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

by Greg Day

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Putting together this project was a huge undertaking, and my personal resources were limited, so I feel a debt to those who made this book possible.

  For reasons that should be obvious, Mark Byers’s name is at the top of that list. While undergoing crises of his own—a not-uncommon occurrence—he kept me informed of every detail over the six years it took to write this book. To the very best of my knowledge, he was always truthful with me, even when it meant I had to write something unflattering. Getting into someone’s head is scary, and Mark made it less so with his openness and trust.

  Mark’s sister Beth helped me with proofreading early on in the project and gave me feedback that was vital for the book. She also welcomed me into her home at a time when Mark’s experiences with the media were mostly negative. She allowed me to share in an amazing home-cooked meal and private family gathering and reserved her judgment of me. Mark’s sister Marilee was graceful and friendly during that same dinner, as was her husband Sonny, whose influence on Mark in his younger years was crucial. Mark’s brother George was not only a great guy to hang out with but was also, I’ve been told, the closest I could get to knowing Mark’s late father. I extend my thanks for the meal ticket in Tunica, George, and a weekend on the farm I won’t forget. These are good and decent folks, and I’m glad to have made their acquaintance.

  Special thanks to Lisa O’Brien, who handled several FOIA requests for me from the state of Arkansas and who also shared a wealth of electronic data that contributed to this book.

  Extra special mention goes to Christian Hansen, who constructed the “Callahan” website, the largest repository of West Memphis Three case data on the Internet. With the addition of an excellent search engine, Calli’s is truly the best on the net. Christian credits Greg and Monte as co-creators, and though I have never spoken with Greg, Monte provided assistance for the photo section. Christian has been at it for ten years, and when I first became interested in the case, the website didn’t exist. Without it, neither would this book. Thanks a million, Christian.

  I’d also like to thank Dana Moore for letting me into her home and socializing a little bit. We didn’t talk about Michael or the case much, but being with her made me feel a little closer to Michael. Bless you, Dana. Todd Moore also shared a little information with me about his life, including a mini-history of the house his father built, the same house they were living in when Michael went missing, at 1398 East Barton.

  So much information would have been unavailable without the local media, and I’d like to call out a few. The Memphis Commercial Appeal and WREG-TV out of Memphis and the Arkansas Times, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, KARK-TV, and KATV-TV out of Little Rock all covered the story extensively, as did the Jonesboro Sun. There are some particular local reporters who have covered the case as well and whose work I have relied on to some degree, such as Stephanie Scurlock, Janice Broach, Heather Crawford, Beth Warren, George Jared, and Mara Leveritt, to name but a few. Erin Moriarty of CBS, Aphrodite Jones, and Larry King also provided useful national media coverage.

  Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the Internet.

  I’d also like to acknowledge Pam and Michelle Echols and Stormy Wells—Damien’s mother, sister, and niece, respectively—for being gracious and helpful during what must have been a time of tremendous stress.

  A very special thank you goes to my dear friend Jacki Byers, who wears many hats, not the least of which is that of peacemaker when required. She also came up with the main title for the book and shared so much information with me. Though we didn’t always see eye to eye, we had a common goal, which was to work toward making this a better book. I love ya, Jacki.

  I need to thank my friend John Douglas for putting up with all my pestering when he really didn’t have time. He shared with me as much information as he could about his involvement in the case without violating confidentiality, and for that I am truly grateful.

  Lorri Davis, who officially declined to be interviewed for this book, nonetheless shared a tidbit or two with me that gave a little more insight into what makes her tick, but not very much. She’ll always be something of a mystery, I think. Anywhere her words are quoted, they came from public interviews and appearances.

  My love and gratitude goes to my old friend Nikki, who sleeps in a little bed under my desk. She makes a lot of noise while she sleeps, and it helped me to feel less alone during these years of writing.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  At age twelve, author Greg Day read his first true-crime book, The Boston Strangler, by Gerald Frank. More than thirty years later, he still has the bug. His personal library contains some two hundred volumes on crime, criminal justice, the death penalty, and the penal system, and he has read and researched many others.

