Crime Weekly - S3 Ep122: West Memphis Three: Alternate Suspects (Part 8)

Episode Date: April 28, 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. StoryWorth Right now, for a limited time, you’ll save $10 on your first purchase when you go to StoryWorth.com/crimeweekly. 2. ZocDoc Go to Zocdoc.com/CRIMEWEEKLY and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. 3. HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/crimeweekly50 and use code crimeweekly50 for 50% off, plus your first box ships free. 4. Honey Get PayPal Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/crimeweekly.

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And I'm Derek Levasseur. Today, we are diving into the eighth and final part of the West Memphis Three series. And trust me, the next couple of episodes, the next couple of series will not be this long because you guys need a break. And to be honest, I need a break. Okay. I need a break. This was a lot of deep dive in. This was a lot of like reading court documents. This was a lot of, whoo, a lot of lot of who a lot of work so a lot of people and you know i was good this this series i didn't say anything last time i said i was like i'm over this and i got i got crushed that's when i sat here like a good little boy yeah good little boy and i didn't say a word i was like 12 parts let's do it whatever you want yay yay but in the last

comments people were like derek's over this one but I mean you're over it too you're over it I mean because I feel like it's so obvious at this point you know to me if it just feels like um we're like belaboring it when it's like and they said they did this but they had no proof and this but they had no proof and it just like feels like so repetitive and I mean it's not because it's like many multiple things where they have no proof but at some point it's just like all right i get it and it sucks because like these these people lost a lot of their like a lot of years of their lives and so we're sitting here like we're over this you know it's obvious no yeah it sucks like it sucks we should talk about this stuff so i wrote about this on Patreon this week. Yeah. I kind of give like my little like, what's my thoughts at that point?

And the detective perspective, my detective perspective. I was responding to some people that again, because in the episode we said this week about certain people thinking they are guilty. And I addressed that in this article that I wrote, this little excerpt that I wrote. And I just said, this article, I know it's not an article. I definitely, this little excerpt that I wrote. And I just said, listen, it's not an article. I definitely, it's like a paragraph guys. So don't think you're going there and getting this little blog post over here. And so I wrote about, I said, listen, you're going to see in this week's episode, we address some people and some of the facts they have, or some of the things they have

that they believe suggest that these guys were responsible. And I said, listen, here's what I'll say. It's not even like, oh, it's totally obvious. They didn't do it to me. Just me personally. It's more so it's very obvious. They don't have enough to have these guys where they are at, where they were at that moment, what they went through. And I don't know if you agree with me on this, but some people had said like, oh, you know, you're, you're, you're passing off some of the stuff that Damien's saying or doing as

a child. Here's my thought on Damien, just me alone. I'm not speaking for Stephanie. Personally, I think Damien was an asshole when he was a kid. And I don't think some of the things he was doing were normal teenage stuff, but that doesn't make him a murderer. But there's definitely things based on how he responded to interviews with the police. Some of the photos that I saw of him at court, he just didn't take things seriously. There was definitely something going on there, but being an asshole as a kid doesn't mean you're a murderer.

So I can separate the two. I'm not sitting here saying, oh, you know, Damien was this good guy and I don't, Stephanie wasn't either, but it's one of those things where I just put out there. Listen,

personally, I didn't love everything he was doing. I didn't love the fact we talked about it last week where he might've allegedly made some comments that he did do it. You know, like he might've said that I didn't love the fact we talked about it last week where he might have allegedly made some comments that he did do it. You know, like he might have said that. Allegedly, yeah. We don't know the context in which he said it or why he said it.

We don't even know if he did. If he did. But based on some of the, again, me personally, based on some of the photos I've seen, some of his documented interviews with police, I wouldn't be shocked if he did say it. And that to me is like, you're kind of poking the bear. And I don't think that's how he did say it and that to me is like you kind of poke in the bear and I Don't think that's how you should be doing it either. That's my personal opinion, but we're not here to talk You're also talking about like when you say normal Teenage thing like what does that even mean? Okay, it means to me it means not acting like that

But who who is normal? What's 17 18 year old who is normal? What 17, 18-year-old kid is normal? Have you, I know you've recently had an interaction with a kid around that age. Yeah. Was he normal? No, he was an asshole. He was, every freaking 18-year-old kid I know is an asshole. See, that's why I disagree with you.

Okay, well, they are. Okay, I'm sorry. Have the tendency and the potential to be an asshole at times they're they're like hormones raging and like personally in high school I didn't hang out with like the normal kids who came from like good two-parent homes and who had like you know parents at home who were helping them with their homework and helping them fill out college applications like I hung out with like the outsiders because I was an outsider because I didn't come from like

a happy home and so I didn't come from like a happy home. And so I don't want to hang out with those freaking kids who had like happy homes. I wanted to hang out with the people that I could relate to. And I can tell you that like most of us were assholes because we were young and stupid and we had hormones going on and we didn't we didn't feel like we were loved or paid attention to at home. And so we acted out like kids who don't have perfect home lives can sometimes act out and do stupid things. I would not expect Damien at 28 to be doing and saying the same things that Damien at 18 was doing and saying, you know, and you could even look back and I could say, oh, well, in the 1950s, 18 year olds wouldn't be acting like this.

You're right. 18 year olds would be going off to fight World War II and starting families and working nine to five jobs after the war. It's about culture and time and how you were raised and what you came from and what kind of anger you have inside of you. Is it the kind of anger where you're going to act like a dick and wear a black trench coat and say stupid things? Yes. Is it the kind of anger where you're going to act like a dick and wear a black trench coat and say stupid things? Yes. Is it the kind of anger where you're going to murder three eight-year-olds for no reason? No, no. I think that's where, and it's okay to have a difference of opinion. I don't find to not rehash everything that we covered about Damien because we've covered, as we just said extensively, my anecdotal experience as an 18 year old boy and the people I hung out with.

I'm not saying I was a choir boy by any means and not doing like I had moments where I did things, but there's things that we've talked about, about Damien that I didn't experience a lot of from my friends and people that I heard of. And I also think that if I were brought in by police and I didn't do something like this, I would not have responded to some of the questions the way he did. And I definitely, if he did say it, would not be joking about this with my peers and my friends about the idea that I did do it out of respect for those boys if I didn't. But that's my personal experience.

You guys may feel differently. That's just how I feel about it. I wouldn't act that way. So I don't think he was like this for me personally, this nice guy who just called out. I think I don't want to use the phrase because I don't believe it that he brought this on himself because nobody brings this on themselves. But I don't think he helped his cause is what I'm saying. And I stand behind that. I don't think he helped his cause the way he handled the situation i mean he's literally in court i'm really like morally against what you just said but you fine you should be able to say whatever the hell you want and nobody should be able to put you in prison and give you a life sentence

with zero evidence besides the fact that you act like a deck like so he didn't bring it on himself or not help his cause he should there was no cause to help like he didn't do it i don't want to spend the whole time doing it but i think there's a it's almost like a traffic stop right like you may hate cops i know i have friends that are anti-police don't like law enforcement but they will tell you hey if i get stopped by somebody when they approach the car i don't go or they don't go what the f do you want like they don't instigate the situation because they already don't like them. So it's one of those things where the, hi, how can I help you? What'd you stop me for?

They're not asking them how they're doing. They're not kissing the ring. Here's my license registration. Do your job. If you got to write me a ticket, if I don't agree with you, I'll fight it at court, but they're not going to, they're not going to entice the person, even though it shouldn't matter in a perfect vacuum. It shouldn't matter.

You could, should be able to say whatever you want and it shouldn't affect the officer's performance whatsoever. The reality is that they're human beings and it does. So I'm not saying it's okay or I'm justifying it. What I am saying is there's a right way and a wrong way to do it and you can choose whatever route you want. Do I think he was convicted because of the way he answered those questions? No. We already talked about it. The community had found them guilty before they ever

went to trial. I'm just saying from Damien's perspective, I'm not condoning the way he went through it. Probably wouldn't have been the way I did it. But at the end of the day, it shouldn't have mattered how he acted because there's clearly not enough here to convict him or his friends of murder, period. And I feel like they were doomed from the start because you had people who already thought it was them before they found a single piece of anything. So it's a tragedy. They shouldn't have went to prison for this. Definitely think they got the raw end of the deal here. The jury had them guilty before the prosecutors ever opened their mouth. Their defense team had no shot and it really didn't matter because they already had decided they were guilty. So to your point, it doesn't really matter what he says. Doesn't mean he's guilty. That's what we're here for. But personally, would I have been hanging out with him if I was 18? Probably not. Do you think he cares? Probably not.

He only cares what Derek Levasseur thinks of him when he was 18 years old. That's the reality. He don't give a shit what I think. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. We're not we're not going to see. I just feel like we have freedom.

We have freedom of speech and freedom of expression in this country. You do. The only time that you should be like put in prison for something is if they have actual physical evidence against you well we know that's not how it works but what then no that's not how it works and it should but it doesn't so we have to we have to like behave in a way that is reprehensible in order to function in a society and adjust the system that's completely shattered so we have to like be on our best behavior and you know like this when when we didn't even do anything wrong like and he was a kid like it's not like an adult against

another adult I could see if like he's a 28 30 year old man doing this shit by now you should know better but these are adult police officers who have a completely like completely pointless bias and grudge against like a teenage kid. And instead of saying like, he's just a dick, they're like, oh, he's an evil Satanist who murdered like three kids and we need to put him away for life. Do you think every single one of them believed that fully or did most of them just go along with it? It's disgusting. Yeah. And you and I are talking about two completely different things where you're talking about the system, how, how the investigation was conducted, how they were found guilty by a jury, not the detectives. Right. So it's a whole, it's a whole, it's a

whole system that's, that, that's, that failed these three guys, right. That failed them. I'm more so talking from the sense of when you were talking about Damien, talking about his behavior as an 18 year old, some of the things that he did that we know he did that you reported on as far as some of the things that were documented, then obviously the interrogation, some of the things that were documented there, some of his responses, some of the photos that I saw as far as his behavior in the courtroom towards the media, things like that. Would I have handled it differently if it were my son? Yeah, I would have told him, hey, listen, they're coming after you.

Yeah, that would be great, right? If he had parents who had like guided him and taught him the right way to behave from the beginning, but he didn't have that. He was cocky. He was defensive. You really want to invite from Damien, huh? Like to hang out? No, no. Honestly, I relate to him because i was an asshole too because i was i relate to him relate to him because i was an asshole at that age i was defensive i was always on the defense

and i could see if these police were coming after me and i was like i didn't freaking do anything man these people like will not leave me alone i would be sarcastic i'd be like oh oh what the police are here again. What did you find? Three more dead boys. Oh, did I kill some other people? Oh, yeah. I killed those boys and I'm going to get three more and kill them, too.

Like kind of just being like like you're freaking fed up with it. Yeah. Like I would be freaking unbelievably like pissed off that I'm being like wrongly accused, harassed, constantly questioned about this. And I know I had nothing to do with it. I think it's ludicrous. It's crazy to me that they don't think it's ludicrous. So yeah, I'm going to be like sarcastic about it. I was a totally sarcastic dickhead at 17, 18, and 19. Honestly, going into like my early 20s, I was sarcastic and defensive about everything. Defensive when you were 18, huh? Couldn't buy, couldn't see that one.

We're going to clip it right there. I'm done. I got it. Let's move on. Let's move on to more brighter things, because this is actually, we're already 12 minutes into that debate. I get nervous bringing up any opinion of my own in the beginning, because I know it's going to start a whole conversation. And it always happens. Oh, did you want to bring up an opinion without a conversation? You just want to say your opinion,

drop it and walk away. Well, it's like you have an opinion, Derek, but now let me tell you why you're wrong. And I'm like, okay. No, it's not why you're wrong. It's why I feel differently. Clearly, that it's evident, but never sarcastic or never defensive about it though.

I try not to be. Never. So positive, real quick. And then we'll dive into it. This is a big announcement. If you watch Crime Weekly News, I teased it up. We've been working on this for months now. Many of you have asked about it. Proud to announce that Criminal Coffee is now stocking, shipping out K-Cups. Stephanie is on the screen right now. You can see we have all three blends, all three rows, whatever you want to call it.

There's two rows in a blend, 12 cups in a box. We tested these for a couple of months. We had the K-Cups sent out to us. We were drinking different percentages of coffee in each one to try to get the exact flavor profile from the coffee bags. So whether you're ordering the coffee bags or the K-Cups, now that it's single serve, it'll taste the exact same as it would, at least according to me,

the exact same as it would if you were drinking a cup of coffee from the bag. We're really proud of it. The coffee tastes great. The price on them is going to be $16.99. So it's a dollar more than the bags, obviously because of the additional cost to make them. It's not easy. We're not doing it in-house. We have to brew and roast the coffee, ship it off to Philadelphia. It gets packaged, nitrogen sealed in Philadelphia, put in those beautiful boxes, and then sent back to us. But the more important thing is a portion of the proceeds from each box, just like the bags, will go to Fighting Crime, which you can see on there.

