Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three

by Greg Day

  There was some disagreement among reviewers about how evident the film’s agenda was, though Berlinger himself estimates that 80 percent of the viewing audience thought the three were innocent. “I thought it should be 100 percent,” he said. What is clear from the first frame is that Paradise Lost is a purpose-driven film and is focused, as one reviewer said, on “allowing the viewer to realize, in his own time, that the trial and conviction is based on two things: the accused looked ‘weird’ and the evidence is totally circumstantial” [emphasis added].99 “In his own time” is debatable, but rare is the viewer who doesn’t come to that same conclusion, for one simple reason: it is, for the most part, true. Prosecutor John Fogleman and Judge David Burnett have long protested that the films are biased and don’t fairly represent the state’s case.100 However, a careful review of the police reports, trial and hearings transcripts, legal filings, and other evidence reveals a procedure that is strongly suggestive of a verdict reached on something other than the merits of the case. The intention of this chapter, though, is to analyze the effect the films had on John Mark Byers and determine to what extent he contributed to a portrayal that left many believing that he was not only a suspect in the murders of his son and two friends but also one crazy son of a bitch.

  When Paradise Lost premiered, Berlinger was asked whether he thought the convicted killers were guilty. “There is a chance they killed them,” he admitted. “But it certainly was not proven in that courtroom in due process.” However, in an interview with Salon.com, he said of his first meeting with Echols, “Within five minutes of talking to him, not only did I feel he was innocent, but all that evil that I had projected on him washed away. I walked away from that first hour-long interview . . . convinced of his innocence.” In the same interview Berlinger said, “I had fallen for the trap . . . and it was such a lesson for me, and I saw how the whole community had bought into the media hype.”101 Whether the filmmakers realized the irony of using “media hype”—their own film—to disprove the impression that had been created by earlier media hype isn’t clear, but it hardly mattered. Paradise Lost appeared to be a weapon in a media war that was waged too late. The verdicts were more than two years old when the film was released, and appellate courts don’t use documentary films, books, or the opinions of celebrity activists to render their decisions. The damage had been done by what Berlinger termed “a lethal brew of Bible-thumping fundamentalism, combined with shoddy local journalism, bad police work, and a narcissistic defendant [Echols] who seemed to enjoy being in the spotlight.”102

  Although the filmmakers claim not to be “agitprop” (agitation propaganda) producers, it appears that Paradise Lost was meant to be just that. “I totally acknowledge that this film is very subjective”, Berlinger told Salon.com. “Hopefully, what the film is doing, and why I feel okay about the subjectivity, is that we’re going for a higher emotional truth.” Sinofsky one-ups that claim, stating, “We only paid attention to and focused on six families, along with law enforcement and the judicial system, and I don’t think we made any attempt to make anyone look different than they were.”103 In Mark Byers’s case, that is an unsettling possibility. It isn’t hard to imagine the theatrical Mark Byers setting up scenes, whether he’s blasting pumpkins, complete with .44 round ball revolver, cowboy boots, and black Stetson hat, or burning mock graves of those on trial for murdering his son. The question is, to what extent was he encouraged? Did he even need the encouragement? Regardless, the collaboration between a character—because we are, after all, talking about a character—and the director was cinematic gold. Other than Damien Echols, the name that most often comes up after viewers have seen the films is that of John Mark Byers. The films, or rather Mark’s behavior in them, almost single-handedly put his name on the suspects list in the court of public opinion, not because of any evidence against him—he had, more than anyone, an airtight alibi—but because of what he had displayed on camera. The film’s objectivity aside, without Paradise Lost, the national support group that sprung up in its wake would not exist, nor would a persistent public suspicion about the role of Mark Byers in the murders.

