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

by Greg Day

  The lab report stated that Melissa’s blood contained a number of prescription medications—some prescribed to her and some not—as well as positive indicators for opiates and cannabinoids, but because none of the drugs were present in sufficient quantity to have a lethal effect, they were deemed not to be the cause of death. There were no signs of a struggle and no exterior marks except for some small bruises on her upper arms and left shoulder and “multiple needle puncture wounds” on her right groin, on her left anterior (palm side) wrist, on the tops of both feet, and in the crooks of both arms. Most of these marks were from places where paramedics had made “sticks” for the injection of intravenous fluids. Some, however, were self-inflicted because Melissa was still injecting Dilaudid regularly. Much has been made of the medical examiner’s inability to determine the cause of Melissa’s death. Even more has been made of the case being regarded as a “possible homicide” investigation. In a death with no immediately identifiable cause—the case with some 2,500 deaths per year—it is standard police procedure to treat the case as a possible homicide investigation.86 It is also true that the spouse of the victim is put at the very top of the list of suspects, though in this case, Mark Byers was, and is, the list. It is arguable that if Mark Byers weren’t Mark Byers, the mandatory investigation would have been very brief.

  Mark doesn’t believe that the paramedics made much of an effort to revive his wife that day. “When the paramedics came in, they jerked her off the bed and onto the floor. They didn’t shock her with the paddles but one time. That kind of bothered me. They kind of acted like they didn’t care, like, ‘Well, good. She’s dead. Maybe now he’ll leave.’ I just felt like they didn’t care if she died or not.”

  Many believe this is just paranoid thinking; maybe it is. But considering that Mark was eventually “exiled” from a five-county area, including Sharp County, the old adage may be appropriate: even paranoids have real enemies. Sharp County sheriff Dale Weaver believes to this day that Mark was responsible for Melissa’s death, though he is unable to point to a single shred of evidence to support his suspicions. The Arkansas State Police closed their investigation shortly after Melissa’s death. Weaver could also close his but stubbornly refuses to do so. When contacted recently, Weaver said, “If he [Byers] was to have said something to someone in prison, or somewhere else, and that person was to come forward, that would be the kind of thing we are looking for.” It’s the “wish-upon-a-star” method of investigation that rarely bears fruit. “To close it, it would have to end in an arrest,” Weaver said. “In ten years’ time, things change; people change; life relationships change. That is the thing that we were hoping to find—someone he has been locked up with in prison, you know, affiliate[d] with in some illegal way or had some personal relationship [with] or whatever, that he’s boasted to someone about what he’d done.”87

  Although the official cause of Melissa’s death has never been determined, the autopsy report suggests many possibilities other than homicide, given that there were “abnormalities that have been associated with sudden unexpected death,” such as the following:

  • Enlargement of the heart

  • Narrowing of the artery supplying blood to the atrioventricular node of the heart

  • Fatty liver

  • Elevated glucose, at 431 mg/dL. The American Diabetes Association labels a fasting glucose level of anything over 130 mg/dL as “diabetic.” This number is elevated during digestion, but Melissa had not eaten for at least six hours prior to blood being drawn, though she may have had a small quantity of peach schnapps before her nap.

  • Presence of hydrocodone, a “potent narcotic” and a drug that is “dangerous even in therapeutic levels,” in the urine.88 The drug’s presence in the urine indicates the possibility that there was a “delay between a toxic reaction and death, allowing clearance of the drug into the urine.”

  • High triglycerides (364 mg/dL, normal level being 35-160)

  • High potassium level (5.9 mmol/L, normal level being 3.6-5.0)

  Despite his inability to determine what had caused Melissa Byers’s death, the medical examiner was at least confident of what was not the cause: she had not been stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, beaten, or poisoned. On the other hand, there were many other, nonhomicidal possibilities. Her health was poor. She was obese. Her blood sugar, potassium, and triglyceride levels were all very high. Her heart was enlarged, and there was a 50 percent arteriosclerotic narrowing (hardening) in her right coronary artery. She was a long-term narcotics abuser with a litany of drugs present in her system. She smoked, ate poorly, and exercised little. She was severely stressed over her impending criminal trial, stressed over how to pay the bills each month, and in a constant state of agitation toward everyone from the linoleum installers to her neighbors. She was still severely depressed over the loss of her son, was being prescribed antidepressants, and had tried to commit suicide. She was, in short, an accident waiting to happen.

