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

by Greg Day

  35 During Detective Bryn Ridge’s testimony on January 27 at the Misskelley trial, he gave conflicting details of the phone call that Jason Baldwin allegedly made to Misskelley. No effort was made by either the prosecution or the defense to clear up this discrepancy:

  Ridge: [Misskelley] talked about some, uh, phone calls he had received, uh …

  Fogleman: From who?

  Ridge: From Jason Baldwin, where he says he heard the voice of Damien Echols in the ackground.

  Fogleman: Alright, what did he tell you that … about those phone calls?

  Ridge: Okay, there were three phone calls. One was in the day before the murders, he explained. One was the morning of the murders, he explained. One was the night after the murders that he explained.

  Fogleman: And in the … did he say, what did he say, uh, that you recall about the phone call the day before the murders?

  Ridge: Uh, something to the effect that they were going to go somewhere and get some girls the next day or something to that effect [emphasis added].

  Fogleman: Alright, and do you have notes related to that phone call the day or night before the murders? [pause] I’m looking at the first page.

  Ridge: Okay, stated that he had received a call from Jason Baldwin the night before the murders.

  Fogleman: Okay, and what did he tell you?

  Ridge: Okay, at that time they were going to go out and get some boys and hurt them [emphasis added].

  Fogleman: Alright. And … and then what did he tell you, about Damien in the background?

  Ridge: Alright, stated he received a call from Jason; Damien, in the background, wanted him to go with them. Said they planned something, heard Damien say that Jason ought to tell [Jessie] that they were going to get some girls or something [emphasis added].

  36 Misskelley’s June 3 confession contained many contradictions. Arriving at Robin Hood at 9:00 a.m. would have placed them in the woods nearly nine hours prior to the time witnesses say they saw the three victims headed toward Robin Hood. In his February 17, 1994, post-conviction statement, however, Misskelley stated that he had worked at West Memphis Roofing that morning, gotten off work at “dinner time,” and arrived at Robin Hood shortly before dark.

  37 Narlene Hollingsworth, Domini’s aunt, would testify that she and her husband, along with a carload of children, saw Damien and Domini walking along the service road by the Blue Beacon Truck Wash at about 9:30 p.m. the night of May 5. Anthony Hollingsworth testified that the pair looked “dirty.” The prosecution would allege that Narlene had mistaken Jason Baldwin for Domini; both had long, wavy, light-colored hair and wore similar clothing. Domini’s alibi checked out to the satisfaction of the police.

  38 In a case brought by the Commercial Appeal, a Memphis newspaper, seeking to have the records opened to the public, a state judge upheld Rainey’s order, citing the “sensitive and inflammatory” nature of the case data.

  39 Warren Holmes, a nationally recognized polygraph expert, testified at Misskelley’s pretrial hearing in January 1994 that his interpretation of the Misskelley charts was exactly the opposite of Officer Durham’s. Where Durham interpreted the answers to pertinent questions to be deceptive—for example, “Have you ever been to Robin Hood Hills?” and “Have you ever took [sic] part in devil worship?”—Holmes thought the opposite. He also thought that the test itself was improper. A “peak of tension” test, Holmes testified, would help to isolate a subject’s truthfulness in a given answer. In Misskelley’s case, Holmes felt that the subject’s statement that the boys were tied up with “brown rope” rather than shoelaces was extremely significant and could have been key to ascertaining the truthfulness of the entire confession. Durham had administered a “zone of comparison” test, which uses control questions—those for which the response is presumed—mixed in with relevant questions. The answers are compared to each other to determine the truthfulness of the answers to the relevant questions.

  40 Jessie Misskelley’s alibi is significantly more complicated. Because he had previously confessed, he now needed to line up witnesses to testify to his whereabouts. Misskelley claimed to be wrestling in Dyess, some forty miles north of Marion, at the time of the murders. His alibi witnesses did not withstand cross-examination at trial.

