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

by Greg Day

  The two expressed amazement that anyone could believe in a “literal” Heaven and Hell even though it is a foundation for many mainstream religions. Furthermore, they believe that this conviction is peculiar to the South. “Only in this part of the country is it possible for the prosecution to offer this kind of fantastical defense of people to just not question it because of deeply held religious beliefs”, Berlinger says. “If this trial was held anywhere else, it would be thrown out.” They offer no proof of these assertions, and the remarks lend a further air of bias to the films. They have such obvious contempt for Southerners—excepting those convicted of the crime—that had their true feelings been known, it is doubtful than anyone in town would have talked to them. Indeed, by the time the shooting of Revelations: Paradise Lost 2 began, few would. By that time, the filmmakers were dependent on WM3.org, the convicted men and their families, and Mark Byers for color commentary.

  The Devil Made Them Do It

  Based on the confession of Jessie Misskelley, information gained from Vicki Hutcheson, and talk among the local teens of cult activities, the police decided early on that the motive for the crime was occult in nature, and they went strictly from that premise forward to gather “evidence.” There were police interviews with teens who claimed that witchcraft was being practiced and that “esbats,” or satanic meetings, were being held in secret locations. Pentagrams and other satanic symbols were being found around town. An abandoned cotton gin the kids called “Stonehenge” was alleged to have been a center of occult activity, including the killing and eating of animals. Dog and cat carcasses were found in the area, animals that Jessie Misskelley claimed he and his mates had killed, skinned, cooked on a bonfire, and eaten. Misskelley said this was part of an initiation for new members. The new member would have to eat the leg of a dog, for example. “If he can’t eat it, he don’t get in.” And there was sex, of course; where there are teens, there will be sex. Aside from chatter around town, however, Jessie Misskelley was the only person (except Vicki Hutcheson) to place himself at these meetings.

  Juvenile officer Jerry Driver, whose attention had been drawn to Damien Echols in May 1992 when Echols was arrested for trying to run away with then-girlfriend Deanna Holcomb, told WMPD detective Bill Durham that Echols described himself as a “gray” witch, something short of a devil worshipper, but nonetheless deeply involved in the occult. Driver hinted at Holcomb’s involvement in witchcraft, but Echols’s girlfriend—and mother of his child—was more direct. “She’s a kook,” said Domini Teer. “She’s the one that’s obviously involved in witchcraft and stuff because of the way she talks about it.”

  When Echols took the stand in his own defense—a disastrous trial strategy as it turned out—he admitted to practicing Wicca (“white” witchcraft) and to reading about, but not practicing, “black” witchcraft, or satanism. He was asked about his tattoos—one of an Egyptian ankh, another of a pentagram, and a tattoo across his fingers that spelled “EVIL.” He also admitted to “doodling” the name “Aleister Crowley,” some Metallica song lyrics, and strange symbols he was “practicing” in a notebook he kept while in jail.110 Alone, this may have meant little, but for some reason Echols lied about it on the stand, claiming he had written these things before being arrested, when in fact he had done so after.

  The prosecution made a weak case at trial regarding the satanic ritual killing motive of which they wished to convince the jury. “Dr.” Dale Griffis was their sole “expert” witness, and it is hard to imagine a jury being swayed by his testimony. Indeed, the juror flip charts from the Echols/Baldwin trial show that the jury was clearly unimpressed with Dr. Griffis’s testimony. On the one hand they found him “knowledgeable,” but on the other they found him “biased toward occult findings” and thought that his “delivery” was “poor” and, most curiously, that he was possessed of “low self-esteem.” Griffis claimed that the number three was significant to cultists, as was the moon, which had been full the night of the murders. The crime also had been committed within a few days of a pagan holiday, Beltane, which is celebrated on May 1 and commemorates the start of summer. Griffis testified that the alleged sucking of blood from Christopher Byers’s penis (the only “proof” of which came from prosecution “snitch” Michael Carson who was briefly incarcerated with Baldwin while he was awaiting trial), or at the very least his emasculation, was related to the phallic symbol the “May pole” associated with the holiday “May Day.”

