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

by Greg Day

  Mark lost touch with Danny again, this time until after Christopher’s murder. Mark was living in Cherokee Village and ran into Danny one day at a grocery store in nearby Hardy, and the two caught up on the past few years. Danny had, of course, heard about Christopher and gave Mark his condolences. Danny had spent the last few years working on a riverboat in Ohio and had been injured on the job. After receiving “several hundred thousand dollars” in settlement money, Danny and his wife Marci*** had moved up to the Ozarks to a development called Ozark Acres, some ten miles west of Cherokee Village. “Come on up and see me,” he told Mark. “It’s real nice.” It was nice all right; Danny was having Mexican reefer shipped right to his door via a commercial package carrier. He and Mark did a few deals together to make a little extra cash; the wives also struck up a friendship. Then came Tunica.

  Tunica

  Tunica, Mississippi, is home to a group of nine gaming establishments that operate under state laws allowing gambling on the Mississippi River. The casinos aren’t exactly in the Mississippi, like a riverboat might be. Rather, they are located on the river, huge, stationary barges connected to the shore by gangplanks. Mississippi approved “cruise vessel” gambling in 1989 in a complex series of rules called the Mississippi Gaming Control Act. Under the act, Tunica was one of fourteen riverfront counties approved for “dockside” gambling. Tunica is located an hour south of Memphis, Tennessee, and is a little over three hours by car from Cherokee Village. Flush with money from their marijuana business, Mark and Danny headed down to Tunica one day to blow a little cash at the slots and card tables. They did better than they expected, each pocketing between $5,000 and $6,000, at which point Mark was ready to leave; Danny wasn’t. Deciding not to wait, Mark took off, leaving Danny stranded. Danny had six grand in his pocket; he’d get home somehow.

  Once he arrived at home, Mark found Danny’s wife Marci waiting with Melissa. “Where is he?” she demanded to know. When Mark told her that Danny had opted to stay behind, she exploded. “Did he have money? Did he have whores and girls all over him?”

  “Well, I don’t know what he’s doing down there,” Mark said.

  Marci sent Danny’s brother down to Tunica to pick him up, and when Danny came home, Marci gave him a slightly enhanced version of what Mark had actually said. “I hear you’ve been out whoring and drinking and carrying on.” The two didn’t exactly have the perfect marriage to begin with; this wasn’t going to make things any better.

  Shortly after the Tunica incident, Mark got a call from Danny. “I have ten pounds of good weed. Do you want it?”

  “Sure I do.”

  In a bizarre setup, Danny told Mark, “I’m going to leave it in a cooler down the road from my house, near a cattle crossing, just past the gate. It’ll be there just before dark.”

  Perhaps Mark should have been suspicious, but he had known Danny for years, and the two had dealt a lot of pot together. Mark headed out and quickly found the cattle crossing but did not see the cooler. He headed over to Danny’s house to see if he was there; he wasn’t. He decided to wait. “I wasn’t going to leave while the cooler was still missing.” Within fifteen minutes, Danny’s Cadillac pulled into the driveway; his nephew Dwayne**** was with him.

  “It’s in the trunk of my car,” Danny explained. “Let’s go around by the woods for a little privacy.” Danny pulled the Caddy around back, with Mark following in his Toyota pickup truck. When they stopped, all three got out of the cars. Danny opened the trunk of the Cadillac and pulled out a twelve-gauge shotgun, pointing it squarely at Mark.

  Mark looked at Danny closely for the first time and could plainly see that he was “all geeked out” on crystal methedrine; he looked like he was out of his mind. Danny started ranting about how Mark had caused him all sorts of trouble by telling his wife he was whoring around in Tunica that night, and now he was going to kill him. Danny shoved him back against the hood of the Toyota and smacked him a couple of times with the butt of the shotgun, splitting Mark’s lip and chipping a few teeth in the process. Danny shoved the barrel of the shotgun, which had been sawed off to eighteen inches, into Mark’s mouth, saying, “Beg me not to kill you.” Mark managed to say, “Dude, I ain’t beggin’ you not to kill me. People know you’re out here looking for me. People know I’m out here; Melissa knows where I am. So if I come up dead, you’re going to be the number one suspect.”