  The initial part of Jessie’s alibi came from his girlfriend, Susie Brewer, then fifteen years old. She claimed that Jessie was at the home of a mutual friend in Highland named Stephanie Dollar, babysitting Stephanie’s children, and that he was still in the trailer park at 7:00 p.m., when he headed for home. Jessie Misskelley Sr. testified that Little Jessie left Highland Trailer Park on the night of May 5 with his friends Keith Johnson, Johnny Hamilton, Freddy Revelle, Josh Darby, Dennis Carter, and “some other guy, Bill something or other” (probably Bill Cox). This purportedly occurred around 7:30. The police and prosecution, however, brought out several things that tended to impeach Jessie’s testimony:

  • It was noted that Stephanie Dollar had been around the trailer park handing out copies of the police report of the “slapping incident” involving a neighbor, Connie Molden, thereby giving witnesses a chance to get the times straight, possibly in an attempt to provide an alibi for Misskelley.

  • Big Jessie’s frame of reference for May 5 was his attendance at DWI school, yet he could not remember details of any other dates or times he attended these classes.

  • Jessie Sr. had initially told reporters that his son “could’ve been there,” meaning the murder scene, but that he hadn’t taken part in any of the killing, thus directly contradicting Jessie Jr.’s alleged timeline. Big Jessie said at trial, however, “That was before I found out; that was before I went to work on the case and found out that he was not there [at the crime scene].” This perhaps indicated that he’d made his early statements before he’d had a chance to “compare notes” with other neighbors and friends. Or perhaps he simply mixed up his times.

  • Crittenden County sheriff’s deputy James Dollahite, Marion Police Department corporal Joe McCafferty, and Marion Police Department patrolman Jason Oliver, all of whom responded to Stephanie Dollar’s call for help regarding the Connie Molden slapping incident (Molden had allegedly slapped Dollar’s child), declared under oath that none had seen Little Jessie Misskelley at the scene, despite Dollar’s testimony that she had “taken” Jessie to within “five yards” of the police cars so he could hear what Molden was saying and report it back to Dollar.

  Numerous inconsistencies were brought out in the cross-examinations of Jessie’s wrestling buddies who claimed they could vouch for his whereabouts on the night of May 5. For example, Miskelley’s cousin Charles “Bubba” Ashley Jr. was also questioned, and he testified that his mother had received one of the police reports Stephanie Dollar was handing out, but that he personally hadn’t read it. Prosecutor Brent Davis was attempting to establish that Ashley’s time frame for last seeing Jessie had been given to him by Dollar.

  41 B. A. Botkin, A Treasury of American Folklore (New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 1944).

  42 Another boy, Murray Estes Byers, was born in 1941 and died a year later from a “heart problem that could have been fixed today,” according to Mark’s sister.

  43 Home Grown, prior to disbanding in 1977, won an Arkansas “Battle of the Bands” contest, which won them a trip to the 1976 World’s Fair in Spokane, Washington. There the band was allowed to perform on stage, just ahead of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Mark jokes that they were “the warm-up band for the Choir.”

  44 Phencyclidine was developed in the 1950s as an intravenous tranquilizer but was discontinued for use by humans because it caused patients to become agitated, delusional, and even suicidal.

  45 Mark was actually baptized three times. He was baptized at age nine while attending vacation bible school and then again at sixteen, but there was no real “heart change.” “I guess you could say that I was under the water so much the fishes knew my name,” he says.

  46 In Devil’s Knot, Leveritt relates a diff
erent version of the events leading to the couple’s move from Mobile to Memphis in 1981. Echols defense team investigator Ron Lax of Memphis told a story he allegedly received from a “cooperative but reserved” Sandra Sloane; according to Lax, Sloane told him that after a two-week business trip, Mark had come home saying that he had quit his job and that they were moving to Memphis, which they hastily did two days later. Though there is no hard evidence to support this version, Leveritt accepted Sloane’s account of this incident, as well as others, as though it were verified fact. P205 endnote 245

  47 The letter was apparently not delivered and in fact was not even finished. It read in part,

  Darling,

  I wish I could talk to you, since I can’t I thought I would try to write.