So that will also be a big thing where now we're going to have more money coming in to the criminal coffee fund because as many of you have mentioned, most of you didn't like the coffee bags. You didn't grind up your own coffee. You didn't want to do the coffee pot type style. You'd rather the K-cup. So we'll see what happens. So that's what we have right now. Yes, if you want K-cups, man, if you want K-cups

and you want them to stay, you better buy them because I didn't even want to do this. She didn't. I did not want to do this, man. I fought it because it's a pain in the ass. I was saying we.

You asked me to say we all week last week. So I was saying we, but yes, it was me. 100%. It was Derek because I was like, it's a pain in the ass. I had to do

the whole proposal to convince her. There's not, like, there's no real benefit, like, to us. It costs us more money. And so, like, we want to make people happy, but, like, I was like, I don't know, man. Like, maybe we should wait. Maybe we should wait. He's like, you don't understand how many people are asking. So if you guys

want this, and you want it to stay, and you want it to be a regular part of the criminal coffee lineup you best put in your k-cup order right now yeah because stephanie's gonna say i told you so if you don't and we don't want to give her that satisfaction so please you really don't not for derek's sake you really don't i'll never let it go no she won't see you spent all that money didn't you know she'll definitely never let it go. No, she won't. See, she spent all that money. She'll definitely never let it go. I told you about the K-Cups, didn't I? So as far as the cups, I did a small run in the context of how many they're doing this company. Custom Cool Pack was willing to do a small run for us to kind of test it out.

So right now, I have 400 boxes of each K-Cup roast or blend blend so if you want to get it i don't know how quick it's going to go but i would strongly recommend sooner than later for the reason of actually getting the first round and secondly me allow me proven we know how to so we and also we like if we're going to restack we order we have to do it ahead of time because it takes like two weeks to like make them even longer, probably even longer, three a week to brew and roast, uh, to roast and grind.

Then I got to ship the 300, the pounds all the way to Philly. They have a week or two, but to make the run, to, to put the lids on, to make the boxes, it's a whole process,

but I hope, I hope it's, I hope it's successful. We're going to find out. I put my, uh, I put my guarantee on it. It was going to go well. So we'll see. I actually think it's going to do really well. find out. I put my guarantee on it. It was going to go well.

So we'll see. I actually think it's going to do really well. K-Cups, there's a huge market for it. We weren't. A lot of people want that instant gratification. They want to take a pot out, pop it in. I have been testing it with the actual boxes for over a week. I bought the Keurig K-Smart.

A little endorsement there. It's expensive. I've been loving it. It's amazing. It's amazing. I've been doing caramel lattes every day. He actually called me and he said, this is better than any caramel latte I've ever gotten from Starbucks. It's the truth. It comes with a frother. It's phenomenal. Not sponsored by Keurig, although we should be. We should be. But if you have a Keurig at home, definitely check it out out let me know what you guys think or let us know what you think but make sure you credit me yeah for it because she's got the knife out already she's ready to slit my throat just because she she's hoping she's hoping

I'm wrong I'm not I'm hoping you're right yeah I guess yeah I guess that would make sense I like I do want you to be right in a way. You did the tutorials with the pods. You're like, see, guys, you don't need the Keurigs. Look it. You can do it this way. And I'm like, you just do the K-Cups. Well, listen, that was because that's a different machine. But that's an espresso.

You're right. You're right. That's an espresso. But anyways, what I'm saying is I win either way. If it does well, then my company does well. If it doesn't do well, I've got leverage on him forever for at least the next five years, at least. And she will use it for the next five years. I promise you. I know I will. So I definitely put a lot into this, a lot of the proposal behind it, the money to get it down. So

it's fiscally responsible for us to do it. I think it's going to work. We're still going to be able to donate. Everything should be good. Ultimately, we'll see what the demand is. Like I said, if it goes well, we'll order more. If not, hey, you know what? You learn it and you grow. But if you're someone who doesn't like Stephanie and want to prove her wrong, this is your opportunity for all those trolls in the comments. Plenty of you out there. Plenty of you. Leave Derek alone. If you want to support the bully fund for Derek. He's just a sweet, innocent boy. You're so mean buy a box of coffee All right. That's all that's all I had criminal coffee Co comm check it out

I would strongly appreciate it and thank you to New Harvest Roaster and also custom cake up for helping make us make this happen Cuz it's a smaller run right now. Hopefully wrote these coffee descriptions. They're so good. They're so good Chat GBbt did it we were talking about this in crime weekly news how dare you yo this is like poetry man you know poetry i don't know if it's your your camera right now show a different box because that white one is so blurred out it might be it might be just the internet but oh yeah that looks better poetry man okay whoever wrote these has the heart of a poet and the soul of an angel yeah all right let's jump in should we take a break let's take a break let's take a break we'll start the episode we'll be good to go OK, we're back.

We ended last episode with the revelation that in 2007, preliminary testing done on a hair that was found in the knot of the shoelaces that had been used to tie up Michael Moore. The hair was found to not match any of the three men who were in prison for the murders. But that hair was also not inconsistent with the hair of Terry Hobbs, Stevie Branch's stepfather. Another hair from the crime scene was also tested, and this one also did not match Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, or Jesse Miskelly Jr., but it was consistent with the hair of a man named David Jacoby. Now, we haven't talked about David Jacoby since early on in the series, part one, I think. But if you remember, Jacoby was a friend of Terry Hobbs,

and they spent time together on the night of the murders. So while the lawyers of Damien Eccles waited for more thorough and final results from the hair testing, they contacted Dr. Vincent DeMeo, a world-renowned criminal pathologist who'd been an expert witness in several high-profile cases, such as the assassination of JFK. He actually sadly passed away last year, which makes me really sad because he wrote a lot of books during his illustrious career. One of them was a great book. It's an autobiography. I think it's one of the best autobiographies I've ever read, and it's called Morgue, A Life and Death. It was released in 2017, and the title stems from the 25 years that DeMeo spent as the chief medical examiner of Bexar County in San Antonio, Texas. Anyways, Damien's lawyers reached out to Dr. Vincent DeMeo and asked him if he would examine the wounds from the three eight-year-old victims to find out if he could see anything or catch anything that everyone else had missed.

And Dr. DeMeo said, you know, he knew Dr. Peretti well. Dr. Peretti was the medical examiner who initially did the autopsies. And DiMaio said that he knew Peretti was a good pathologist, and he doubted he would find anything that Dr. Peretti had missed. But he agreed to have a look anyway. On May 17th, 2016, Dr. DiMeo published an article called Reopening the West Memphis 3, and in this article, he stated, quote, the horrific genital mutilation on Chris Byers was not in fact done by a human. It was caused by animals gnawing on the soft tissue after he died.

Bruises and gashes in the boy's mouths, first interpreted as evidence of forced oral sex, were also caused by animals. Those strange punctures on the skin that looked like knife-inflicted torture? Animals nibbling and chewing. The huge bloodied patch on the left side of Stevie Branch's face? Also animal damage. Similarly, the knife wounds and scrapes Dr. Peretti saw on the bodies was not inflicted by a blade, but were the tooth and claw marks of feeding animals. What animals? Snapping turtles, possums, feral cats, foxes, raccoons, squirrels, stray dogs, and the occasional coyote inhabited the Robin Hood woods. Any or all of these predators could have been attracted by the scent of fresh blood,

found the bodies very quickly, and nibbled on the softest parts, which were the most easily chewed off. To me, they looked like turtle bites, end quote. And many, many other experts have agreed with Dr. DeMeo after looking at the crime scene and autopsy photos, such as Dr. Rebecca Hu, who said the wounds, which had been described as torture marks by the police and prosecution, had actually been made post-mortem, and they could be the results of bite marks from animals like turtle and fish. Dr. Hu also noted that clawed animals such as turtles will dig their appendages into a food source to gain traction while they're eating, which would cause

a variety of different puncture marks and scratches. She also said that if the extensive genitalia wounds had been inflicted with a knife, these wounds would have been more consistent and cleaner. And she concluded that there was a good chance, in fact, a high probability, that what she was looking at was purely animal activity post-mortem. Several other injuries inflicted on the boys, including Stevie's facial wounds, were also consistent with turtle beaks and claws. Overall, many of these experts believe that only the boys' head injuries had been inflicted before they died,

and their most likely cause of death had been drowning, with the exception of Christopher Byers, who had bled out from his head wound. The West Memphis Three defense team also brought in several more experts, such as forensic pathologist Warner Spitz and forensic scientist Dr. John Norby, who also concluded the genital wounds were from post-mortem animal predation. Additionally, one of Jason Baldwin's attorneys, Paul Ford, would claim he had a number of conversations with Dr. Frank Peretti, the original medical examiner who did the autopsies, to address matters such as time of death and mechanism of injury. And Ford, the attorney, said, quote, I recall that at one point in one of our discussions, Peretti told me, I believe it was the cheek of one of the young boys who may have been bitten by a turtle or some of those were turtle bites. He may have said could have been, but I made the decision that I wasn't interested in postmortem injuries. I was more concerned about did the state's evidence prove that Jason Baldwin did anything, end quote. This offhand statement was made by Paul Ford in a document detailing

his experience defending Jason, so it wasn't made in response to other experts deciding that the marks on the boys had been made by animals after they were dead. It was basically just him typing up a report talking about what he had done as Jason's lawyer. And his conversations with Dr. Peretti were part of that. So it was just basically supporting evidence of what these experts were already saying, because apparently the initial medical examiner, Dr. Frank Peretti, who did the autopsies on these three boys, had also suspected some of their wounds were animal bites or animal wounds. There have also been many tests done to prove this theory, including the West of Memphis documentary makers. So remember, there's Paradise Lost. They did a couple documentaries. West of Memphis was done by the guy who did Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson.

Peter Jackson did West of Memphis. So they basically got a pig carcass and then they got a bunch of snapping turtles like the ones that are found in that bayou where the boys' bodies were found. They dumped the pig carcass into like this pit of snapping turtles. And they said that basically the snapping turtles went right at the pig carcass and they just started like biting on it. And these wounds happened very quickly and the wounds looked nearly identical to the wounds from the autopsy photos.

Wounds that the West Memphis police and the prosecutors had told the jury had been made by the serrated blade of a knife. Also, podcaster Bob Ruff tested this theory out as well when he lowered chicken carcasses into the bio where the boys' bodies had been found. And almost immediately after placing the chickens into the water, he said the turtles swarmed and started ripping meat off of the carcasses. So it makes sense, because the boys weren't in the water for that long. It's not like they were in there for days. They were found the next morning. So if they'd been in there longer

They probably would have had more Damage and more wounds definitely definitely would have in this didn't this this process of using a pig carcass is very common We had a case where the FBI came in we enlisted their help To try to go back and determine a time of death for a victim that had been found, what we believe, a couple weeks later. But it's hard to tell the exact date and time, which was critically important to our investigation. But she did have some form of fly larvae on her face, and we wanted to replicate that by putting the pig carcass out there, letting it sit there in similar conditions during a similar time of year

to see what type of insect activity occurred, and then compare the fly larvae on the pig carcass to her to find out how long in the process she was. And so this is a very common practice that's used a lot, and it's very accurate. Like I said, it's implemented by the FBI, and they're very good at that stuff. So it all seems very sound to me as not a pathologist myself. It's it all makes sense. I don't have any any rebuttal. So, I mean, what does this say? It says that the whole theory of Christopher Byer, Stevie Branch and Michael Moore being

murdered in some Satanist full moon sacrifice, that's looking less and less likely. And it it really seems that whoever killed these three boys didn't like cut them up or sexually assault them beforehand or torture them like we had once thought. It looks like they just wanted them dead, right? Beat them up maybe a little bit and tied them up and threw them in the water. And as you said, two of them were still alive prior to entering the water. So they really didn't do anything too much with it. So that all those, the hypothesis we had come up with as far as like oh which one was first either way like you said this was a quick interaction yeah and and you

know they were saying oh it couldn't have been done their murder couldn't have been done there because of how many wounds they had and there would have been a lot of blood well no there wouldn't have been a lot of blood. Now we know because whatever caused those wounds happened to them in the water by these snapping turtles, which we do know live in that like bayou area and swim in those waters. And that makes a lot of sense. So once again, you might want to ask yourself, who would do that? Would a random sex offender come across three boys and say, oh, I normally would sexually assault you, but I'm not going to do that now. I'm just going to murder you and put you in the water.