  Griffis testified that the blood of the young held a powerful “life force” and that the occurrence of the murders near water held significance, though this probably was hardly occult-related. The location likelier had been chosen not only because it was secluded, but also because there was water available to wash up with after the crime. Although he maintained that the location of the murders, near water, had helped him to reach the conclusion that these were possibly satanic murders, Griffis never gave any other reason for the claim.

  There was more. Griffis made much of Echols’s minor interest in Aleister Crowley. The pampered son of devout Christian parents, Crowley was born and raised in Victorian England. He was an esoteric poet and mystic who developed his own school of occultism which he called “magick.” 111 Crowley is notorious for his occult rituals, saturated with the use of sex and drugs. He is best remembered as “the Great Beast”, a moniker Crowley claims was fostered by his mother, who truly thought her son to be the Anti-Christ. But Crowley was also an accomplished mountain climber, and made aggressive assaults on Tibet’s K2 and Kangchenjunga, the second and third highest peaks in the world respectively (though he didn’t reach the summits, he did exceed 20,000 feet on both climbs). Teacher, sexual deviant, drug addict, and magician, Crowley’s legend would exceed his accomplishments, though the mere mention of this man who biographer Lawrence Sutin called a “frightening mixture of egomania and self-loathing” tends to evoke a strong reaction.112

  The fact that the attorneys, judge, and probably a good number of jurors didn’t know who Crowley was—Griffis himself was shaky on the facts—didn’t stop Brent Davis from hammering Echols’s on his knowledge of Crowley.

  Davis: Aleister Crowley is a guy that based on his writings believes in human sacrifice, doesn’t he?

  Echols: He also believed he was God so . . .

  Davis: He also had writings that indicated that children were the best type of human sacrifice, right?

  Echols: Yes, sir.

  That Echols apparently believed that Crowley advanced the notion of human sacrifice, was strong evidence the youngster was essentially clueless about the belief system of Aleister Crowley, a system that was complex and probably beyond the scope of Echols’s understanding at the time. In his 1993 book The Magick of Aleister Crowley (Red Wheel/Wesier, York Beach, ME), longtime Crowley student and biographer Lon Milo Duquette was emphatic that Crowley “Did not—I repeat did—perform or advocate human sacrifice.” In a hearing outside the jury where Griffis was to be qualified as an “expert”, he stated that in “Crowley’s writings” it was stated that in order to preserve the “magical power” during a sacrifice, sex must be had with children before they reached the age of nine. This was significant to the state’s case because according to Jessie Misskelley, at least one of the victims had been sexually abused (though the autopsies were never able to confirm this). Sex with children, however, was at odds with Crowley’s beliefs.

  Griffis also contended that there was evidence of “overkill”—multiple stab wounds; severe, probably fatal head traumas; and the castration of Christopher Byers—and that this also had the “trappings” of the occult, but again he could not be precise.

  Griffis had been grilled by defense attorneys Val Price and Paul Ford in Burnett’s chambers for hours prior to his testifying. His credentials were suspect. Griffis had retired from the police department after twenty-six years, having reached the rank of captain. When it came to expertise on the occult and cult activities, he was largely self-educated, having obtaine
d a PhD from a mail-order diploma mill in California.113 His thesis, Mind Control Cults and Their Effects on the Objectives of Law Enforcement, a two-hundred-page paper he coauthored with another PhD candidate, was the sole qualification for his doctorate. Griffis defended his record, stating that he had been qualified as an expert in three courts in three different states and that he received more than fifty calls per week regarding “nontraditional groups,” or cults. That was good enough for Judge Burnett.

  All things considered, the occult aspect of the trial was small, though the media focused on it extensively. Satan sells. But if the jurors believed that satanism was a motive, it wasn’t at the top of their list. Their notes indicated that they considered the following about Echols (Baldwin was just along for the ride):

  • Echols was “dishonest, manipulative and weird.”

  • He was a “satanic follower” of Anton LaVey [founder, Church of Satan], and Aleister Crowley.

  • They believed Ridge’s testimony to be incriminating.

