Crime Weekly - S3 Ep115: West Memphis Three: Robin Hood Hills (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

West Memphis, Arkansas is located in Crittenden County and is directly across the Mississippi River from Memphis Tennessee, but in 1993, West Memphis and Memphis were worlds apart. Memphis boasted a healthy and growing population of over 620 thousand, while West Memphis had just over 28 thousand residents. But Memphis, TN struggled with high crime rates, with 1993 setting a record for the most homicides in one year, a record that wasn’t broken until 2016. West Memphis Arkansas had a more small town, laid back feel, and as cliche as it sounds, people felt safe leaving their doors unlocked and letting their young children play outside all day with no supervision. That was until May 5th, 1993, when three eight year old boys rode away on their bikes, eager to expel the energy they had built up all day while sitting in their second grade classrooms at Weaver Elementary School, but they never came home. It wouldn’t be long before the residents of West Memphis and then the world found out what happened to Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers. Their battered and mutilated bodies were found the next day in a swampy wooded area known to locals as Robin Hood Hills, and the community of West Memphis felt a shockwave hit their community that they would not recover from for some time. Within a month three teenagers were arrested and charged with capital murder, and it wasn’t long before whispers of witchcraft, devil worship and occult killings rippled throught the homes and businesses of West Memphis, and those whispers eventually turned into a loud roar, a roar that might accompany an angry mob looking for someone to blame for an unimaginable tragedy, akin to the infamous witch hunts that are dotted throughout history. This is the story of six boys from West Memphis, Arkansas; three were brutally murdered and stolen from this world far before their time, the other three were marched to the proverbial gallows, guilty in the court of public opinion, and found guilty in an actual court of law. Six lives destroyed, six lives forever changed, six lives eternally tied together.  Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. Magellan TV Claim your SPECIAL OFFER for MagellanTV here:https://try.magellantv.com/crimeweekly. Start your free trial TODAY so you can watch 'Britain's Child Drug Runners', and all of MagellanTV’s other exclusive true crime content. 2. Helix Helix is offering up to 20% off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners! Go to HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly. This is their best offer yet and it won’t last long! With Helix, better sleep starts now. 3. Prose Go to Prose.com/crimeweekly for your FREE in-depth hair consultation and 15% off. 4. Beis Go to BEISTRAVEL.com/CRIMEWEEKLYfor 15% off your first purchase. 5. HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/crimeweekly60 and use code crimeweekly60 for 60% off plus free shipping!

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apply. West Memphis, Arkansas is located in Crittenden County and is directly across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee. But in 1993, West Memphis and Memphis were worlds apart. Memphis boasted a healthy and growing population of over 620,000, while West Memphis had just over 28,000 residents. But Memphis, Tennessee struggled with high crime rates. In 1993, they set the record for the most homicides in one year, a record that wasn't broken until 2016. But West Memphis, Arkansas, had a more small-town, laid-back feel. And as cliche as it sounds, people felt safe leaving their doors unlocked

and letting their young children play outside all day with no supervision. That was until May 5th, 1993, when three eight-year-old boys rode away on their bikes, eager to expel the energy they had built up all day while sitting in their second grade classrooms at Weaver Elementary School. But they never came home. It wouldn't be long before the residents of West Memphis and then the world found out what had happened to Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher

Byers. Their battered and mutilated bodies were found the next day in a swampy, wooded area, known to locals as Robin Hood Hills. And the community of West Memphis felt a shockwave hit that they would not recover from for some time. Within a month, three teenagers were arrested and charged with capital murder, and it wasn't long before whispers of witchcraft, devil worship, and occult killings rippled through the homes and businesses of West Memphis. And those whispers eventually turned into a loud roar, a roar that might accompany an angry mob looking for someone to blame for an unimaginable tragedy akin to the infamous witch hunts that were dotted throughout history. This is the story of six boys from West Memphis, Arkansas.

Three were brutally murdered and stolen from this world far before their time. The other three were marched to the proverbial gallows, guilty in the court of public opinion and found guilty in an actual court of law. Six lives destroyed, six lives forever changed, six lives eternally tied together. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are covering one of, I think, the most infamous cases in all of true crime history, West Memphis Three. This is a case that's brought up, you know, a ton of documentaries. They made a movie about it. It's just a very prevalent case that I think still attracts people to this day because one, it's technically unsolved. And two, yeah, the brutality of this crime, the brutality of what happened to these three boys is unimaginable. Like you just don't, you can't wrap your head around it. You know, you don't understand why this happened, what the motive was, and how it could have happened in some place like West Memphis, where, you know, kind of we talked about in the teaser a little

bit, pretty safe place, small town. People weren't getting murdered left and right in West Memphis, much less three little boys being mutilated and tortured and, you know, just murdered without any really rhyme or reason. So it definitely shocked the community and it shocked the world. And we're still shocked and we're still trying to make sense of it. We're still trying to make heads or tails of it. Yeah, it sounds the backdrop is kind of similar to Delphi, right? With the whole backstory of that case and not being an area known for crime and then to have something this heinous happen in that community,

it affected it forever. So you have a similar situation here and up until recently which is still going through the process that case was unsolved as well but yeah this is a big case obviously familiar with it a lot of people have covered it including yourself and we're kind of putting the crime weekly spin on it we we i've told you before we always want to give you guys a catalog here where although you may be familiar with the case we dive dive into it. And even though Stephanie has already covered it at length, adding my perspective to it, maybe it brings up some new things that we can discuss. It's always good to do it. And I like to get a deeper understanding of these cases because when we are fortunate enough to meet you guys, you want to talk shop, we start talking about specific cases

and I want to be familiar with those cases as well. So yeah, obviously on the surface, I'm familiar with the case and the outcome of the case as of right now, but we're going to go over the details and maybe we start to think about things differently because I've heard some opinions, but not all of them. So maybe we'll develop some new ones here. So I'm excited about it. We are always kind of diving into the deep end when we cover cases that have been covered this extensive because everybody's an expert on it so when we when we take it on it does open us up to a new level of

scrutiny but i think it's good to have you know constructive conversations and see where we end up because at this point as stephanie said it's unsolved so you got to talk about it if you want to change that narrative and change the outcome as it currently stands. have improved. I've really honed my process and I'm finding out things that I didn't know before, which I love. So I'm excited to dive in and discuss it with you and discuss with everybody listening and watching. But before we do, did you have something you want to talk about? Yes. You and I talked about it before the camera started rolling. And if you've seen Crime Weekly News this week, you have permission to skip this part, go right past it. But as you can see, we're in the criminal coffee merch

This is the official merch. This is the finalized product. It's looking pretty good If I don't say so myself if you're watching on YouTube, it looks great Stephanie came down to Rhode Island this week We went over to J&R marketing and had an opportunity to see the production to see what they're doing how they're this how they're building Everything how they get the blanks in the material feel it. It's all awesome I wanted to address on here because we're getting a lot of the questions from you guys who did the pre-order, you know, where's our, where's your product, all that stuff. Good questions. The pre-order was done because we put a lot of different items on there. If you go over, we didn't know what was

going to be popular, what wasn't now we do, right? We have your orders. And from what I'm being told from JNR and from what you're being told as your emails are coming in One to two weeks one to two weeks this stuff should be shipping out We were there as they were producing it and manufacturing it while we were there So it is coming I promise you if you want to hold off like another week or two before you send an email if you're looking for your item Just hold off. I promise you we have it and if we don't we will get it to you So that's number one the second thing about criminal coffee, which is something we were aware of, but it's becoming an issue that we're going to have to fix.

If you are on the criminal coffee co website, you'll notice that when you click on merch, it does look like the same website. But if you look at the hyperlink in the actual URL in the bar, it's a different website. It's J and R marketing. That's who's producing our product. It's right here in Rhode Island. They're right down the road from me. But the reason we did that is because they have the backend to it.

So they can fulfill your orders quicker than having to come through me on the criminal coffee side. So right now people are having issues where they're going, they're putting, you know, merch in their cart and then they're trying to add coffee and it's two different carts. Essentially it's two different websites. So they did a really good job at making the two sites look similar, but it's caused some issues. So unfortunately, right now, if you want to buy coffee with your merch, you have to do it separately. It's two different stores.

When you buy the coffee, it's coming to me and we're fulfilling it. One or two days, you're going to have your coffee. The merch side of it, that's JNR. They're fulfilling it there. We are currently working on something. It may take us a little bit. Anybody's familiar with like web design. It's basically two different websites that we have to try and combine into one. So it's a, it's an undertaking to do it. We want to get these pre-orders out and then we're going

to start to address that. But that was really it. I know some of you have been emailing us and this is kind of like a blanket address for everybody who's maybe concerned, like, Hey, I ordered my item at the beginning of February. I haven't gotten it yet. Please just be patient with us. It is coming. I promise you. And it will be worth the wait. The products are, they're awesome. They're awesome. Awesome. I really like, I'm so mad, honestly, because now I want to, um, you know, move my merch over to JNR because I love the quality. I love the designs. Like I just, I love our criminal coffee merch so much. And I can't wait till they send me my stuff because I have one hoodie, but I can't wear that every day. One

hoodie and one hat. I can't wear that every day, even though I have been wearing it quite a bit. So I'm excited for the rest of it and definitely worth the wait. Absolutely. It is coming. Thank you for the patience. Like I said, in a couple of weeks, if you don't hear or see anything, you'll get a notification as soon as it ships. If you don't hear anything, by all means, reach out. You can email me or you can email right to JNR and we'll respond promptly and we can confirm your orders there and that'll be shipped out.

But I would think if you give it that period, you're going to be getting a notification relatively soon, letting you know that your items are on the way. All right. So let's dive into today's episode. So believe it or not, West Memphis, Arkansas was once a thriving town. In fact, it was considered the manufacturing and distributing hub of the country due to its proximity to the Mississippi River and the availability of railroad transportation. After the Depression of the 1930s, West Memphis continued to grow, with Broadway Avenue transforming into a visitor's haven, with new shops, restaurants, and hotels springing up every year. But in 1956, Congress approved the Federal Aid Highway Act, which promised to construct 41,000 miles of highway system to connect 42 state capital cities.

And these highways were designed so that traffic could only enter and exit on designated ramps in order to keep traffic flowing. They even had diners, gas stations, all of that on the highways, which was great for efficiency and speed, but not so great for small towns that had populations under 50,000 because those small towns are basically caught off from this highway system and forgotten. And West Memphis, Arkansas was no exception. It became one of those places that travelers once would have stopped, eaten some food, maybe stayed the night at a hotel and contributed to the town's economy.

But now it was too complicated to get off the highway and navigate through side streets, especially if you had no reason to visit. And no one who didn't live there had an actual reason to visit West Memphis, Arkansas. This is why the national highway system is known as the Grim Reaper of small towns, and West Memphis saw a huge decline of traffic coming through, and eventually things began to close down, and Broadway Avenue, a once-flourishing area, started to look like a ghost town. West Memphis would eventually find their place as a trucking hub, but no one there could be described as wealthy or even well-off. According to the 1990 census, West Memphis had an 8.4% unemployment rate. The median household income was $22,000, and of 9,861 households, 1,094 of them were bringing in less than $5,000 a year. Of 7,485 families in West Memphis, 1,378 of them were living below the poverty line, So it was generally considered to be a pretty depressed area.

