Convicted killer Wayne Williams says evidence withheld

ATLANTA - Lawyers for convicted killer Wayne Williams Friday filed a petition in federal court alleging that police and prosecutors withheld key evidence from the defense. <br> <br> Williams has long claimed that prosecutors were guilty of misconduct and that his attorneys failed to effectively represent him during his 1982 trial. <br> <br> Williams is serving a life sentence for the murders of 287-year-old Nathaniel Cater and 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne. They were among 29 blacks, mostly children, whose slayings between 1979 and 1981 led to one of the most intensive investigations of the century. <br> <br> Williams was blamed for 24 of the murders, and evidence of a pattern of conduct was used against him at his trial. The state Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1984 and rejected an appeal for a new trial last year. <br> <br> The petition filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta alleges that authorities withheld from the defense evidence that the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for the child murders. <br> <br> The petition says the probe was abruptly derailed when a Georgia Bureau of Investigation officer tipped off the Klan suspects as to the identity of an informant. It says the officer later destroyed much of the evidence of the Klan investigation, including tape recordings of the Klan suspects.