  The Red Carpet

  Paradise Lost premiered on HBO in June 1996. The film covered the trial of Jessie Misskelley Jr. in January 1994 and the subsequent trial of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin the following month. Misskelley’s trial had been severed from that of his codefendants because of his refusal to testify against them, rendering his confession inadmissible in that proceeding. All three defense attorneys were able to obtain changes of venue for their clients. Misskelley was tried in Corning, a tiny hamlet of 3,500 souls, 110 miles north of West Memphis, near the Missouri state line. The combined Echols/Baldwin trial was held in Jonesboro, Craighead County’s largest city (population 59,000), some 65 miles northwest of the crime scene. The enormous pretrial publicity made the impaneling of an impartial jury all but impossible, but as is customary in high-profile trials, the judge had little choice but to rely on the voir dire of the jury and instructions from the bench to ferret out any juror bias.

  In addition to their expectation of an advocacy film for the victims, there may have been a more ordinary motivation for the participation of the victims’ families in Paradise Lost. The filmmakers paid the Byers, Moore, and Hobbs families, as well as the families of the convicted men, an “honorarium” of $7,500 for their participation in the film. Getting access to the courtroom was easier; Judge David Burnett, as is permissible under Arkansas law, agreed to let the proceedings be filmed. Lead prosecutor John Fogleman said, “Because of the high interest in the area, the state, the nation, we felt like it would be appropriate to have cameras in the courtroom to record the proceedings, rather than have them outside the courtroom and hundreds of them just hovering around everyone who goes in and out.” The defense’s motive for accepting was obvious; these were indigent defendants, and they were court-appointed attorneys. There was no money to hire investigators and expert witnesses, and the honoraria, placed in trust for the defendants, were to be used to offset some of these expenses.104

  Critics were divided in their opinions, though for the most part they took the film at face value, ignoring the possibility of prejudicial editing, and reviewed it as a stereotypical story of hayseed Southern justice in which redneck sheriffs had railroaded hapless hippies, which was partly true. However, the filmmakers’ “enmeshing” themselves in the lives of their subjects, much as they did in Brother’s Keeper, allowed the film to take on a breadth and depth that goes far beyond such superficiality.105

  WM3.org

  By the time Paradise Lost opened before the American audience in 1996, the West Memphis Three had been in prison for three years. They most likely would have stayed there, despite the success of the film, were it not for the actions of three Californians. Even before the HBO premiere, Kathy Bakken was busy in her ad agency office creating promotional material, or “key art,” for the film. She and photographer friend Grove Pashley had viewed the film “three or four months before it actually aired” and immediately turned it over to mutual friend Burk Sauls, a prop maker and “colorist” for the film industry. Based solely on a viewing of the film, Sauls decided, “Oh my god, these boys are innocent.” He then went on a self-described “crusade” to collect any scrap of information available; Bakken and Pashley did the same, eventually publishing their findings on a website to which they granted the public access. They and others on their behalf began to copy official documents—court transcripts, police reports, autopsy reports—and post them on the Internet. The die was cast. These boys were innocent, and if the WMPD had “Damien Echols tunnel vision,” the newly formed WM3.org had it in reverse. Between Mr. Bojangles and John Mark Byers, Bakken, Pashley, and Sauls figured they had their “West Memphis Boogeyman.” The difference was that Mark Byers was there, big as life; Bojangles had vanished into thin air.

  Paradise Lost was a critical success, but the aspect of the film that would garner much of the spotlight for critics a
nd viewers alike was undeniably the larger-than-life presence of John Mark Byers. Less of a character and more of a caricature, Mark Byers lit up the screen like an Appalachian Archie Bunker, the star of his own Southern-fried soap opera, personifying the stereotype of a gun-totin’, Bible-thumpin’, boot-scootin’ redneck that young liberals love to hate. To them, he signified the anti-Metallica. Viewers reacted viscerally to Byers’s theatrical performances—which were often fueled by some combination of grief, anger, booze, and drugs—before the ever-rolling cameras of Berlinger and Sinofsky. Here are just a few reactions from the public to Mark Byers:

  • “The belligerent, mullet-headed oaf whose comic self- incriminations are lost on the Keystone Kops at the West Memphis Police Department” (www.laweekly.com).