Add to that, in 1987 and 1988, a string of natural disasters made things even worse. Ten days before Christmas, on December 14th, 1987, a tornado hit town, killing six people, injuring hundreds, and causing approximately $35 million in damage. This was money that West Memphis just didn't have. But Mother Nature wasn't done yet because 11 days later on Christmas Day, the skies opened up and released torrential rain, leaving 12 inches of water on the ground and flooding the already shell-shocked town. The following January 6th, 7 to 10 inches of snow fell,

and when that snow melted, it exacerbated the flooding that West Memphis never really recovered from to begin with. But depressing adult stuff like the economy and rebuilding after a natural disaster doesn't really bother young kids, who are happy as long as they have their bikes and their buddies. And that was the case with friends Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, who were all eight-year-old second graders at Weaver Elementary School. The three boys all lived pretty close to each other. Stevie lived on Macaulay, which was just a few blocks south of Barton, where Christopher and Michael lived across the street from each other. In fact, Weaver Elementary had only 335

students in grades K through 12, and only 44 second graders, so all the kids were pretty close. And since they all lived in a tight-knit network of streets and homes, it was common for the kids of West Memphis to study together during the day and play with each other after school and on the weekends. Many of them were drawn to playing in a swampy, wooded, undeveloped area of about four acres known as Robin Hood Hills. This area was located between the Mayfair Apartments and the Blue Beacon Truck Wash. The truck wash was part of a corridor that consisted of a truck stop, refueling stations, motels, and restaurants that were built to service truckers who were driving Interstate 40 and who needed a break on their long hauls. And I-40 was one of the busiest highways in the United States, so West Memphis depended on this trucking corridor for a good deal of their economy, and many residents were employed in some capacity there.

You know, they had gas stations, motels, restaurants, and a lot of people who lived in West Memphis and worked in that trucking corridor would walk through Robin Hood Hills in order to get to all of that area over there. After the flood of 1987, the city had also dredged a channel through the city, and this channel is known as 10 Mile Bayou. It was a ditch that was meant to divert rainwater away from West Memphis and back to the Mississippi River, and part of it ran through this wooded area between the truck stop and the residential neighborhoods where the families of West Memphis lived. Now calling it a ditch actually makes it seem like small and, you know, shallow, but actually 10 Mile Bayou could be as wide as 40

feet in some areas, and it could be as deep as four feet. And there were smaller tributaries and other channels that sort of branched off this larger diversion ditch, which made the whole area very swampy and muddy, which made it really the perfect place for young kids to play during the daylight hours. And teenagers would also hang out there. They'd smoke cigarettes, they'd drink beer, grope each other after dark. And most parents knew that the older kids were up to no good at night. The adults of West Memphis were also concerned about accidents happening in the watery area. So they would tell their children to stay away from Robin Hood Hills, but the children didn't listen, of course. And the adults kind of knew that they didn't listen and it was just this like mutually understood thing that the adults were like you

guys shouldn't play there and the kids were like okay but then they they kind of did anyways and you know the adults kind of felt like well as long as they're home before dark when you know it's it's too dark to see and you don't want to like get into a watery area you can't get away from, or when the older kids are there kind of drinking and smoking. As long as they're home before dark and they're not wandering through the swampy woods at night, everyone kind of was okay with it and looked the other way. But that was until the evening of May 5th, 1993, when it seemed like the entire population of West Memphis, Arkansas,

was out trudging through Robin Hood Hills, yelling the names of three little boys who had gone out bike riding and had not returned home. Yeah, so at first, when you're talking about this, I'm going back to Delphi again, right? Because it seems like this might be an area only familiar to people who live there. But then you throw in the curve ball of this truck stop and doesn't take a far reach to say, okay, well now you have a whole different Avenue to explore because there's a lot of people who are not from that area passing through there on a daily basis makes the investigation that much harder because yeah, could it be someone who's from the area

who's familiar with this, this location? Sure. But it could also be someone who was driving through for the first time or has driven through that location on numerous occasions and was waiting for an opportunity to do something that maybe they've done in other states. So good to explore sucks for the case because there's so many more persons of interest. Now, I always felt with Delphi and we said it when we covered it, this was an inside job. This is someone from the area because although that bridge was something that was frequented by a lot of people, it was more something for the locals. And yeah, there was

a road driving by, but it wasn't a main artery, a main highway like this, where there was a stop specifically located there for people just passing through. so this adds a whole nother dimension to this case which i could see right now just by you saying that truck stop the cases has grown in size by a hundred times so just just by that now your suspect pool is astronomical yeah and i mean they said that there would be like transients and like hitchhikers and stuff that would kind of like wander through there and like people kind of knew that like nobody really felt safe with their kids playing in that area. And not just because, you know, there's like ditches and water and stuff like that, but because there's like unknown people there.

That was always a thing that people were concerned about even before, you know, this happened. So I definitely agree with you. I think it's something that law enforcement at that time didn't really explore, which we'll talk about because they were focused on these three local teenagers, but it could have been anybody. Could have been anybody. It could have been a trucker.

It could have been somebody hitchhiking their way through. It could have been a local. It could have been somebody in these kids' own families. Honestly, with the level of violence, it looked like somebody was really angry with these little boys when they killed them. I don't understand what an eight-year-old boy could do to make somebody that angry, much less Doree. But it definitely looked like it was personal. So you go back and forth. You don't really know who it could be. It could be somebody who's just sick and likes to do that, you know, like it was personal. So you go back and forth. You don't really know who it could be.

It could be somebody who's just sick and likes to do that, you know, like a serial killer. And there's actually a new theory. And we're going to talk about in the theories section that some, you know, prevalent serial killer is now being considered as a suspect. So it could be just somebody who likes to kill, likes to hurt, likes to torture. That's the gratification. Yeah. Could be just some sick person who likes the gratification of hurting someone smaller. But remember when we talked about how uncommon it was for one killer to kind of attack, you know, more than one victim at once and that it gets kind of harder to control the situation?

Yeah. of harder to control the situation. So it almost makes it feel like maybe. There was more than one person who was responsible for this or more than one person who took part in this. And I really do think that's kind of why they focused on Damien Eccles and Jason Baldwin and Jesse, Ms. Kelly, because it was like, well, if they work together, this makes sense. One teenage boy for every one little boy. So that makes sense. They could keep them under control

and corral them and they wouldn't have to worry about somebody getting away. And I think that was like their main driving force, at least for law enforcement initially, like it had to have been more than one person in order to do this in the way it was done, which we're going to discuss. But yeah. And that, that narrow mindedness of, of as far as oh well it's got to be more than one person how would you control three guys that's what can get you into trouble because if you have a general consensus amongst the investigators now you're you're looking for these two or three individuals and that's what you're focused on when the reality is and i know i'm going to refer to it a lot because i do see a lot of similarities delphi two girls could have easily gotten away

you would think but as we're learning there's ways to control a situation with the use of a weapon and so it looks like that could i shouldn't even say it looks like but that could be a situation here where you have three little boys eight years old that is not old i mean these are little boys i got i got a seven-year-old and a ten-year-old that's mentally if they were to see a gun or even a big knife, they're going to freeze. They're going to freeze because they're not developed enough yet mentally to understand, well, if we all take off at the same time, we're, you know, two out of three should at least be okay. And then also it's the, this, I hate to even say this, but you do

have a situation too, where we've heard from other victims where they don't want to leave their friend right so they're there they're three together and you could have had one person with a gun or a knife catch them off guard by approaching them maybe presenting themselves as a friendly person ice cream whatever candy who knows gets them close enough and now it's a down the hill situation where they're right on top of them with a gun and they can point it at one of them or all of them and the kids are frozen and going to do whatever they're told to do. Yeah, I agree. And it's difficult. And I think when we get into, which we're going to do this next episode, we're going to talk about the autopsies and it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough because I remember covering this

for YouTube and it was hard. We're going to talk about the autopsies and basically what happened to these kids. And then we'll be able to determine better whether you think it could have been one person who did all of this or if there was more than one person. And we're going to dive into the timeline of May 5th, the day that these boys went missing. But before we do that, let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. So let's go over the timeline of May 5th, 1993. It was a Wednesday and classes at Weaver Elementary School let out at around 2.55 p.m. 8-year-old Stevie Branch was walked home from school by his mother, Pam Hobbs, and his 4-year-old sister, Amanda. Later, Pam would remember, quote, the whole time we were walking home, Stevie told me how much he loved me. He kept repeating, I love you, Mom, the whole time, end quote. Reportedly, Stevie and his mother were

very close, like best friends, and she was incredibly proud of him. But like almost everyone in this case, Stevie hadn't had the most stable or consistent childhood. Born on November 26, 1984, Stevie was just a year old when his mother divorced his biological father, Stephen Branch. Pam was awarded custody of Stevie, and in 1986, she remarried to a man named Terry Hobbs. In 1989, Pam and Terry would go on to have a daughter, Amanda, who Stevie was very fond of, and everyone said he took his job as a big brother very seriously. The little family lived together at 1601 Macaulay Street in West Memphis, and Terry Hobbs worked during the day as a delivery driver for the Memphis Ice Cream Company, while his wife Pam worked nights at the Catfish Island

Restaurant. Stevie was described as being a little bit more mature than his age. He had spiky blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and his teachers said he was very smart. He was on the honor roll in school. Some of Stevie's favorite activities happened smart. He was on the honor roll in school. Some of Stevie's favorite activities happened outside. He loved riding his bike, playing with his friends, doing projects for Cub Scouts, and acting like the daredevil he was known to be. His mother, Pam, said that Stevie loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

and he liked to practice their moves. He actually taught himself to do backflips and front flips. But when he wasn't doing Ninja Turtle moves, Stevie was listening to music or singing. He loved music. And his mother said, quote, he was going to be my little Elvis someday. I told him how Elvis had bought his mama a Graceland, so he'd have to buy me a promised land, end quote. Reportedly, Stevie had said he would. He would do that for his mother because he loved his mother, Pam, so much, which is what he couldn't stop telling her as they walked the short distance from school to home. Pam, Stevie, and Amanda got home around 3 p.m., and Pam started

to get ready for work and to prepare dinner. As soon as they walked in, Stevie ran to get his bike. It had been a cool and rainy spring, but on that day, the sun was shining, everything was starting to dry out, and Stevie was itching to get on his new bike. His old bike had actually been stolen, and recently his grandfather, Jackie Hicks, had purchased him a new bike, which Stevie kept in his room to avoid it being stolen again. Pam told Stevie that before he went outside to play, he needed to do his homework, and Stevie told her he had finished his homework already, and he showed her to prove it. Once Pam was satisfied, she told her son he could go outside and ride his bike around the front yard,

which he did for a little bit until his friend Michael Moore stopped by, and Michael wanted to know if Stevie wanted to ride bikes around the neighborhood. Now Stevie and Michael were good friends and more than that Stevie actually considered Michael's nine-year-old sister Dawn to be his girlfriend. He was head over heels in love with Dawn and he had just purchased her a birthstone ring for five5 from Walmart. The parents of Dawn and Michael Moore actually kind of joked and said like Stevie liked older women because Stevie was eight and Dawn was nine. She actually turned 10 at some point during this. So she was 10 when this happened, but it's kind of cute. And you know, Michael and Stevie were, were very close friends. I think it's a common thing too where,

I know when I was young, you always have your best friends or buddies, the older sister. Really? And yeah, you're like, when you start to get curious, you're like, hey, Becky's looking kind of cute. At eight?