No, probably not. Would a random person just out of nowhere want to kill three kids just to kill them? No, probably not. It seems kind of like somebody had a personal motive to do it. It had to have been somebody they knew because there's none of the trademarks of, you know, a sexual predator, because you would see a sign of sexual assault. You would see that something had happened. A sexual predator of children isn't going to just kill the kids. He's going to, he or she, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be sexist. They are going to just, you know, use the kids for whatever they want and then kill them so that they don't tell and they don't get in trouble. They're not just going to kill them

for no reason. And as you said, this doesn't seem like something that someone took their time with, really. It seems like something that they just kind of went in and did and then put them in the water so they wouldn't be found. This didn't take a lot of time. It wasn't a bloody scene. Just something that's coming to my head as I'm sitting here and it may have no legs to it whatsoever, but hypothetical. Boys are down there. Something happens. And I'm not even insinuating it's the West Memphis Three. Anybody pick your poison, whoever you want. There's a fight or something where it gets a little crazy. Christopher Byers gets injured severely. He's going to die from his injuries. They can tell. And because of that, the other two boys can't go free now. So all three of them are tied up and thrown in there

because this was an assault where we see it in videos where it's supposed to be a fist fight or whatever. But for some reason, due to the fight, someone hits their head the wrong way and he ends up a manslaughter at minimum, right? Could they have been victims of being witnesses? I wonder if that's a theory that's been explored where this could have maybe not the West Memphis three, but another boy or another kids from that neighborhood where something went wrong. It escalated and Stevie Branch and Michael Moore being present was their biggest, their biggest thing that they did wrong. Yeah, I don't, I don't think that this was done by other kids, but I do have that similar

theory. If you remember, John Mark Byers was looking for Chris that day. And remember, he found him riding his skateboard and he was like, what are you doing? He was upset with him. You're supposed to be cleaning the garage. He hit him with a belt, sent him back to the garage. Chris Byers takes off again. So now this is the second time Chris Byers takes off.

And if you've been in the presence of an abusive male figure, an abusive father figure, you know. Yeah, disobeyed him twice. So now the form of the disobedience, it's going to escalate as far as the reaction to it. He finds him in the woods with his friends. Finally, he's looking around for him. We know he was. John Mark Byers said he was looking around for him forever. He finds him in the woods with his friends because he knows they go and play there. And he starts beating him around like he usually does. And he goes too far. And now Chris Byers is no longer alive. And Stevie and Michael saw the whole thing. Well, you can't leave them alive now. Of course, it's over for you at that point. You're an adult. They're kids.

They're terrified. They don't even know what to think. So you tie them up so you can think about what to do. You check on Chris to see if he's okay. And you realize he's not. They're tied up. And then you're like, well, what am I going to do? And this doesn't just have to be John Mark Byers, right? It could be any one of the fathers. But that does seem to be, in my opinion, the way things went.

If you ask me, this was not done by kids. The way those knots were tied. This is not like a neighborhood kid fight because even kids would be like, oh, shit, what happened? You know, we didn't mean to do that. And they'd run and find somebody before they were like, well, I guess we got to kill the other ones. You know, like that's not usually how like a kid's mind works. It's really interesting. It could be it opens the floor for a lot of different people. I even think like the trucker theory where the trucker's down there and Chris gives some lip

or whatever, and there's a little bit of a struggle and Chris gets hurt during the struggle because he's fighting with a grown man. And now this grown man, same thing, same pattern you just laid out, same theory. Exactly. These two kids are present. What'd you do to Chris? Oh, well, now you all got to go because I can't leave one of you because now you've seen my face but not even my face like it feels like they would have had to have known him you know he could have just been like oh you saw me you don't know me from freakin Adam I can get in my truck and leave and no one's gonna find me what are you gonna tell them I have brown hair and brown eyes you're eight

they had to have known the attacker for that person to be scared enough to kill another two kids. Well, yeah, it's interesting because we've talked a lot, or I don't know if I've mentioned in the episode, we've been doing this for so long, but it's like, I keep writing down motive, like what would be the motive? Was it sexually motivated? Was it a satanic cult? Like all these different things, but the motive could be pretty simple. If the pathologist, multiple pathologists are correct, you could have a situation where the intent wasn't to kill anyone, but something escalated and the motive was simply self-preservation, right? They get into a fight with Chris, they accidentally kill him, right? Because it doesn't

seem like he was beaten to death, right? It seems like he could have, he definitely got the worst of the three, obviously. I'm not trying to diminish what happened here, but his head wasn't caved in, right? It wasn't like this. So my point being, could he have been injured during an assault, a vicious assault, mind you, and the motive was just self-preservation to make sure that no one else there told on this person or these people. So that's interesting that it could be as simple as that. The injuries that we talked about so extensively to Chris could be the motive behind it where, hey, got to make sure nobody else talks about this ever again. And if you're watching this as a movie, this is the twist, right? This is the twist where the first hour and a half of this movie,

you've thought one thing, which is these kids were tortured for hours before their deaths and they were sexually assaulted and they were caught and they were like battered. And you've thought this the whole movie. And then you come to find, wow, maybe those wounds were not from them being tortured. Maybe those wounds weren't from them being cut by a knife. Maybe they were post-mortem animal predation. And so the only wounds that these boys have on them are their head injuries, and then they are put in the water to drown, right? So somebody didn't even want to finish them off, right? They couldn't do it. They didn't have the stomach for it. They couldn't take that final step. They had to let the water-

There was no gratification there. The gratification was not the assault and the beating of the children, which is very important. This was a means to an end. Yeah, this was a means to an end. And they couldn't even take that final step themselves. They did not have the stomach for it, which tells me Chris's death was an accident. And the other two were collateral damage because they were there. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. So you agree that Chris's death was not intentional? I agree. Yeah. Because if it was intentional, then the person would have killed the other two as well. I mean, this whole time we've been going along by this thought that these kids were tortured. This is somebody who got off on this.

This is somebody who took pleasure from it. Could be a Satanist, right? At that point, you know, could be somebody who has like some weird beliefs, could be like a just a serial killer or like a child predator. Now, it doesn't make sense the way that the crime scene is set up, the way they were murdered. It doesn't make sense for any of those, because as you said, there's no gratification in like putting some kids in the water and letting them drown. Anybody who's doing it to get because they're getting a kick out of it

is going to take that final step themselves. That's what they're there for. Well, it goes back to what we were saying first episode, right? When there's two ways to conduct an investigation, one way is right, one way is wrong. When you're following the evidence, it tells you the story. But if you're going into it in this, like, we'll just use this as the example here, the template, you're going into it already knowing your suspects in your head, right? Your suspects are Satan worshipers. They're cults. They're cult members. They do these rituals. So when you get the evidence and the pathologists aren't immune to this either, right? They're hearing the information behind closed doors, who the suspects are, things like that, right? So then they get the bodies and they're conducting the autopsies. And now their interpretation of

those injuries are suggestive of a suspect that fits that narrative, right? Instead of just looking at it from an objective perspective and saying, hey, this is what it is, they are tainted by what they've been told who the suspect is. So now their filter as far as interpreting the injuries is through that lens. And that's where you get on this path that just keeps going and going. And we are where we are as far as them being found convicted and all this other stuff. So this is why you don't do it this way. I still don't understand how we got on that path. I'm going to be honest.

Of course. I don't understand. By the way, not justifying it here. No, definitely not. But you had multiple pathologists come out and say, yeah, no, this is completely wrong. This is predation, not something. How did this pathologist who seems to be respected get it

so wrong? I mean, there was a previous pathologist who said, hey, I usually agree with his findings, but sure enough, this one was wrong. And you have to ask yourself, why? How could this one guy be so off? And it's not because he's stupid or it's not because he doesn't know his job. It's because he's human and he's influenced he's being influenced and we don't know how much influence like there's a right there's a subtle way where it's like hey he should have been still been able to separate himself how much pressure was being applied pressure yeah it's the difference between influence and pressure right the whole community believes it's these guys you don't think that that power is a tv yeah you're gonna be the one guy who's like actually guys you're wrong and

we don't have anybody in custody who did this and there's murderers out there still you're going to be the one guy who's like, actually, guys, you're wrong. And we don't have anybody in custody who did this. And there's murderers out there still. You're going to be evaluated in and of itself and just let it tell. Even if it doesn't go along with what you believe, that's okay. It's still going to get you closer to the truth. But if you're going into it with a preconceived notion, then your human instinct is to interpret that information in a way that fits a narrative you've already created. And that's wrong. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, on that note, if not Damien, Jason and Jesse, which once again, I can confidently say I 1 million percent believe that these three teenagers at that time did not do this. There's no motive. There's no reason. Now that we take the Satanist like tint and filter off of it. Why would they do that? We can't even prove that they were there. First of all. Like there's a lot, there's no physical evidence, et cetera, et cetera.

So if not them, then who? And we're going to focus on the two suspects that I've been coming back to over and over again throughout this series. And that is John Mark Byers, who was the stepfather of Christopher Byers. And we're gonna talk about Terry Hobbs, who is the stepfather of Stevie Branch.

These are the two, in my opinion, the two people who are probably most likely to have been involved, not just because they're weird guys, because they are weird guys, but because of, you know, stuff from their past, stuff that suggests that they could be capable of something like this. And also, you know, lack of alibis, changing stories, DNA evidence on the part of Terry Hobbs, things like that. So we're going to get into that, but let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. OK, let's start going and talking about John Mark Byers, the stepfather of Christopher Byers, who was so adamant that the West Memphis Three were guilty, he did and said things like this. You know, one thing I like about this right here, black powder gun, is they can't pull any type of ballistics on it.

If by some chance you was to shoot something with it, every bullet rifles through the chamber are just a little bit different. So they just can't pull no ballistics off this one. There's a few people I wouldn't mind going on shooting with it, but hopefully the courts and the justice system take care of them. They read the president, they're going to get took care of. You know Todd, I could save the state a lot of money. If they'd just let me line them three son of a guns up, I'd say, this one here's for you, Jesse,

and we're gonna go for the jug of water. Oh, Jesse, I done blowed you half in two, son. Now, this one here's for you, Damien. You that black circle right in the middle. Oh, you got hurt. Damn. That sure looked painful, didn't it? Yeah. Hey, Jason, I want you to smile and blow me a kiss for this one.

Now let's go back to Jesse. I just wounded him. I want him to bleed a little bit like he made my baby bleed. Oh Jesse, you know that breaks my heart thinking about that scum. Because this right here is all that needs to be done to him. Just shot slowly with a real nice firearm and it ain't got no consideration or no feeling of who it's aiming at just like they didn't care about killing my baby i'd be happy lining them up i wouldn't have no problem with it i think old jesse's still kicking a little y'all go ahead and put him out of his misery what kind of range we got in the courtroom? Probably about 10 foot right here.

I know what we're going to talk about here as far as like this is. So I'll just I'll let you weigh in. I don't really want I don't have too much to say. It's crazy. But I mean, he's a caricature, man. He's a cartoon character like that. I OK, listen, let me be very clear. I do not think he's a good person.

He was the most entertaining part of these docu-series because that was how he was the whole time, man. Singing in church, all right? He's got a good voice. Recording like an album in a recording studio. Getting like every time there's a reporter around, John Mark Byers,'s there man he's there and he is talking all right and you're gonna see in a second so this is this is how he's speaking he's clearly so sure that that these three teenagers that he's got a pumpkin and he's like

shooting the pumpkin and saying their names and then you've got a Michael Moore's dad over there Todd Moore like what kind of range we got in the courtroom. Like this is some crazy shit, okay? This is some crazy stuff, all right? Like forget Alec Baldwin in that Rust movie. John Mark Byers was perfect for it, you know? Perfect, like this is the kind of thing you expect to see in like a Western.

Are people really like this in real life? I don't necessarily think so. I think he was playing a character the whole time. He knew the cameras were on. He knew people were watching. He's so extra. I don't think that he's probably like that all the time. to slip into that character a bit too many times. And this is quite a different tune from the one that John Mark Byers would be singing years later when, you know, Jason and Damien and Jesse gave their Alfred pleas, and he was outside of the courtroom talking about how it was like an injustice

that they even had to do that. This is not justice. Who do you believe is the real killer? Terry Wayne Hobbs. Amen. I don't know how much clearer I have to make it. What do you think about what's happening today? It's a travesty, it's wrong. Now I know the defense has their reasons.

