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

by Greg Day

  Despite this resolution, Mark agreed to participate in the third installment, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, ten years later. In this film, viewers saw a man who was much more in control of his emotions and with a different message entirely. Besides, by then the producers had a new alternate suspect.

  Because he had been attacked in the Jonesboro nightclub even before the second film was released, his concern about living there after the film aired was probably justified. After talking to some of the guards who had seen the movie, Mark felt a little better. “They say they don’t think I had anything to do with it, and the WM3 are still guilty as far as they’re concerned. They say they will never get out or get a new trial. So things here are ok for now.” One of the prison staff members said she would try to get a copy of the video for Mark to watch, but it never happened. Mark’s copy of Revelations was shipped to his brother in Memphis; Mark would not view the film until after his release from prison on August 29, 2000.

  Dermott

  After almost seven months in Brickeys, Mark was transferred to the Delta Regional Unit in Dermott, Arkansas, where he would serve the remainder of his sentence. Dermott is classified as a minimum/medium-security facility, as opposed to Brickeys medium/maximum-security classification. Although it is nicknamed the “Dirty D,” Dermott is a definite step up from Brickeys for most inmates; the food is better—as it tends to be in the smaller institutions—and overall, there is less violence. Still, it’s prison. On his first or second night there, while in intake barracks #4, Mark spotted an inmate sitting on his rack, just staring at him. He had a satanic Bible open on his lap and a pentagram suncatcher (though, of course, there was no sun) hanging over his head. He eyed Mark and said, “I know who you are,” ostensibly recognizing him from the news, or perhaps from Paradise Lost, or maybe just because the information was already out on the wire.

  Mark just shrugged. “So what?”

  “Nothing. I just know who you are, that’s all.” For whatever reason—perhaps he took issue with Mark’s comments in the film regarding evil and devil worship—the inmate soon snitched on Mark for eating chocolate in the barracks; the pettiness in prison is sometimes incomprehensible. When Mark heard what had happened, he parked himself on his rack and started staring the other inmate down.

  “What are you looking at?” the inmate snapped.

  “Oh, nothing,” Mark calmly replied. “I’m just going to sit here and wait until you’re asleep, and then I’m going to kill you.” Visibly agitated, the inmate nonetheless managed to fall asleep. At around one o’clock in the morning he awoke to find Mark sitting on his rack, drinking coffee and eating a chocolate bar, just staring at him.

  He immediately began shouting. “Guard! Guard! Guard!” Over and over, nearing panic, he called for the hacks. The guards arrived and superficially tossed the barracks, but nothing was found, and no problem was detected; Mark was lying peacefully on his rack. “That guy is trying to kill me! I want out! Put me in PC.” The guards did him one better; after keeping him in protective custody for several days, they shipped him back to Brickeys.

  Though Mark had now been received into Dermott, he hadn’t gotten out of Brickeys scot-free. A truism in prison, as Mark would write in his letters home, is that if you’re not careful, you can get into trouble and not even know why. On the bus ride from Brickeys to Dermott, Mark was not careful. He and another inmate, an old-timer who had lived in the barracks across the hall from Mark in Brickeys, were talking, just passing time, and the old man told Mark a story about someone in his barracks at Brickeys, a guy named Green. It seemed that Green had gone to commissary one day, stashed his goodies in the locker on his rack, and then been promptly ripped off by his barracks-mates after leaving his rack unattended. It was nothing, just a story. It happened to inmates all the time; it had happened to Mark. Where Mark was careless, however, was in his retelling of this story to another inmate at Dermott. And what Mark didn’t know was that Green had also been transferred from Brickeys to Dermott, and he soon caught wind of the fact that Mark, whom he didn’t even know, was chatting him up to other inmates. Green didn’t want the inmates at Dermott to regard him as ripe for a shakedown, to know that he’d been “punked” by another inmate, and he surely didn’t want anyone to think that it was okay to randomly spread stories about him. Word started going around the yard that Green was pissed off and that he had plans to find Mark and “bust him up.” One afternoon on the prison softball field, he got his chance.