No, not at eight. I'm saying as you get a little older. Jesus. But it's like you start to, I think at this age it's more fun. But yeah, as you get older the first the people that you're gonna start to be attracted to are gonna be like your buddy's sisters and stuff like that I mean hey is uh is Jen gonna be at your house today it's like why

why are you asking that no reason just you know I hate her so I just want to I just want to pick on her while I'm there of course you know it's cute you know what's crazy? We're talking about Stevie, Michael, and Christopher, like they're little boys, but they're all eight years old at that time, but they're all born in 1984. That's the year we were born. That's right. turned 39 they would be 39 today that's crazy to me like they were our age when we were running around as eight-year-olds in rhode island in new york living the life no cares in the world these kids were being murdered and that's that's it's crazy to put yourself in that like context and think about it that way so when you see that that these kids are the same age as you are it's kind of like a little creepy and eerie and and you think like, that could have been me, you know, and it could have been anybody. Yeah. And I think we also can, can acknowledge because we're around the same

age, even though I was in Rhode Island, you were in New York back then, it was very common to get on your bike or on your skate, skateboard or skate rollerblades or whatever. And right around the town or city, uh, with now to care in the world parents did that it was very common because you could do it back then not me oh really my mother would not let me leave the driveway oh this makes a lot of sense we have to dive into this deeper but it makes a lot of sense but no i but it's one of those things where i was driving all i mean i was maybe it wasn't a good thing but we were riding all over the city my buddies would come pick us up and we'd hop on our bikes. We put our baseball cards in the back wheel and make the sound like a motorcycle as you're riding.

And we were just like the coolest people in the city at that age. I don't know about eight years old. We were probably a little older, but the point I'm making is I know some initial thoughts when you're looking through the lens of 2023. You might think like, why are you letting these kids go out and ride their bikes? I think we all agree with you in today's world that we're living in and what we've have come to learn about society and the people living in it. But back then, this was a normality. This was something that people did often and nobody really thought twice about it. So it goes to show you what has happened in only 30 something

years, but it's the world we live in now. But you got to show you what has happened in only 30 something years, but it's the world we live in now. But you got to, when you're looking at this case, you have to dissect it through that lens of 1993, a little bit different of a time. I mean, I think even today, like if you're living in an insular neighborhood like this, right, where all the kids play together and everybody kind of knows everybody and it's like not super close to a main road, it's West Memphis, Arkansas. You know, it's like nothing's happening there. Like even me, when I lived in like a subdivision kind of area, I would let Aiden go and ride his bike because it's like four streets, you know, and he's with a bunch of kids.

So it's like what's going to happen? They're not leaving. They're not going on a main road. And everybody kind of like is sitting outside their houses watching me watching the kids like looking out for each other and stuff like that it's this was so unexpected for this area that that i can't even begin to explain like what an impact it had on the people who lived there they would never in a million years have thought this could happen and isn't that always a situation too i mean understandably so whenever you have a tragedy happen like this even whether

it's a school shooting which obviously is a bigger magnitude or even a more specific case like we think about Delphi we think about Elizabeth Collins and lyric cook like it doesn't only affect those immediate families if it affects the whole community because anyone with children at that point is thinking oh my god I let my child ride their bike bike in the same location. It could have easily have been so-and-so so you never really recovered the town becomes known for that in a way and Michelle Norris I refer to that sometimes too that happened in 1988 in my hometown and We have a playground where she was taken from where it's now called it's that's

what it's called now michelle norris park and it's one of those things where time passes but the impact that it has on that community doesn't change uh and so it's a very common thing nobody ever recovers from this which i think is a reason you see a lot of people end up moving from that location after something like this because everywhere they look, they're reminded of that incident. You know, you can't say West Memphis without everybody. Exactly. Like, exactly. That's what I know it as, you know.

Yeah. And I mean, this is this is what West Memphis like I was typing it and I was trying to find some background, you know, I'm like, what was it like? Every time I type in West Memphis, Arkansas, this is what pops up. This is what they're known for. This is what will stay with them forever. So that's unfortunate. So Michael Moore, also eight years old, born on July 27th, 1984, and he lived at 1398 East Barton in West Memphis with his parents, Todd and Dana Moore, and his sister, his older sister Dawn.

Now, according to sources, Michael was a natural-born leader, and when he was with his friends, he usually took control. He was kind of like the head of the group. And he was a kid who was very well-liked by adults and his peers equally. He had a great sense of humor. One of his favorite things to do was make others laugh. In school, Michael enjoyed playing t-ball. His favorite subject was math. But what he loved more than anything was the idea of like wearing a uniform and helping people. One time, Michael showed up to school wearing a hat and a coat from his father's Navy uniform. And when he joined Cub Scouts, he fell in love with the uniform. No one was prouder

to be a Cub Scout than Michael Moore. And he wore his uniform all the time, even to school, where his teacher remembered that every morning when they would do the Pledge of Allegiance, Michael would stand, he would take a wide stance, put his hands behind his back, and give the Scouts salute. So it's true, like Michael Moore, he wore his Cub Scouts uniform all the time. There's actually a school picture, I think it was the most recent school picture of him, his second grade picture, where he's wearing his Cub Scout uniform. So very adorable, so sad. And one day, you know, Michael wanted to grow up and become a police officer. So he always carried around a little toy badge that had his name on it that his father had given him. And on this mild May day,

Michael was focused on only one thing, getting outside and riding bikes. After school, Michael stopped at his house quickly. He put on his Cub Scout uniform and then he headed right to his friend Stevie Branch's house. Okay. So we have, there's one more, there's one more person that we're going to talk about, obviously, but you can see how these two teamed up. And just back to what you're saying again, and I love that you always do this with the research because it's easy to dive right into the facts, which we do. But I always think it's important to talk about these victims as they were as people, because it's, yes, I know that when you hear these names, when you Google them, the first thing you're going to see is this, and it's going to most yes, I know that when you hear these names, when you Google them, the first thing

you're going to see is this, and it's going to most likely be about the facts and the details of the case that aren't easy to hear about or read about. I love the fact that we always take the time to talk about who they were in life, because that's important too. That's important to discuss who they were, who they could have been, who they wanted to be, because they're not just a piece of evidence. They're an actual human being. And I think it's important for you guys to understand who they were because it adds to the case itself. It adds to the complexity of it from the sense of now you're emotionally attached to it, whether it's because you have children or you know someone or you think about yourself, there's more at stake now, understanding who these kids

were up until the very moment when they disappeared and ultimately were found So I love that we do that and it does for me It's harder to hear because now instead of just being pragmatic and talking about the evidence and what happened to them Now i'm thinking about that little boy in the cub scout uniform Now i'm thinking about the fact that he wanted to be a police officer that in it And it adds an emotional stake to it where you want to work harder for them. So it not a bad thing it's a great thing and uh i know it's hard for you guys i know some of you don't like when we cover the children's cases but it when we do you have to include this stuff because it's not to sensationalize or make it more than it has to be

this is necessary not only for them but for their family members, because you never know who's going to listen or watch this. And every time that I've had to speak or deal with family members of the victims personally, one of the first things they always say is thank you. Thank you for talking about who they were before this happened, because that doesn't always happen. Sometimes, even just networks, I'm not talking just podcasts, they go right into the specifics of the case because that's what they feel is going to be the most enticing for the viewership. And I know like, yeah, people don't like the kids cases. And it's not like I'm like, yeah, you know, they're terrible. But like if we're not talking about them, no one is. That's the point. You know, we can't just like let them be forgotten because if we don't talk about them, remind you who they were, remind you what happened to them. Well, obviously history is doomed to repeat itself, but also like they disappear. No one's talking about them because they're afraid of talking about them or they feel sad or they don't want to think about it.

But the fact of the matter is like talking about them keeps them alive and keeps their memory intact. And that's very important to do because, I mean, otherwise what happens? You know, they just fade into history and we don't want that. Not for these three boys. Nope. And these are the worst ones to talk about, but personally for my own fight, my own personal gain, I, I don't want to say the word enjoy, but I'm most intrigued by these because as a father, I'm trying to learn. And it's just like reading a book, right? You learn from other people's choices, reading a book, right? You learn from other people's choices, both choices that were impactful and worked out good and also their

mistakes. So you don't repeat them. And I'm not necessarily saying there was a mistake in this case, but you can see the behaviors that were done in this specific- Lots of mistakes, lots of mistakes. And we're going to get there. But I'm saying as far as parents, letting your kids go out there, there's no victim blaming here. It's just more so, Hey, I know what the outcome was. How did they get there? Right? What can I take from that information and apply it to my own life as a parent to try to prevent this from happening to me or someone else I care about. So I'm constantly learning from this, from an educational perspective, not just covering the case for the investigative purposes of it, but also I apply a lot of the things that I hear about and read about on these cases in my own life, not necessarily to make myself paranoid, but to learn and grow and not have to learn by

mistake, right? Because sometimes the impact of those mistakes are you can't repair them. So I'd rather just learn by what's happened in other cases so that I can prevent it from happening to me or anyone else I care about. And I think that's something where you as listeners and viewers is a good angle to look at it as well. I know it's tough to hear, but you're becoming more educated. You're becoming more informed and better prepared to prevent a situation like this. That's the goal here to solve the case and to better protect yourselves. 100%. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So the boys, Stevie and Michael,

they walked into Stevie's house to ask Stevie's mom, Pam, if they could go and like ride bikes around the neighborhood. But Pam said, no. She said, listen, I'm getting dinner ready. You know, she had to like wash and dry her uniform before leaving for work. She was training that night to be the closing manager at Catfish Island, the restaurant. And she had to be at work at 5 p.m. So when the boys asked her, she was like, I feel like it's too close to that time to let Stevie go wandering off. But you know how kids are. They don't take the first no.

They are natural-born salespeople in that way. They do not take the first no. They kept asking, and eventually Pam gave in. However, she gave her son explicit instructions to be back by 4.30 so that she could leave for work, and if he didn't get back by then, she said he would be grounded for two weeks. Stevie promised to be back by 4.30, and Michael told Pam not to worry. He said his mom wasn't home at that moment, but she would be home

within five minutes. Now, this statement actually led Pam to believe that the two boys were going to the Moore house, Michael's house, and when they left on their bikes, Pam thought it was around 3.20 or 3.25 p.m. And almost as soon as Stevie and Michael had left, Stevie's other friend, Christopher Byers, showed up and he was like, hey, are Stevie and Michael here and can they play? So he basically just missed them. He came over like within a couple of minutes Christopher Byers was born on June 24th 1984 to his mother Melissa and his father Ricky Murray and Chris was actually born Christopher Lee Murray but his parents divorced when he was four and in 1989 his mother remarried a man named John Mark Byers who if anybody's seen these West Memphis Three documentaries, I think they were done by Peter Jackson, Paradise Lost or something like that. I watched them years ago. You'll

remember John Mark Byers as being one of the biggest characters in those documentaries. And there were plenty of characters to choose from, and he stood out amongst them all. So John Mark Byers, he'd previously been married, and he had two children from his first marriage. And when he married Melissa, Chris's mother, he legally adopted Chris and then changed Chris's name to Christopher Mark Byers when the boy was about five or six, which I find to be incredibly odd that your name's been like one way for six years of your life and then you get adopted. But he didn't just change his last name. He changed his middle name, too, to make it part of his name, which I think is just very odd. say this personal experience. My, my stepdad came into the picture when I was seven years old. My brother was six. My, my sisters were four at the time. Well, my one sister was four. We had another sister, Amy. Um, but recently my brother, my, my father and I had a, not a very good relationship. He was in and out of my life, my whole life, my, my biological father, my brother had an even

rougher relationship with him. So my father's last name is Levasseur, same as mine. I had too much history with my last name to change it. It became my last name. That's how I looked at it. It represented me, nobody else. I mean, I played sports. I was on Big Brother, all these different things, right? Well, my brother disliked my father so much that my dad legally adopted us when we turned 18. And part of the reason he did was because he works at Brown University. So in order to get tuition reimbursement through Brown, they had a family program.