I know the state has their reasons. I was called by the district attorney Ellington yesterday and told me what was gonna happen today. I expressed my displeasure of him. He basically didn't care, which I knew he would, just wasted breath. But this is not right. And the people of Arkansas need to stand up and raise hell, because three innocent men are gonna have to claim today

that they're guilty for a crime they didn't know, and that's bullshit. And it's total incompetence on the West Memphis Police Department. It was a botched job on the state. There was evidence planted. There were liars on the stand for the state. There were state witnesses that were told to leave so they couldn't testify. This is corruption to the highest degree. What makes you so sure it's Hobbs?

What makes you so sure that it's Terry Hobbs? Pardon me? What makes you so sure that it's Terry Hobbs? Well, his DNA was found there in the lace of Michael Moore. It didn't get there by osmosis. David Jacoby's hair was there. What did it do, fly there on Harry Potter's wand? It either fell off of Terry Hobbs or he was there.

There's no other two ways about it. None of the West Memphis Three's DNA was there. None of my DNA was there. My wife, Melissa, had long hair. Dana Moore had long hair. None of their hair was there. None of their DNA hair was there. Does that answer your question, sir?

Thank you. So what do you think about that? After watching the first clip, and I know your opinion on John Mark Byers and we're going there, but it could be a situation where his mentality at that first point, the pumpkins being shot video, that was the mentality of the entire community, right? Like he was a representative of that entire, like basically in that video, it was a microcosm for the entire society of West Memphis at that point because these boys hadn't even gone through trial yet as pointed out in the video where they said hey how how much range do we have in the trial and it was already a foregone

conclusion that these three boys did it and I don't think this mentality seen in that video was isolated to just them two I think the whole community including the police department including the police were on board with this this was these these were the guys. These were the guys. And then looking at it as if John Mark Byers is not the guy who did it. You could look at this and I'm not trying to paint him as a victim because, you know, there is a potential he didn't do it right where he has now seen the evidence. He has now seen the corruption. He has now seen the planting of evidence all these different things and now he's serving as an advocate for the West Memphis three I don't know but he's also making a fatal mistake again though which is pointing out someone else Terry Hobbs as the new guy with very little evidence right you have it you have DNA and I know DNA is important and we'll probably talk about

that but it doesn't automatically mean as we've seen in other cases that you committed a murder right there are other ways to explain how that got there, right? So he's, again, at minimum, making the're laying it out where he's over the top, because in his mentality, if he did do it, he's like, Hey, as long as it isn't me, I'm happy. I'll point out Bozo the clown. If you want, I don't care who you want me to point out. As long as it's not me, I'm going to go to my grave saying it was them. Because if I'm pointing at them and you're pointing at them and the media is thinking it's them, then you're not going to be looking in my direction and that's a win as far as i'm concerned So I get I get where you're going with it how you could look at these videos and perceive them Well, I mean that's for me. It's not just looking at the videos and perceiving them

It's knowing who he is what he's done. He's doing too much. First of all, right? It's like too freaking much, you know It's like a kid when they're lying and they like are just so dramatic about it and they're so earnest and their eyes are so wide and you're like, well, you're doing too much, man. Chill out.

You're not a good liar. And it is this tendency to sort of flip from being so dead set on it being the West Memphis Three and then as soon as the wind blows the other way, he's like, I'll go that way.

I'll go and I will be as righteously indignant about that as I was about this, you know? And he says something, my hair wasn't there. My hair wasn't there. You know, he says things like this a lot. Like he's saying, oh, this person's guilty. And nobody's saying you're guilty, dude. Like nobody's really even saying that. But you have to consistently point out why you're not guilty and how you couldn't have been there and how it wasn't you. And there's no evidence that you were there. You kind of like throw that in. If anybody, it's not that he woke up to the corruption of the West Memphis Police Department, because remember, he was working as a drug informant for them, a criminal informant. So he knew how corrupt they were. He was working

with them. They had swept things under the rug for him that we're going to talk about multiple times. So it's not as if this is this like he's this little naive, wide eyed, you know, like teddy bear walking through the world, all innocent, not understanding what's happening. He knew how corrupt they were. He knew what they did. He knew what they were up to because he helped them and he was part of it. So it's a whole act, you know, like I can't believe they hid evidence. They didn't let people like they didn't let people testify. What? It's just unacceptable. You know, David Jacoby's hair being there, Terry Hobbs hair being there. And like you've said, and we've talked about before, it could have been transfer, you know, it could have been transfer because Michael Moore had played at, you know, Chris Byers house. But we don't know own shoelaces because we know that the boys were tied up with different colored shoelaces. can become untied and completely straight, and somebody can tie it up into a knot and catch a hair in that knot when it was completely straight before, if it was transfer, you know, because you'd think untying the shoelace from the shoe that it was in, taking it out of the shoe, the

little hole that would have gotten the hair off. And so when you're tying it back up and something's getting caught in the knot, it feels like it would have to kind of be falling at that moment Right kind of agree. I mean if it's inside the knot, I kind of agree because if that knot was clearly tied During the incident I guess you could make an argument that the hair is kind of trapped in there by the fibers of the lace and as it's being Tied up it could go again. I think overall you could make that argument. It could go either way, but it's not necessary. You can't say 100% AOS transfer. Yeah. I always find the DNA, and I think it's pretty commonsensical, where if you have DNA

from someone who's had an interaction with your victim, it's great. It's obviously great, but it also could be nothing. It's not all you need. Now, if you said, hey, there was a trucker by the name of Derek Levasseur driving that route that day. He's never met these boys in his life, but he happened to be driving by. So they did this inventory, found out all the truckers who drove by that interstate that day. And you end up finding my hair on any one of those boys' shoes. And I've never met them before in my life. Guess what? You got your guy. You got your guy. But that's not the case here. This person

had an interaction with Michael Moore, at least in the vicinity where there could have been a transfer of DNA, although there is a compelling argument you just made. But that's usually my rationale on it. And it's the same thing we talked about other cases where when you have someone who has interactions with the victim prior to the incident, it is something you have to be a little bit more skeptical of as far as implicating them in the murder saying Yeah, they definitely did their hairs there. It must have been them. Oh, I agree But it sucks because when you're talking about the murders of children It is, you know, usually at the hands of somebody they they know we've talked about that before

It's less likely that a stranger is gonna abduct your child, right? Yeah, so less likely that a stranger is going to abduct your child. It's less likely that a stranger is going to kill your child, right? It's more likely that this child is going to be harmed by somebody that they know and some domestic sort of issue. So when your DNA evidence is evidence of a person they know and a person they know is the most likely person to have harmed them, where does that leave you? It's hard. One other thing we can take away from DNA here, which is important as we continue to cover cases in the future, is you have three boys, right? Just keep this in mind because everyone's so gun-ho on DNA, as you should be. It's a compelling piece of evidence.

But you have three boys here, right? Not all of them had Terry Hobbs's hair on them. So let's take Michael Moore out of the equation for a second. Let's say he wasn't there. Then you have two other victims who didn't have this potential suspect's hair on them. So let's take Michael Moore out of the equation for a second. Let's say he wasn't there. Then you have two other victims who didn't have this potential suspect's DNA on them. Does that mean he didn't do it? Of course not.

What I'm trying to get at here is just because you murder someone or you assault someone, doesn't guarantee you're gonna leave your DNA behind. And that's something that's important to remember where if you say, oh, there's no DNA on John Doe or Jane Doe, couldn't have been this person. Then his DNA is not there or her DNA is not there. It's not always the case.

In fact, I would argue that in many cases it's not. So when we have the absence of DNA. But it's more than they had on the three kids, right? What's that? It's like finding that hair. That's more than evidence that they had against Damian, Jesse and Jason. Agreed completely.

And I'm not even insinuating, I'm just saying going forward as we talk about cases. So we're being consistent because there will be other cases where we might, you and I might sit up here and say, Oh, it was definitely Joe, Joe, John Doe who did it.

And then you guys are going to say, well, well, there's no DNA there. Well, that doesn't tell the whole story. Sometimes that's why I'm saying this is a perfect example of three victims who were potentially murdered by the same person. And yet, if it is Terry Hobbs, his DNA was only on one person. So you could have, that's a small sample

size, but three victims, DNA only on one body. Doesn't mean he didn't kill the other two, just means he didn't leave any DNA behind. So I always want to keep that in the back of our minds when we're talking about DNA, because I feel like sometimes if you're just reading it on the surface, it's easy to go, oh, DNA is there. They did it. Or DNA is not there. They didn't. And that's that could they both can be wrong. Completely agree. And I mean, when we're looking at somebody like John Mark Byers, the way he like has all this righteous indignation, you would think this dude doesn't have any skeletons in his closet, right? Like he's completely as pure as the driven snow.

But that's obviously not true. Not only was John Mark Byers the stepfather of Christopher Byers, he was an unemployed jeweler at the time of the murders and an undercover police drug informant. So in the police files from the investigation into the murders, it detailed how dozens of West Memphis residents backgrounds were looked into. But John Mark Byers background was never looked into. I mean, at least not so far as the files say. And that's most likely because the police already knew he had a long one and because they'd been partially responsible for making sure that that record wasn't available to the public.

So John Mark Byers was born on March 8th, 1957 in Markt Tree, Arkansas, where in 1973, his parents called the police to report that their son was threatening them with a butcher knife. Before he was married to Christopher Byers' mother, Melissa, John Mark Byers was married to a woman named Sandra Byers, who he had two children with. Byers would be accused of domestic violence by his first wife multiple times, and she had to get a restraining order against him, claiming he had threatened to kill her. But six months after that, Byers was convicted again of terroristic threatening for physically attacking Sandra Byers again with an electric stunning device in the presence of her children and threatening to kill his wife again. John Mark Byers was placed on probation, and he was placed on probation with the condition

that he stay away from his wife and pay her child support. But Sandra went back to the court multiple times and said he had not been paying child support. However, his probation was not revoked. Five years later, Judge David Burnett, the same judge who presided over the West Memphis Three trials, wiped Byers' criminal record clean, expunging it from public record a year before Stevie, Christopher, and Michael were murdered. Why did this happen? We don't really know, probably because Byers was a

drug informant. And Judge Burnett did this even though John Mark Byers had not held up the terms of his probation, he had not held a job, and he had not been paying child support to his previous wife. In 1987, the same year he attacked his first wife with an electric stunning device, John Mark Byers married Melissa DeFer, a woman originally from Memphis who had struggled with heroin addiction for years. Actually, Melissa's first husband, who is Christopher Byers' biological father, he said that she'd been on heroin since she was 12 years old. At that time, John Mark Byers no longer had custody of his own two children, so he adopted Melissa's two sons, Ryan and Chris, when they got married in 1987. In 1989, Byers and his new wife, Melissa, opened a jewelry store in West Memphis. Within a year, the business had declared bankruptcy, which left many of their neighbors and friends wondering how the Byers had afforded to purchase a three-bedroom home with an in-ground swimming pool.

In October of 1990, the owners of a jewelry store in Jonesboro that Byers had previously worked at pressed charges against him for stealing $65,000 worth of jewelry. When Byers was not arrested by the West Memphis police for some reason, the store owners had to file a civil suit, and eventually John Mark Byers had to pay restitution to those jewelry store owners. John Mark Byers had also been arrested nine months before the murders in July of 1962, and he'd been charged with conspiracy to sell cocaine and charged with carrying a dangerous weapon. He was booked into the county jail, but that same night he was released into the custody of the U.S. Marshals, after which he was soon released with no explanation of who had ordered it or why.

I mean, this guy should have been in prison by now like several times. So on December 8th, 1992, a loss prevention agent from UPS contacted the West Memphis police, specifically our buddy Bryn Ridge and his buddy, Detective Mike Allen. And this UPS agent said, listen, a resident of yours, John Mark Byers, he had a package delivered to his house and he claims he never got this package. And this normally wouldn't be a case for the police, except for the fact that this package contained $11,000 worth of Rolex watches, two gold Rolex watches to be specific, and UPS

felt that there was fraud happening, and they asked local law enforcement to look into it. If the West Memphis police ever did look into it, we didn't hear about it because nothing ever happened. Byers wasn't brought in for questioning. No one paid him a visit to ask about these two gold Rolex watches, and this caused UPS to go over the head of West Memphis police and ask the Arkansas State Police for help. John Mark Byers would eventually confess to having lied about not receiving the watches. Surprise, surprise. And he said he had taken them and sold them to a chiropractor in a different town. Brent Davis, the ADA, who would help John Fogelman later convict the West Memphis Three, he asked the judge that Byers

not be prosecuted. And Byers was asked to pay back just a bit over $7,000 in restitution. So we got a lot of stuff already. We've got a lot of stuff already, even before the murders. And it kind of continues to get bad. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you can't always judge a book by its cover, right? Like you see certain things, you see these videos, very, that's the first videos I've seen of John Mark Byers. And then you start to hear about this person. And as you're talking about him, I'm saying, oh, wait, this is the same guy.