  • They felt that Echols was lying when he said he had never been to Robin Hood Hills.114

  • He “blew kisses” to the victims’ parents, in court.

  • He carried knives.

  • He had stated that he would “eat [Joe Hutcheson] alive” while the family was living in Oregon.

  • Wax was found on a book and shirt when Echols’s house was searched, wax that Dale Griffis said was indicative of satanic activity.

  The most significant item on the juror charts was actually not on the charts at all, or rather was blacked out. One juror’s personal notes, recovered years later, showed the items scratched out to be notations regarding Jessie Misskelley’s confession, which was not to be considered in the Echols/Baldwin trial. Evidence that it had been considered would constitute a critical part of Echols’s habeas petition years later.

  Paradise Lost Revisions

  Berlinger and Sinofsky decided to really take the gloves off for Revelations: Paradise Lost 2. Berlinger has readily admitted that Paradise Lost 2 was strictly “an advocacy film.” Although he claimed that he wanted viewers to independently evaluate the evidence, Berlinger said, “If people come away from the next film not believing that the three are innocent, I would tell them that they are wrong, that they have fallen prey to the very same prejudice that the prosecutors were able to bring to this community.” What happened to “letting the story unfold” and believing that “the truth would come bubbling up to the surface”? All pretense of objectivity was stripped away with the release of Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, a film that delivered its propaganda straight-up. In case for some incomprehensible reason viewers hadn’t gotten the message after watching the first film, Berlinger and Sinofsky directed Revelations to be as subtle as a spear through the head. The very fact that this was a sequel to a documentary was enough to make the film unusual. Revelations, however, was unprecedented. The movie single-handedly indoctrinated thousands of new believers, helped to expand one of the largest movements of its type, and created media personalities out of ordinary people.

  Revelations: Paradise Lost 2 chronicles the rise of WM3.org and the progress of Damien Echols’s appeals through the legal system. It also introduces us to journalist Mara Leveritt, who two years after the release of Revelations would publish her book, Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three. The book was derived from her experience covering the murders as a reporter with the Arkansas Times, and it received a tremendous boost from the legions of supporters who took the HBO films as gospel. Prior to the March 2000 release of Revelations, Paradise Lost aired a second time on HBO, and the reaction was dramatic, driving even more truth-seekers to the Internet for information on the case. When Revelations was released, the WM3.org website was reporting some 133,000 hits per day, which gives credibility to Prosecutor John Fogleman’s declaration that the film was an “infomercial for the West Memphis Three.” Springing from this website were discussion forums where supporters of the three could share information and where those on the opposing side could challenge them in their beliefs. It isn’t possible to calculate the exact number of those who truly believe in the innocence of the three convicts, but the movement attracted a number of high-profile celebrities to their cause, including Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam; Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks; Johnny Depp; Winona Ryder; Henry Rollins; Metallica; comedienne Margaret Cho; and a number of punk-era band members, such as Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Michale Graves (Misfits), and Eddie Spaghetti (Supersuckers). It is axiomatic that without the HBO films created by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the three young men who once were sitting in prison for the murders of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore would be languishing anonymously in the obscurity of the Arkansas penal system.

  The second film was also an opportunity to fine-tune the public’s perception of John Mark Byers. Mark was at his cinematic best, and if he felt that he hadn’t hammed it up enough for the first film, he made up for it in the second.

  What was the true motive for the murders? The police filled the void with satanic ritualistic homicide; Berlinger and Sinofsky and WM3.org filled it with Mark Byers. The filmmakers had already made it clear in the first film that they believed the three to be innocent—“within five minutes of talking to [Echols] I [felt] he was innocent”—and they set out to make Revelations with a clear, unabashed agenda. Berlinger said, “Most people in Arkansas were pissed off at us. The Moores would have nothing to do with us. Pam Hobbs tried to sue us. Brent Davis wouldn’t talk to us. That left pretty much Mark Byers. He was more than willing to appear on camera, and we put him front and center.” Mara Leveritt was more direct in Devil’s Knot. “Byers was more than ‘front and center,’” she wrote. “He was the film’s target” [emphasis added].