You had to be legally the person's son or daughter. So we did it for that reason. I did it as well. But my brother at the time was like, basically an FU to my father. He changed his last name and he played college football everything He everything he owned was Matthew Levasseur and he changed his last name to a different I won't say it just in case he doesn't want people to know but he has a different last name now

So I it is tough and I guess but the last name makes sense because you're adopted. That's right Would you did your brother change his middle name? No, no, no. No, he didn't he didn't so I know some people have their reasons I he seems obviously Christopher was a little young to be doing it for that reason where it was like hey my father I don't want to be connected to my real father anymore So I see why some people do it Like I said, my brother did it really late in life like it was even after 18 almost I think it was Well after he was 18 actually. But yeah, I do see it happen from time to time. And sometimes it can be just a one, a disassociation with your biological

relative, you know, you know, it's like, Hey, I don't want to be attached to them in any way. I just, I think it's more about like the parent at this point. Like it's about some ego thing. Like this child has to have my name and not just my last name, but part of my name has to now become this child's middle name because he's not blood related to me. So I have to like put my like mark on him any way I can. And you know, that makes me-

You don't think it could be just like a pride thing? Like I want you to have my name as well because I love you and I just, I want you to be, I want you to have the same name as me. I want us to all don't need the last name is fine oh just when i said that the middle name is weird why would you change a kid's middle name to make it your name weird yeah john mark byers man have you seen these documentaries these west memphis three documentaries absolutely not oh absolutely well you need to peter jackson the guy who did lord of the rings did it like they're Have you seen these documentaries, these West Memphis Three documentaries? Absolutely not. Oh. Absolutely not. Well, you need to.

Peter Jackson, the guy who did Lord of the Rings, did it. Like, they're very, they're like, they're good, you know? You should watch the first one. Like, tonight, watch the first one. So you just don't like Mark Byers, obviously, as to this documentary. Well, it's not that I don't like him. I don't like, so I'm going to be honest, and most people already know my biases. I don't like Terry Hobbs, who is Stevie Branch's stepfather.

I think that dude's a dick. He is a dick. John Mark Byers is a character. And so he's also incredibly complicated, problematic. There is people who believe that he killed his wife, Melissa, who died a couple years after Stevie was murdered. And there's definitely some evidence to support that. So, you know, not a good dude. At this time, he was unemployed, but he was having issues. He was accused of stealing a bunch of jewelry from his previous employer. This actually, this was still in like litigation when the boys went missing and were found murdered.

So the whole jewelry thing was still in litigation, but he would later confess that he had done it and he had to give the jewelry back. He was accused of like having Rolexes, like a couple Rolex watches like mailed to him. And then he claimed he didn't get the package. And then it turned out he sold the watches to like a dentist in a different town. And, you know, so he's like kind of a scumbag, not somebody that you would say like, oh, this is a really good role model. So like, do I think

that he made Christopher change his name, his middle and his last name because he loved him so much and cared about him and had a great deal of pride. Nah, I think it was an ego thing and a narcissistic thing, knowing John Mark Byers. I mean, this dude sings in church and then had a recording of his singing. He made a song for Christopher Byers. And I don't really even think that he cared that much about Chris Byers, if you wanna know what I feel,

but he made this song and then he went into a recording studio and did it. He just kind of got off on the attention. You've got to watch the first one and see what he does. He goes out shooting and he puts pumpkins up with the pictures of Damien and Jason and Jessie, Miss Kellyanne, and he's like, these ones for you, Damien. And he's just putting on a show for the cameras cause he knows there's like a documentary and he's just like a ridiculous person. He was a ridiculous person. So just from what I know of him, and I know there's gonna be tons of people right now

watching and listening who are like, who've seen this documentary, who know John Mark Byers and who are like, absolutely yes. Like dude was a banana split sundae with extra nuts. Okay, so Stephanie hates Mark. Got it. All right. John Mark.

John Mark. I apologize, John Mark. That's all you had to say, Stephanie. That's all you had to say. Got it down here. So Chris Byers lived at 1400 East Barton, right next to his friend, Michael Moore. And he lived there with his mother and stepfather.

And he also shared a room with his 13-year-old stepbrother, Ryan. And when he was young, allegedly Chris had been given the nickname Wormer because of how much he squirmed. But later, this might be explained because he was actually diagnosed with ADHD and he was prescribed Ritalin in April of 1992.

I hate to see an eight-year-old be put on Ritalin. It's so sad. But according to family friend Andy Taylor, Chris was very interested in motors and moving mechanical parts, and he was super imaginative. He had a strong creative streak. Andy Taylor said, quote, he always asked a thousand questions. Why do you drive that kind of car? Why are you doing that? He was very inquisitive. And I think along with that comes creativity. End quote. Now, during the summer, no one could get Chris out of the pool because he loved to swim so much.

He was also a Cub Scout. And all three of these boys were Cub Scouts, even though nobody loved being a Cub Scout more than Michael Moore. But, you know, he loved being a Cub Scout. He loved hanging out with his friends, Stevie and Mike. But all of that excess energy may have been causing trouble for him at school. Apparently, Chris was having some behavioral issues at school. From what I read, it said he got into like a couple of fights with some friends. But he also had set a few fires.

And I don't know why this is downplayed, because to me, that's concerning when an eight year old is setting fires at school. And like they keep saying, oh, he set up just a couple small fires. But it's like that to me, that's concerning. Like that is a red flag that there's there's some issues there. You shouldn't be setting fires at school. But because of these behavioral issues, he was actually sent to a psychiatrist and he was treated for extreme impulsivity, destructiveness, opposition, defiance, hyperactivity, extremely low frustration tolerance, and a refusal to follow commands. In a report written by Dr. Donald J. Eastmed, a pediatric neurologist, quote, Chris is certainly a difficult child who may require in-hospital treatment to gain control

of his behavior, end quote. So it seemed like it was pretty bad. And when you're going over what are the motives, if this was someone local, if this was someone who knew the kids, if it was somebody who happened to maybe be related to one of these children, what could their motive had been? A lot of people kind of gravitate towards Chris Byers and say, was it because he was kind of a bad kid? Was it because he was causing a lot of trouble? There was a person, I forget her name right now, but I have it written down in my notes because we're going to discuss it later in more depth. But she said she was at the school for like a PTA meeting and Chris Byers' parents were sitting behind her. And she said they were talking and they were saying like, oh, you know, the principals called us twice this week. Like Chris is a problem. We have to get rid of him.

They were talking about like sending him away, you know, things like that. So some people wonder, was this just like a setup to get rid of this kid so he wasn't causing more problems for his parents, for his mother and stepfather or for his stepfather. And his mother didn't know that this happened. And because his friends were there, it was just more convenient to take all of them out so that it would look like some random act of violence or so that nobody could determine that it was actually Chris who was the target. Because some people believe one of these boys was the target and the other two were just killed to sort of cover up who the target was. Okay. That's interesting. I mean, I'll, I know we have multiple parts to us. I'll reserve judgment

until I have more facts because that's, it's an interesting theory and may have some legs to it, but we'll see as we go and we dive into the details. We have a lot of details. Yeah, I know. I know we're just scratching the surface. So for me to sit here and speculate based on that one little summary, it's early. I mean, honestly, the way I feel about this case, especially diving back into it now with like a different mind than I had years ago, I feel like five parts would be scratching the surface, but I'm going to try to be succinct and as condensed as possible for everybody. so chris byers he's got some problems at school hyperactivity you know oppositional defiant disorder it sounds like but on this lovely spring day chris was trying to find something to do with himself when he arrived home from school to find the door to his house

locked so apparently he did not have a key to the house. His older stepbrother, or yeah, stepbrother, he had a key, but John Mark Byers thought that Chris was too young to have a key. So basically he was just supposed to sit there and wait until somebody came home to let him in. Now, Chris's mother, Melissa, was at work that day and his stepfather, John Mark Byers, had been in Memphis since 9 a.m. that morning having some tests run for a medical condition at a clinic. Now, John Mark Byers arrived home at 3.10 p.m. and he was surprised to not find his stepson, Chris, waiting outside because he was supposed to wait there until somebody got home. And you can sort of see, like, just in my opinion, I'm not trying to judge parenting styles, but this is like super controlling and a little negligent. Like to say you're too young to have a key, so you have to sit outside and wait till someone gets home to let you into your own house.

That's fucked up if you ask me. So, but that's what happened. So Chris should have been sitting there waiting to be let in like a dog, and he wasn't. And this did not sit well with John Mark Byers. Now, at around 3.30, that was the time that Christopher was knocking on Stevie Branch's door. And so his older stepbrother, Chris's older stepbrother, Ryan, was getting home from school around 3.30 as well. But Ryan had to be at the courthouse by 4 p.m. because apparently he was scheduled to testify as a witness in a hit and run case. So John Mark Byers had to bring Ryan to the courthouse and he had to leave the

house again with Ryan in tow around 3.50 p.m. to make sure that Ryan was there by 4.00. All right. So with all that said, I think we can take away from it that 3.20, 3.25, because obviously Chris gets over there around that time. That's the time. Because I'm assuming Chris doesn't stay there long. He knows he's got to leave. So that's the time frame we're working with. Let's just say anywhere between 3.20 and 3.45.

Is that fair to say? When all three boys are kind of last accounted for? No. They're seen again. They're seen again. Okay. So this is just so, although I'm writing down this window right now, it's probably going to become irrelevant as we go forward because we're going to be able to narrow the window between when they're last seen and when they're eventually found. So although we're going with, right now we're at 320, 330, we're going to be able to isolate that window even smaller.

You know, what's interesting is I was going to go over the eyewitnesses because there's several eyewitnesses. And I still am going to do that once we get into the investigation portion. But so many of these eyewitnesses, I feel like kind of just, you know, we talk all the time about how eyewitness testimony is not super credible. Like they could be hit or miss. Could be hit or miss. Like there's multiple things that could happen. They could be seeing different kids and think that those were the kids that are missing. They could be seeing the right kids, but on a different day. Like it could have been the day before. Or they could just be making shit up to interject themselves into the case. And I think with the plethora of eyewitness statements we have in this case, we got a little bit of all three. Yeah, a little bit of everything, a little smorgasbord of messed up eyewitness testimony that doesn't make any sense. So we will go over that in the next episode. And I guess it will be

kind of up to us to decide who's actually legitimate. Yeah. Welcome to police work, because that's the same i mean you're constantly having to filter through all these statements and figure out what's credible and what's not it's a whole different dimension to the case it's not only having the witnesses it's figuring out which one who's telling the truth because you got to investigate them as well to see what their motives are to see if it's valid where they were is it credible you know have they done things like this before it's a whole different dimension to the case. It reminds me of the Adnan Said case where we just like, it was so confusing at some

point because it was like, these three people say completely different things at completely different times and not a single one of them can be telling the truth if the others are telling the truth. So like who's telling the truth and you just don't know. You don't know. Absolutely right. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. So back at the Hobbs home, Christopher was obviously hoping to play with Stevie and Mike, but Pam Hobbs told him he had just missed his friends. And then Christopher saw that Stevie's little sister, Amanda, was watching the Muppet Babies, and it was his favorite show. So instead of rushing right back out to find Stevie

and Mike, Chris asked Pam Hobbs if he could stay and watch the show with Amanda, which is freaking adorable. Like, you see this little eight-year-old boy, and he's got all these behavioral problems, and he's kind of just like pushed around and locked out of his house. And all he wants to do is wash them up at babies. Like it kind of breaks my heart a lot. I feel bad for Chris because Chris Byers I feel like was kind of the pushed aside child. And apparently like there were some parents who didn't want him playing with their kids because he kind of did have these behavioral issues. And it kind of seemed like maybe Steve, Stevie and Mike because he kind of did have these behavioral issues. And it kind of seemed like maybe Steve, Stevie and Mike were like kind of tight and Christopher kind of just

like came in sometimes. So it just kind of felt like to me, like nobody kind of wanted him around and it makes me feel so sad for him. I wish you felt bad for me sometimes. Well, why would I? Exactly. Exactly. So Christopher sits down to watch the Muppet Babies. Pam keeps preparing dinner and Christopher and Amanda finished the episode and it ended at 4 p.m. So at that point the carport where they kept their washer and dryer to see if her work uniform was dry yet. And that was when her husband, Terry Habs, returned from work. What is a carport? Is it like a garage or is it like?