But you wouldn't know that by looking at him. But that's why it's important to dot your I's and cross your T's, which it sounds like Memphis Police maybe didn't do that. They kind of dropped the ball there. Yeah, because he was working for them. Although one of those videos, man, the one where he was like, this is a gun and you can't trace it. That kind of gave you an indication maybe he was into some sketchy stuff. Yeah, maybe he's done some things.

He's done some things. He's over here putting nail polish on the bullets and he's like, these bullets here be untraceable. You can kill people. They won't come back to you. And you're like, I can't believe he would do something illegal. This is crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

You remember that? All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. In early 1994, before the trial of Jesse Miss Kelly Jr. began, the district attorney John Fogelman released a round of documents to the defense attorneys. And Ron Lacks, he was a PI that Damien's defense team had hired. He was reviewing those documents when he found out that just the previous week, the police and staff from the Arkansas Crime Lab had searched the homes of Michael Moore's family, as well as Christopher Byers' family. And Lacks was curious to find out why, right before Jesse's trial, the police had felt it necessary to search the homes of two of the victims.

Like, were they looking for something specific? What was the point of this? And he got an answer two days later, when Damien's legal team provided him with more documents that had just been released, and these documents centered around a knife that had been mailed to the police by FedEx. This knife had been sent to the police by the Paradise Lost documentary makers, who claimed that a few days before Christmas of 1993, John Mark Byers had given a member of their crew a hunting knife as a present. The letter accompanying the knife said, quote, We later discovered that the knife appeared to have traces of blood on it.

Naturally, we were shocked and found ourselves in an extremely difficult situation. We felt it was strange that Mr. Byers had given us a used knife that seemed to have blood on it. However, it could have been an innocent gesture of friendship, so we did not want to carelessly hand it over to police, creating controversy for Mr. Byers, particularly in the local press. On the other hand, since the investigation has yet to recover a definitive murder weapon, and since it was Byers' stepson who had been castrated with a knife, we had no way of knowing if knife that was found in the lake, you know, behind Jason Baldwin's trailer that John Fogelman would wave around during the trial that he would suggest to the jury was the murder weapon, that knife didn't have any blood on it. This knife actually did have blood on it. And after being tested at the crime lab, the blood Dan Stidham, demanded that John Mark Byers be questioned by police immediately. And at first, Judge Burnett denied this request.

But eventually, he allowed a hasty interview to take place on January 26th. This was after Jesse's trial had already been underway for about two weeks. The interview was really short. It was only 45 minutes long. And during the interview, Byers claimed that although, yes, this was his haunting knife, he'd never used it for hunting. He'd never used it for anything. And no one had ever been caught with it. Now, of course, they didn't tell him there was blood on it. They just asked, is this your knife? So the West Memphis police apparently can question people properly when they want to protect them, because that is exactly the way you should question

somebody like, is this your knife? And you don't tell them right away like, oh, by the way, there's blood on it that matches your stepson. Is it your knife? You know, they know how to question people properly. We found that out. But John Mark Byer said, quote, I never used it. I would have used it. Hopefully I was going to use it for deer hunting. That's all I do is deer hunt. But I never had the opportunity to use it on a deer. End quote. He said that as far as he knew, the knife had never left the top drawer of the wardrobe in his bedroom. Now, Gary Gitchell then told Byers that the knife he'd given the film crew did have blood on it, which was a problem. And Byers responded, quote, I got a deer this year and I was cutting it up to make some beef jerky and I had a filleting knife, a Ginzu filleting knife, and I thought of that knife and I tried to cut some of the deer as thin as possible. And when I found out that it wouldn't cut as thin as the skinning knife was, I put it up.

But that would be the only time that it's been around anything bloody. I was cutting some deer meat at home, end quote. Gitchell was like, okay, but that's not our only problem, right? Because the blood on this knife is human blood, not deer blood. And it matches the blood of your stepson, Christopher. John Mark Byers was confused. He said he had no answer for that. He had no idea how that blood might have gotten there. Now, this knife and the blood on it, it's obviously not a slam dunk.

I mean, especially now that we know that the experts don't really believe that these kids were cut with any knives. Once again, it's stronger than any evidence they had against these three teenagers, but there are still other explanations for it. For instance, John Mark Byers himself was also the same blood type, right? As Christopher? I was going to say that, yeah. Yeah. So this blood could have been his, even though he kept insisting, like he had never cut himself with it. He didn't remember cutting himself with it. Like he didn't know why his blood would be on it. Can I stop you for one sec? Because I was a little confused at first until you just said it just to confirm for anybody

Who might be dumb like me that blood on the knife was not DNA belonging to Christopher. It was the same blood type Mm-hmm, so it could match a lot of people with that same blood type. Is that just that's what you're saying? Yeah, okay All right I I missed that if I was like wait did they do a DNA analysis on this where maybe I just missed you same blood type. Is that just, that's what you're saying? Yes. Okay. All right. I missed that. I was like, wait, did they do a DNA analysis on this where maybe I just missed you said blood type. But yes, this blood type could belong to Christopher Byers. It could also belong to hundreds of thousands of other people who have the same blood type,

including John Mark Byers. Yes. Okay. Okay. I'm with you. But we do know that John Mark Byers was aggressive and abusive to Christopher. The eight-year-old boy had wounds on his body that were in various stages of healing, wounds that had not happened the night of his murder.

We know that Byers had admitted to hitting Christopher with a belt the very same night he disappeared. And although Byers claimed he was searching the woods that night with the police officers, none of these officers mentioned this in their reports. What it looks like is he had given that knife away the day before his house was searched. And that was kind of why people thought it was suspicious. Like I have this knife and I'm giving it randomly to this like person on this film crew as a gift when I know the police are coming tomorrow to search my house. That was kind of like what struck people as odd. I can see that, right? The only thing I'll say, and maybe he's not this

bright, but I probably wouldn't give it to a film crew, regardless of the crew member that is looking into this. They're writing and they're creating a documentary about this. I probably wouldn't give, if I'm going to dispose of a potential murder weapon, I'm not going to give it to a film crew who could potentially look into it. I'm throwing it in a river somewhere, you know? But I do see how it's problematic that the day before. If he was smart, he wouldn't have thrown it to a river. He would have given it to the film crew because they left, you know, they went back to LA or wherever they were from and they eventually had to mail it to the police. And then even then they were like, we didn't really know if we should do this. Like, we don't know how he felt about it, you know So he might have gotten away with it

And then if if it does come out he could just be like yeah I gave it to them as a gift like i'm not trying to hide it But if he threw it in like a river and it got found That looks way more suspicious. I mean I would throw it in a river like a Couple towns over where it's no but I I hear what you're saying I hear what you're saying and I will say chain of custody wise which i'm sure everyone's already coming to this conclusion on their own The fact that the knife was mailed sent to a a film crew, how many people on the film crew saw it? How many people on the film crew has a similar blood type? Was the packet? I mean, if you're a defense attorney, if you're a defense attorney, you could rip that apart because at that point it's been out of the custody of law enforcement for a long time. It hasn't been preserved properly. There's so many different people who could have come in contact with that knife at that point yeah those film crew could have like put blood on there just to like make their documentary more exciting yeah i don't think

they did but no wouldn't be the wouldn't be the worst thing i've ever heard of from a crew a tv crew doing something to get clicks or or boost ratings on a show because i'm sure the whole knife thing made it in to the documentary i didn't even need to ask you to know that made it in. That's why I wasn't like, Oh, that I knew that was in the show. That was documented very well. I'm sure.

Sure. It was a big scene. Yeah. And I'm just saying like the knife isn't even that important because I don't even think that, that any, like any of those wounds were made by, I don't think there's a knife involved.

As I once said, it's a nothing burger in a lot of ways because none of the boys were stabbed and you would have other things with that knife that would make it even more compelling if they had been stabbed. You would have the blood type, that's one thing, but you could have serration marks.

You could have the hilt of the knife, hilt marks on the body where if the knife goes in far enough, the hilt of it could leave an indentation or an impression that would match up to the knife in question. enough, the hilt of it could leave an indentation or an impression that would match up to the knife in question. So there's multiple things. Obviously the length of the knife as well, based on the injuries sustained during the stabbing, you'd be able to compare that as well. So there'd be like three or four different variables that you could pull from that knife to determine whether or not it could have been used in the, in the attack.

There was no stab wounds. So all you have is a blood type and the blood type is, even if it's not the most common, but do you know what blood type it was? Did you say? No, I didn't. Even if it's, I mean, what's A negative is the most rare, right? I don't think it was that common. I will say that. But in context of common, how many people in the world would have that blood type? I don't know, but we're not asking about how many people in the world would have it. We're asking how many people in West world would have it we're asking how many people in west memphis arkansas would have it

i would i would assume a couple hundred at least right were there even a couple hundred people in west memphis well but the knife has been transported to la now yeah exactly and that's what i'm saying at this point it's like yeah oh if it was only in west memphis then maybe but even if there's 10 people that's why dna is so compelling right there's only one person that it matches so it's one of those things where exactly matches, right? You can have familial DNA, but overall a blood type. If I'm the defense attorney, I'm saying, hey, I'm going to do a little blood bank here and we're going to survey the hundred people who show up.

I would venture to say a decent percent of them would have the same blood type. Maybe if it's the most rare side of the three or four, how many blood types are there? A negative, I don't even need to go there. A negative, A positive. There's like a taunton because then there's mixtures like AB plus,

AB negative, O. Yeah. And AB, whatever. But overall, there'd probably be a little bit of everything. So,

you know, that would, that would, that would hurt that piece of evidence as well. But it's interesting the timing. We're talking about all these coincidences, right? He ships out the knife the day before the search. It has a blade type similar to Christopher Byers.

He said, and this is, again, like you said, proper interview. They didn't lead with that. So he could create a narrative that would support potentially blood on the knife. He didn't know that. Because if he did, maybe he would have changed the story up and said, yeah, you know what, before I shipped that knife out, I cut myself. Cause he knows what's coming, right?

He knows why he's there, but you are not supposed to fill in those blanks. You let someone, you give them the rope and you let them hang themselves, right? If they're guilty. And so that's kind of what they did here, where now he's already just on The record said his story. I've never used it before it's never been used for deer hunting

But once they say there's blood on it, well, it was near a knife that had blood on now He has to backpedal a little bit. So yeah, that's why you do that. Yeah, so they know how to interview people Gitchell was the same guy who interviewed. Okay, Gary, yeah, yeah, and your boy Brynn Freakin Bryn, man. What dicks are they? I'm sure they love you. I don't care. Go ahead and say it.

I don't care. There you go. Listen, we're going to keep going, though. We're not done with John Mark Byers. Wait till you hear. Okay. So shortly after the trials, a man named Ricky Murray called the PIs that were working for the three now convicted teenagers.

Rick Murray was Christopher Byers' biological father. And he told the investigators that he'd watched the episode of Maury Povich, where John Mark Byers had claimed he picked his wife, Melissa, up from work on the day of the murders. And this was basically Byers' alibi for like, when these three boys went missing. But then this Rick Murray guy was like, well, I talked to John Mark Byers about that day and like what he had seen. And he never mentioned picking Melissa up from work. And she would never give a straight answer as to whether he had or not. And his alibi, he doesn't have an alibi.

Him and Terry Hobbs don't have an alibi. OK, not one that can be verified. So John Mark Byers said he was with certain people. He said he was with this guy named Ryan Clark and he was searching and he was with the Garner's like a family or a couple. And they all said, like, I don't know. He said we didn't see him that he'd been at court that day. And that wasn't true at all. It was his son who was at court doing, you know, because he had to testify in like a DWI hit and run case. And John Mark Byers had dropped him off and then left and claimed that he went to go pick Melissa Byers up from work at that point. But if he didn't, what was he doing during that time, that crucial time when these three boys went missing? After the trials, after Jason and Jesse and Damien went to prison for these crimes, John Mark Byers and Melissa Byers had left West Memphis. And on their travels, they wrote a bunch of checks that they didn't have the money for along the way. And in September of 1994, Mark and Melissa were in jail under suspicion of being responsible for residential theft. They were accused of stealing more than $20,000 worth of antiques from one of their new neighbors.

