Atlanta ? A white supremacist investigated for a child-killing spree that terrorized Atlanta’s black community once praised the crimes in secretly recorded conversations obtained by The Associated Press.

Although Charles T. Sanders didn’t claim credit for any of the deaths, lawyers for Wayne Williams, the black man convicted in two of the murders and blamed for 22 others between 1979 and 1981, believe the evidence will help their bid for a new trial.

Sanders – whose older brother, Don, was a reputed officer of the Ku Klux Klan – told an informant for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the 1981 recording that the killer had “wiped out a thousand future generations of niggers.”

His only complaint was that the killings were prompting police road blocks.

Police dropped the probe into the Klan’s possible involvement after seven weeks, when Sanders and two of his brothers passed lie-detector tests, according to documents released this week to the AP following an open-records request.

The 315 pages of documents show the investigation started after a source told police that Sanders said the KKK “was creating an uprising among the blacks, that they were killing the children, that they are going to do one each month until things blow up.”

Wayne Williams, center, is led from the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta in a Jan. 18, 1982, file photo during his trial. Seven weeks into an investigation of whether members of a family with ties to the Ku Klux Klan were involved in the notorious Atlanta child killings, police abruptly dropped the probe after three of the targets passed lie-detector tests, according to documents released in August 2005 to AP following an open-records request.

The source also told police that Sanders had threatened to strangle one of the children, Lubie Geter, because Geter ran into Sanders’ car with a go-cart. Geter was later strangled, and Williams was blamed for his death though never charged.

Williams has long contended that he was framed and that Atlanta officials covered up evidence that the Klan was involved in the killings to avoid a race war in the city.

His lawyers believe the materials released to the AP and other evidence they are seeking will help him get a new trial. They say the investigation into the Klan was withheld from Williams’ defense.

“There is no doubt that evidence in the hands of the defense and the jury would have at the very least created reasonable doubt at Wayne’s trial,” said Williams lawyer Michael Lee Jackson.

Transcripts of multiple wiretapped conversations involving the Sanders family were not released, and authorities won’t say if there were any admissions in those talks.

In May, the police chief in neighboring DeKalb County, who assisted with the original investigations, said he was reopening the investigation of five of the deaths.

Sanders, brothers Jerry and Don, and their father, Carlton Sanders, are dead, according to relatives. Reached by telephone Friday, another brother, Ricky Sanders, declined to comment.

“They had nothing to do what that stuff,” said his fiance, Michelle Eno.

Former GBI Director Robbie Hamrick, who worked on the case, said he believes Williams is guilty, though he wouldn’t say Williams committed all the killings.

“I’m convinced he was responsible for the two cases he was convicted on,” Hamrick said. “The others, that’s something the courts would have to decide.”