  Profiler Brent Turvey implied that there was a tremendous amount of information requiring “further investigation” in the Melissa Byers autopsy report. In his Equivocal Death Analysis of Case Evidence for Melissa Byers (done for unknown reasons), Turvey asserts that the medical examiner should have taken into consideration Melissa’s past drug use and other “environmental” factors, stating, “Her history of drug use and abuse, her criminal history, and her family history are not factored in to the opinions given in this report. That kind of history is important information to include should drugs be considered potential contributing causal elements, as they were in this case.”

  He gives no indication of how Melissa’s “family history” should be “factored” into the report, unless one considers her upcoming court dates and the stress they were causing her. Turvey highlights other injuries that were noted in the autopsy report but were, as he puts it, “uninvestigated and unelucidated” elsewhere in the document. Such injuries, including some minor contusions to the scalp and upper arms, were not listed as a possible result of medical handling during the emergency. The absence of these injuries from the list of possible contributors to Melissa’s death indicates that in the opinion of the medical examiner, they were not relevant to the cause of her death. Turvey also stated that the scene was “staged” by Mark Byers, presumably because Mark tried to put a shirt and a pair of sweatpants on his nude wife before the paramedics arrived. This is nonsense, and Turvey should know this.

  The first thing police wanted was to have an autopsy done. “Considering everything that’s happened in your family,” Officer Waser told Mark, “and the press you have received in the last three years, it would benefit you if you requested the autopsy.” Mark agreed. This is a point that is almost never emphasized by others when discussing Melissa’s death. Mark Byers requested that an autopsy be performed for the simple reason that he too wanted to know what had killed his wife.

  As the evening of March 29 droned on, the shock of his wife’s death finally hit home; as he was signing the papers for the autopsy, Mark collapsed on the hospital floor and was attended to by medical staff. Meanwhile, the investigation was just getting started, and the police would waste no time. Fred Waser conferred with Sharp County sheriff T. J. “Sonny” Powell, and it was agreed that Waser would ask Mark to consent to a search of his residence. Again, Mark agreed. State police officer Stan Witt, who was now heading the investigation, told Waser that he and state police officers Bobby Walker, Steve Dozier, and Steve Huddleston would be heading out to the Byers place as soon as possible to conduct the search and requested that Sharp County sheriff’s deputies secure 75 Skyline Drive until Witt and his team arrived. Mark had already left the hospital with Norm Metz and was home, sitting in his carport with Mark and Melissa’s friend and neighbor Mandy Beasley, when the search team arrived.89 Family friend James Lawrence from Marked Tree drove up shortly thereafter, and the three just sat there talking as the officers performed the search.90 Police videotaped the search of the Byers resi
dence and seized a number of items, including two bath towels and one hand towel retrieved from the master bedroom; a blue, long-sleeved pullover shirt that was in the bed; and several medications prescribed to Melissa, including the following:

  • alprazolam (Xanax), 1 mg (antianxiety)

  • lithium and lithonate, 300 mg (for bipolar and depressive disorder)

  • Paxil capsules, 20 mg and 30 mg (antidepressant)

  • Desyrel, 150 mg (trazadone, sedative/antidepressant)

  Police also seized a small quantity of marijuana and paraphernalia, which Mark had told them they would find, and the contents of two glasses, one containing milk and the other peach schnapps. The search produced no clues that would be useful in determining how or why Melissa Byers had died. The autopsy was equally unproductive; on September 30, 1996, the medical examiner’s office ruled that the cause and manner of Melissa’s death was undetermined. They simply did not know exactly what had killed her, though as mentioned previously, there were some possibilities. Officer Stan Witt conceded that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with any crime, and on October 15, 1996, he requested that the case be designated as “inactive.”