They both pleaded not guilty and bounded out. But within weeks, two weeks, Mark Byers was arrested again. This time he was charged with the delinquency of a minor. And this charge stemmed from an incident the previous summer where a teenager had been seriously hurt during a knife fight that John Mark Byers had allegedly been a part of. This is interesting to me. So check this out. So the incident occurred in the town of Hardy, Arkansas, and the police chief there reported that Byers had been in the car with a teenage boy for some reason. Not a teenage boy that was related to him, just a local teenage boy. And they were driving by and another boy started like talking shit to them as they were driving by. So John Mark Byers stopped the car and he goaded the boy that he was with in the car to go and like fight this other boy. According to the teens, the other teens who witnessed this

fight, Byers stopped his car, got out and told his young passenger to take it over in the shade and settle it like a man. Byers told the police and admitted to the police that while this fight happened, he stood by his car with a 22 bolt action rifle pointed at the ground in order to ensure that the fight was fair. He also admitted that he told his young passenger to use a pocket knife he had in the car to fight with, and he showed him how to hold it. And when the boy wrapped his fist around the knife, Byers told him, that's the way we do it. What do you think about that? Isn't that interesting that he's with a young person and he like goads him into fighting with other young people and even like stands there with a gun to make sure the fight is fair.

I mean, my first reaction, I think, is probably similar to most of us. It's guys, guys got some problems, right? I mean, he's an asshole, clearly. I mean, the way he's conducted himself, the decisions he's making just on the surface, not good. Are you saying in comparison to what we know about the three victims? Yeah, like could he have done something similar with his stepson? So you're saying and that's I can see where you're going with it. So you're saying a situation where? Maybe two of the he goes out there two of the boys. He wants them to fight each other

Mm-hmm one gets the best of the other now He realizes it went too far and he takes out the other two maybe something like that or like you know christopher christopher was kind of like the outsider in the friend group you know but they were friends right i mean he wouldn't have friends but like look at look at jason baldwin damian eccles and jesse miss kelly jr they were like friends where they would hang out sometimes but even jason and damian were like jesse wasn't really our friend he was just like kind of slow and he was always around and you know we hung out with him but we weren't like close not like jason and damian were close stevie and michael moore

were best friends christopher had some you know anger issues he had some developmental issues he was known to kind of be a little bit left on the outside sometimes because other kids didn't want to deal with him. So maybe John Mark Byers is like, well, you go and make those kids play with you. And if they don't, you know, you kick the shit out of them or something like that. You know, that could have happened. It's just weird that an adult would force kids to fight and stand there with a gun to make sure that that the fight went down and then teach one of the kids to hold a knife properly and to the point where the other kid had to be hospitalized because of this knife fight yeah no it's terrible terrible uh on behalf

of the adult there to do that i do i'm not justifying any of it. It's wrong period but I do try to put myself in the perspective of How their culture did a little different there and again not saying I agree with it But up here Rhode Island if you had a parent holding a gun while these two kids were fighting. I mean, you're it's a bad thing We're down there. It's a little bit more socially acceptable not saying we should be accepting of it But either way take away the gun for a second, right? I think the bigger issue for me was the fact that he wants these two boys to fight fair, and yet he's given his boy a lesson on how to use a knife. It doesn't sound too fair to me. And standing there with a gun.

Yeah, and then the intimidation factor of if I do win this fight, what's the guy with the gun going to do? So yeah, there's multiple things there that definitely stack the deck in their favor. So overall, just not a good person. I don't know how else to see it, just not a good person and at minimum making some really poor decisions. But based on everything else that you've talked about, as far as his criminal activity, it just sounds like he's at minimum a bad guy. He's a bad guy. He's a criminal, period. And so this par for the course. If you look at him through that light. Yeah. He's not like the church going singing in church, like, Oh, good fire and brimstone. And God's going to come down and strike you. Cause you're bad. Like he's bad. He's bad. I definitely didn't have that impression of him either. After the first video, the fact that he's saying those things on camera, regardless

of what you've been through, it's not the smartest thing to do. So so yeah i definitely think he was an innocent person who just decided to go out there and film himself shooting pumpkins and talking to the three west memphis three like it were them yeah again poor choices but yeah like down there somebody who like doesn't really think things through i have a feeling he was a hero down there at that point though i have a feeling the community was rooting him on watching a video like that. Yeah, probably. You know what I mean? Like yeah, you go for it, John Mark Byers,

shoot those pumpkins. I think that, I mean, you could tell, right? In one of the videos, they're like cheering for him and the woman who's next to him, which I don't know if that was his wife or his new girlfriend at that point. I don't know if that was Melissa, but you could see she's kind of like looking up at him.

She looks scared at times. She's like, okay, that's enough. Yeah, it was a woman to his right. It was probably his wife, right? She says, that's enough. She's like, okay, that's enough. Yeah, it was a woman to his right. It was probably his wife, right? She says, that's enough. That's enough, Mark. Let's go. And she keeps like kind of trying to pull him away. She's significantly shorter and smaller than him. And the way she's looking up at him is kind of like in fear. Like, why is he still talking? You know, like, why is it? Shut up. Yeah, you're going too far.

You're going like, it's enough. You've said enough. So, yeah, bad guy. But by the end of October 1994, the Byers were hit with multiple restraining orders in connection with a feud that they had with one of their neighbors. These neighbors had called the police on the Byers eight times in the space of one month. According to John Mark Byers, his neighbors were mad that he had swatted their five-year-old son with a fly swatter, and the neighbors claimed that whatever Byers had done had been more than a light swatting. Whatever he had done had been enough to leave bruises on their child. And then, not long after that, a motorhome went up in flames after it mysteriously exploded, and this motorhome belonged to the woman whose house John Mark and Melissa Byers had been charged with robbing. So obviously they were suspects.

In January, Byers was found guilty in relation to his teenage knife fight incident. Author Mara Leavitt in her book writes, quote, By the end of 1994, the year of the murder trials, the Byers faced 12 misdemeanor charges in West Memphis for more than $600 worth of hot checks. Their neighbors had a restraining order against them. They faced charges for residential burglary. Mark faced charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He and Melissa were both suspects in the explosion of the motor home. And Melissa faced charges of aggravated assault stemming from an incident in which she held a gun on a carpet installer who'd refused to work in her house until the floors

were cleaned. End quote. I wonder why Christopher Byers had behavioral problems, honestly, coming from this. I wonder why he was a bad kid. Usually the case where you are the company you keep and the kids are going to look at their parents for guidance and if this is what they see is acceptable, sometimes they go down the same path. I mean, sometimes you see the adverse effect, right? Where the people go the opposite direction because they hated what they saw. But unfortunately, it can happen more than kid would admit. So then something happened, which would cast a lot more suspicion on John Mark Byers on March 29th, 1996. And that's why I don't think it was his wife next to him.

Like it wasn't Melissa Byers next to him in that video. It was his new like girlfriend or wife. But on March 29th, 1996, Melissa Byers was found unconscious in her home and she was pronounced dead at the hospital just over an hour later. The doctors didn't know how she had died. There were no marks of violence on her body. So the local sheriff called in the Arkansas State Police, who began investigating Melissa's death as a homicide. Investigators would find IV puncture marks on top of both of Melissa's feet, on the inside of her right wrist, and on her upper thoracic area. The police found out that Mark and Melissa had been having problems in their marriage, and he'd actually been dating a woman named Mandy, who was present when law enforcement searched his home at 9 p.m. that night. This is the same night that his wife died. And the police are coming over to question him about it.

And he said, this is a great time to call over my new girlfriend to be here when the police get here. It was John Mark Byers who had found his wife, but he had not been the one to call the ambulance. A neighbor had done that after Byers called him a little after 5 p.m. and said, listen, I can't wake Melissa up. Would you come over and check to see if she has a pulse? And the neighbor was like, why don't you call an ambulance? Have you called an ambulance? And John Mark Byers was like, no, no, just can you come over and check for me? So this neighbor said he went over. He found Melissa completely naked on her back on the far side of the bed with her eyes closed and her mouth wide open. She was totally limp. The same neighbor was the one who called the ambulance and he went to the hospital with Byers.

And once there, he claims that Byers told him he was afraid Melissa had overdosed on a street drug that could be purchased for $50 on the streets of Memphis. Byers said he knew it was an overdose, but he was afraid the police were going to accuse him of smothering his wife. Officially, the cause of Melissa's death was never settled on, and her autopsy and toxicology reports were sealed. But in December of 1997, the Arkansas Times looked deeper into it.

Like I said, the autopsy and toxicology had been sealed, but a reporter was able to get a copy of it from the state police and found out that Melissa did have puncture wounds along with multiple well-heeled scars. But there was no alcohol or opiates in her system, which is important because Melissa's drug of choice, allegedly since she's 12, is heroin. And her urine did test positive for marijuana and allotted, a drug that at this time was being sold on the streets of Memphis for $50 a tablet. But there was nothing in her system of enough volume to have caused her death. So nobody really knows what caused her death. These police were like super sketchy about it. A lot of people believe she was smothered by John Mark Byers because he'd found somebody else and he was just done

With her and there's no evidence to the contrary by the way fascinating when you put it all together I mean, it's definitely I don't want to sit here and say like oh my god. Yeah, he definitely It's it's not like we're talking about a person who couldn't have done it. Yeah, absolutely. There's a big pool I think the pool at the beginning of this episode just expanded exponentially when you start negating things that were originally thought to be true. Right. So now the pool of people who could be responsible for this expands not only to friends and family, but all people who are not cult members, but also random people as well, where it could have been something where could have been some drunk guys in the park, in the wooded area who said, Hey, y'all going to fight right now. We're going to watch. And then while they're fighting, one of them gets really hurt and they do the same thing. They kill the other two because now they feel responsible for it. I mean, that's

not very likely, but it's absolutely a potential scenario. So the pool of people that this expanded to is as vast. But having someone so close to these boys with a past like this and then also a history after their deaths of still doing things like this. Would I rule this person out? Of course not. But like, it's crazy because we talked about, you know, the criminal history or like the past of Damien and Jesse and Jason. Nothing like this in their past, right? They were set on a cult member. Well, listen, John Mark Byers will go to prison for a little bit.

He did become part of a white supremacist cult for a bit. So, got yourself a cult member. Got yourself a cult member there. Yeah, I mean, they knew, they had an idea of who they were looking for and he looked a lot like Damien Echols. Damien. I mean, that's... And not like good old boy John Mark Byers.

Yeah, that's it. And so, not to sound like a broken record here, they knew who did it before they had any evidence to support it. So the case was built around Damien Echols and his counterparts. That's who the case was based on. They knew who did it. Quote, unquote, yeah. They knew who did it.

They had their suspicions and they were going to find the evidence that supported that. And if it didn't, they would skew it to support it. Right. We talk about the interrogation tactics and things like that. But people like John Mark Bars and I'm sure if we had access to the records of everybody in that area, that vicinity during that time who had, you know, checkered pasts like this, it'd be a plethora of people that we could put on the board and say, OK, that's right. There's there's 30, 40 people here that could potentially be good for this that don't have alibis for that day. I'm sure John Mark Byers would be on a very long list, but he wouldn't be off that list. That's for damn sure. Now, with that past be at the top of it, you have to do it. You have you can't help it because they did look into the backgrounds of like almost everybody in West. And now you think they do a good job?

No, but I know that they just conveniently left him off the list. Isn't that suspicious to you? I'm not disputing that. But when you say, oh, West Memphis police looked into the people in the area, that means shit to me based on the record that you've laid out to me. I'm not going to let you make John Mark Byers seem just like an average Arkansas resident. No, he's a suspect. He's for sure a person of interest at minimum.

He's definitely a guy who has a past and seems capable of doing some shitty things. And then you think about his behavior with Christopher Byers in the past. I mean, yeah, absolutely. He feels like a guy who would throw a whiskey bottle over an overpass. Well, how would Jesse Mis Ms. Kelly know that though? I don't know. Maybe they both did. It just happened to be the same bottle, same spot. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot there, but I just think overall the case was doomed from the beginning because instead of doing it like

you would do, which is you have this big pool of people, you start to collect evidence, you start, you read the reports, the pathologists, what they have to say, and you start to narrow down the pool of people at that point where they had their person and they expanded it out to fit the narrative of whatever information they gathered. So that is the opposite of what you should do, which is why the person who did it may have been right under their nose and they never would have known it because they had so much tunnel vision on the West Memphis Three. Well, let's take a quick break and then I have one more funny story to tell about John Mark Byers. I can't wait. I can't wait.