It's just an over, like a roof over it with like poles. It's not enclosed, but a carport is like an area where they're obviously in the driveway, but it's covered. And you would keep your washer and dryer in the carport? There's like an awning or something. Maybe the carport is somewhat covered where some of it is like inside and some of it is exterior. There might be like a door to let you outside. But that's my understanding of a carport is it's kind of a covered area where you can park the car underneath it. Not completely enclosed, but does protect it from like sun and rain, snow.

Yeah, because I was like, is this like a southern thing you know how like in maine they call like a driveway a door yard like is this like how the southern people say garage you know carport but i feel like they're two different things yeah yeah i mean either or at least we know there's laundry out there either the laundry's out in the middle. She's doing the laundry out there. She's washing and drying her work uniform. She goes out there to get the uniform. And that's when her husband, Terry, pulls in.

Right? And Terry gets out of the car. And the first thing that he asks his wife, Pam, is, where's Frog Leg? Which is apparently his nickname for his stepson, Stevie. Frog Leg. Cute. So Pam told Terry that Stevie had gone to the Moore house, but he should be back at any minute. But Stevie didn't come home any minute. You know, he didn't come home at 4.30 when he was supposed to. He didn't come home by the time Pam had to leave for work and Terry, her husband, was going to bring her to work. So around 4.45, 4.50, Pam was like, we can't wait anymore. Like we have to go.

So her, Terry, and Amanda all get into the car and they start driving towards her workplace, the Catfish restaurant. And she says, well, let's stop at Michael Moore's house or let's drive by Michael Moore's house on the way to the Catfish so I can see if Stevie's bike is still outside. But they did drive by the Moore's place. There were no bicycles outside, not Stevie's, not even Michael Moore's. At 5 p.m., Pam Hobbs began her shift at Catfish Island, and her husband promised that he and Amanda would continue to drive around and look for Stevie. Now, it looks like after Chris Byers left the Hobbs house,

he'd gone back to his house and he attempted to get into the house through an open window. But he was unable to do that. So he had left again. Apparently, there was like a chair inside that was sort of like preventing the window from opening. And once again, so sad to me because that kid probably wanted to get in the house to begin with and he couldn't so he ended up going to stevie's house and then he tries to go back to his house to once again get in and he still can't at 5 20 p.m when his stepfather john mark byers returned home after dropping ryan at the courthouse and picking up his wife melissa from work the front door was still locked but but John Mark Byers did see signs that

Chris had tried to get in through the window. So John Mark Byers left the house again to pick Ryan up from the courthouse, and on his way there, he saw his stepson, Chris Byers, and Chris was playing with some other kids in the street, kind of like, not with them, but like adjacent to them, and he was basically riding his skateboard belly down on North 14th Street. So Chris Byers did not have a bike. Stevie had a bike. Michael had a bike, but Chris only had a skateboard. And John Mark Byers said he didn't like that Chris was riding his skateboard in the street on his belly because what if he got hit by a car? So he grabbed his stepson, he brought him home, and he gave him two or three licks with his belt as a

punishment for not waiting at home to be let in and for breaking a seal on the window that he tried to crawl through. So this kid gets punished for trying to get in his house and he gets punished for leaving the house when he can't get in. I guess he was expected to just sit there and stare into the distance and wait two hours for somebody to come home and let him inside. But before John Mark Byers left to go get his son Ryan from court again, he gave Christopher a paper sack and told him to stay out outside under the carport and clean it as part of his punishment. Because I guess there was paper and like dirt and stuff all over the carport and he wanted Chris to clean it. So when John Mark Byers and his son Ryan returned home a little after 6 p.m., Chris's mother, Melissa, instructed Ryan to go get Chris from his room because they were going to go out somewhere and eat for dinner.

But Chris wasn't in his room and he wasn't outside anymore. He left again. Now, Melissa Byers reported that the last time she'd he wasn't outside anymore. He'd left again. Now, Melissa Byers reported that the last time she'd seen Chris was around 5.45 p.m. He'd been outside cleaning the carport. He had come in a few times for a drink or a cookie, but she hadn't seen him leave, and he hadn't said anything to her. And she'd been on the phone with her boss, so she really wasn't paying close attention to what her son was doing. And that's not me being judgmental. That is what she said. She said, I was on the phone with my boss, so I wasn't paying

close attention to what Chris was doing. So remember that earlier, Michael Moore had told Stevie's mom, Pam, that his mother hadn't been home at that time, but she'd be home any minute. And this is what caused Pam to think that the boys were going over to the Moore house. Michael's mother, Dana Moore, would later confirm what Michael had said. She said she had arrived home from work about 10 minutes after her son would normally get home from school and it was at that time that she saw her son, Michael, riding bikes with Stevie Branch on North 14th Street. But Dana Moore saw the boys again later around 6 p.m., still on North 14th Street. But Dana Moore saw the boys again later around 6 p.m., still on North 14th Street and heading in the direction of Robin Hood Hills. And this time they were with Christopher Byer, who, like I said, doesn't have a bike of his own, but he was riding tandem with Stevie on

Stevie's bike. So the Moores lived on East Barton. North 14th Street runs through East Barton, and then it ends right at that meadow next to the woods. And I'll have Shannon put up a picture for you guys if you're watching on audio. So there's like Robin Hood Hills, that like area, and then there's like a meadow to the right of it. Like if you're looking, if your back's to North 14th Street and you're looking at Robin Hood Hills. It's on your left and the Meadows on your right. So it was around this time, around 6 p.m., that Dana Moore asked her daughter Dawn to go and get Mike and bring him back home for dinner. So Dawn climbed on her bike and rode in the direction that her brother had been seen going in, but she couldn't find him, and she couldn't find his two friends either. She did later tell Detective Brynn Ridge that she'd seen three teenage boys coming out of the woods near the ditch that led to the Devil's Den. So for context, once again, there's like Robin Hood Hills and part of Robin Hood Hills is called

Devil's Den. So in that wooded area, there was a pipe bridge. And if you felt like this was Delphi before, the whole pipe bridge thing is going to kind of make it feel even more Delphi-like because there was this very narrow, okay, very narrow pipe. And it was sort of supported on either side by steel L-beams, but super narrow. Like if you're a kid, your small little feet, you can maybe walk single file down this pipe bridge. And I'm actually going to once again have Shannon insert a picture here. One of the boy's friends who was the same age as them, there's a picture of him walking along this bridge and you can see, I mean, I wouldn't even call it a, it's literally a pipe, a pipe

that goes over that 10 mile bayou, that drainage ditch. It's a pipe, and it's super thin, and it's rounded, and it's very precarious. I personally wouldn't feel super safe walking across it. So the area before that pipe bridge was the area that many of the younger kids sort of hung out in because they were afraid to walk across the freaking precarious pipe bridge. It's like really scary. So if you walked past the pipe bridge, eventually you would come across a smaller, more heavily wooded area that was known as Devil's Den. And Devil's Den could only be reached if you

crossed the pipe bridge, turned right onto a trail. That trail would lead down a steep hill. And at the bottom, you would be in the area known as Devil's Den, which was about 40 feet down and covered in dense trees. So you couldn't really see what was going on down there unless you were down there. And if you were down there, you would find a man-made shallow drainage ditch that fed into the 10-mile bayou. So this is obviously a less visited area, and it was definitely a less visited area by those younger kids because that pipe bridge was really just scary for them to walk across. And this was really the place where the teenage kids would hang out. You'd find stuff like beer bottles and condoms and stuff over there, you know, just shenanigans. So Michael Moore's older sister Dana Moore claims she saw these three teenage boys leaving the woods right by this area,

and this would have been just within minutes, you know, of the three younger boys allegedly riding into that direction. She described these three teenage boys as being two black boys and one white boy. And as she passed them, they were at the hydrant across the street from her. And she said they asked her if she wanted a shot. And 10-year-old Dawn didn't respond. But later she told the police she didn't know what they were saying, but she thought they were offering her drugs, like needles for drugs, asking her if she wanted a shot. This poor little girl. like needles for drugs, asking her if she wanted a shot.

This poor little girl. So this is what Dawn Moore claims happened, what she saw. Now keep in mind, the three teenage boys who would later be arrested for this crime, all white boys. So either the three boys that Dawn saw had nothing to do with, you know, Stevie and Michael and Chris Byersers or they arrested the wrong boys either way this is what don saw and later don's friend who's in the same grade as her and lived in this like neighborhood claims she saw these three boys these same three boys go into like a house together in that area so we'll talk about that we'll talk about eyewitness statements yeah

i will say just to kind of break this up a little bit. So I'm going in sections. At first, I'm thinking, oh, well, Stevie knew he had to be home by 5 PM. So him not being home, if he hadn't been seen again, you would say, okay, well then we know whatever happened to him happened pretty soon. But this wasn't like he had to be home for work or something important that he wouldn't have missed. Like a typical young boy boy they're given a time to come home and usually they don't and we know that was the case here because as you said he was seen riding his bike well after 5 p.m 6 p.m so he was 30 he was supposed to be home remember right so yeah so he was just like man either he lost sense of time or he did what we've all done which it it's like, I'm fine. Well, she'll understand.

I'll be home when I'm home. And he could have lost track of time, right? I don't know how she expects an eight-year-old without an iPhone. Yeah, exactly. To know what time it is. Exactly. So we know he was still alive at that time at 6 p.m. And then you get a little bit more of a narrow window because now you have to ask yourself okay dana saw the boys

at 6 p.m we know that and then it seems like it was relatively quick because the street where they live is nearby so she gets home she talks to her daughter dawn let's say for the sake of this conversation maybe 10 15 minutes and then she sends dawn out to retrieve her son so it wasn't that long of a period and at that that point, I don't know how extensive of a search Dawn did, but I'm assuming she went over there, maybe yelled into the woods, like, Hey, are you guys in there? Chris, Stevie, you know, Michael, are any of you guys in there? Didn't hear anything. And so that's a, that's a relatively small window where now you not only don't have the boys, but they're not responding to someone who's looking for them.

So on the surface, without knowing if you're going to tell me there's more witness testimony, we might have our window there. We might have our window where the boys are, whatever happened to them, happened to them in that small window, which is pretty good. If that's what happened to know that it's that small of a window where this occurred. You're not talking about days on end. So the fact that they didn't come out of the woods when they were hopefully called or that she didn't see anything. I don't think she called them. She didn't even yell. So how would she know?

