On January 10, 2015, Atlanta homicide detective Darius Mitchell walked into an abandoned pharmaceutical building on Marietta Street following a tip about a murder suspect. The building, a former research facility for Meridian Pharmaceuticals, had been empty since 2005. Instead of finding the suspect, Mitchell found a steel basement door with a broken lock and a hallway of six rooms. Behind the first five doors were hospital beds with human remains, each connected to medical monitoring equipment and IV stands.
In the sixth room, he found a woman still alive, barely conscious and severely emaciated. Her body was failing, kept alive only by an automated system of saline, glucose, and vitamins. She was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital. The woman, Briana Jackson, had been held in that basement for 17 years.
Before she died that afternoon, she gave Mitchell a name: Dr. Georgiev. She whispered that he was still operating, that there were more victims, more facilities. Mitchell had found five bodies in one location, but Briana’s final words suggested the horror extended far beyond that single building.
Forensic examination identified the five victims found at Marietta Street. They were Kesha Thompson, Marcus Williams, Destiny Porter, Jamal Carter, and Briana Jackson. All were Black college students from Atlanta-area HBCUs, all between the ages of 19 and 22, and all had disappeared within a four-week window in the fall of 1998. The four who died showed evidence of severe drug reactions.
They had been administered experimental compounds. The medical examiner found IV sites on all the victims. These were not random abductions. They were systematic.
Mitchell began interviewing the families. Gloria Thompson, whose daughter Kesha had disappeared in 1998, told him that Kesha had signed up for a clinical trial with Meridian Pharmaceuticals after her financial aid fell through. The company offered $5,000 for six weeks of participation. Kesha never came home.
The police had investigated for two weeks, concluded she had likely run away, and closed the case. Gloria spent 17 years calling the police, hiring a private investigator she could not afford, and demanding answers. Kesha’s roommate confirmed the story. She and Kesha had both gone to Meridian’s recruitment booth on campus.
The company was offering money to desperate students. Kesha called from the facility on her first day saying something felt wrong, but she was told she would not be paid if she left early. Her roommate told her to stay. It was the last time they spoke.
Mitchell dug into Meridian Pharmaceuticals. The company was founded in 1985 by Dr. Nikolai Georgiev, a Bulgarian immigrant. In the mid-1990s, Georgiev developed a new antidepressant and applied for FDA approval to conduct clinical trials.
The application was denied due to insufficient safety data. He conducted the trials anyway. Returning to the Marietta facility, Mitchell found handwritten research notes. Georgiev had logged every subject by number, documenting their dosages, reactions, and deaths with clinical detachment.
Kesha Thompson was Subject 01. Briana Jackson was Subject 05. Georgiev had reduced her dosage deliberately, not to save her, but to study how long a human body could survive chronic exposure. The notes also mentioned a secondary facility, with a new cohort recruited starting in 2000.
The most recent entry was dated November 2014, only two months earlier. The threats began almost immediately. Mitchell received a distorted phone call warning him to stop investigating. He found listening devices in his home and in his sister’s apartment.
He found photographs of his family, including his ten-year-old nephew, left on his kitchen table with a note: Stop or they pay. He moved his sister and nephew into his home and continued working. A key name emerged. A woman identified as Dr.
Morgan, an administrator at Clark Atlanta University’s student affairs office, had been the contact person on Meridian’s recruitment materials. She had encouraged students to sign up for the trials. When confronted, she requested a lawyer. Days later, her attorney negotiated a meeting with the district attorney.
Morgan admitted she had been paid $20,000 per year by Georgiev to identify students who were financially desperate, who had limited family support, and who would not generate significant public attention if they disappeared. Over 18 years, she helped recruit 14 students. The other nine had been taken to a second facility in Decatur, near an old train station. With a warrant, Mitchell led a SWAT team to the Decatur warehouse.
The main floor was empty, but the basement held ten rooms. In nine of them, they found human remains. The scenes were far more chaotic than those at Marietta Street. There were signs of struggle, of people fighting until the end, of desperation.
The tenth room had fresh linens, a full IV bag, and monitoring equipment turned on but disconnected. Georgiev had been there recently. He had known they were coming. Forensics identified all nine additional victims, all Black college students who disappeared between 2001 and 2014.
The total was now 14: five at Marietta Street, nine at Decatur. Mitchell contacted all 14 families. Every one told him the same thing: the police had not looked hard enough, had assumed their children had simply run away because they were Black students, because the system did not value their lives. Mitchell traced Georgiev’s money through shell companies and offshore accounts to a house in Marietta, a wealthy suburb just outside Atlanta.
Georgiev had been living there under a false identity since 2006. On January 28, 2015, a tactical team surrounded the house. Georgiev did not resist. He calmly stood as he was handcuffed.
He showed no remorse, referring to the students as subjects and claiming their deaths were contributions to science. Georgiev was charged with 14 counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and assault. Dr. Morgan was charged with 14 counts of accessory to murder, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.
The trial began in November 2015. Georgiev’s defense argued the students had signed consent forms and volunteered. The prosecution presented the evidence instead: locked doors, students who tried to leave and were prevented, and Georgiev’s own notes describing subjects as expendable. The jury deliberated for four hours and returned a guilty verdict on all counts.
Georgiev received 14 consecutive life sentences without parole. Morgan pleaded guilty, testified against him, and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Georgiev died of a heart attack in prison in December 2017, after serving only two years. Morgan remains in prison.
The case led to new legislation requiring stricter oversight of clinical trials, mandatory reporting of adverse events, and criminal penalties for researchers who harm subjects. The Kesha Thompson Clinical Trial Safety Act passed in 2016. Ten years after the discovery, the Marietta Street building still stands, abandoned and tagged with graffiti, but it now holds a memorial: 14 plaques, one for each victim, with their names, photos, and dreams. Visitors leave flowers and notes.
Gloria Thompson volunteers with families of missing persons. Detective Mitchell still works homicide and still visits the cemetery on the 15th of every month, where the 14 victims are buried side by side. On January 10, 2025, he returned to the memorial one more time. Then he got in his car and drove to the precinct.
There were still cases to solve, still families waiting for answers. The work never ended.