Before we move on to Terry Hobbs. Great. We'll be right back. We're back. So this story is hilarious. In April of 1999, John Mark Byers accidentally called an Arkansas state police trooper and told him to come over because he had some good drugs to sell him. He called the wrong number and he just happened to get a state trooper. And the state trooper was like, what? And the guy that the buddy, like the state trooper's buddy who was with him, he's like, oh, this is somebody, you know, messing with you. And the state trooper was like, what? And the guy that the buddy, like the state trooper's buddy who was with him, he's like, oh, this is somebody, you know, messing with you. And the state trooper was like, no, man, I got to see where this goes. So he's like, what kind of drugs, you know? And John Mark Byers was like, weed, man, you know, whatever you want. Like, I got it. Like, it's really good. You got

to come over now. So the guy's like, okay, hold on. He's like, actually, I can't come right now because I'm working. But like, what should I do? And John Mark Byers was like, send Jeff. And so the trooper like pretended to know who Jeff was. And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll send Jeff. And he's like, where's Jeff going again? I forgot. And John Mark Byers gave him directions to his house. And then the trooper called in somebody from the narcotics team, like an undercover person, and sent that person to Byers' house. I mean, listen, I told you before, if criminals were smart, we wouldn't catch them.

They'd make you drop easy. He said, come over, I got some good drugs for you to a state trooper. I can't take it. It is perfect. So then, obviously, Byers gets arrested because he was charged with selling Xanax to this narcotics officer, and the narcotics officer said something like yo you should have seen the look on his face when I told him who I really was and I was like I am NOT Jeff whoever Jeff is we don't know but I'm not Jeff anyways hilarious he was

sentenced to five years in prison but for some reason he was able to avoid that sentence once again don't understand Literally, he called a state trooper and said, come over and buy my drugs. And he still avoided that sentence. He was sentenced to, I think, five weeks for past burglary charges. He kind of made a deal. He was like, how about this, guys?

Instead of doing five years for drug charges, how about I do five weeks for burglary charges? And the police were like, that sounds completely reasonable, John Mark Byers. Absolutely, for all your service that you've done for us as a drug informant, that sounds amazingly fair. So in prison, like I said, he started running with some white supremacist gang, this, this and that. I mean, I could talk about this dude forever, sketchy bad dude. But in 2020, he was killed in a car accident. So John Mark Byers is no longer alive. And if he was

responsible for what happened to these three kids, we will never know because he took it with him to his grave. Now I know why you're going so hard on him. Oh, I would go hard on him regardless. You know this. This is true. This is all on the record. I'm not saying anything that he doesn't know about himself. R.I.P. John Mark Byers. I know I am. Listen, I think that he was definitely a bad guy. I couldn't tell you how certain I am that he was involved with what happened to these boys. Like, I just I don't think he was. I don't think he was. There's like a small, like, I think he was involved. Like the chance of him being involved is more than the West Memphis three being involved. But I will say like, he was an incredibly entertaining figure and i will miss him for that r.i.p john mark by and that's what we can all take from it because there's a real possibility that he had nothing to do with it very poor decisions but he lost his stepson broken over it i'm sure if they don't know i don't think he i don't think it's broken i mean you can't say that

you can't say that and dude he spent every second he could trying to get attention for himself and recorded an album saying it was for christopher byers and just wanted everybody to hear him sing like he definitely was not beat up about it i mean people cope different ways i mean i would be inconsolable i wouldn't be out there i wouldn't be doing that i don't think you would either but different people cope with i've seen it i've seen all spectrum the whole spectrum of how but you would also see that like some people are just unfeeling assholes and maybe he didn't he wasn't sad about it at all like you understand that's a possibility right it is it is it's a possibility but i think the reality is he could be someone who just dealt with things in a way that we wouldn't have dealt with it and was mourning in his own way because there's there's two ends right he's either the murderer or he's a or i

guess it could be in the middle where he's just not a not likable guy. Or he could be someone where it was struggling to find a way to cope with what had happened to his son. And this was his way. Not what we might do, but there are other ways. There are other possibilities there. He's, I know he's at the top of your suspect list, Stephanie. I mean. Remind me to never commit a crime in your city.

That would be great. I wish, I hope you do not. I won't. Comm commit a crime in your city that would be great i wish i hope you do not commit a crime in my city i won't because you will you will think you you have to admit you are the type of person though that once you think you know who it is that person's fucking doomed yeah i mean i i will admit that because you know what like i don't just jump on the first thing i think i put a lot of thought into it so once i put a lot of thought and weighed like the options yeah and i already said like i don't think it was him necessarily so like you could have fooled me with this narrative that we just talked about he's a shitty person like a bad person man like a murderer or bad person who hurt a ton of people

to me what's the difference i mean okay i'm pretty sure he murdered his wife if that makes you feel better okay doesn't make me feel better but okay i don't know how i would feel better about that i'm just saying like you think i'm just you know going after him because he's got a criminal history no like i think he's a bad dude i think he's definitely made some poor life got away with a lot of shit that he shouldn't have and it and it doesn't really make sense so like does it does it make you wonder if maybe the police look the other way about him being a suspect in in these killings i think they looked the other way and a lot of people anybody who wasn't jason ballwin jesse miss kelly damien eckles they looked the other way yeah exactly yeah i agree so let's

talk about terry hobbs now who is at the top of my suspect list. Oh, just so you know. Oh, he is. Yeah. So where is it like 1A, 1B? I mean, honestly, I kind of like I go back and forth. Okay. All right. Let's hear it. Let's hear the whole, let's hear it. Terry Hobbs, not as entertaining as John Mark Byers. So it puts him at the top.

Okay. On my list. So Terry Hobbs was born in Northern Arkansas in 1958. His father was in the military. His father was a trained butcher, and Terry also studied and learned how to be a butcher. Later, he would use those skills working side by side with his father in the slaughterhouse. Terry's upbringing was very strict. He was the son of a minister of a fundamentalist church. His father was not only in the military and a trained butcher, but also the minister of a fundamentalist church. His father was not only in the military and a trained butcher, but also the minister of a fundamentalist church. And Terry had a really like, I don't know, like strict childhood.

He wasn't allowed to play sports. He wasn't allowed to watch television. And he would later claim he'd witnessed his father cast evil spirits out of people. Terry had one son with his first wife, Angela, before marrying Pamela Hicks Branch in 1986. The next year, Terry and Pam, along with her son Stevie, who was just two years old, moved to West Memphis. Terry began working as a salesman for the Memphis Ice Cream Company.

There were issues in the marriage of Terry and Pam before the murder of Stevie, and they'd spent some time apart, kind of on again, off again. Two weeks after Stevie died, Terry left Pam and their younger daughter. And he stayed for a time in Hardy, Arkansas, 120 miles away. Which is funny because that's the same place that John Mark Byers made those teenagers knife fight. But his absence at that time meant that he was not interviewed by the police at the time of the murders. For some reason, Pam's family always blamed Terry Hobbs for what had happened to Stevie. Pam's brother, Jackie Hicks Jr.,

regularly accused Terry of killing Stevie, and in November of 1994, Terry hit Pam during an argument, causing Pam to call her brother over. So Jackie Hicks comes over, an argument ensued, and Terry shot Jackie in the stomach. The man luckily survived for another 10 years, but he later died when he had to undergo follow-up surgery from the gunshot wound. And during that surgery, a blood clot was released, made it to his heart, and it stopped

his heart. And understandably, Pam's family also blamed Terry for Jackie's death. Now, in 2003, Terry was arrested for drug possession, and he was twice reported for sexual abuse towards his daughter, Amanda. And in 2005, Pam got a restraining order against him. She would divorce him and have his name removed from Stevie's tombstone. Pam Hobbs is wracked with doubt as new revelations allegedly surface linking her ex-husband, Terry Hobbs, to the crime continued to surface. If you know this case, and a lot of you do over the years, Pam Hobbs' life has been a painful roller coaster of emotions played out in public. But the usually outspoken Hobbs does find it hard to put into words her feelings toward the man who may have betrayed her in the worst way possible.

He told me back in the beginning that... Pam Hobbs tries to stay busy, which helps her avoid mentally agonizing over whether the man she once loved as a husband could have been capable of committing the unspeakable crime that's torn her world asunder for 19 years. I'm not letting that thought dwell with me. However, I'm scared. I'm fearful. Sometimes guilt-strucking that I might have overlooked something. I really can't explain my emotions with that.

I'm just numb to the feeling right now and praying that it's not true. Yet with the emergence of three potential new witnesses allegedly implicating Hobbs' ex-husband Terry as the perpetrator in the brutal 1993 killings of the three West Memphis boys, including his own stepson Stevie Branch, Pam Hobbs has been forced to again relive the tumultuous time. That includes looking back on her often stormy relationship with her former husband and what she now sees as his strange behavior before and after her son's heinous murder. A strained marriage she reflects often found Hobbs and her at odds over his treatment of their children. Terry, even in the beginning of our marriage, it was sort of like a little bit of a jealousy thing

that I had to pay more attention to my son than I did him. He would, you know, take a belt, make them hold their hands in the air and would whoop them, and it would cause him and I to argue. And he would tell me not to tell him how to discipline them children. Hobbs alleges the relationship grew even more distant after the tragedy. As her despondency over Stevie's death grew deeper, Hobbs says Terry began to develop a cavalier attitude even before the autopsy results were divulged. He was telling me that I had to let go and go on with my life. And me telling him that I was as much in that ditch as my baby was

and not to tell me how to feel. I fought with him a lot. I was very angry at him, and I still feel anger towards him for not coming and letting me know that my son was missing. Now firmly convinced of the innocence of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Miskelley, and with new revelations in the case arising, Hobbs declares it's imperative for the investigation into the murders be reopened by prosecutors. I am not going to rest and I'm not going to

stop screaming until Arkansas corrects what they messed up. To them, it might be a murder case or something, but this is my life. It's real. It happened. And I'm not going to shut up until they really take this seriously. Listening to that, it's always compelling when you have someone who's so close to the situation, who obviously has been very involved in the information that's been coming out about her son, right? So when she is coming to the conclusion that her husband, or I guess I'd say the stepfather of Stevie branch may have had something to do with this. I do think that's something that's compelling. And I do think it's something you have to take seriously

because you would hope based on who she's speaking about some, a man she loved that she would also be very sure of what she's saying before publicly saying it. So yeah, there's definitely some things there. And I don't look deep into this because like I've said before, people process stress a different, different ways. But I will say on the surface, watching those videos of Terry Hobbs at court, it looks like someone who just stole a cookie and doesn't want anyone to know about it. You know, like it does look like that, but that again could be absolutely nothing. If you're watching on audio, he did listening on audio. I should say he did look like he just stolen something and got away with it. So could be nothing.

But yeah, no, it's interesting to have her come out and say this. Okay. So let's talk about why Terry Hobbs looks guilty, right? So, you know, in 2007, his hair or one that was consistent with like the DNA of his hair was found in the bindings of Michael Moore. And then like the floodgates opened right now, all of a sudden everyone's turning on him. This was the first time he was questioned by the police about these murders, by the way, 2007. That's a problem. The father, stepfather of one of the victims, and he's not questioned

at all because he leaves town. And then when he comes back, they just don't question him. 2007 is the first time he's questioned. So he was questioned about his timeline of that night. And two events that happened that night were undisputed. Basically, 5 p.m., we know that Terry Hobbs dropped Pam Hicks off at her job at the Catfish restaurant, right? Catfish Island. And at 9 p.m., he came back to pick her up. And that was when he called the police to report that Stevie had not come home. Now, in his police and subsequent interviews, Terry Hobbs gave several versions, some that didn't make any sense of what happened between 5 and 9 p.m., which would be that alibi time he'd uncovered. So Terry stated that after briefly searching his neighborhood with his daughter, Amanda, he encountered Dana Moore and

followed her to her house. There he met up with Mark Byers in front of Byers' house before 6 p.m., and this was when they knew all three of the children were together. The time presented for this meeting was far from possible. When Terry Hobbs actually met up with Dana Moore and John Mark Byers and the rest of these parents, it wasn't until later after all of these police reports had been filed. So about 8.30 p.m., definitely not earlier. So he was giving John Mark Byers and Dana Moore as people who were his alibi and they were not his alibi because they had not been with him at that time. And John Mark Byers actually filed an affidavit saying that he did not see Terry Hobbs during this time period, which isn't saying much if John Mark Byers is also a suspect, right? Which we kind of think he might be. Terry Hobbs also talked about visiting the

Robin Hood Woods between 6 and 6.30 p.m. with his friend David Jacoby. In one interview, he described 20 to 40 people out there searching on three and four wheelers, motorcycles, and bicycles. In another interview, he says there was probably a 100 people looking before dark. This account never happened. It's not true. The three victims were last seen at 6 p.m. and not reported missing until after 8 p.m. There was no immediate massive turnout for a search. And if there were so many witnesses, that it would have made it impossible for Hobbs to have killed the children. It would have made it impossible for anybody to kill the children if there was like hundreds of people out in the woods before dark, as he claimed. Furthermore, David Jacoby, Terry Hobbs' friend, has declared an

affidavit that he was not in the woods with Terry Hobbs at this time and that his searching with Hobbs consisted of briefly driving around, which we talked about a little bit in episode one of this series. David Jacoby says he never went into the woods with Terry Hobbs. So all of these alibi witnesses that Terry Hobbs gave, they did not come through. So that leaves him with no alibi between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. So then, remember, I said all of these people were coming out to support the West Memphis Three, Johnny Depp and Metallica. And the Dixie Chicks were also a part of that. They're not called the Dixie Chicks anymore. They're just called the Chicks.