  Mark was sitting on a bench at the edge of the field watching the game. At one point, he stood up to stretch his legs, handing his sunglasses to a friend as he rose. Without warning, he was struck squarely in the face with a clenched fist, sending him sprawling backward over the bench and onto the ground. This was what the inmates referred to as a “creeping.” When he stood up, inmates were scattering, and the whistle was blowing to call in the yard. Mark’s nose had been bashed in—broken, as X-rays would later confirm—and blood was flowing freely down the front of his whites. Still seeing stars, Mark staggered back into the barracks with the other inmates. Chow call was twenty minutes away, and Mark cleaned himself up as well as he was able to, considering that his nose now looked like a pound of raw hamburger. News of the fight spread rapidly through the barracks, and by the time Mark came off the chow line and started to eat his lunch, the sergeant was standing at his table. “Cap’n wants to see you right now.”

  When Mark walked into the captain’s office, Green was already there. During the twenty minutes between the attack and chow call, Green had learned a couple of things about Mark, the most significant being Mark’s affiliation with the prison gang Dirty White Boys (DWB), a spin-off from the larger and far more violent Aryan Brotherhood.141 Although DWB did not practice the “blood in, blood out” policy of its parent gang, it did have a reputation to maintain. An assault against a member had to be avenged. Immediately upon returning to his barracks, Green had started getting threats screamed at him from another barracks. “You’re a dead man, Green!” DWB had also been passing “kites”—notes tied to a string and tossed to another barrack—informing Mark that they were aware of the situation and were ready to retaliate. Although Green didn’t have a plan yet for how to deal with DWB, he knew that he at least had to get to the captain before Mark in order to try to clear himself of any charges Mark might bring against him.

  “So what happened, Byers?” the captain asked.

  “Well, I was sittin’ on the bench, not paying attention, and got hit with a foul ball.”

  “Green?”

  “I didn’t see nothin’. I just looked up and saw people were taking off, so I did too.”

  Rules are rules. Nobody snitches.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” the captain said. “If anything happens to Byers, I’m coming after Green first. If anything happens to Green, I’m coming after Byers.”

  With one problem taken care of, Green now began to worry about DWB. But with less than six months until his parole hearing, Mark wanted no part of an attack against another inmate, which would result in the loss of his good time credits, so he pleaded with DWB to let him handle the matter himself. Although they agreed in principle, it would be only a matter of time before they got tired of waiting for Mark and took matters into their own hands. There was, however, a solution. Mark had an inmate friend at the counting office who was responsible for coordinating the movement of cons between prisons. For twenty-five dollars, this inmate would place another inmate’s name on a transfer list and have him moved to another facility, which is exactly what he did to Mr. Green. For good measure, Mark had his friend tack twelve months onto Green’s parole hearing date, a mistake that was not rectified for six months.142

  As for the broken nose, Mark thinks he got off easy. “I was just glad it wasn’t a shank.” As it was, it took several weeks to get him down to Cummins Unit, where the nearest ADC X-ray machine was located. By that time, Mark had had his nose “set” by a fellow inmate. “He stuck two p
encils up my nose—one in each nostril—wrapped them in tissue paper, and yanked. I heard the sound—just like you can hear your teeth grinding in your head—and that was the last thing I heard before I passed out. I woke up with a wet towel on my face and in a whole lot of pain.”

  One of the privileges of being a class I inmate was that you were given a job to pass the time. It didn’t pay, but it was a chance to break the routine and spend more time out of the barracks. Mark worked at one of Dermott’s prison industries, Janitorial Products. Here inmates manufacture soap products, including liquid dish detergent, oven cleaner, floor wax, and floor wax stripper, all made exclusively for ADC use. Mark ran a machine called the wet platform. (“At least I stay clean and smell as good as possible in this hell hole!”)

  Preparing for Reentry

  As his experience and prison smarts increased, Mark learned that although life inside involved one hazard after another, there were four especially dangerous times for an inmate: induction (while still a “fish”), chow call, pill call, and the time immediately following the receipt of your parole date. It was this last pitfall that Mark had to negotiate now, and it would prove to be one of the most slippery.