  Danny wasn’t listening. He backed up fifteen to twenty feet and pulled the trigger; all Mark remembers is seeing the muzzle flash, hearing the glass in his truck’s windshield shatter, and hearing pellets ricochet off the hood of the Toyota. Somehow, Danny had missed his target. He racked up another shell and another and finally hit Mark with the third shot, in the knee. Not having anticipated that he would miss a target Mark’s size three times, Danny had only three rounds with him. “He came up and hit me across the head with the butt of the shotgun,” Mark says, “and kinda knocked me goofy, but I can remember him saying, ‘Well, I’m going to go back to the house, and then I’m goin’ to come back and kill ya.’ Well, as soon as him and his nephew left, I wandered off into the woods, and sure enough, ten or fifteen minutes later, he comes back and shot up the truck, ten or twelve times, it seemed. And there was a lot of cussin’ and hollerin’ out there in the woods, there’s buckshot flyin’ off into the woods, and then he left. I hitchhiked back into town and bought me a handgun, and I had every intention next time I saw him of shootin’ his ass. Well, I never saw him again . . . till I saw him in the penitentiary.”

  The Calm

  Between the summer of 1992 and the spring of 1993, Melissa cleaned up her act considerably. She was drug-free, and she and Mark were going to Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings together. She had started going to church and was baptized at the Second Street Baptist Church in West Memphis.56 For the first time in years, she was feeling good and looking good. Despite the family’s continuing financial troubles, things were starting to look up. By the time of Christopher’s murder, Melissa had been clean for nearly eight months.

  Christopher

  On Wednesday morning, May 5, 1993, Christopher Byers went off to Weaver Elementary School for what should have been just another day in second grade. Weaver was a neighborhood school, and all of the students were “walkers.” Nothing special was planned in school that day, and Christopher was looking forward to spending time with his friends, Steve Branch, Aaron Hutcheson, and Michael Moore. Christopher, Steve, and Aaron were all in Miss Jones’s class together, and Michael was in Miss Miller’s. It was a going to be a nice warm day in West Memphis, sunny and about seventy-five degrees, and all four boys were anxious to get out of school so they could play. Stevie had a new bike that he wanted to break in—a gift from his grandfather—and it was perfect riding weather. Michael was also anxious to get on his bike, and Christopher was planning on doing some skateboarding. What could be better than to be eight years old on a sunny spring day?

  Things hadn’t always been easy for Christopher, whose birth had been difficult. He was born Christopher Lee Murray on June 24, 1984, at Lebonheur Hospital in Memphis and was extremely premature, weighing only a few pounds. He remained in the hospital for several months while surgery was performed on his stomach and intestines. Still, once he came home from the hospital, his development was normal, though he would always be slight in build. At the time of his death, he was a very healthy four feet tall and weighed fifty-two pounds. He was rarely sick, and during his life, he’d had no major illnesses or injuries. His biggest problem was that he had far more energy than he knew what to do with.

  Although Christopher didn’t excel academically, he did manage to maintain a “C” average. He was an active boy, hyperactive even, and it was nearly impossible for him to sit still at school. Mark and Melissa didn’t know that anything was wrong with Christopher, other than the difficulty they had getting him to sleep at night. “Before I realized that Christopher actually had a problem,” Mark says, “I used to be pretty ha
rd on him. When he wouldn’t go to sleep, I would sometimes spank him or punish him for not listening to me.” By the time Christopher was in the second grade, it was obvious to his parents that he was more than just rambunctious and a little hard to handle. They took him to see Memphis neurologist Dr. Donald Eastmead, who examined him for his behavioral problems at home and in school. Eastmead determined that Christopher suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and that his symptoms were on the severe side of the scale, with incidents of “very low frustration tolerance,” “anger outbursts,” and refusal to follow directions. Dr. Eastmead prescribed Ritalin, later changing the prescription to Dexedrine instead. He also prescribed Tegratol, an anti-seizure medication. Although Eastmead claimed that Christopher was “a difficult child who [might] require in-hospital treatment to gain control of his behavior,” Christopher responded well to the medication change, according to Mark, and hospitalization was never required. His last visit to Eastmead was on January 4, 1993.

