/3, or was that a sex crime charge pled down to mere assault by some willing prosecutor and judge? Were any other convictions actually sex crimes that got pled down, too?
- Why did Michael Harvey get only three years for attempted rape and false imprisonment in 1996? Three years for trying to rape a woman? Nice.
- Why didn’t the state of Georgia bother to take a DNA sample from Harvey when he was convicted of rape in 1996? DNA was being widely used by then, and as a sex offender, Harvey probably had to provide a sample, even though the state law requiring DNA of all felons had not yet been passed. Did he give the state DNA? Why wasn’t it tested, if it wasn’t tested? Is that sample one of the thousands shelved and forgotten by a criminally careless criminal justice system?
- Does Michael Harvey’s DNA match any other crimes, especially crimes committed since the state last cut him loose?
Here is Harvey’s prior conviction record:
CASE NO: 130362OFFENSE: NOT AVAILABLE
CONVICTION COUNTY: CONVERSION
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: NOT AVAILABLECASE NO: 130362OFFENSE: NOT AVAILABLE
CONVICTION COUNTY: CONVERSION
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: NOT AVAILABLECASE NO: 130362OFFENSE: BURGLARY
CONVICTION COUNTY: FLOYD COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: 2 YEARS, 0 MONTHS, 0 DAYSCASE NO: 130362OFFENSE: THEFT BY TAKING
CONVICTION COUNTY: FLOYD COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: NOT AVAILABLECASE NO: 130362OFFENSE: THEFT MOTORVEH OR PART
CONVICTION COUNTY: FLOYD COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: NOT AVAILABLECASE NO: 130362OFFENSE: THEFT MOTORVEH OR PART
CONVICTION COUNTY: FULTON COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: 6 YEARS, 0 MONTHS, 0 DAYS
He spent four years behind bars for these crimes, October 1980 to November 1984. A long time for motor vehicle theft. And that burglary: was it really just burglary?
CASE NO: 176538OFFENSE: NOT AVAILABLE
CONVICTION COUNTY: CONVERSION
CRIME COMMIT DATE: 09/07/1984
SENTENCE LENGTH: NOT AVAILABLECASE NO: 176538OFFENSE: CRMNL INTERFERE GOVT PROP
CONVICTION COUNTY: HABERSHAM COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: 1 YEARS, 0 MONTHS, 0 DAYSCASE NO: 176538OFFENSE: simple battery
CONVICTION COUNTY: HABERSHAM COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: N/A
SENTENCE LENGTH: NOT AVAILABLE
He appears to have served nine months for these crimes, February to November 1985. Then the Atlanta killings began.
CASE NO: 392286
OFFENSE: FALSE IMPRISONMENT
CONVICTION COUNTY: FULTON COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: 08/08/1996
SENTENCE LENGTH: 3 YEARS, 0 MONTHS, 0 DAYS
CASE NO: 392286
OFFENSE: AGG ASLT W INTNT TO RAPE
CONVICTION COUNTY: FULTON COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: 08/08/1996
SENTENCE LENGTH: 3 YEARS, 0 MONTHS, 0 DAYS
CASE NO: 392286
OFFENSE: AGG ASLT W INTNT TO RAPE
CONVICTION COUNTY: FULTON COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: 08/08/1996
SENTENCE LENGTH: 3 YEARS, 0 MONTHS, 0 DAYS
He appears to have served 1 year, 4 months in state custody for this crime, from May 1998 to September 1999. He probably served some of his sentence in county custody prior to being transferred to state prison. But his DNA, if it was sampled, was never checked against other rape and rape-murder cases in Fulton County while they still had him behind bars. Come on, folks: 1999? Unsolved rape-murders? There’s no excuse.
CASE NO: 515573OFFENSE: AGGRAV ASSAULT
CONVICTION COUNTY: FULTON COUNTY
CRIME COMMIT DATE: 08/18/2002
SENTENCE LENGTH: 0 YEARS, 6 MONTHS, 0 DAYS
He served February – June 2003 in state custody for this crime.
