The Lost Children’ HBO Doc: Review

Cries for justice — for American power systems to make even the most basic concession that Black lives matter — are not in any way new. 

Over the past couple weeks, however, those cries have rung out with a long-overdue collective ferocity that has rarely been seen in this country. But to truly join the voices who’ve been demanding a safer future for Black Americans, we must also look back and fully reckon with the countless times non-Black Americans failed them.

That’s why HBO’s Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, a documentary released this past April about an infamous string of child murders in the ’80s, feels especially pertinent right now. It’s not only a timely reminder of how far back these conversations around race, injustice, and policing go. The documentary highlights exactly how the American law and order system enables and protects those who murder Black people, even when they’re children.

It zeroes in on the biggest forces of evil at play in the murders: systemic racism and white supremacy.

The Atlanta child murders have seen a resurgence in pop culture recently, whether through Payne Lindsay’s 2018 true crime podcast series Atlanta Monster or Season 2 of David Fincher’s Mindhunter. Unlike those explorations, though, this documentary doesn’t focus on Wayne Williams (the man authorities pinned the murders on). Rather, it zeroes in on the biggest forces of evil at play in the murders: systemic racism and white supremacy.

The key difference in the documentary’s approach comes down to whom it listens to and believes. Rather than giving the police or the accused killer the majority of screen time, it takes the Black communities and families who suffered through these tragic losses at their word. Most, if not all, do not believe Williams killed their children and, by the end of the five episodes, I doubt any reasonable mind wouldn’t question the officials’ narrative either.

There are numerous revelations in Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered that are truly jaw-dropping —ones that went ignored in the numerous other tellings I’ve consumed (which is failure both of these narratives and of my own ignorance). The latter half of the five-part series digs into the enormous pile of evidence that validates what many labeled the “conspiracy theories” (i.e., the very substantiated beliefs) held by many Black Atlantans, that the Ku Klux Klan was involved. 

But I won’t spoil any more specific details. A better way to capture the relevance of Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered to current events is by focusing on how it addresses the many arguments being used in attempts to discredit the police brutality protests following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

For one, the documentary should be required viewing for anyone spouting the “but who will catch the murderers?!” rhetoric to counter calls to defund the police. 

As the Atlanta child murders make abundantly clear, cops aren’t doing a great job of catching murderers as is. Assumptions that they’d care enough to try that hard are based in white privilege, since it took the death of nine Black boys before anyone really started taking notice. (Meanwhile, the cavalry came out in full force before JonBenét Ramsey’s body was even cold — and they still didn’t catch her killer, mind you.) What’s painfully obvious is that the issue of police routinely disregarding Black lives isn’t just a matter of brutality, but of indifference and callousness. 

Far from being treated with any shred of decency, the family members who suffered these losses are barely seen as victims by the police. Instead, they’re nuisances, simply for demanding that the police do their jobs of protecting and serving. More egregiously, most police officials interviewed for the documentary show no remorse for behavior that some might try to excuse as being “of its time.” One is indignantly self-righteous as he restates today to the camera why he was totally justified in accusing one of the victims’ mothers (and other family members) of killing her own child. His main reason for vilifying her? She was “a prostitute.”

All of these injustices intersect with another sick media cycle we’re all too familiar with now, since it happens after every viral video of an unarmed Black person being killed for the crime of being Black. The victim’s family is forced to go on a media tour to try and convince the public that their murdered family member was a human being who did not deserve to be killed and is worthy of our attention. Inevitably, the news media and police find a way to victim blame, vilifying the murdered and questioning their innocence even when if, like the Atlanta cases, they are literal children.

More Black people in powerful positions is not enough when every branch of the political and judicial system is rot with white supremacy.

The documentary is also a great takedown of another popular argument being used to counter protests: Just go vote instead! While voting is obviously important, let’s recognize who exactly is most affected by voter suppression. (Hint: It’s a lot of the people protesting right now.)

Moreover, the racial dynamics of the Atlanta child murder case are complicated by the fact that the murders and investigation happened under a Black mayor (the first one ever elected in the South, actually) and a Black police chief.

Clearly, having more Black people in powerful positions is not enough when every branch of the political and judicial system is rotting with white supremacy. So you can throw out that other argument about “good apples” too, since no amount of good intentions stops a machine specifically designed to protect some through the literal sacrifice of others.

Beyond a salient and timely commentary on systemic racism, Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered is a gut-wrenching reminder of the unconscionable human costs of that system’s failures. 

The documentary is unrelenting in how it lays bare the pain and fear these families and communities suffered. They are not just mourning the loss of their children, although that in itself is too much to bear. They are also mourning the loss of any and all illusions — however small — that the people in charge would protect the most vulnerable among them.

The failure to provide the families of the Atlanta murder cases any real justice should prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that white supremacy reigns over definitions of “justice” in America. No one went to prison for those dozens of unsolved murders, but the documentary makes clear exactly who has blood on their hands.

Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children is available to stream on HBO and HBO Max.