  • “After seeing the first one, I was a bit ambivalent about getting involved [in a fundraiser for Damien Echols],” said artist Emmeric James Konrad of Los Angeles. “After watching the second film, I called Chad [Robertson] up and said ‘I am in . . . Byers is a motherfucker.’”106

  • “The massive bastard offspring of John Brown and Leatherface” (The Village Voice).

  • “He’s a freak, he looks like a character from a Rob Zombie movie” (YouTube comment).

  • “A pathological religioso “(brightlightsfilm.com).

  • “A fascinating character; equal parts genial and terrifying, a brittle man seemingly made of fire and brimstone, and he does some hypnotically odd, and often disturbing, things” (24framez.blogspot.com).

  • “The tall, creepy, angry, sunken-eyed, hellfire-Christian adoptive father of one of the victims, [who] may have been the killer” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly, September 14, 2011).

  • “One of the most amazing characters ever to be put on film” (Bruce Sinofsky).

  The last remark by co-producer Bruce Sinofsky is most telling, coming as it did from commentary added to the DVD release of Paradise Lost in 2005. The practice of adding voice-over commentaries was not possible with VHS; hence, the commentary on Paradise Lost was recorded some ten or eleven years after the film was made and added to the DVD release. The passage of time only increased the filmmakers’ belief in the innocence of the West Memphis Three and their suspicions about Mark Byers.

  In an August 2006 interview appearing in Los Angeles CityBeat, Sinofsky said, “We thought we were going there to make a real-life River’s Edge [Tim Hunter, 1987], and that these kids were guilty.” He continued, “We wanted to look into why they would commit such a heinous crime. When we realized they were innocent we went back to HBO and let them know it had gone in a different direction. We said we were kind of thinking the stepfather John Mark Byers did it. He was a fighting kind of guy and one time he even said to us, ‘Just remember boys, it all started here.’”107

  By December 2007, Sinofsky hadn’t changed his opinion of Mark Byers. “Mark Byers presented himself in the light he wanted to present himself. If it was interpreted that he looked guilty, it was by his own hand.” He continued, “In the second film we gave him every opportunity to confront his accusers, which he did, and if people saw the second film and thought he looked bad . . .” Sinofksy shrugged.108

  It is that sort of feigned naivety that frustrates attempts to assess the films fairly. Mark Byers says of the films, “They could have edited it to show that, here’s a dad that’s lost everything, including his mind, because of this tragedy . . . that would have been the truth too. But let’s sensationalize it and put all the question marks we can toward this man. Look how crazy he is; look how wild he’s acting. Look at all his different faces; he’s a chameleon. He’s got long hair, short hair, no hair, beard, no beard . . . he’s crazy.” If Berlinger and Sinofsky did not intend for Mark Byers to appear somehow guilty, why is it that the mass majority of viewers came away with precisely this conclusion?

  Just how did Mark Byers fare in Paradise Lost? According to Berlinger, Byers was simply “too weird [for us] to be able to stage anything,” Again we are stonewalled with the same obstinate refusal by the filmmakers to admit that they were able to, and in fact did, manipulate the film to put Byers in the perfect role as a suspect. Given that they confessed to making advocacy films to advance their cause, and given the public opinion of Byers resulting from the film, how are we to believe that they were not at the very least using Byers as a decoy?

  Todd Moore also had problems with Paradise Lost. In an August 9, 1999, letter to Shelia Nevins, the executive producer of the Paradise Lost series at HBO, Todd accused the filmmakers of omitting information from the finished cut of the film, such as Misskelley’s post-conviction confession at attorney Joe Calvin’s office in Rector, Arkansas, on February 17, 1994. Berlinger and Sinofsky excluded this “pertinent fact,” Todd said, and thus “spun a tale that suggests that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley are the victims of deceit and inequity.” The film, he said, was edited in such a way that viewers “may come away with the opinion that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were unfairly convicted for [Moore’s] son’s murder.”