And you probably can't even answer this, but how do you know if you saw, if she, if your mom tells you they're driving, they're riding their bikes towards the woods, you have to assume if you're not seeing them on the street they're in the woods so wouldn't you at least check some area of the woods before saying they're not there like how would you know they're not there so a couple things i mean she's 10 right and as she's driving by the woods these three teenage boys come out and ask her if she wants a shot and she thinks they're trying to like give her like heroin needles or something, you know? So she probably is like, I got to get out of here.

Eyes averted, like be quiet, pretend you didn't hear them, keep going. So she's not going to stop and sort of like start calling into the woods because she's made nervous by these boys. And she's 10. Makes sense. So yeah. So I think, I bet you she did not call. However, I will say once again, one of her friends who were I think her name's Kim, she mentioned seeing the boys bikes sort of like outside of the woods.

Because if you if you look at like inside the woods, this isn't really a place you would like bring your bike in. Right. Because you can't be riding around in the woods. And if you wanted to cross that pipe bridge, there's no way you can get the bike over the pipe bridge. So if they did go into the woods, they would have left their bikes outside, sort of like on the grass outside the entrance to the woods. So I'm wondering, because Dawn says she didn't see their bikes at this point, I'm wondering if they hadn't even gone in the woods by this time and they maybe had like done one more round around the neighborhood and they had gone in like after she had already passed looking for them. Because the way it makes it seem is Dana Moore, the mother, says, oh, I just saw them at like six-ish go and get them, which was like a matter of minutes when she saw them and when she told Dawn to go get them.

So they could have just kept riding and they hadn't actually made it into the woods yet. Yeah. I'd be curious wherever the bikes, where were the bikes located? You just said that they were located outside the perimeter of the woods, right? No, they were not. You didn't say that a witness saw that they might've dropped their bikes because they couldn't really bring them in? There was an eyewitness who says she saw their bikes like kind of dropped on the grass outside the woods.

But the bikes would later be found past the pipe bridge, right? As if somebody carried them over there. Yeah. So that's going to add a whole new dimension to it. But it does seem like there's a couple of things. I don't know how far from where Dina saw the boys to where Robin Hood Hills was. Like, is it a mile? Is it less than a mile?

Because assumption would be they went into the woods. It's less than a mile. So, like I said, the street they live on goes into that street, North 14th, I think it was, that she saw them riding on. She could see them riding. So, it's definitely less than a mile, not far at all. I'll tell you what, I know we talked at the beginning of the episode about a passerby, a trucker, something like that. Just sounds on the surface with just, again, we're just getting into this. It sounds on the surface, maybe like they encountered whoever they

encountered in the woods that they weren't brought there. So that's again, early assessment that could, that opinion could completely change. But if, if, if Dean, if Dean is right and they did go into the woods at that moment, well, then she didn't see anybody else with them at that point. They were by themselves. These three teenage boys that Dawn identified are definitely someone to consider as far as potential persons of interest. And it sounds like those aren't the same individuals who were later arrested. So I'm not going to ask you now, maybe you're going to tell us later, but I'm really wondering if these three individuals were ever identified. They were not. Okay. That's a problem. That's a problem. I mean, West Memphis police department is really like, you know, firing in all cylinders in this case.

So yeah, that's just my, that's just my initial impressions. Maybe this person was already in there or those three individuals that I don't think Dina, Dawn mistakenly made, you know, got it wrong or made it up. You said two, two black males and one white male, right? And the three people that were teenagers the individuals that were arrested later were three white males so it's really hard to it's really hard to mix that up and i'm hoping that a photo lineup was done which you know where you would see at least at least dawn saying those aren't the three three same teenagers that i saw or spoke to and asked me for a shot that's not what happened oh jesus yeah i don't and I know some of the outcome of this case,

so I'm trying not to go there. You guys always want me to know more about the... I mean, this one's a very public site. You guys all probably know. The ones who are with Stephanie all the time, you've already heard her cover it, but I'll reserve any further comment than that. We do...

Let's take our final break and then we can continue because it seems like we can open that can of worms right now and we could go for another four hours. So I know there's still more. That's what I'm saying. Five parts. I feel like I'd still be scratching the surface. It's crazy.

Yeah. And I have a lot of like initial thoughts, but you can make the mistake of like jumping on a fact that's later disputed or discredited. So we'll leave it as is for what you're laying it out as. We'll take this final break. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. So John Mark Byers, stepfather to Chris Byers, he was the first to report his child missing. After finding that Chris was not in the house, Mark Byers sent his son Ryan out on his own skateboard to find his brother, but there was no sign of Chris. However, a neighbor told Ryan that they'd seen Chris on a skateboard with Stevie and Michael who were on bikes. And

Chris had actually gotten on Stevie's bike and then left his skateboard on the side of the road. And they would actually find that skateboard a few hours later, a couple streets or a couple houses down from where Chris lived. But when Ryan couldn't find Chris on his skateboard, he and Mark and Melissa Byers got in the car and began searching that way, like in the car, sort of driving around. And it was around 7.30 when they passed a police officer parked near a Dollar General. And so they pulled over. And John Mark Byers, you know, he told the police officer basically, like, my son's missing. I haven't seen him in a couple of hours. And the cop told Mark, give it till 8 p.m. And if Chris doesn't come home, call the police station and then they'll send someone to take a report. So Mark Byers then drove his family home

and called the police just before 8 p.m. And a few minutes later, Officer Regina Meeks arrived. While Regina Meeks was there taking a statement, Dana Moore from across the street walked over, and she was like, hey, you know, did you find Christopher yet? And the Byers were like, no, we haven't found him yet. And Dana Moore said, well, I saw Christopher with Stevie and Mike, you know, right around six o'clock. So that's the last time I saw him. And according to Mark Byers, this was the first time that he and his wife, Melissa, had any idea that Chris was with someone else. They had thought he was completely alone. Dana Moore also mentioned that Stevie's stepfather, Terry Hobbs, had been by earlier asking her if she'd seen Stevie. She believed it was around 5 p.m. that he'd been

there. At that point, Dana Moore also told Officer Regina Meeks that her son was missing. You know, basically, she couldn't find him either, and that he was with Christopher Byers, who the Byers were reporting missing. Officer Meeks had arrived at the Byers' residence around 8 to 10 p.m., and by 8 to 29 p.m., she was leaving to search for the boys, at which point the Moores and the Byers also continued looking, heading down the street, knocking on doors, asking if anyone had seen the boys. And at the end of their street, they actually got lucky when two little girls that Chris would sometimes play with

told the adults that they'd seen Stevie, Mike, and Chris entering the woods at Robin Hood Hill. So the Byers went back home quickly. John Mark Byers wanted to change into boots and stuff so he could go search Robin Hood Hills. And they found Dana Moore there with Terry Hobbs. They shared this information and then everyone headed down to that wooded area. A couple of quick questions. So you mentioned that these young children had seen the boys heading into the woods. Do we know the time? I'm assuming not. We don't know the time that these children saw our victims heading into the woods. No, they didn't. They didn't say. And I mean, this is once again, just secondhand information from John Mark Byers saying the kids said this, maybe they didn't even say it. You

don't know. Well, let's, for the sake of this conversation, say that they saw the boys entering the woods. Obviously the time would be extremely important and critical even because if they were able to say definitively, we saw them at 645 heading into the woods. Well, those three teenage boys that Dawn had encountered earlier, you know, right around six. Well, now that's after the fact, right there, the boys were still seen alive after these teenage boys exited the woods. So that makes them less suspicious, less viable as potential suspects. But I feel like, again, pure assumption that more than likely when Dina sees the boys heading down there, that's probably shortly after there where these teenagers or these other children see the boys entering the wood, which does kind of affirm the fact that they weren't brought there

by someone else. They weren't taken from some location and brought there. They entered the woods on their own, you know, under their own power. And I think we're getting to a point now where it's fair to say that once they were in the woods, they encountered their offender and or offenders. And are you comfortable with this window? I'm trying to go as vague as I can here. 6 p.m., I want to say till 7.30 p.m. I'm thinking that's our window where the boys, they may not be deceased at this point, but they're taken. They're no longer capable of their own free will.

They can't go wherever they want because we know that they were starting to look for them around 7.30. So we're still, it's only an hour and a half, but a lot can happen in an hour and a half obviously yeah because you know according to john mark byers and even terry hobbs like even before they had called and reported them missing to the police they were checking robin hood hills in this area and calling their names so yes you would be right, I think, in that assumption that they were already dead or incapacitated at that time. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, if those three teenage boys coming out, wow, they're very, the fact that they

weren't able to identify them, that's- I don't know if they even tried. I don't even know if they tried to identify them. But it also could be someone else. And I will say this, the area that you mentioned, yes, there's a truck stop nearby. There's a truck stop. There's a refueling station. There's a truck wash. There's a couple of restaurants.

It's like a whole kind of like corridor of you're going to have to look at pictures. Like you're going to- I'm going to look at it. I'm going to look at it. But for the sake of this conversation, is it fair to say that although there's that corridor if i'm a trucker i'm not going to need to enter these woods at any point this is off the path of where i would have to go

right i mean because because here's why i'm saying this if it's a trucker or someone who's in a truck they're more than likely going to identify the boys before they go into the woods and go in with them. Why would the offender be in the woods before the boys? Because they wouldn't know that the boys were coming their way. What would be the reason for the trucker to be in the woods in the first place? Because again, we're assuming the boys entered the woods by themselves, so there are offenders already inside, unless I'll put, I think this is less likely, but unless they're a fender saw them going into the woods and followed them in. So the place where their bodies were found was on the other side of that pipe bridge. So actually right behind or like closer to the blueacon truck wash. Okay. So let's say you're getting your truck washed.

You have to pee. You're a trucker. You're used to peeing wherever. I mean, I think they like pee in bottles and stuff when they drive. Like as they're driving, it's very impressive. So you walk into the woods, pull it out, you're peeing, and then you look around and there's like three little boys there. And you happen to be some crazy pervert.

And you're like, wow, this couldn't be more perfect. That might be a scenario. The boys even could have went all the way to the other side. They could have went all like, hey, let's go all the way across to the trucker. There's no way they crossed that bridge by themselves. No way. No. No, because you can't get your bikes over there.

And the bikes were on the other side or like basically kind of like thrown in the water. We're going to get there, but like, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll reserve. I'll reserve any more for that. I feel like, I feel like there's again, this offender, whoever it is, they had to have been either already in there or like you just laid out a situation where they were coming

from the opposite side because only one week statement but you kind of have two though you have the mom who says i seen the boys she didn't see anybody following them or anybody close behind and then you have these children who said they saw them as well going in there and then you also have dawn down there later not seeing anybody else besides these three teenage boys so it does kind of narrow down the pool right there and i feel like the the the scenario you just laid out is the the only other one right that's either a fender who came in on the same side as the boys who may be from the area or to what you just said a trucker or a transient passing through who happens to hear or see the boys from the other side and then enters the woods as well

or somebody who is kind of like maybe, you know, not like living in the area, but familiar with the area because of how often they came through. So they knew the woods was back there. Like that could be possible. Any type of homeless population that would be over there as well. Is that possible that someone could have been living in the woods or nearby? Yes, it is possible that somebody could have been living in the woods yes okay because i also think about that too with this you know the area we're talking about rural you could have people that are camping out in there all the time that just don't come out

yeah i mean like i said the the parents were worried about like the transient population so if they're worried about it then i assume that it's been an issue all right so officer Regina Meeks remember she's supposed to be out searching for the kids she leaves by 8 29 p.m but she was only looking for the kids like driving around for 13 minutes until she got another call this was dispatched telling her to go to the nearby Bojangles restaurant on Missouri Street because the manager had reported a disturbance in the lady's bathroom. And Officer Meeks did something that I find to be quite odd and honestly incredibly lazy and bad police work, if we're being honest. Okay, so she goes to Bojangles, but she doesn't park in the parking lot. She doesn't walk into the restaurant to like take a report or look at any kind of scene of the crime.