  As Mark’s time grew short, his anxiety heightened. Short-timers in prison face the most abuse from the class III and class IV inmates. During this time, lifers and other long-timers were most likely to mess with an inmate who was on his way out, for no other reason than cheap thrills and petty jealousy. Lifers derived great satisfaction from getting a short-timer to go off, thus jeopardizing his parole status. Mark steered clear of them to the extent that he could, but it was not always possible. During his stay at the ADC, he had been “stomped” to the point of passing blood in his urine for several days and had sustained three or four broken ribs, several black eyes, a total of eight stitches in his head, and one broken nose. “I thought I got out pretty easy.” Easy, perhaps, but medical care was not always immediately forthcoming in the ADC. After the aforementioned stomping, where three inmates had kicked, punched, and “slocked” him (hit him with a padlock stuffed inside a sock) for several minutes, Mark had great difficulty getting in to see the prison doctors. He finally had to file a grievance in order to be seen and even then waited two weeks; he was given two extra-strength Tylenol and sent back to his barracks. The likelihood of these types of attacks only increased as word got around that he was paroling out.

  As June approached, he began to prepare for his parole hearing. Because of the high stakes—freedom—and the risk of something, anything, going wrong, this is an extremely stressful time for a prospective parolee. A parole plan must be submitted by the inmate, detailing where he wants to live and with whom, where he plans on working, and how he plans to spend his free time. If he does not have a relative or approved friend to live with, he must find a halfway house or other interim housing where he can stay until he finds a place of his own. Also, a judge from the judicial district where the inmate was convicted—Sharp County, in Mark’s case—must approve the parole plan and agree to allow the parolee to reside in that county. Since Mark was requesting to parole out to Craighead County, a judge from that district also had to approve the plan. Fortunately for Mark, his sister in Jonesboro was willing to let him parole out to her, though her agreement had not always been a sure thing, particularly after the release of Revelations. “Brother, please don’t leave me,” Mark wrote after a telephone conversation with his sister, who had just viewed the film. “From the way our sister talked, you are all I have. I don’t even know if she’s going to let me parole out to her. Even that would be only a short time thing. She sounded really mad at me, like I planned this all out to happen. I don’t know what to do if I don’t parole out to Jonesboro. An out of state plan takes five or six months longer. I was told I will see the parole board the first week of June and should catch the EPA [Emergency Powers Act, designed to reduce overcrowding] and get out somewhere before Oct 6th. If I parole out to our sister in Jonesboro, all I have to do is tell my parole officer that I got my own place [and] then move to wherever. I’m now thinking about a CAVE or under a BIG ROCK. From the way she talked, when I get out I need to go hide somewhere. I just don’t know what to think or do. Please, please, HELP ME. Brother, right now I feel DEAD inside. I can’t even think straight. Things have gone to shit. I guess it’s my fault because I trusted the jerks in NY. What a dumbass I’ve been. Never again.”

  Avoiding trouble—and troublemakers—was Mark’s number one priority in his last few weeks at Dermott. “People would fuck with you just because they could,” he said. An inmate whose parole date is coming up first learns to keep that information to himself as long as possible, though sooner or later, word gets out. Mark recalls, “There were lots of guys I knew who got close to their dates and went off on someone who was harassing them.” If an inmate makes it to the day of his release without catching a violation, he is wise to clear out his stuff and leave his barracks as soon as possible. On his release date, Mark stood nearly eight hours at the control booth waiting to be processed, during which time he was catcalled, elbowed by passers-by, spat on, and taunted to the point of such aggravation that he nearly lost control. Determined, he kept his composure, and on August 29, 2000, Mark Byers was a free man. Today, he is convinced that prison did indeed save his life. Perhaps, as expressed in the biblical gospels, it is necessary to lose one’s life in order to save it, and if so, Mark’s loss of his freedom to the ADC for fifteen months—plus six-and-a-half years of supervised parole—was what he needed to apply the brakes to a life that was careening out of control and set it straight.

