Curtis Walker was 13 when he left his Bowen Homes apartment in Atlanta on February 19, 1981, reportedly to look for odd jobs. He was last seen near a gun shop and a shopping center on Bankhead Highway; his mother immediately reported him missing because it was uncharacteristic for him to disappear without telling anyone. Volunteers and tracking dogs followed his scent to a local schoolyard before the trail ended, suggesting he may have been picked up by a vehicle.

On March 6, 1981, firefighters inspecting the South River found Curtis’s body lodged against a log miles from where he was last seen. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as asphyxiation, a detail investigators noted in linking his killing to several other child victims. The case was absorbed into the Atlanta Child Murders task force; investigators pursued leads including reports of a green Chevrolet near the river and a minister’s suspicious phone calls. After the 1982 conviction of Wayne Williams for two adult murders, authorities attributed a majority of the child cases to him and closed them. Recent efforts to re-examine evidence, including DNA testing, have been reported.

Did anyone who knew Curtis as a child or lived near Bankhead Highway in 1981 see anything that could still help this investigation?