  The families of Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley never expressed any dissatisfaction with the final production, and Pam Echols was adamant in her belief that the film helped her son. In the commentary added to Paradise Lost in 2001, Berlinger said, “Our belief is that the wrong people are in jail. And as we explained to these people in numerous phone conversations after the film came out, we never intended to hurt anybody. Our goal was to cover the story. I understand the parents’ position. When we make a film demonstrating that the wrong people are in prison, they are not allowed to achieve closure” [emphasis added].

  It is too tedious to cover the films frame by frame, but certain sequences demonstrate more than others the clear intention of the filmmakers to convey a specific message. There is nothing “unfolding” in these scenes.

  At Graveside with Christopher

  It was Christmas time in Arkansas, and Mark and Melissa were making the trip across the Mississippi River to the Memphis area cemetery where Christopher is buried. Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger had been with the Byerses sharing some Christmas leftovers and had asked if they could tag along. In their DVD commentary, Sinofsky and Berlinger initially let the scene stand on its own, as a depiction of grieving parents visiting their son’s grave, their first Christmas after his death. Then suddenly, the filmmakers begin describing an “incredibly powerful moment of bonding” between themselves and the Byerses. “This was an incredibly moving and odd scene,” Berlinger begins. “This incredible moment of a pentagram—you know, the star from the Christmas tree [there is a miniature Christmas tree topped with a star sitting on Christopher’s grave marker]—is creating this upside down shadow [on Mark’s forehead], and an upside down pentagram is the sign of the devil. And here this guy who has been preaching fire and brimstone and who has been talking about Heaven and Hell and who some people have questioned as maybe possibly being involved—all of a sudden, you know, the end-of-day sun, after the day had been an overcast day, at this precise moment, the sun peeks through the clouds and sends this upside down pentagram on his forehead. It’s just one of these weird things that happened, where you feel like something bigger than what you’re doing is happening while you’re making a film.”

  “Was it a message from God?” Sinofsky blurts out. And he’s serious. The filmmakers now appear to believe that their film is under the influence of the Divine.

  This dialogue segues into a discussion of Mark’s potential as a suspect in the murders. Berlinger says that he wouldn’t dream of doing to Mark what was done to Echols and then proceeds to do precisely that. He declares that “such a strong case could have been made against [Byers] that we were disappointed that the police had such tunnel vision with regard to trying to pin this on Damien Echols.” It should be noted that while Berlinger and Sinofsky are bloviating about messages from the Supreme

  On the left is a pagan, or Wiccan pentagram (points down), and is the same image that was “miraculously” f
ormed by a shadow on Byers’s forehead. The image on the right is a satanic pentagram with points facing upward, resembling a goat’s head with horns.

  being, Mark Byers is on-screen sobbing, “Oh God, why did you let this happen? Please help us through this.”

  As for the technical aspect of this “message from God,” the description is flawed. The alleged “upside down pentagram” was, in fact, not upside down; the geometric shape is defined merely as a five-pointed figure drawn with five connecting lines, all crossing at the center. Although the orientation of the symbol may be varied indiscriminately, neopagan groups such as the Wiccans generally depict the pentagram with the single point facing up. When the star is turned upside down, the two points face upward and at adjacent angles, forming a shape similar to a goat’s head, an often-used symbol for Satan. The directors’ uncurbed use of the phrase “satanic panic” in the years following the film’s release calls into question this misinterpretation of the symbolism. Oddly, at the time of his trial, Damien Echols claimed to practice Wicca and in fact attracted the attention of a Wiccan “coven” that appeared in Paradise Lost 2.

  The image on the right is the so-called satanic pentagram, with the two points facing up. The image on the left is a pagan-style pentagram, with the single point facing upward. The image on the left is the shadow image that miraculously “formed” on Byers’s forehead. For what it’s worth, in the film it also looks suspiciously like the camera is being maneuvered so that the shadow lands squarely on Byers’s forehead.109