  Christopher’s biological father, Ricky Lee Murray, might have been a more negative influence in Christopher’s life had he been more involved. It was probably fortunate for Christopher that Melissa divorced Murray in 1986, when Christopher was three. Murray was living in Indiana at the time of Christopher’s murder and hadn’t seen Christopher or spoken with Melissa in at least five years. He was on probation for a burglary in Scottsville, Kentucky, at the time of Christopher’s death and had to get special permission from his probation officer, Denise Ware, to leave Indiana.57 Absentee parenting notwithstanding, Murray claimed that he had never given up his parental rights and that Christopher had not been adopted by Mark Byers. (See photo section for a copy of Christopher’s adoption certificate.)

  Christopher’s friends and relatives weren’t concerned with any behavioral issues he might have had at school. “He was a real extrovert,” Mark says. “Friends of mine would come over to the house, and Christopher would be there on their laps, asking questions, wanting to show them things from his room. He loved people and loved it when we had company.” His mother described him as “loving and giving.” Mark concurs. “Christopher was the kind of kid who, if he had one cookie, he’d give half of it to someone else.”

  Family friend Andy Taylor has similar recollections. “He was the kind of little kid who could climb in your lap and make you feel good right off the bat.” Christopher was at least as curious as any eight-year-old. “He was very inquisitive, and I think along with that comes creativity,” Taylor said. “He always asked a thousand questions. ‘Why do you drive that kind of car?’ ‘Why are you doing that?’” Christopher was only six years old when his grandparents, George and Auvergne Byers, died, but both had adored him. When he visited his grandparents in Marked Tree, his grandmother would put him up on the counter and allow him to sample whatever she was baking. George would show him his workshop and all the different things he was working on. Christopher visited his grandparents often, as well as his aunts, uncles, and cousins in nearby Jonesboro. The Byerses had a tight extended family, and Christopher knew the security of having people around who loved him.

  During the period that Mark and Melissa had Byers Jewelry open, Christopher often was with them in the store after school. Mark recalls one afternoon near Christmas time when Christopher was five years old. Mark was negotiating the sale of a ring with a particularly demanding customer. “She was the kind of customer who wanted something for nothing.” When they finally agreed on a price, Mark went into the back of the store to size the ring. Leaning over to Melissa, he whispered, “Ya know, I really stuck it to that old bitch!” It was maybe not the nicest thing to say, but he’d said it privately to his wife, or so he thought. Looking from the back of the store a few moments later, Mark was horrified to see Christopher, who’d been standing between Mark and Melissa while Mark was sizing the ring, now addressing the customer. “My daddy says, you old bitch, he stuck it to you!” Mark lost the sale.

  Friends of the family called Christopher “The Worm” because of his constant fidgeting. So pervasive was this nickname that Mark made Christopher a 14k gold ring with an embossed worm on it, a ring he was allowed to wear only on special occasions. Christopher was able to release some of his energy in the family pool, however, and did so whenever time and weather allowed. “During the summer, you couldn’t keep him out of the pool,” Andy Taylor recalls. Christopher shared a bedroom with his thirteen-year-old half-brother Ryan Clark, and though five years and different fathers separated the two boys, they were fairly close. All things considered, Christopher was a happy little boy with good friends and a good life.

  The question of how Christopher’s life might have been affected by Melissa’s drug use—and Mark’s, for that matter—invariably arises, and to this there is no definitive answer. There was surely at least an adequate amount of love and attentiveness toward Christopher in the home. Mark and Melissa took him to the doctor to have his behavioral problems addressed, and they had regular conferences with the school to monitor his progress. Christmases and birthdays were enthusiastically celebrated. There were pets in the family to hug, toys to play with, and books to read. Still, Melissa was an addict, and her children were exposed to the realities of her drug use, though it was arguably Ryan who would have been affected more than Christopher. Christopher’s acting out in school consisted largely of being disruptive, talking, and not paying attention during class, and it was these things that most often brought Mark and Melissa to school for conferences.