  Day spent some fifteen years in lay prison ministry in association with Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, writing to and visiting inmates in his home state of Virginia, including two men condemned to death. One of these capital cases, Mickens v. Taylor, was heard before the United States Supreme Court. His employment with the United States Department of Justice in Washington, DC, gave him access to the court, simply by proximity, and he was thus able to attend and study one of a handful of capital cases heard by the court.

  The second death-row inmate Day connected with was thirty-year-old Brian Lee Cherrix of Chincoteague, Virginia. Cherrix had been convicted of luring a twenty-three-year-old mother of two to an abandoned house where she was to deliver a pizza. There she was forcibly sodomized and shot once behind each ear. His last meal wasn’t published at his request, but when Day spoke with him an hour or so before his execution, he giggled a little and said, “I ordered a pizza.” Day never visited the row again.

  Day’s interest in crime and justice, however, never waned, and he was eventually led to the case of the West Memphis Three in the year 2000. When he was introduced to John Mark Byers five years later, he was presented with the opportunity to report on one of the most complex and controversial criminal cases in modern history from the inside. After a short time, the two men agreed to embark on a project that neither could have predicted would last almost seven years. Untying the Knot is the result of that alliance.

  A native of Long Island, New York, Day, who has three grown children, has lived in the Washington, DC, area since 1990 with his wife of thirty-one years.

  ENDNOTES

  1 “Debt consultant” Jerry Kane, forty-five, and his sixteen-year-old son Joe were pulled over for driving an apparently unregistered van on I-40 in West Memphis on May 20, 2010. Kane opened fire on West Memphis police officers Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans with an AK-47 assault rifle, killing both men. Kane and his son were stopped ninety minutes later in a Walmart parking lot, and a shootout ensued. Both Kane and his son were killed. Two sheriff’s deputies were injured.

  2 Hobbs would claim during an interview with Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman, who were doing the screenplay of Devil’s Knot for Dimension Films, that his first meeting with Mark Byers took place at Dana Moore’s house somewhere between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on May 5. Mark Byers steadfastly maintains that it was between 8:20 and 8:30 when he first met Hobbs and that West Memphis police officer Regina Meek was there along with Melissa Byers and Dana Moore. When Meek was asked by prosecutor John Fogleman whether she had had “contact with any other parents” while she was at the Byers residence, she replied, “Yes, sir, Mrs. Moore came and knocked on the door while I was taking a report from Mr. and Mrs. Byers and told me that her son was with the Byers boy, and also Steve Branch was with them.” Meek further stated that she “had been told” that Stevie’s parents were already out searching.

  3 Here there is a discrepancy between Ryan’s statements immediately following the murders and his testimony in court some nine months later. His statements had been “summarized” by WMPD officers and were not recorded. There were several statements taken. One referred to Ryan hearing a gunshot, something he said nothing of in court (
nor was he asked). In another statement, Ryan is alleged to have said that at one point all four boys crossed the pipe bridge during the search. During his testimony at the Misskelley trial, he emphatically stated that he had never crossed the bridge to the north side of the bayou but had waited on the south side with Britt while Ritchie and Robbie crossed over.

  4 Officer Moore’s call log shows that he was dispatched to Catfish Island at 9:21 p.m. and arrived at 9:26. Terry Hobbs’s arrival time at Catfish Island was taken from Pam Hobbs’s testimony at the Echols/Baldwin trial and must be regarded as an approximation. Regina Meek testified that the call dispatchers didn’t always record the calls when they were received, and therefore, their times must be taken with that caveat in mind.

  5 The subject of the tree house was debated in some circles, given that no fort was ever found. Mark believes that if Aaron Hutcheson was telling the truth—which is debatable—the tree house may have existed on the south side of the bayou, opposite the area where the boys’ bodies were discovered. The woods there have long since been destroyed.

  6 Qtd. in Pam and Terry Hobbs interview with Dimension Films as presented in Exhibit 17, p34 of Hobbs v Pasdar, Terry’s defamation suit against the Dixie Chicks, filed in the Federal Court, Eastern District of Arkansas, and summarily dismissed on December 1, 2009.