  In December 1997, nearly two years after Melissa’s death, state police interviewed one James Biby, an inmate at the Varner Unit, the prison facility where Jason Baldwin was housed at the time. Biby had been brought to the attention of state police by a confidential informant. Biby claimed that before he was incarcerated, he had been friends with Ryan “Byers” at Highland High School in Cherokee Village. Biby told Witt that he knew that Mark Byers had killed Melissa, that Byers had fed her pills and alcohol on the day she died. Biby said he knew this because he was there on the day she died. He further stated that Ryan had told him that his stepfather had been “in on” the killings of his stepbrother and two other little boys in West Memphis. Why Biby waited almost four years after Christopher’s murder and almost two years after Melissa’s death to come forward is obvious: he was lying and was surely looking to “deal away” some jail time. Curiously, Biby also told police that he had given a signed affidavit including these claims to be used in “some kind of documentary.” He said he had spoken to reporters and had also given the information to Jason Baldwin. Witt then had the following exchange with Biby:

  Q. Have you ever seen Mark Byers give Melissa Byers illegal drugs?

  A. Yes.

  Q. What kind?

  A. Pills, unknown, but I’ve took all kinds of pills with them. Valium, Xanax, Dilaudid, and Talwin pills.

  Q. Have you ever seen Mark Byers force Melissa Byers to take any type of pills?

  A. No.

  Q. Why would he want to kill her?

  A. I don’t know.

  Q. How do you know what she died of?

  A. I heard what the police said.

  Q. Can you really say he killed her?

  A. No, I cannot, but I believe he did in my mind.

  Q. How long had it been since you saw Melissa Byers before she died?

  A. I could not put a date on it. Maybe a few days or a few weeks.

  Obviously, Biby was dismissed out of hand as having no reliable or verifiable information, and no action was taken. But police also interviewed one other person who seemed to think that Mark Byers was involved with the death of his wife.

  Mandy Beasley

  Following Melissa’s death, Mandy Beasley and Mark started spending time together. The two had known each other since high school, and Beasley was no stranger to the Byerses’ house, having become friendly with Melissa after they all wound up as neighbors. At some point, Mark ended their relationship and lost touch with her. In December 1997—twenty-one months after Melissa’s death—Beasley gave a statement to state police investigator Stan Witt. In the statement, Beasley implicated Mark not only in Melissa’s death but also in the Atwood burglary and in the fire that had destroyed Atwood’s recreational vehicle. She also told police that there had been three syringes stashed in a dresser drawer at 75 Skyline Drive the night of Melissa’s death, but that police had failed to discover them during their search. She said that Mark later put the syringes in a can and tossed them in the trash. Although she stopped short of saying that there was a connection between the syringes and Melissa’s death, Beasley claimed that Mark had threatened to kill her if she told anyone about them.

  We won’t ever know what went on between the two, but why Mark would threaten to kill Beasley over a couple of unused syringes is unclear. The police knew about Melissa’s drug use, and she’d been dead almost two years. Why would Mark care if Beasley told someone that a long time ago he had thrown some needles in the garbage? Beasley went on to say that Mark had told her he’d blown up Brenda Atwood’s RV by pouring gasoline around it and making a gas “fuse” leading to the road, where he had ignited it with a cigarette. What would Mark have had to gain from blowing up Brenda Atwood’s RV? Having been arrested for burglarizing her house, wouldn’t he have been the first suspect in the RV fire? Beasley added that she believed Mark to be a “pathological liar.” As far as “confessing” the Atwood burglary to Beasley, Mark had been convicted for that crime in August 1996, long before Beasley made her statement. As far as anyone knows, nothing was ever gained as a result of the Beasley statement.

  Mandy Lou Beasley died of natural causes in Hardy, Arkansas, on July 26, 2002.