  Mark wanted to get into a long discussion tonight about repairing our marriage. When I would talk he got on the defensive, telling me how I had done him wrong, and never appreciated the jewelry he made. Anyway, to make a long story short, I realize it’s to [sic] easy for him to talk me into things I don’t want to do. So as I tried to tell you twice yesterday, I am going to get some legal advice or at lest [sic] make an appointment for next week. No, you are not pushing me and maybe I am moving to [sic] fast, but if I don’t it may be a [sic] late …”

  48 The psychologist was Dr. Roland Lee of Memphis, who was reputed to be an expert in the area of child sexual abuse.

  49 Judge Rainey was the justice who issued the search and arrest warrants for Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley in June 1993 and also the gag order for the cases of all three defendants.

  50 Mark was required to file paperwork changing the way the payments were made. He was not aware of this at first, so initial payments to the children may have been late.

  51 “Hometown Boy Makes Good in Jeweler Trade,” Tri-City Tribune, December 15, 1988.

  52 According to www.pdrhealth.com, Dilaudid (pronounced dye-LAW-did) is “a narcotic analgesic [that] is prescribed for the relief of moderate to severe pain such as that due to Biliary colic (pain caused by an obstruction in the gallbladder or bile duct), burns, cancer, heart attack, injury (soft tissue and bone), renal colic (sharp lower back and groin pain usually caused by the passage of a stone through the ureter), and surgery.” On the street, the drug is a valued opiate and sells for approximately $50 for a 4 mg tablet (called “K-4s”). At one time, if she could locate and afford it, Melissa would take up to 16 mgs intravenously per day.

  53 Daniel Hatchett and his partner (who was also his nephew), Dustin “Dusty” Charles Boyle, were interviewed during the investigation into the murder of Christopher Byers, Steve Branch, and Michael Moore. They were asked to provide alibis and fingerprints. Boyle was asked to submit to a polygraph examination, to which he agreed. According to examiner Bill Durham, Boyle answered all questions with no deception detected. It is unclear why only Boyle was asked to take the polygraph.

  54 Leveritt, Devil’s Knot.

  55 The ATF was brought in because John McFarland had convinced them that Byers was also running guns.

  56 This church was featured in the film Paradise Lost as the church that Damien Echols had visited once, at which time he told their youth pastor that he was “beyond saving” and had “a pact with the Devil.”

  57 Murray was down on his luck and broke during a cold winter, and his fiancée’s car was in the process of being repossessed. Murray broke into a shed and stole unspecified merchandise that he intended to sell. He was convicted of third-degree burglary and sentenced to three years’ probation. Because he was living in Indiana at the time, his probation was transferred there.

  58 This information was provided by Todd Moore in a phone conversation with the author.

  59 Not only had he never met the Hobbses, but he had also never met or even heard of the convicted killers. Only Pam Hobbs ever alleged having any contact with any of the teens. In WMPD inspector Gary Gitchell’s June 9, 1993, interview notes, he states that Pam “remembers Damien as a younger person, and hates to think that he would/could have done this to her son.”

  60 Mara Leveritt made much of this fact in Devil’s Knot (pp. 34-35). In order to bolster her case for police ineptitude, she points to the failure by the police to question Mark further about his not knowing where Stevie Branch lived. First, Mark thought that he did know where the Hobbses lived. Second, the irrelevancy of the information was obvious to police. Dana Moore had already told police that she had seen Michael and Stevie together, later joined by Christopher. Even conceding that Mark didn’t know exactly where Stevie lived, what possible difference would that have made to the investigation?

  61 Neighbor Debra O’Tinger lived at 1309 Goodwin Avenue, just across the street from Robin Hood Hills. She testified at both trials that she had seen Christopher, Stevie, and Michael cut across her yard between 5:45 and 6:00 p.m. on May 5.

  62 Aaron Hutcheson was invited to go with the boys to Robin Hood that day, but his mother, Victoria, wouldn’t allow it, according to an article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 13, 1993.

