Patrick Wayne Baltazar was 12 when he vanished from downtown Atlanta on February 6, 1981. He was known to spend time in that area selling candy and visiting an arcade. A week later, on February 13, a maintenance worker found his body down an embankment behind an office park in a wooded part of North Atlanta.

The medical examiner determined the cause of death was asphyxiation by ligature strangulation; scrapes and bruises were also reported. Investigators recovered fibers on his clothing and dog hairs on his body that were later reported to be consistent with materials from Wayne Williams’ home and car and with Williams’ German Shepherd. In 2010 mitochondrial DNA testing on two scalp hairs from inside Patrick’s shirt was reported to match Williams, a result that excludes a large portion of the population but is not nuclear DNA.

Patrick’s death was treated as part of the larger Atlanta Child Murders; no charges in Patrick’s case were filed at the time of Williams’ trial, although material from Patrick’s case was introduced during prosecution of two adult murders. Does anyone with memories of downtown Atlanta in early 1981 or information about Patrick’s last known movements want to come forward?