Since Summer 1979 the working-class black community of Atlanta (a 'convention' city, which aims to project an image of middle-class pros perity and comfort) has suffered a continuing series of murders and ab ductions of its children. One year after the first bodies were discovered, due to increasing public protest and criticism of police ineptitude, an official Task Force was set up to investigate the killings. In February 1982 this was disbanded. Official figures claim that twenty-nine young people (mostly boys aged 9-14) were murdered in the period July 1979-June 1981 — until, that is, a black photographer, Wayne Williams, was arrested, charged with two of the murders and in February 1982 convicted. After the trial the media reported that the authorities were satisfied that Williams was guilty of at least twenty-six cases. The verdict is be ing appealed and it is expected that information about the multiple series of murders that have taken place throughout the three-year period, particularly those that occurred while Williams was in jail, will come up in the defence case. Before, during and after the trial, a number of community forums focused on the stark discrepancy bet ween 'official' and 'actual' versions and protested the arrest, trial and verdict. Community estimates of the death toll - the black parents of Atlanta had from the first organised their own increasingly dynamic campaign to stop the murders - had put the numbers far higher. Many girls, young women and young men have also been murdered, but excluded from the official death toll as not fitting the 'pattern' (an arbitrary characterisation of the killings produced under media pressure). What the community records demonstrate is that the killings did not cease with the arrest and imprisonment of Wayne Williams - they are even now going on. Since this article was written a number of families have petitioned the Attorney-General for an investigation into the murders, and the present chief of police has, in response to intense community pressure, invited a citizen's Task Force to assist in investigating the murder of seven women. Community forces hope to use this oppor tunity to pry open the whole case. This article is taken from Toni Cade Bambara's forthcoming book on the Atlanta killings (to be published by Random House). Cast part ly in fictional form, it is based on the experiences, records and ongoing work of the STOP campaign against the murders, of which she was, and is, an active member.