  So many ask, “Why was Mark Byers the only victim’s parent to appear in Revelations?” In answer to this question, and getting to the heart of the matter, Byers had more than enough reason to participate in the making of the second film. For one, with Christopher and Melissa gone, along with Ryan, who’d gone to live with his grandparents, Mark’s life was so desolate and lonely that by his own admission, he wasn’t in full control of his life. “I went out lookin’ for fights and self-destructed” after the murders, he said, and particularly after Melissa’s death. Being considered a suspect by the public may have pushed him over the edge, and his behavior grew erratic and sometimes violent. He was filled with rage and hate and needed to feel like he was doing something. Berlinger and Sinofsky suggested that participating in the second film would be the only way to present the victims’ side of the story, the same line used on him and the other families during the filming of the first movie. According to Mark, the filmmakers told him that both the Moores and the Hobbses were participating in the film. Joe Berlinger denies this, but when Revelations was released in 2000, Mark was still in prison, and he states that he learned from his sister during a phone call that only he was in the film.

  As was so often the case, however, Mark was motivated by pragmatism. “I had just moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas,” he said. “I had nothing. No phone, no car, very little food. Then they tell me this will be my time to tell my side, and I can tell the world how wrong they are about me.” Is that what they had in mind? In part, yes. But there was more. “The thing is Byers was just too weird for us to be able to stage anything,” Berlinger said. “We just turned on the camera, and he did his thing.” Since they had filmed Mark extensively for Paradise Lost, they knew exactly what his “thing” would be. Mark never met a camera he didn’t like, and the cameras were ever-rolling in Revelations, where they picked up footage that would sear the images of his antics on the minds of anyone who might have somehow missed them in the first film. If one of the intentions of Revelations was to overshadow the convictions of Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley with the crazed behavior of John Mark Byers, for most viewers the tactic worked. While acknowledging the film to be “ethically ambiguous” and a “queasy b
alance between sensationalist propagandizing and unblinking activist journalism,” Jessica Winter, in an August 2000 article for the Village Voice, also took square aim at Berlinger and Sinofsky’s leading man. “The massive bastard offspring of John Brown and Leatherface,” she wrote, “John Mark Byers enacts a Bible-thumping circus sideshow of grief for the filmmakers, who give every indication that he’s shedding crocodile tears for his stepson and his wife (her mysterious 1996 death was ruled ‘undetermined’). The festering layers of perversion and delusion reach no bottom here.” Winters concedes that the film is “cheap and suspect” but believes that it’s justified as “advocacy.” In Revelations the ends seem to have justified the means.

  At different points throughout the film, screens of text are displayed that serve to segue between scenes. One such screen appears in Revelations to introduce the “John Mark Byers knife” to viewers.

  Mark Byers, stepfather of Chris Byers, gave the makers of this film a used hunting knife as a Christmas gift three weeks before the Misskelley trial was set to begin.

  The knife appeared to have blood on it, so it was turned over to the police.

  Since Mark Byers and his stepson have the same DNA type, the test results were inconclusive. Therefore, the defense focuses on pre-trial statements that Byers made about the knife.

  Mark Byers could not be excluded from having used this knife based on the blood test that was performed. A “DQ Alpha” test showed that the blood was consistent with Christopher’s and John Mark Byers’s blood, as well as 9 percent of the Caucasian population. The filmmakers also state that the test had destroyed the amount of blood available, making further testing impossible. The more powerful DNA-RFLP test would have required an amount of blood enormously greater than the amount available to the lab. Neither the Byers knife nor the “lake knife” found behind Jason Baldwin’s trailer could be conclusively identified as the murder weapon, though it should also be noted that no actual murder weapon was ever identified. Dr. Frank Peretti noted similarities between the John Mark Byers knife, the lake knife, and the wounds inflicted on the boys but came short of being able to identify either knife as the murder weapon. Domini Teer, in her statement to police, said that Damien had owned a knife very similar to the lake knife, but that his had a compass on the handle. The distributor of the knife, James Parker, said that the lake knife, a “Special Forces Survival II,” came with a compass on the handle but was missing from the knife in evidence.