  63 Memphis Commercial Appeal, “Counselors Help School Deal With Its Grief” May 8, 1993.

  64 Stevie Branch’s funeral was held on May 13 at Bradshaw’s German-Aumon Funeral Home in Steele, Missouri, and presided over by Reverends Leon Brassfield and J. D. Hobbs, Terry Hobbs’s father. Michael Moore’s services were held on May 11 at the Holy Cross Episcopal Church in West Memphis, with the Reverend Fred Tinsley officiating.

  65 This is Mark Byers’s account of the incident. Joe Berlinger was contacted by this author and asked to verify this account but could not or would not do so. Berlinger initially said he was inclined to grant an interview but eventually declined.

  66 A panel discussion was hosted by the Arkansas Times at the Argenta Theater on June 1, 2011, following a screening of the film Paradise Lost. The panel consisted of Joe Berlinger, Devil’s Knot author Mara Leveritt, Arkansas Take Action co-founder and restaurateur Capi Peck, and the wife of Damien Echols, Lorri Davis. An audience member posed a question to Berlinger regarding the “honorarium” paid specifically to Mark Byers, and Berlinger answered that all six families had received $7,500 for the first film. Only Mark Byers had been willing to participate in the second film. Berlinger then stated that he had never paid for participation in his previous films, nor would he do so in future documentary films. However, Mark Byers claims that he was paid in three installments, amounts unspecified, for granting five appearances in Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. There are unsubstantiated rumors that Terry Hobbs was paid for his appearance in the film as well. Berlinger was asked by this author about these payments but did not respond, as was the case with all questions posed to him. Curiously, there is a disclaimer at the end of Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory to the effect that certain people—not named—were paid for their participation in the film.

  67 Melissa’s parents, Delores and Kilbourn DeFir, were not present. “Melissa said it would only upset us,” her mother said, according to an interview granted with Mara Leveritt and appearing in Devil’s Knot.

  68 Though this similarity was certainly pertinent—it actually caused a delay in the start of Misskelley’s trial—little use could be made of the discovery. Because there wasn’t enough blood on the knife to perform a more narrowing DNA test—the sample was only sufficient in quantity for DQ Alpha testing—it was impossible to identify exactly whose blood was really on that knife. But Leveritt seemed to believe that because the blood type was common to both Mark and Christopher, it added credibility to her insinuation that Christopher’s adoption by Mark might not be legitimate. Although early in Devil’s Knot, she lends credence to Ricky Murray’s claim that Mark never adopted Christopher, she later uses the DNA results to suggest that Mark might be Christopher’s biological father. She wrote,

  “Lax and the attorneys wondered, could the DNA of two people who were not biologically related be utterly indistinguishable [by DQ Alpha testing]? Or—the thought arose—was John Mark Byers actuall
y Christopher’s biological father? Was that why he’d always claimed to have “adopted” the boy, but not Christopher’s half-brother Ryan? Those questions would hang over the case, unresolved, for years to come.”

  This was an incredibly convoluted assertion. In whose opinion would those questions “hang over the case”? If it is a question regarding Christopher’s adoption, there never was any ambiguity. Mark adopted Christopher on February 21, 1991, according to papers filed in the Crittenden County Clerk’s office, and renamed him “Christopher Mark Byers.” The filing of the petition was handled by West Memphis attorney Jan Thomas. Any interested parties had six months from the date of the temporary decree of adoption to file any objection. No such objection was received. Ricky Lee Murray, who feigned outrage by saying he had never given his permission for the adoption, was notable for his absence, a trait he had displayed often during his short marriage to Melissa. According to Mark, Melissa had told him that Murray was drunk in a bar the night Christopher was born.

  69 This information is contained in a lab report from Genetic Design in Greensboro, North Carolina, dated January 27, 1994.

  70 When Cooper was interviewed by police at a Ramada Inn in Memphis, he said that he didn’t know why Mark had given him the knife, and that he hadn’t wanted it. He also stated that Mark told him, “I want you to keep it in your car,” “we have something between us,” and “I want you to think of me if you should ever use it.” The interview with Cooper was recorded by hand on yellow lined paper and has no investigator’s name or signature on it.