  According to Ryan, the only really “weird” thing that he recalled Christopher doing was defecating behind Weaver Elementary with a few of his friends one day, after which they started throwing the feces. Though this was important enough to be noted by Christopher’s physician, Dr. Eastmead, Ryan claims it was an isolated incident. When Christopher did get into trouble, more often than not, it was when he was with Michael Moore. According to Stevie Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, Michael was a “natural leader,” whereas Stevie could sometimes be shy. Christopher was more the adventurous type. One day, for example, Michael and Christopher slipped into Weaver Elementary after school one day after discovering an unlocked door. What the boys were doing in the school is uncertain, but they were taken into custody and were sitting in the backseat of a squad car when their parents came for them—handcuffed, no less.58

  The Moores lived at 1398 East Barton, across Fourteenth Street from the Byerses (the street name sounds impressive, but in reality it’s a neighborhood lane barely wide enough for two cars to pass). Eight-year-old Michael and ten-year-old Dawn lived with their parents, Todd and Dana. Todd and Dana were also friends with Mark and Melissa, often attending the barbeques and parties that the Byerses held at their pool home. Being such close neighbors virtually assured that the boys would become friends, and they spent most afternoons after school together, riding bikes, skateboarding, and exploring their surroundings. This included trips to the area surrounding Ten Mile Bayou known as Robin Hood Hills, even though both sets of parents had forbidden their boys to play there. It wasn’t far—only a few minutes by bike from their houses, just at the end of McAuley Drive, behind the Mayfair Apartments—but there was often enough water in the bayou for an eight-year-old to drown in and enough tree cover to allow the older kids and transients to do what those types of people do when no one can see them. The woods’ close proximity to Interstate 40 also made it a magnet for hobos and other undesirables, and it was directly opposite the Mayfair Apartments, which was known to house unsavory types such as paroled drug and sex offenders. The boys’ parents were adamant about the rule against playing in Robin Hood. Sometimes the boys minded their parents. Sometimes they didn’t.

  Mark Byers says he had “never laid eyes on” Steve Branch’s mother and stepfather, Terry and Pam Hobbs, before May 5, 1993.59 Stevie had been around the Byers house often enough, and Christopher had spent time at Stevie’s as well, but Christopher had always maintained to his parents that Stevie lived somewh
ere down East Barton, close to home. In reality, the Hobbses lived at 1601 South McAuley Drive, nearly half a mile away. Christopher knew his parents wouldn’t let him go that far alone, so he had “misled” them about where his friend lived. It wasn’t until the night of Christopher’s disappearance that Mark learned where Terry and Pam Hobbs actually lived.60 Regardless, the boys spent an enormous amount of time together, along with Michael Moore, so it was not unusual to see the three boys roaming through the neighborhood, doing the things that eight-year-old boys do.61 But May 5, 1993, was different. Somewhere between 5:30 and 6:15 p.m., Christopher left his house without telling his parents where he was going and hooked up with Michael and Stevie. The three boys never came home.62

  Real Monsters

  The period between the murders on May 5, 1993, and the beginning of the trials in late January 1994 was one of surreal anguish for the victims’ families. How could any parents know what to do and how to behave after the sudden and violent death of their child? Along with the total loss they felt without Christopher in their lives, Mark and Melissa had to confront the incomprehensible fact that three local teenagers, boys from their own community, were allegedly responsible for the murders. The viciousness and apparent frenzy of the killings was simply too much for the families to take in. They were obviously in a deep state of shock, as were Todd and Dana Moore. In the film Paradise Lost, Dana Moore asked “Was he conscious or unconscious?” “Did he watch the other two being . . . cut?” Her husband Todd wondered aloud whether Michael might have been calling out for his father and how long he had been left on the ditch bank to die. “They were really being killed by real monsters.”