She goes through the drive-thru to take the statement from the manager. She goes through the drive-thru. So the manager, Marty King, he told Officer Meeks that about a half an hour before she'd arrived, a tall black man had walked into the restaurant and he'd either been actively bleeding or covered in blood. So basically, he was covered in blood, and it probably was his blood, but also could have been somebody else's blood. Marty King said the man stumbled into the women's restroom, smearing blood on the walls as he went. And when Marty went into the bathroom, he found the man like sitting on a toilet with his head in his lap. And King noticed that besides the blood that was all over him, this man had muddy feet and his pants were wet up to his knees. Now above the toilet, he said there was a forearm

print in blood. There was also blood around the toilet where the man was sitting. There was blood like all over the walls and the floor. And Marty King spoke to this man and he asked him to leave. And he said the man raised his head in response and seemed to be in a disarray. The man told Marty King that he was fine, but he didn't get up and leave until about 15 to 20 minutes after that. Now, Marty said that when Officer Meeks didn't come inside, he told her the man had left on foot and that he was headed east towards the back dumpster. Regina Meeks left, allegedly to pursue this man, but she never got the chance to because she got another call about criminal mischief. Apparently someone was throwing eggs. Some kids were throwing eggs. So she had to go and handle that. The man covered in blood, wandering about aimlessly,

not as important as egg throwing mischief makers. So not only did Regina Meeks never go inside and look at that bathroom, she never pursued this bloody man, like just dropped it. And Marty King said that they eventually had to clean the bathroom up. They used a big water hose. They cleaned everything up. And, you know, this was like before anybody had a chance to see it because it's a restaurant. Like you can just leave blood all over the place. I think it's crazy that the police didn't go inside to look. But what they did find was a pair of sunglasses in the toilet. And Marty King said it appeared that the bleeding man had tried to flush these sunglasses. Marty King also remembered that the man had a blue Velcro cast

on his left arm and that his right arm was bleeding profusely. He said the blue cast on the left arm was like one you'd get from Walmart, sort of like more of like a splint, like one of those flexible Velcro casts, not a real like plaster cast. Now the next day after the bodies of Stevie, Christopher, and Mike were discovered, a police officer who'd been at the scene in the woods all day went to the Bojangles restaurant to talk with Marty King about the strange man from the night before. And Marty said that this police officer had mud all the way up to his knees from the crime scene because the boys' bodies were found in water. The water was, you know, about that deep and there was mud and things like that. And Marty King said it was surprised him because the way this police officer looked, the mud and the water up to the knees resembled the man, the bleeding man from the night before. And it just so

happens that behind Bojangles, there was an open field that led up to 7th Street, which was a major road in West Memphis because of the fact that the Union 76 truck stop was located on it, as well as the Blue Beacon truck wash. So Officer Regina Meeks was very busy that night because after the criminal mischief call, she was summoned to the Catfish Island restaurant because another parent wanted to report their young son missing. And this call had been phoned in by Terry Hobbs, stepfather of Stevie Branch. But the way he went about reporting Stevie missing was a little strange, as we can gather from a statement made by Stevie's mother, Pam Hobbs. Remember, Pam had said that Terry had dropped her off at work at 5 p.m. and Terry had promised to keep looking for Stevie. And during her shift that night,

she said Terry did not call her or inform her in any way that he had not located Stevie. Pam remembered that on the evening of May 5th, around 9 p.m., she saw her husband Terry walk into the restaurant, but he didn't look at her. He didn't address her. He didn't say one word to her. He simply walked in and went straight to the payphone and made a call. Not knowing what he was doing or who he was talking to, Pam grabbed two pieces of candy from the restaurant's candy bowl and brought them outside to give to her two children, assuming that both Amanda and Stevie were waiting for her in the car. But she only found four-year-old Amanda in the car, so Pam asked Amanda, where's Stevie? And Amanda responded that they hadn't found Bubba.

Bubba was what Amanda called her big brother, Stevie. At that point, Terry came out and told Pam that he had searched all night but had not located Stevie, and he had just called the police and reported Stevie missing. Pam said that the first thing that went through her head was that her son was dead, and she was never going to see him again. Officer Regina Meeks responded to Terry Hobbs' 911 call and took the report. Pam, in hindsight, Pam Hobbs felt that this was weird, that Terry, her husband, would just not call her at work and let her know, you know, we've been

looking for hours and we haven't found Stevie yet. I'm going to call the police. She thought it was odd that he would wait that long to call the police because by 9 p.m. it's like after dark and Stevie was supposed to be home at 4.30 and she thought it was weird that he came in and like used the payphone at her job to call and report Stevie missing instead of you know doing it at some other point or instead of letting her know what he was doing before he did it kind of just like leaving her in the dark about it. Yeah I can I can see that And I think in hindsight, you're going to, especially when we know what the outcome is, right? You're going to question everything, everyone's words, everyone's actions, everyone's behavior. Because at that point,

when something like this happens to you, you can't trust anyone. Your world is ripped out from under you. And now you're wondering who's on your side. And you hear all these stories and you see movies where it's someone close to you that's that's involved and now you're starting to question even the people in your life from what you're saying right now i could i i understand the why she would question it i don't know if that suggests he was involved but i don't disagree with her skepticism in this situation you got to be skeptical about everybody because at that point everyone's a person of interest everyone's someone who could potentially be involved and that's how you got to be skeptical about everybody. Because at that point, everyone's a person of interest. Everyone's someone who could potentially be involved.

And that's how you have to approach it, especially as a parent. There's no other way around it. That is how you're going to approach it. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, she was very close to Stevie. And she said the second she heard he hadn't been home yet, she just knew instinctually that he was gone and she was never going to see him. I think that happens with everyone though, right?

We've all had that situation where you can't see a child for two seconds and it feels like two hours and automatically the worst thoughts are running through your head. That's just that you automatically go to the worst place. And that's why you have that feeling of anxiety and panic that comes over you instantly

because you automatically go to the worst possible outcome. Yeah, I agree. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I've lost my kids before and never have I once, I guess like I worry like somebody has them or they're in danger, but I've never felt this like instinct in my gut, like they're dead. That would be horrendous. I can't even imagine. So no. Okay. So like I said, Terry Hobbs allegedly acting a little sketchy. Pam believes he was acting a little sketchy. But remember Terry Hobbs and what he claimed he was doing that night

while Pam was at work searching for Stevie the whole time because we are going to come back to him and that claim later on. So on the evening of May 5th, the sun set at 7.49 p.m., and it was replaced by a looming full moon. It was a weeknight, a school night, and everyone in West Memphis should have been inside getting ready for bed. But instead, by 9.30 p.m., people were searching the streets and the woods, yelling the names of three little boys who were all officially missing and who no one had seen for hours. But besides the light of the full moon, the helpful neighbors and friends had no other real light to guide them in their search, and they had to reconvene the next morning. On May 6th, the parents of the boys began searching bright and early. John Mark Byers claims that there was a knock on his door at 5.30 a.m., and on the other side, he found Todd Moore, Michael's father, who worked as a truck driver

and who had just returned home, as well as Terry Hobbs, Stevie's stepfather. And Mark Byers was actually meeting Terry for the very first time that day. And also there was Jackie Hicks, Stevie's maternal grandfather. The West Memphis police, headed by Chief Inspector Gary Gitchell, also gathered and began searching the streets and the woods with the help of a search and rescue team from the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office. And as I said, they did search the streets. They went door to door taking statements and trying to see if they had any eyewitnesses. But the majority of the search focused on the woods of Robin Hood Hills. And for hours, dozens of people were walking carefully through the woods, sometimes shoulder to shoulder, so as not to miss anything. By noon, it had pretty much been decided that the boys were not in the woods

because they had been searched so thoroughly, and many police officers and volunteers had moved on to begin searching other places when suddenly, Steve Jones, a Crittenden County Assistant Juvenile Probation Officer, spotted a black, laceless tennis shoe floating in the watery ditch in the Devil's Den area of Robin Hood Hills. Now, the funny thing is, Chief Inspector Gary Gitchell would later claim that it was one of his officers, Sergeant Allen, who'd actually made the initial discovery of the tennis shoe. But in reality, it was Steve Jones. And I do think that there was an interest in keeping this information on the down low because Steve Jones was actually familiar with at least two of the three suspects who would later be arrested

for this crime, and he was known to maybe have an ax to grind with them, as did his supervisor, Jerry Driver, who was like the head juvenile probation officer in Crittenden County. Both of these men had already convinced themselves long before Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers went missing that there was satanic and cult activity happening in the area. So Steve Jones sees this shoe floating in the water, allegedly, and he radioed for help. And he was soon joined by Sergeant Mike Allen of the West Memphis Police Department who was wearing street clothes, dress shoes, dress pants, a white shirt and tie. And it was Mike Allen who would be the first person to wade into the water where that tennis shoe was ominously floating. And he had not been in that muddy water

for more than 15 minutes when he encountered the body of Michael Moore. Michael was found at 1.45 p.m. and by 2.15 p.m. the police had taped the scene off and were stationed at the only two entrances to Robin Hood Hills, the dead end at Macaulay Drive and the entrance south of the Blue Beacon truck wash. And then the terrible work of pulling all of the boys' bodies from the murky water began. The police officers would discover that Stevie, Michael, and Christopher had been anchored to

the creek bed with sticks, and the clothes they had been wearing that day had also been pinned to the creek bed with sticks. All three boys were nude, and they'd been hogtied, their wrists tied to their ankles with their own shoelaces. These three boys had been beaten, sexually abused, mutilated, tortured, and murdered. And it's reported that as Crittenden County Assistant Juvenile Parole Officer Steve Jones stood and watched the bodies being removed from the water and placed on the nearby banks, he made a comment. He said, it looks like Damien finally killed somebody. He was referring to local teenager Damien Echols, an 18-year-old who had dropped out of high school, who had struggled with psychological issues, who wore black clothes and listened to heavy metal music,

a teenager who Steve's boss, Jerry Driver, believed to be leading some satanic cult. And that kind of kick-started the whole satanic panic thing that happened in West Memphis. But when we return next week, we are going to talk about Damien as well as his two friends, who would eventually become his co-defendants, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Miskelley Jr. And we're going to talk about what happened to Stevie, Christopher, and Michael. And then we have to ask the question of why. What could these three boys have done to make anyone angry enough to abuse them and hurt them in the way they did? Like, what was the motive here? Who was the target? Was it a random act of violence? Was it some sick psychopath or was this planned and carried out by somebody who knew them? And that is the question at the end of the day. Yeah. A lot of questions there and maybe we won't even get all the answers, but

on the surface, it sounds like the condition of the boys would suggest something deeper. Right. Before knowing the condition of the boys, and I know you just touched on it here and we're going to go deeper, but this does sound like it's a lot more. This isn't a situation where you could say like, oh, maybe there were some other boys in the woods and things got out of hand and they beat them up and they beat them pretty bad.

So they anchored them down because they knew they had done something wrong. No, these these these little boys were tortured. And it appears that it went on for a little bit. And you have to think that the offender or offenders were getting some type of gratification out of this, that they were going to. So if these if it was a group of teenage boys, did they go into this situation thinking this? Did they go into the situation feeling like they were going to go into the woods for this reason? And if they did.

