In the summer of 1911, a palpable fear gripped the Black communities of Atlanta, Georgia. A brutal and elusive serial killer, dubbed the “Atlanta Ripper” and the “Black Butcher” by the press, was preying on the city’s Black and dark-skinned women. For months, a string of unsolved, savage murders had been met with a chilling indifference from the city’s white-owned newspapers and its police force.
That began to change after the discovery of a young woman named Lizzie Watkins, a female victim whose death would force the city to confront the terror in its midst.
On Saturday, June 24, 1911, Lizzie, a resident of West Oakland Street, became the latest woman to vanish. The next morning, around 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 25, her body was found. She had been left in a clump of bushes at the corner of White and Lawson Streets, her throat savagely cut. Evidence at the scene indicated that she had been killed elsewhere and her body dragged to the hiding place. The horrific manner of her death was tragically similar to that of Addie Watts, another victim found just weeks earlier, and several others before her.
Lizzie Watkins’ murder was a grim turning point. For weeks, as the bodies of women like Belle Walker and Addie Watts were discovered, *The Atlanta Constitution*, a prominent local newspaper, had treated the killings as isolated incidents. The paper even dismissed Lizzie’s death initially, incorrectly suggesting it was the result of “cocaine and whiskey.” However, the sheer brutality and the undeniable pattern—a fifth woman of color killed on a fifth consecutive Saturday—became impossible to ignore. Following Lizzie’s death, *The Atlanta Journal* finally moved the story of the serial killings to its front page, acknowledging the terrifying reality that a single predator was likely responsible.
The killer’s methods were vicious and varied, including strangulation, throat slashing, stabbing, and bludgeoning. The victims were often described as young, neatly dressed, and educated. The Ripper was believed to be responsible for at least 15 murders, though some estimates climb to more than 20, between 1911 and 1912. The slayings spread terror through Atlanta’s Black neighborhoods, which were already navigating the dangers of a deeply segregated and racially hostile city, still reeling from the violence of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. Women feared walking home from their jobs as cooks and laundresses, and service workers reportedly refused to go out after dark.
The official investigation was plagued by incompetence and indifference. While several suspects were arrested over the course of the murder spree, no one was ever convicted for the crimes attributed to the Ripper. The police department’s efforts were disjointed, and some city officials openly denied the existence of a serial killer. City Recorder Nash Broyles publicly stated his belief that each murder was committed by a different man, a theory that likely undermined any chance of a focused, coordinated investigation into the string of connected homicides.
Tragically, while the circumstances of Lizzie Watkins’ death became a catalyst for public awareness, the details of her life have been largely lost to history. Her age and what she did for a living went unrecorded in the dismissive press coverage of the era, a testament to the marginalization of Black women at the time. Her name, and the names of the other victims, were preserved not by the authorities who failed to find their killer, but by the frightened community that mourned them. The case of the Atlanta Ripper was never solved, and the identity of the person who ended Lizzie Watkins' life remains unknown. Her death stands as a stark reminder of a reign of terror that was for too long ignored, and of a life that mattered, even when the society she lived in acted as if it did not.