  7 Mark Byers would later say that it looked like the children had been killed “two or three times” (Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger, Paradise Lost, HBO Films, 1996).

  8 Guy Reel, Marc Perrusquia, and Bartholomew Sullivan, Blood of Innocents (New York, NY: Kensington, 1995).

  9 The Vietnam veteran “tip” was most likely triggered by an informal profile done for police by FBI profiler Tom Salp, though it was never clear why the suggestion had been made. Salp did not review case data, visit the crime scene, or view autopsy photographs or reports, but probably gave police an opinion formed by what he had been told about the murders over the phone.

  10 Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot (New York, NY: Atria Books, 2002).

  11 Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, p. 41.

  12 Echols, Damien, Almost Home iUniverse Lincoln, NE: 2005.

  13 Though he would later maintain that the name was chosen to reflect his admiration for the Catholic priest Father Damien de Veuster, the patron saint remembered for his work with lepers in Hawaii, others would insist that he was taking the name of the antichrist child in the 1976 film The Omen by director Richard Donner.

  14 Ibid. Many of Damien’s remarks in this book can be written off as an attempt at some type of literary effect, but much can also be gleaned from this unedited autobiographical account of Echols’s first thirty years of life.

  15 “Declaration of Andy Jack Echols,” September 4, 2000. Reprinted at http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/a_j_echols_declaration.html.

  16 Affidavit submitted to the court by Dr. George Woods on February 9, 2001. The affidavit was part of Damien’s petition for writ of error coram nobis, asserting that Echols was not competent to stand trial due to the state of his mental health.

  17 Jerry Driver, Statement to West Memphis Police Department (WMPD) detective Bill Durham, December 13, 1993.

  18 Reel, Perrusquia, and Sullivan, Blood of Innocents, p. 93. Jones was at the crime scene, and according to the authors, Jones told others that his fears had come true: Damien Echols had finally killed someone. This statement has been widely circulated on the Internet and among case watchers but cannot be verified. E-mails to two of the book’s authors went unanswered. The book also incorrectly lists Echols’s residence as Lakeshore, when he was actually living in Broadway trailer park with his parents at the time of the murders, and it was this residence that was searched on the night of June 3, 1993.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Interview with Dennis Carter by Marion Police Department lieutenant Diane Hester, June 6, 1993. This interview took place three days after Jessie’s arrest in connection with the murders.

  21 According to Mara Leveritt in Devil’s Knot, defense psychologist William Wilkins tested Misskelley at 70, but an elementary school test conducted on Jessie in 1983—the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—had scored the seven-year-old Misskelley at just 67.

  22 Leveritt, Devil’s Knot. The prison interview was conducted by Leveritt.

  23 Report by WMPD Officer Stan Burch, May 10, 1993.

  24 This would create even more suspicion among the WM3 supporters. Because of Mark and Melissa’s undercover work with the police of both Memphis, Tennessee, and West Memphis, Arkansas, supporters believed that Mark was getting special treatment from the police. This was utter nonsense, but making the claim stick among the supporters was an easy task. This topic is covered more thoroughly in other chapters.

  25 May 1993 notes from the WMPD show that Richard Cummings Jr. used to walk his dog at Robin Hood Hills. A next-door neighbor, Mary Ann Bledsoe, had complained to the building superintendent that a hole in her apartment wall could possibly be a peep hole used by Cummings, and she related this to police. Cummings had a number of items seized from his apartment, including a couple of knives, a photo album, and for some reason, a Garth Brooks poster. During interviews with police, Cummings, when asked what he knew about the murders, stated that he had heard that the boys—plural—had been sexually mutilated. Police questioned the timing of his statement, believing it to be before such information was available to the public (even though the information was not accurate). He was quickly deemed to have no connection to the murders.

