Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three
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178 Declaration of Mildred French, Hobbs v. Pasdar.
179 In her 2009 declaration in the matter of Hobbs v. Pasdar, Pam Hobbs would say that she’d seen Terry’s divorce papers and that his ex-wife had accused him of “sexually molesting” their son, Bryan.
180 The so-called lake knife was a large survival knife found behind the home of Jason Baldwin in Lakeshore Trailer Park, submerged in the mud at the bottom of the lake that gives the “park” its name. Police divers recovered this knife in November 1993, six months after the murders. The knife was never linked in any way to either the suspects or the victims, with the exception of the testimony of medical examiner Dr. Frank Peretti, who said that it was “possible” that the knife had caused some of the injuries. Prosecutor John Fogleman, in his closing argument to the Echols/Baldwin jury, used a grapefruit to show jurors how cuts to the fruit by the lake knife “matched” some of the injuries to the victims. In Echols’s habeas petition, forensic odontologist Dr. Robert Wood stated, “Grapefruit is not a recognized analog for human skin. To my knowledge it has never been used as a model for skin injury, in any court, anywhere … the difference in damage inflicted by a knife to these two substrates are as different as chalk and cheese.”
181 The Memphis Commercial Appeal, for example, printed much of the statement verbatim in a June 7, 1993, article by Bartholomew Sullivan, “Teen Describes ‘Cult’ Torture of Boys: Defendant Misskelley Tells Police of Sex Mutilation.”
182 In between the Misskelley and Echols/Baldwin trials, prosecutors Brent Davis and John Fogleman told the families of the victims that without Misskelley’s testimony at the Echols/Baldwin trial, they would have only a “50/50” chance of obtaining convictions against the two. He apparently underestimated the jury, who convicted the defendants on all counts and sent Echols to death row.
183 When Gary Gitchell was asked by attorney D’Leslie Davis during the Hobbs v. Pasdar depositions if he would make the same statement—that the case against the three teens was eleven on a scale of one to ten—Gitchell replied, “Probably not.”
184 Warford was originally retained by Arnold on behalf of his brother, Gerald Arnold, who was facing allegations that he had raped his four-year-old daughter during a planned visitation. Warford pled him out.
185 In 2001, Moneypenny, a privately practicing psychologist in Little Rock, signed an affidavit stating that he had been retained “solely for the purpose of determining what, if any, mitigating factors were present that could be presented at the penalty phase of his trial, if [Echols] were to be found guilty of capital murder.” He felt pressured to give the evaluation, despite a very short (two days, February 20-21, 1994) time frame, but because of his belief that all defendants are entitled to an “impartial and competent evaluation where mental health issues are relevant to the proceedings,” he gave it his best shot. Echols’s writ maintains that “trial counsel unreasonably introduced testimony from defense expert James Moneypenny concerning petitioner’s mental health history; unreasonably failed to object to cross-examination of Moneypenny concerning excerpts drawn from Echols’s mental health records; and unreasonably failed to seek a limiting instruction as to the use of the Moneypenny testimony.”
186 Corporal Joel Mullins of the state police dive team recovered the knife in the lake behind Jason Baldwin’s trailer on November 17, 1993. Mullins had been called by investigators of the WMPD to search this area. Staff writer Kathy Burt of the West Memphis Evening Times was on hand with her camera just in time to snap a photo of Mullins popping his head up out of the water, knife in hand. Much was made about how reporters knew to be there during the search. The easy answer is that the property owner, James T. Ellison, who consented to allow state police to cross his property, notified reporters during the “several hours” divers were searching. According to Ellison, once the knife was found, police left, saying, “We got what we want. Let’s go.”
187 Indeed, Hobbs was receiving unwanted visitors at his place of business, one going so far as to come in with a camcorder, posing as a tourist from another country in order to get Hobbs on film.
188 Maines was represented by D’Leslie Davis and Dan Davison with the law firm Fulbright and Jaworski. She was further represented by John Moore and Melissa Bandy. The Dixie Chicks were represented by Bob Wellenberger with Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons. Hobbs was represented by Cody Hiland and Ted Thomas.
189 It seems odd that Ryan would have been in school that day with his little brother still missing. He himself had been out till midnight searching. For Mark’s part, with all the activity going on at the time, he says he doesn’t remember whether Ryan went to school or not.
