All offers reward

Press, 11 May 1981, Page 6

All offers reward

NZPA Atlanta Muhammad Ali, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, has given $400,000 to a reward fund for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the death of 26 young negroes in Atlanta, Georgia. Ali’s gift, the biggest individual donation the city has received in connection with the series of murders over a 22-month period,

raised the reward fund to $500,000. “It seems as though somebody should know something or should be looking harder,” Ali said at a news conference. “I think it’s a disgrace to people of our stature to gather only $lOO,OOO to capture the killer of our children.” The Mayor of Atlanta, Mr Maynard Jackson, predicted that Ali’s gift would greatly increase the rate of dona-

tions to the reward fund. City officials originally set a $lOO,OOO limit for the reward fund late last year, when the killings of 14 children were being investigated by a special task force. While Ali was making his announcement, about 40 volunteers searched the wooded banks of the Chattahoochee River in the hopes of finding clothes or other clues in the slayings.