6-year-old found dead near Georgia cemetery in 1999. Now mom is charged with murder
A 6-year-old was found dead near a Georgia church cemetery — and decades later his mom is charged with murder, officials said.
The case dates to 1999, when someone stumbled upon a decomposing body in a patch of Atlanta-area woods. At the time, officials discovered that the remains belonged to a child but were unable to match them to a missing persons report, according to news conference video from WAGA.
“It was estimated that he had been deceased for three to six months prior to being found,” DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said in the news station’s video. “Exactly who was this child and what happened to him? Those are the questions that would resonate.”
Now, years after the discovery, officials have some answers. The district attorney’s office has identified the boy as William DaShawn Hamilton, a former resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, who loved to read and tell jokes.
Prosecutors also have identified Hamilton’s mother as his suspected killer. Officials in a July 13 news release didn’t list attorney information for the mom, identified as Teresa Ann Bailey Black.
Before her son’s death, prosecutors said Black “abruptly” took the 6-year-old out of a Charlotte school and took him to the Atlanta area in December 1998. His body was found off Clifton Springs Road in Decatur on Feb. 26, 1999.
“She returned to Charlotte in late 1999 without William and told differing stories about his whereabouts,” officials wrote in their release.
Though William was never reported missing, someone who knew the family had a lingering suspicion that helped to crack the case, according to the WAGA video and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“For more than two decades, a woman in Charlotte who knew William and his mother followed her gut feeling that something wasn’t right and kept looking for him,” prosecutors wrote. “We’re grateful she never stopped until she found a rendering of William online and gave investigators the missing piece to help solve this 23-year-old mystery.”
Black is accused of causing “her son’s death by giving him ‘a substance or substances containing Diphenhydramine and Acetaminophen’ and by striking him in the head with an unknown object,” WXIA reported. The two medicines typically are used to relieve allergy symptoms and pains or fevers, respectively.
Black, now 45 years old and living in Phoenix, Arizona, was indicted and arrested in June. She faces “two counts of felony murder, two counts of cruelty to children, aggravated assault, and concealing the death of another,” officials said.
Prosecutors continue to seek clues in the case and ask anyone with information to call them at 404-371-2444.
This story was originally published July 13, 2022 at 12:07 PM with the headline "6-year-old found dead near Georgia cemetery in 1999. Now mom is charged with murder."