  26 Exhibit C Jason Baldwin Petition for Relief Under Rule 37. Transcript of Sworn Statement of Victoria Hutcheson June 24, 2004 taken by defense team investigator Nancy Pemberton

  27 At the scene of the murders on the afternoon of May 6, when the bodies were found, Aaron and Vicki were present, and Aaron said to Mark, “Mr. Mark! Chris and I play in the woods, and we have a tree house in there.” Despite numerous trips back into Robin Hood, Mark never did see any fort or tree house, and neither did the police when Aaron brought them to the woods. Aaron claimed to have put some of the boards into the tree by using another board as a hammer to drive through nails that he had found on the scene.

  28 The reward fund eventually swelled to somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000. Neither Vicki Hutcheson nor anyone else would ever claim it, though Jessie Misskelley, on his way to make what would turn out to be his confession, joked with Detective Mike Allen that he would use the reward money to buy his father a new truck. Big Jessie’s boss confirmed that this conversation took place in his auto shop, but Allen said he didn’t recall it. Misskelley and Allen were at Jim’s Auto Repair to get the senior Misskelley’s permission for his son to take a polygraph examination.

  29 Mara Leveritt, in Devil’s Knot, claimed that it was “common knowledge” around West Memphis that Damien was a person of interest in connection with the murders (p. 66). In her May 28, 1993, statement to police, however, Vicki stated that it was through her friendship with Misskelley that she first heard about Echols and became suspicious of him.

  30 Tim Hackler, “Complete Fabrication,” Arkansas Times, October 24, 2004.

  31 Leveritt, Devil’s Knot 67 and endnote 94. Prison interview with Mara Leveritt, February 2001.

  32 Reel, Perrusquia, and Sullivan, Blood of Innocents, p. 167.

  33 Jessie actually gave four statements regarding the events of May 5. His first was to police at the West Memphis Police Department on June 3, leading to his arrest, along with those of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin. After his conviction on February 4, 1994, Jessie allegedly confessed again to the sheriff’s department deputies who were transporting him from the county jail to the state prison at Pine Bluff, Arkansas. No recording was made of this statement. Jessie gave a third, post-conviction statement to Dan Stidham at attorney Joe Calvin’s office on February 8, 1994. Prosecutors were trying to make a deal with Jessie to testify in the upcoming Echols/Baldwin trial, and Stidham forced Jessie to make this statement with his hand on a Bible (this would become known as the “
Bible confession”). Misskelley tried to rehabilitate himself from earlier statements—for example, correcting himself by saying the boys had been tied up with shoelaces, not “brown rope” as he had earlier stated—but the statement was still riddled with inconsistencies and lacked the sound of authenticity. Finally, and against the advice of his attorneys, Jessie made a fourth statement on the eve of the Echols/Baldwin trial, apparently looking for a deal through which he would testify for a reduced sentence. All four statements were similar in style, though some of the details varied. It is very difficult, if not impossible, based on these statements, to determine whether Jessie Misskelley was ever at the crime scene and what, if anything, he saw or did. It is interesting to note, however, that although Jessie agreed to go to the scene with the police to point out the exact location of the murders, he was never taken to Robin Hood Hills. Inspector Gary Gitchell cited “security” concerns as the reason the trip was never made.

  It should also be noted that the notorious “twelve-hour interrogation” is something of a misnomer perpetuated by supporters and the media. Misskelley was brought into the station sometime around 10:00 a.m. and questioned prior to being considered a suspect. He was given a polygraph at 12:40 p.m. Given the time it must have taken to interpret the results, report back to Gitchell, and put Jessie under interrogation, it was probably no sooner than 1:00 p.m. that Misskelley was questioned in earnest. The time of the first part of the taped confession was 2:44 p.m., making the total time less than two hours.

  34 An almost identical detail was given by Aaron Hutcheson in his imaginative June 8 statement to Marion police detective Donald Bray. In it Aaron states that it was Steve Branch who “got away and got caught” by Jessie Misskelley, who was “chasing him.” Since it is highly unlikely that Aaron Hutcheson actually witnessed the events of May 5 as he claimed, one is left to wonder where Aaron came up with this. Was it just a coincidence? This detail from Misskelley was critical in the establishment of probable cause for obtaining search warrants against the three suspects.