2005: Harvey’s DNA is matched to the 1994 murder of Valerie Payton.
2008: Harvey is charged with Valerie Payton’s murder.
~~~
“I’m Back in Atlanta. Mr. X.”
Living in Cabbagetown in the early 1990’s gave me a front-seat view of the realities of prostitution. Not that they’re particularly difficult to discern from further distances. Ironically however, just a few years later, I entered graduate school and found that academic feminists had a very different attitude towards what they euphemistically termed “sex work.”
While real feminists were pounding the halls of the Georgia legislature and city officials to strengthen laws against rapists, child molesters, and pimps who targeted children (Mayor Shirley Franklin’s finest legacy), many of the academic feminists I met were busy “celebrating” prostitution as a “liberatory practice.”
So, in a city where scores of prostitutes, including children, suffered addiction, disease, violence, rape, and murder as a direct consequence of their “careers,” the academics were excitedly playing at being fake prostitute labor organizers and paying fake professional “sex workers” like the repugnant Dolores French to come titillate them with trumped up stories about happy hookerdom. French is married to defense attorney Michael Hauptman, who used to specialize in getting violent child molesters off (his e-mail name is loophole) — sort of a two-fer for those whose outrage over date rape never bled over into actually advocating for harsher sentencing for any rapists.
The distance between Valerie Payton’s murdered body and this dismal intellectual buffoonery? Four miles, or a thousand light years. Take your pick. Meanwhile, I hope somebody in Atlanta will get to the bottom of Michael Harvey’s story. Nothing is particularly clear right now.
To be fair there are some better academic feminists out there like Seigfried. Most of the Freudians and French inspired academic feminists though are going to spread a lot of crap though about “liberatory prositution”…
Who is Seigfried?
At any given time in the USA, there are dozens of serial killers working. As long as they stick to prostitutes and hitchikers, it is difficult to chronicle their work.
One serial killer of prostitutes was tried and convicted on one case in the early 1990s, his name escapes me, and he got a “life” sentence. Ironically, a whilte male and a black female assistant DA wanted to dismiss the case but there was intervention and help from a white woman asst DA who helped, and the guy was convicted. He was working the SW side of town though, not cabbagetown area.
It is so troubling to me that anyone would opt to “avoid possibly wasting resources” by not prosecuting someone accused of such serious crimes. But it happens every day. Thanks for writing.
wow…things that make ya go hmmmm, when it comes to our legal system…seems to me it gets just as bent to suit one’s needs as does our constitutional rights. Very disheartening. Thanks for all your research and for bringing this to public view.
I won’t comment on the legal or societal aspects but I know a little about the C’town pros.
I moved to Estoria and Gaskill in Cabbagetown in 1997, a prostitute having been brutally murdered by a group of men a number of years before (great selling point!). Supposedly she had stolen money from a drug dealer. The last I heard, they were let off due to a mistrial.
By the time I moved here, mine was one of the last corners where they plied their trade. As mentioned above, a stream of big, older cars w/ OTP tags would go up Gaskill ST. By then, I think they’d become safety conscious, usually gather in a group of three (boys and girls), with at least two going w/ the John. A guy in a beat up van would ride around and stop after they came back, I’m assuming selling drugs. There was even a married couple, 17 and 15.
It’s cleaned up now, although one still sees the occasional emaciated, dazed and confused woman waking the streets.
My two cents!
I know of another serial killer in Georgia, however, it seems the police are simply waiting on him to maybe, some day, just himself in. I dont know what the problem is there, but how many times must I report information on 6 bodies they have had in the crime lab for over 3 years? No one will even return my phone calls. Way to go Georgia!
My daughter was murdered Aug.15,2008 on Metropolitan Ave. Any the homicide has still to this day reminded unsolved The Police an the City Politicians are get kick backs
It is interesting that the author seems to think only the families of the johns are victims. (If they even have a wife or kids to begin with). The prostitutes are most certainly victims, too, especially if they are underaged.
Of course I agree with you. Thanks for reminding all of us.