After 20-Year Search, She Saw the Rendering and 'Screamed'

It had been more than 20 years since she'd seen the little boy. But when the woman saw a facial rendering of a child that had turned up dead outside Atlanta, Ga., in 1999, created by a forensic artist with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children two decades later, she says she "screamed." "I knew that was him," the woman named Ava told the center. "It was no doubt." That tip has now led to the arrest of Teresa Ann Bailey Black for the murder of her 6-year-old son, William DaShawn Hamilton. Ava had known the pair when they lived in Charlotte, NC, in 1998. Following her May 2020 tip, DeKalb County police learned Black had removed her son from school in Charlotte in December 1998 and moved with him to Atlanta, acording to a release.

The body of a long-dead African American boy was found in a wooded area near a church cemetery in Decatur, east of Atlanta, on Feb. 26, 1999. Months later, Black returned to Charlotte without her son and reportedly gave different reasons for his absence, per CBS News. "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," says NCMEC spokesperson Angeline Hartmann. "She made phone calls, scoured the internet, and talked to anybody who would listen." Ava told the center that finding William—a boy she loved and cared for, who liked to dance, draw, read, and crack jokes, per WCCB—became "my job," one she was dedicated to "every day."

"Maybe that was my purpose of coming into his life—to make sure that once his life was taken, that I would get him justice," added Ava. "And I have." According to police, DNA collected from 45-year-old Black earlier this year linked her to the boy's remains. A DeKalb County grand jury returned an indictment against Black on June 28. She was arrested in Phoenix a day later and is now awaiting extradition to Georgia. She faces charges of felony murder, cruelty to children, aggravated assault, and concealing the death of another. Investigators continue to piece together the details of the case and are asking anyone who knew Black and/or William around 1998-99 to call the DeKalb County District Attorney Office's Cold Case Tip Line at 404-371-2444. (More cold cases stories.)