In the summer of 1979, a sense of unease began to creep into the city of Atlanta. It was a time when children played freely in their neighborhoods, but that sense of security was about to be shattered. Fourteen-year-old Edward Hope Smith, a Black male, was one of the first to vanish. On July 21, 1979, after a night out at the Greenbriar Skating Rink with his girlfriend, he disappeared. For a week, his family and friends waited, hoping for his safe return.
Their hopes were tragically dashed on July 28, when a woman searching for cans in a wooded area stumbled upon his body. He had been shot in the back. The discovery of another body, that of 13-year-old Alfred Evans, nearby only deepened the growing fear that a predator was stalking the city's Black children.
The investigation into Edward's death was subsumed into the larger 'Atlanta Child Murders' case, a string of at least 28 killings of African American children, adolescents, and young adults that terrorized the city between 1979 and 1981. Although a man named Wayne Williams was arrested and convicted for two of the adult murders in 1982, and authorities subsequently closed many of the other child murder cases, attributing them to Williams, Edward Hope Smith's case was not among them. His murder officially remains unsolved, a cold case that continues to haunt the city and his family, a painful reminder of a dark chapter in Atlanta's history. No suspect was ever formally charged in his death, leaving a void of justice and unanswered questions that have lingered for decades.
In a separate and unrelated case in the fall of 2022, another man from the Atlanta area became the center of a homicide investigation. On the evening of October 7, police in Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, responded to a call about a single-vehicle accident and a person shot at a construction site off Stone Mountain Highway. They arrived to find the body of a woman, later identified as 33-year-old Breana Marie Rogers, lying in the driveway. She had sustained multiple gunshot wounds. Witnesses reported seeing a man flee the scene on foot.
The investigation quickly zeroed in on Edward Rodley Smith Jr., a 39-year-old man, as the primary suspect. Authorities issued warrants for his arrest on charges of aggravated assault and felony murder. A few days later, on October 10, Smith turned himself in to the Gwinnett County Jail. The subsequent trial revealed a grim story of domestic violence. Prosecutors said that Rogers had been trying to leave Smith on the night of her death. Smith pursued her, and their altercation spilled out onto the highway, leading to the car crash. It was there that Smith shot Rogers multiple times, ending her life. In November 2025, a Gwinnett County jury found Edward Rodley Smith Jr. guilty of malice murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, bringing a legal conclusion to the tragic and violent end of Breana Rogers' life.