190 Most of Mark Byers’s statements were taken directly from his declaration to attorneys in the Hobbs v. Pasdar case.
191 The Serological Research Institute (SERI) in Richmond, California, did the DNA testing on the Jacoby and Hobbs samples and then cross-referenced them to the reports of Bode Laboratories, which had received evidence for testing from the Arkansas State Crime Lab. According to SERI analyst Thomas Fedor, regarding the cigarette butts taken from the front yard and ashtray at Terry Hobbs’s residence by Rachel Geiser of Inquisitor, “The person who left DNA on the cigarette butts #8 and #10 (or anyone in his/their maternal lineage) are not excluded as the source of the ligature hair [Bode #2S04-114-03a.” This was the hair recovered from the ligature that bound victim Michael Moore. The same comment was made regarding the analysis of a cigarette butt and hair sample obtained from David Jacoby as it related to Bode #2S04-114-23, “hair from tree stump.” Jacoby also could not be excluded as the source.
192 Actually, Hobbs had already retained Memphis attorney Ross Sampson as his “entertainment lawyer.” Sampson was now pulling double duty, deflecting questions from the media related to any alleged involvement of Hobbs in the murders.
193 Larry King Live, December 19, 2007.
194 The governor was not available. Maines delivered the letters to an assistant.
195 This setup didn’t last long. Mark was soon making his own decisions about whom he would be interviewing with, once his contract with Clear Pictures had expired, and he didn’t need approval to grant interviews. He also felt that he was savvy enough at this point to handle his own publicity.
196 According to Misskelley, the tattoo is a clock with no hands. He said he would have the tattoo completed with the time of his release upon being freed from prison.
197 Since deceased.
198 The hearings were reminiscent of scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These people were drawn to the hearings, and it didn’t seem like anything could keep them away. They were always peaceful, polite, and orderly. Most, but not all, were young and for the most part well informed. Their main fault was that they were perhaps overly reliant on the HBO movies for information.
199 George Jared “WM3 judge says decision in case coming in 2010” Jonesboro Sun December 27, 2009
200 George Jared, “Boy’s Mother Recalls Fateful Day, Part 4,” Jonesboro Sun, July 6, 2010.
201 Jon Gambrell “Arkansas Attorney General’s Office statement on recent federal court filing of Damien Echols Associated Press, October 30, 2007, as reprinted at http://wm3org.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/index.html. The spokesman’s name was Gabe Holstrom.
202 Also known as the “Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome,” this condition describes women who are attracted to men who have committed heinous crimes Though this disorder is not currently cataloged in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (DSM-IV), it is nonetheless recognized by psychologists as a recurring paraphilia, though little is actually known about it since “sufferers” don’t normally seek treatment.
203 Reporter Stephanie Scurlock from WREG TV Memphis interviewed Davis in February 2010.
204 Mara Leveritt, “The Damien I Know,” The Arkansas Times, January 9, 2004.
205 Nelson told defense attorneys that Hobbs had first used the phrase “buried under water” in a conv
ersation with her and that he became “annoyed” or “bored” whenever the subject of Stevie’s death came up. According to Nelson, Hobbs told her that he had discovered the bodies before police did but didn’t say why he’d never told anybody. Nelson claimed that she had only recently discovered that Hobbs had not told Pam that Stevie was still missing while she was at work and that he had not told police that he had discovered the bodies.
206 Jared, “Boy’s Mother Recalls Fateful Day, Part 4”.July 6, 2010, as reprinted at http://wm3org.typepad.com/blog/2010/07/boys-mother-recalls-fateful-day-part-4-2.html
207 Damien Echols’s direct appeal for a rehearing had been denied by the ASSC on February 24, 2005.
208 Worth Sparkman, “Arkansas Supreme Court Oral Arguments to Be Broadcast Online,” ArkansasBusiness.com, September 14, 2010.
209 None of the footage of the exchange was used in Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. Video filmed by another cameraman not associated with HBO or Creative Thinking was at one time viewable on youtube.com. It has since been removed without explanation. The introduction to the video contained text accusing Mr. Byers of drug use and may have been removed for legal reasons.
210 Leveritt wrote the following passage in Devil’s Knot:
[The author’s source] was former Poinsett County sheriff’s deputy C. L. Carter. When questioned about the attack on Byers’s parents, Carter recalled, “Mark had a knife after them. He wanted them to give him money to buy dope with.” The former deputy said he cornered Mark in a closet and ordered him to throw down the knife. Carter said he vividly recalled that, as he was putting handcuffs on Byers, the teenager looked at him and vowed, “I’ll cut your throat.”