  Melissa Byers is buried in Memphis, Tennessee, only a few feet from Christopher. Her tombstone reads,

  Melissa DeFir Byers

  January 16, 1956-March 29, 1996

  May She Rest In Peace

  Beloved Brother Dennis

  Beloved Mother of Christopher and Ryan

  Beloved Daughter of Kilborn and Dorris

  Note that there is no mention of her being the “beloved wife of John Mark.” That there was animosity between the DeFirs and Mark is evident here as elsewhere. Mara Leveritt used this fact to support her thesis in Devil’s Knot. Kilborn “Dee” DeFir, Melissa’s father, believed Mark to be lazy and claimed that he, Kilborn, had made monthly visits to Cherokee Village to bring groceries, according to Leveritt. He claimed to have paid for the telephone installation as well as the monthly bill. Dorris believes that Mark “may have had something to do with” Melissa’s death. Leveritt further quotes the DeFirs as saying, “If he killed her and got away with it, he’ll pay for it in the long run.” Kilborn and Dorris were, Leveritt says, worried about their daughter and Ryan after the move to Cherokee Village, which was so far away. Why, one wonders, if the DeFirs were so concerned with their daughter’s well-being, did they not visit her during her two stints in rehab? Since Mark claims he informed Melissa’s parents each time she was institutionalized for drug abuse, how could they deny that she did indeed have a problem? The DeFirs felt that Melissa had married poorly, for the second time (she had never married Ryan’s father, Jimmy Clark), and that Mark was not a good provider. If they believed this, it is hard to understand why, at least according to Mark, when he and Melissa opened Byers Jewelers in West Memphis, Kilborn cosigned a $10,000 loan for tools, equipment, and operating capital, all of which was paid back with interest. Despite X-rays and Social Security disability checks that proved otherwise, the DeFirs were convinced that Mark was faking his brain tumor.

  In any event, Mark was now alone in Cherokee Village with an impending court date to face misdemeanor and felony charges, with his wife and son gone and Ryan living God knows where.

  Ryan

  Often lost in the shuffle of events, both in the movement to overturn the convictions of the West Memphis Three and in the focus on the lives of Mark, Melissa, and Christopher Byers, is the existence of other victims. Ryan Clark often bore the brunt of life alone, having to grow up faster than other boys his age. He grew up with drugs all around him. His mother had been an abuser since the boy was born, and his further exposure during his years with Mark and Melissa is well documented. What is less obvious is what affect the traumas of his youth might have had on Ryan in the y
ears after Mark last saw him.

  Ryan was born Shawn Ryan Clark in Memphis in June 1979, to Jimmy Clark and Melissa DeFir; the two were never married. There was nothing remarkable about Ryan’s youngest years, the exception being the extent to which Ryan might have been exposed to drug usage as he was growing up. Considering that the onset of Melissa’s drug use predated her marriage to Mark Byers—Ricky Murray, her first husband, claimed that Melissa shot heroin before she smoked marijuana—it is safe to say that Ryan was vulnerable to the effects of a family drug abuse problem from at least age six and possibly earlier. All things considered, however, Ryan grew up relatively normally and had no noteworthy behavioral problems. Jimmy Clark and Melissa parted ways after only a few years, and Clark paid periodic visits to Ryan. He worked at a frozen food processing plant near Memphis and was steadily employed during his time with Melissa. Ryan continued to spend time with his father on occasion, including a period that ended two weeks prior to his mother’s death.

  While he was a student at Weaver Elementary School in West Memphis—the same school that Christopher, Stevie, and Michael attended—it was discovered that he suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as dyslexia. He was put on Ritalin to help with his hyperactivity, and Melissa took him to special summer classes in Memphis to deal with his dyslexia. His grades in school improved markedly once his learning disabilities were addressed. By the time Ryan was thirteen, he no longer needed the Ritalin. He and Christopher got along well, having the normal skirmishes that brothers five years apart in age are likely to have. In family photos, Ryan can be seen smiling, mugging for the camera, hugging one of the family cats, lying on the couch with Christopher, or splashing around in the family’s in-ground pool. “He was a good kid,” Mark says, as were the kids he hung around, notably Ritchie Masters and Brit Smith, both of whom lived down the street. Ritchie’s father owned Masters’ Jewelry in West Memphis, so Mark knew Ritchie fairly well. Brit and Ritchie were also with Ryan searching for Christopher on the night he disappeared.