Yeah, that's the idea. That's what they're saying. Like they. Right. They say like these three teenage boys, Damien and Jesse and Jason. Like lured these boys in and then like mutilated and murdered them in some like satanic devil worshiping ritual sacrifice thing. It gets crazy, dude.

It gets crazy. I really want to dive into the rest of it right now. And I'll say on the surface that this isn't always the case, but just now, just throwing it out there after episode one, I wouldn't be shocked if down the road we learned this was one person that did this. Really? And the reason I say that is because in situations like this, you usually, when you have multiple offenders, there's someone who's like the primary person who's really driving it. And then there's a couple or even one of the person who's involved, but more of an associate, more of just kind of an, they're there and that person will if more than one person knows somebody usually breaks or there's

a slippage or there's something from family members or friends of one of these co-conspirators where i don't know i feel like if you're there for something like this you never fucking talk about it man yeah i mean it's yes yes that's absolutely could be the case but we've seen it before where we have these horrific cases involving multiple victims and it turns out to be one person i wouldn't be surprised based on the boys and I guess from what you're going to tell me, a lot of it was similar between the three of them, right? Like we have to look, are you going to go, how much detail are you going to go into with the autopsies? As much as I need to. Okay. Pretty specific. So you have to look at motive, like, and then you have to look at the modus

operandi, right? Like as far as the actual trying to be respectful here, but as far as the actual offense, as far as what actually happened to the children, is it similar in the way it was carried out where it would be more in line with one person doing it multiple times? Or does it appear that all three victims were injured and maybe similar things were done, but it was done in a different way that may suggest multiple people? like seem to be in worse shape than the others. But I think once I described their wounds and what happened to them, I'm going to look to you to kind of get your indication of whether you think this was the same MO, this was the same person, or whether it was, you know, more than one person doing different things. Well, it could also be just to throw another wrinkle in there. When you think about it, if you have three people you're trying to control, let's say it is one person for this scenario, right? It's one person and you have three people you're trying to control let's say it is one person for this scenario right it's one person and you have three people that you have to control while conducting whatever you're doing the first two you may deal with quicker because you don't want one of them to escape the third person could either be someone who this is really the target about or it

could be because now you don't have anyone else to deal with that you can take more time with it because now you're you're not there's no chance of the other two victims fleeing the area while you're doing what you're doing so there's multiple ways to look at it and i know just a caution to everybody obviously stephanie's giving you the heads up we're gonna go pretty deep with it for some of you it may not be the first time you heard it but i do think that's important if we want to go down the rabbit hole of one offender versus multiple offenders. It's important, I think, also because maybe that boy who had it worse was the target, depending on what happened. I know you had said that in the beginning. Yeah.

People had alluded to that. So we'll look at it. We'll look at it from both angles. Does it appear that that person got it worse because they were the individual that the individual that the offender or offenders were after or does it suggest the same per it looks like the same person did it but they went a little bit more into it with with one particular person then we have to ask the question why and get this like i think that this is weird i'm like giving stuff away already but you know how they were tied with their own shoelaces. Right. But they weren't tied with their own shoelaces.

It kind of seemed like all the shoelaces got taken off and put in a pile and then the boys were tied up. So like, like a mishmash of different shoelaces. I know what that kind of says to me. What does that kind of say to you? Kind of says to me that there was possibly one offender who stripped them down and then tied them up so that they couldn't, because the person couldn't control all three of them at once. There's not as much of a necessity to hog. You have, this is so terrible to say, they're hog tied because they're still alive when that's happening. Right. Right. Yeah.

That's to keep them from getting away. Yeah. You're not hog tying them after the fact. So the fact that you said that, that was a trigger phrase for me as far as like, okay, they were rendered and able to leave the area because whoever was with them had to make sure they didn't run. So why would you have to do that? Well, you're not able to control everyone at once. But how are you hog tying one while the other two are not? Well, there's a couple of things that have been going on there. Well, one, you could be having them do it to each other to a certain degree. If you have a gun,

the gun's the ultimate game changer, the ultimate leveler, right? Three against one, well, if the one has a gun, that one person with the guns in charge, that's the bottom line. Big, small, doesn't matter. Person with the guns running the show. And like I said earlier, these are little boys. They see that firearm and they're petrified. They're frozen. And so it would be easy to say, hey, strip down, take your clothes off, take your shoes

off, everything in a pile right here. Don't you move. If you move, I'm going to kill your friend and then I'm I'm gonna kill you and you're able to do what you need to do and these are little boys again if this is a grown man if it's only one person and I'm not trying to guide the ship in that direction I'm just saying if it's one person that's also an adult that they may be dealing with or an older teenage boy there's another level of authority that comes into that where you have a fear because this is an adult or someone who's bigger and stronger and faster than you.

So there's multiple variables there that the kids are dealing with at that moment. And it may sound crazy in hindsight that they would stay there. Like, why wouldn't you run and just take the chance, put yourself in those shoes as an eight year old boy, you tell me what you would do or an eight year old girl. Tell me what you would do. You're not going to think like you and I would think. I can't even imagine. Can't even imagine as an adult, we're going to take the chance and run, right? We're going to roll the dice. We're going to run for it. I don't even know if I would as an adult,

man. I don't even know. Well, there you go. Proving the point even more. But the hog tying to me, ask yourself this, if there's two or three boys, why do you need to, why do you, as offenders, I mean, why do you need to hog tie them? What's that extra step for? If you can clearly control the situation, you got multiple people surrounding them. What's the, what's you need to hog tie them? What's that extra step for if you can clearly control the situation? You got multiple people surrounding them. What's then what's the need for? Tying them. I don't know the answer. I'm asking like what would that be then? What what seems unnecessary if you have three offenders you're carrying out the act at the same time There's really no need to restrain them and you might be able if you were just one person you might be able to like talk To them and be like hey guys like nothing's gonna happen to you

I'm just gonna tie you up so you can't get away and then i'm gonna leave you so i just won't i don't want you to follow me and i don't want you to go run for help and tell somebody i was here so i'm just gonna tie you up you know and so these kids allow it to happen thinking like yeah yeah yeah and not i have no skin in the game not trying to drive it that way it just feels like the hog time is is suggest that the offender or offenders, it could be two guys or two girls. Two girls. Stop it. I like to be correct here. Women don't do this type of shit to escape. So they took that out of the equation initially. And the only reason I think that would be the case is if the

offender was maybe outnumbered and they wanted to be able to put down the firearm or knife to kind of do what they needed to do more specifically. And I think when you get into the injuries of the boys, we're going to have an idea of potential weapons that were used maybe, at least at least at least one of the weapons that were present um because another thing that's going to come into play here we're going long here who cares the the type of weapon that was used for each boy was it the same with knife stab wounds and things like that depending on the hilt the hilt would be the mark of the it's the top part of the handle as someone's being stabbed if they stabbed, you would be able to tell if the same knife or the same weapon was used on all three boys or was it three different weapons. Yeah.

Right. And you're going to talk to about that. And if you're telling me that it appears the same weapon was used for all three. Yeah. It could still be three people using the same weapon. I would argue that it's more likely it's one person using the same weapon. Yeah. They're not going to pass the knife around.

Right. Yeah. We're going to stand here. You, you go first and then we'll pass this one. I know. I mean, unless it was like a ritual devil worshiping sacrifice and it's a special knife that they have to use. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's, I'm not going to rule out. I don't believe that's a scenario, but yeah, sure. I'm sure that could be it. I think we'll have to go deeper into it. If we keep going, we might as well just start part two right now. So we'll stop there because it's also, it's a lot to get into and you have to, we have to prepare for it too, because I don't like talking about it. I really, really don't. But I do think in this case, especially, it's going to be extremely important if we're trying to identify people that could be involved. Is it one person, more than one person? And I think some of what happened in this case that's wrong is what you just said. First and foremost, they saw three

teenage boys come out. They're already looking for multiple people because they're assuming three victims. It's got to be at least two or three offenders, right? That's one path. They're looking for a group of people instead of just one person. That's one problem. But they even took it a step further where, as you alluded to, they're pulling the bodies out of the water and they're already naming a potential suspect who they have no connection to this case yet. They're already saying it's Damien. So that's a problem because you didn't tell me anything yet that suggested it was this individual, nothing. So to even make that comment, that shows a level of tunnel vision, a level of bias where we talk about this other cases.

Now they're reverse engineering it. They're seeing the little boys and they're saying, how is Damien connected to this? How do we tie it back to Damien? Because he's got to be the guy. Instead of saying, let's look at these boys and see where it takes us. They're trying to connect it between two people already that's a problem so yeah we have a lot a lot to discuss and i'm being honest when i say i kind of know why west memphis is so famous now with what ends up happening with

this case yeah but you don't even know the half you don't even know like 1 20th of it it like it's so i believe damien damien was at CrimeCon one year. You identified him for me, right? Jason. We saw Jason Baldwin. Okay. That was Texas, Austin. We were in the VIP section. Wow. Weird flex. Weird flex right there. That was a weird flex. I mean, I was. You stood awkwardly outside of the VIP. Yeah, because I'm a normal person. I don't think I'm above it. I mean, I wasn't above it, but there was like a pole and we were dancing whatever this is going off the rails so so so yeah i know and i can see where how we ended up there and what ultimately ended up happening so we'll keep covering it next week it's probably not going to be easy so prepare for it

something that i'm assuming the autopsy stuff will be next episode. Yes. And then also we're going to talk about some eyewitnesses and we're going to introduce you to Damien and Jason and Jesse. I'm looking forward to getting into that because I want to see how they get connected so fast. I can already see where it's going. And so that'll be, that'll be interested in to dive more into the, the MO of the offender and or offenders. That's good to go. One thing, house cleaning. That's, that's the MO of the offender and or offenders. That's good to go. One thing, house cleaning, that's the end of the episode right now. When I talked about pre-orders for criminal coffee, I thought about it. I did not want to bring it up mid-episode. Pre-orders are taking one to two weeks, but I will tell you, we saw that the stock is in now.

So if you order after pre-orders are filled, which like I said, one to two weeks, you'll be getting your orders right away. So going forward, this will not be the case. It's important to mention this isn't going to be an ongoing occurrence. And then also the final thing, which I think is really important to mention is that this episode is dedicated to my friend, Tom, or as you normal people may know him, Tom Brady, but we're friends. So we just go by Tom and Derek, but I just wanted to put that out there. Tom, this one's for you. Do you think he's watching? Did you tell him about Crime Weekly and Criminal Coffee? You know, we're not there yet.

I'm taking it slow. You don't take things slow with Tom Brady. With Tom Brady, you take it as slow as he wants it. No, you drive him like a Ferrari. You need to go to sleep. I do. You need to go to sleep. It's 1.33.

I got up at 4.15 this morning, so almost officially 24 hours. Rocking. By the time I go to sleep, It's 1.33. I got up at 4.15 this morning. So almost officially 24 hours. Rocking. By the time I go to sleep, it will be. I flew out from Vegas at two o'clock in the morning, got home at 11 o'clock this morning. And yeah, here we are. And we still have to send it to Shannon. So what I'm hearing is you got to sleep on the plane. Two hours. Yeah, two hours yeah two hours i win the non-sleeping competition stephanie when do you not win i always win exactly defeated at this point any final words before i close it out don't let your idol tom brady hear you say that don't talk about him okay okay fair enough no i have nothing else to say it's time to wrap it up. You bring us out.

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