This author (Greg Day) interviewed May Carter in February 2007 when she was ninety-seven years old. May and her husband Carol “C. R.” (not C.L.) Carter (101 years old) were in the Woodbriar Nursing Home in Marked Tree. Deputy Carter was unable to come to the phone at the time, but his wife had a near-perfect memory, and without any prompting, she recalled the incident with Mark Byers in the same detail as her husband had to Leveritt when he was interviewed for Devil’s Knot. Mark has said that Deputy Carter—and his wife—may be remembering Danny or Larry Myers, brothers he said were in trouble all the time, or perhaps Duane Byars, another youth in town known to cause trouble. Larry Myers was declared a fugitive on April 23, 1997, after he gunned down one Poinsett County sheriff’s deputy and wounded another during a traffic stop just south of Marked Tree. Myers killed himself before he could be captured. Myers was born in 1951, which would have made him approximately twenty-two years old at the time Carter investigated the call. Both the Marked Tree police and the Poinsett County Sheriff’s offices claim that they do not keep records dating back to the time of the incident. Friends and family members interviewed by this author gave this story no credibility at all. Whoever Carter remembered arresting, it wasn’t Mark Byers. Not only did Mark love his parents dearly, but the idea of sixteen-year-old Mark holding George Byers hostage with anything less than a howitzer was laughable. Leveritt has acknowledged that she sought no corroboration for her story since she had obtained it from a “former public official” and that the story was obtained “long before” she wrote her book, according to e-mail exchanged between Leveritt and the author in March 2007.
211 Jill Zeman Bleed, “New Hearing Ordered for 3 in Ark. Scout’s Death,” Associated Press, November 4, 2010.
212 Mara Leveritt, “Briefs Set for West Memphis Three Hearings,” Arkansas Times, January 4, 2011. Although the hearings were public, some of the information in this chapter was gleaned from Leveritt’s articles in the Times.
213 Mara Leveritt, “The Big Ask,” Arkansas Times, August 24, 2011.
214 From a March 21, 2012 e-mail from Mr. Braga to the author.
215 Allison D. Redlich and Asil Ali Ozdogru, “Alford Pleas in the Age of Innocence,” Behavioral Science and the Law (2009).
216 Stephanos Bibas, “Harmonizing Substantive Criminal Law Values and Criminal Procedure: The Case of Alford and Nolo Contendere Pleas.” Frontline website, PBS. (Originally published in the Cornell Law Review 88, no. 6 [July 2003].)
217 Damien Echols, Almost Home. Lincoln, NE iUniverse 2005
218 From Heather Crawford’s two-part interview that aired on October 29 and November 2, 2011, on WKAT-ABC TV, Little Rock.
219 Sharon Waxman, “Out of Prison, West Memphis 3 Ex-Con Seeks Justice,” The Wrap (Reuters), January 12, 2011.
220 Qtd. in Suzi Parker, “West Memphis Three now must learn how to live as free men” Christian Science Monitor, August 2011. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0820/West-Memphis-Three-now-must-learn-how-to-live-as-free-men
* Not his real name.
** Not his real name.
*** Not her real name.
**** Not his real name.
***** Not his real name.
****** Not his real name.
******* Not his real name.
Table of Contents
Untying the Knot
Contents
Preface
Foreword
Chapter 1
A Community in Shock
“There’s Been a Homicide”
The City Reacts
The Investigation
Damien
Jason
Jessie
The Investigation Part 2
Victoria Hutcheson
The Confession
Chapter 2
I’m No Angel
Setting Out
All the Way to Memphis
Descent
Sandra
Melissa
Tables Turned
Danny Overman
Tunica
The Calm
Christopher
Real Monsters
Getaway
The Misskelley Trial
One Down, Two to Go—the Echols/Baldwin Trial
Cherokee Village
Chapter 3
Melissa
Mandy Beasley
Ryan
Exile
Chapter 4
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
The Red Carpet
WM3.org
At Graveside with Christopher
The Devil Made Them Do It
Paradise Lost Revisions
The Blame Game
The Rule 37 Hearings
The Leeza Deal
Chapter 5
Summer Camp
Paying the Piper
Wrong Number
Summer Camp
Brickeys
Hoedown
Moving On Up
Passing Time
“Welcome to Brickeys, Brother!”
Mail Call
Dermott
Preparing for Reentry
Chapter 6
Redemption and Revelations
Jacki
The Cuckoo’s Nest
The More Things Change
Tinsel Town and the Monster in the Shadows
Terry Hobbs
Questioning Hobbs
The Mind-Hunter Cometh
Revelations
The Petition
Summary of the Evidence
Meet the Press
Brent Davis Answers
Trouble with the Chicks
The Hobbs Alibi
Further Revelations
“The Price of Justice Is Eternal Publicity”
Chapter 7
Jason and Jessie
Chapter 8
John Mark Byers, Damien Echols, and Terry Hobbs
Lorri Davis
48 Hours
Voices for Justice
More on Film
Larry King Live, Part 2
September 30, 2010
The ASSC Returns a Surprise Decision
Reviewing the Evidence
Florid Delirium
North Carolina v. Alford