  “I’m working on my plans to start over,” Mark said after being released, “this time the right way, the only way.” After a successful parole hearing, Mark Byers was granted his freedom that day in August, with a supervised parole period ending May 26, 2007, marking the termination of his eight-year debt to the state of Arkansas. He has thus far made good on his vow never to return.

  CHAPTER 6

  Redemption and Revelations

  I wish I was a messenger, and all the news was good.

  —Eddie Vedder

  Good people are always so sure they’re right.

  —Last words of convicted killer Barbara Graham upon her execution in June 1955

  When Mark Byers walked out of prison in Dermott, Arkansas, on August 29, 2000, he had a typical ex-con’s list of things to do. “After I get out,” he wrote just prior to his release, “I’m looking at the Mississippi side of the bridge at the Grand Helena Casino, some Crown Royal, and the first good looking woman I find. After that, I don’t know; that’ll do for starters.” In truth, his dominant thoughts involved getting as far away from Dermott as he could.

  It is safe to say that Mark Byers looked only forward, not back, though to say that he left prison a free man is only a half-truth. He still owed six-and-a-half years to the state of Arkansas in the form of supervised parole. Although it may seem like a simple matter for a parolee to stay out of trouble and meet the conditions of his parole, the reality is much different for many. Mark was no exception, but with a little common sense (and sometimes a little is all he could muster), a good dose of support from his family, and a lot of luck, he managed to make it. Since his parole plan specified that he parole out to his sister in Jonesboro, it was there that he went on the day of his release, though his true desire was to get the hell out of Arkansas forever.

  Mark’s sister’s home is a single-level brick house sitting on an immaculately manicured suburban half-acre, and it was here that Mark began the fresh start that most ex-cons aspire to but often don’t achieve. He had no job, no car, no money, and no female companionship. His only real commitment was a monthly date with his parole officer. At age forty-three, he had before him a lifetime to figure out what to do with and a past that he might never let go of. During his time with his sister, Mark picked up work painting houses. He did a job for a friend of his brother, and word caught on that he was dependable and did good
work. He bought a 1984 gold Buick Riviera from a friend, paying it off in installments. He had one objective, and that was to stay out of trouble for the next six-and-a-half years. At times it was all he could handle.

  In 2002 Mark’s brother once again came through for him by hooking him up with a mobile home that, though needing renovation and a place to park, would provide Mark with the first home of his own since Cherokee Village. After gaining approval from the Arkansas Department of Parole, Mark located an empty lot in Millington, Tennessee, five minutes down the road from his brother, and spent the next year gutting the place and making it livable. By the beginning of 2003, he was finally home. He was doing pretty well painting and was living near family, and with the exception of his monthly visits to his parole officer, he had been able to put Brickeys and Dermott far behind him. Still, he was alone.

  Jacki

  Jacki Sizemore is a crafter—wood, glass, all types of mediums. She loved to work with her hands. Stained glass, edging glass, dollhouses and dollhouse furniture made from polymer clay—she loved them all. Not only did the work bring her great pleasure and satisfaction; it sustained her during some very tough times. Her health was often fragile. She had had two kidney transplants, a pancreas transplant, and an ongoing battle with diabetes, all while trying to raise a child. During the time that Mark was trying to cope with the loss of his son in May 1993, Jacki was on dialysis, trying to hold on until a compatible donor was located. “I didn’t pay attention to the world of news around me; I didn’t care. I remember a few years later watching a movie on HBO, thinking it was about the book Paradise Lost [the 1667 work by John Milton]. I obviously didn’t read the information before clicking on it. I was so bored in the first five minutes that I changed channels.” So it was that years later she didn’t recognize the hulking giant of a man who offered to help her off the floor after she tripped over her own shoelaces in a Memphis bookstore. “I had an armload of crafting books—eight or nine of them—and as I went sprawling across the floor, this towering man offered me a hand up. I had no idea who he was; he was just a gentleman.” They spent about twenty minutes together over coffee before going their separate ways, though not before Mark asked for her phone number.