But it's going to be really hard for me to remember that because I grew up with them being the Dixie Chicks. So the Chicks, the country singers, they also kind of got in on that. And there was like a big sort of, I don't know, rally in Little Rock. And during that rally, Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Chicks, she basically came out and she was like, we need to support the West Memphis Three. There's no physical evidence that ties them to this. However, there has been a hair found that is consistent with the stepfather of one of these boys. So why are these kids still being looked at when there's no evidence and there is evidence and this person's not even being

looked at? And Terry Hobbs was pissed, okay? He claimed that he'd been defamed by her and publicly accused of murder. So he filed a lawsuit against Natalie Maines, who at the time her name was Natalie Maines Pazdar. I think it was her married name, but that's what if you're looking for the court documents, which they are online, you can find them. It's Pazdar versus Hobbs. And first of all, he didn't win this lawsuit because she had not defamed him. She didn't accuse him of murder. And not only that, she countersued. And her countersuing meant that Terry Hobbs was now required to defend his behavior, his criminal record, and his actions on the night that the children went missing. So he actually had to be re-interviewed by the police. And once again, he had no firm alibi that could be verified.

And he basically just made a ton of statements that went in circles. Close associates and several members of Pamela Hobbs' family have given sworn depositions and claimed that they saw Terry do things that were very suspicious in the days before and after the murders. Jo Lynn McCowie, who is Stevie's aunt on his mother's side, she stated that Terry Hobbs repeatedly sexually molested his daughter, Amanda. She also claimed that Terry used cocaine, crystal meth, and marijuana. And this is something that I find to be very damning if it's true. She said she was at the Hobbs house on May 6, 1993, and she saw Terry washing clothes, bed linens, and curtains at an odd hour.

He wasn't just washing the dirty laundry, but he was also taking clothes out of the dresser drawers and washing those too. And she said this was very odd because Terry Hobbs didn't do laundry. He was kind of one of those like alpha males, like that's women's work. I'm not cooking. I'm not doing laundry. So why was he all of a sudden washing sheets and Stevie's clothes? She said she also found this pocket knife. This was Stevie Branch's prized pocket knife. He always had it with him. It was always on his person at all times in his pocket and with him. And she found this knife amongst Terry Hobbs' belongings. And she told this to Pam, who's Stevie's mother, and Pam also said she was surprised that the knife hadn't been on Stevie's body when he'd

been murdered because he always had it with him. Jolynn McCowie said that Terry Hobbs had told her that his experience as a butcher had given him the skill to make the cut on Christopher Byer's genitals. She stated she discovered Terry had a large cache of knives. And in response, Terry Hobbs admitted to the drug use and gave contradictory stories about Stevie's knife and also denied washing any items on May 6th. So about the knife, Terry said, like, I don't know if he had a pocket knife. Maybe he did have a pocket knife. But then he also claimed in another police interview that Stevie did have a pocket knife and he had he had it in his possession and stevie didn't have it because he had taken it away

from stevie because stevie was using it irresponsibly and so he felt he had to like take it and hide it from stevie even though pam hobbs was like i never heard of this i didn't know that he would have taken it stevie always had it on him and last i knew stevie still did have it on him and he hadn't done anything like usually if stevie did something wrong terry wouldn't let me hear the end of it he'd be like your son did this your son did that but to the point where he felt he had to take this knife away from stevie because he did something wrong and he just failed to mention it to me it doesn't make any sense terry also denied the molestation charges on about Amanda, but he was also charged or alleged to have committed sexual molestation of his first son with his first wife. So Judy

Sadler, Stevie's aunt, stated that Stevie told her Terry Hobbs locked Stevie in the closet and beat him. She said that he forced Stevie and his sister Amanda to watch pornography and he threatened to kill members of Pam's family, the Hicks family, if Stevie told anybody. She also said that Terry forced Stevie to sexually molest his sister and he made Stevie watch him masturbate. Now, Terry Hobbs denies these accusations. And once again, I will say they do sound a little off, especially considering that so many people at that time thought that these three boys had been sexually molested. And it kind of almost seems like a witch hunt again, like the whole Satanism thing. Like, oh, yeah, you think it was a Satanist?

Well, I saw Damien doing satanic things. It's kind of on that same vein. Well, I heard that Terry did like sexual things with kids. So therefore, it must be connected. It kind of feels like that. And I think that they really just did hate him, so maybe some of this stuff isn't true. Sheila Hicks, Stevie's aunt, stated that Terry Hobbs whipped Stevie Branch leaving Welts. She stated he forced Stevie to play dead cockroach, lying on his back with his arms and legs raised.

When his limbs grew tired and he tried to lower them, Terry would whoop him. She also stated that Stevie talked about fights that Terry and Pam had, and Stevie saw Terry strangling Pam. Finally, she stated in 1997 that she saw Terry Hobbs simulating sex with his then nine-year-old daughter, Amanda. These things I do believe because this dead cockroach game that Terry would play with Stevie was talked about by other people. Like, Pam Hobbs said that Terry would do that, and it does kind of sound like something stupid that Terry would play with Stevie was talked about by other people. Like Pam Hobbs said that Terry would do that. And it does kind of sound like something stupid that Terry would do. Maria Hicks, who was Stevie's grandmother, claimed that Terry Hobbs was physically and sexually abusive,

used drugs and was an alcoholic. Once again, Terry Hobbs has admitted to having used these drugs and to being an alcoholic. And she said that when Amanda Hobbs was young, she confided in her that Terry Hobbs stuck his finger in her butt. Terry Hobbs denied all of this. Amanda Hobbs, Terry's daughter, gave a devastating plea regarding her father's abuse. Terry denied the abuse and said he couldn't remember if he ever discussed this subject with her. So we have a bunch of people saying that Terry sexually abused Amanda and Amanda also supporting this. Could this be planted in her head by these

adults? We've seen it happen in a lot of cases. Once again, this just isn't strong enough to say that it happened without a doubt. But Sharon Nelson, Terry Hobbs' girlfriend, said that Hobbs claimed he found the bodies before the police, but he left them there undiscovered. Once again, Terry Hobbs denies this. David Jacoby, Hobbs' friend, said that he only searched with Terry Hobbs briefly before dark, and he also stated that when Terry Hobbs came to his house, he saw the three victims in the street behind him. Hobbs denied ever having seen the victims that evening and described repeated trips searching with Jacoby. But another neighbor of Terry Hobbs, Mildred French,

she said during the 1980s she was sexually attacked by Terry Hobbs. She also stated that he claimed to have killed her cat and charges were actually filed. Without actually denying the attack, Terry dismissed this as being ancient history and he admitted to being sentenced to counseling at the time and he denied saying he killed her cat. So it does look like Terry Hobbs probably sexually assaulted Mildred French in the 80s. So, I mean, he didn't deny it. And this isn't a child at this point. It's a grown woman who's making these allegations.

Okay, so, yeah. It's kind of along these same lines. He has no alibi. He seemed to really not like Stevie. He gave several different versions of what he was doing. Pam Hobbs cannot get past this thing that her son was missing and Terry Hobbs went to pick her up from work that night. And instead of telling her that Stevie was missing, he just kind of walked by and went to the payphone and called the police and reported Stevie missing. And he claimed that he was doing all of

the searching for Stevie, but nobody really saw him searching and nobody really talked to him about these boys being missing until 830 p.m. when he met up with the other parents. He has no alibi for that time. John Mark Byers has no alibi for that time. And once again, we could talk about all the things that make Terry Hobbs and John Mark Byers suspicious for hours. You know, we could keep going. They've done enough that it just they are both bad people. They're not good

guys. Right. They both don't have alibis. They've both done things in their past and in the future after the murders that would say, hey, maybe these two guys are capable of killing these kids in the way that we sort of touched on in the beginning of the episode where they're mad at one of them. They go after them. The other two see what happens. And then they've got to, you know, basically take out the witnesses. But at I said earlier in this episode, I guarantee you if I gave you the time and if I took the time, we could probably develop profiles on 10, 15, 20, maybe 50 other people that have similar backgrounds

who have done things like this in their past that could be good for this. I think with how vague these murders are as far as what we have, the specificity of them not having anything to really go off of other than that these boys were drowned. They were tied up, they were thrown in the water. And there's really nothing that you can take from that and say, okay, this is what we can compare about their death to this particular person, because it was really,

doesn't appear to be a weapon that was used. So it really, it really keeps it open to many potential suspects that could be involved with this. I guess my final thoughts on this would be based on the, we're at 16, 20, 20 hours of recorded time. That's made it to you guys. My opinion is that I do not believe that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, or Jesse Miss Kelly killed these three boys. I know there are people out there, and it's not just one or two people that believe they're guilty. I don't think those people, if they're being objective, would say that there was enough in this case to convict them, never mind even arrest them.

Okay? I don't think they have the best alibis. I get that. Is there a world where if you could bring me back there, you could show me how they did it? Sure. But as I just said, you could do that with hundreds of other people in that community that could be responsible for this. And so I do think overall, you have a situation based on what we know that was a miscarriage of justice. These guys shouldn't have been arrested.

They shouldn't have had to go through this. And if they're responsible, well, then they'll have to answer that in the next life, if that's what they believe in. But there's not just not enough here. There's just not enough here to say that. And I get where some of you are coming from, where you say, oh, the, you know, Jesse, Miss Kelly was told 19 times and still admitted to it. For every point you make, I can find, not Stephanie, I can find 10 other people

to make a counterpoint to it. This is just one of those cases. But I do think the way we ended this episode is kind of the theme you should take from it, which is in that community, both very close to the victims and And if we had expanded our search, if West Memphis police had expanded their search, there would have been a bunch of Terry Hobbs that they would have found. And maybe at the time, if they had done that part of it, they would have found individuals who also didn't have alibis for that day, who they could have investigated. And maybe, just maybe, they could have investigated and maybe just maybe they would have figured out definitively what happened to these three boys but overall stevie christopher

michael i feel bad for them their families this was this is what it's really about it's about them um and yeah the fact that they don't have justice their family doesn't have justice that's that's the real tragedy here and i hope we did justice by this case i know it's a polarizing case and i know a lot of people have opinions on it hard man to do it honestly there's so much information like and i hate having to choose what to talk about you know i know i mean and you even there were certain things like uh mr bojangles we didn't you know we didn't talk about that too too much but i mean that's someone where you have a guy that day going into an establishment covered in blood,

although there wasn't a lot of blood at the crime scene. So I would probably, and it wasn't, it doesn't appear to be a lot of injury. So you could probably rule him out too. Right. I mean, that's so there's so many things we could go over, but I think that's, that's my big takeaway from this is that there's a lot of potential suspects in this case. It shouldn't have been narrowed down to the West Memphis Three as fast as it was. Or at all. And that only was a misjustice to them, but also to the people who, you know, to the parents, because they narrowed down their pool so quickly that they never had time to really look at the

outside people who could have done this as well including truck drivers and Neighbors and anybody who could have seen them walking into the woods It could have been someone who lived on that street who saw three boys Going into the woods by themselves and followed them in we'll never know. Yeah, I mean it's less likely than then I think like I said the the scenario we outlined at the beginning of this episode, I really think that It's it's pretty likely likely that's what happened. Likely what happened? That there was some sort of discipline happening.

It went too far. Okay, you think discipline. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I think if that's what you're going with, this was someone who knew them. There was some discipline being displayed in front of the other two boys. It went too far,

and that's why the other two boys were killed. I've always felt it was someone who knew them. Always. My gut tells me, my gut tells me that, and either of our opinions could be right. There's no, nothing more. I think it's close, but I think it might've been something where it seems like that area might've had some other people hanging out in there, drinking beer, doing whatever. And maybe there's guys in there

See these boys Maybe some maybe the guys say something to the boys Christopher byer says something back like screw you whatever, you know being you know being a little kid They get roughed up christopher gets roughed up. It goes too far. He gets hurt Now these this guy and his buddies are looking at each other like holy shit. I just killed this kid We're dumping the other two as well. Yeah. And like I said, if we had two or three more parts to talk about this, we would talk about other other like kind of youngsters, not youngsters, like teenagers, young adults in the area like LG Hollingsworth, who people believe might have been involved. Buddy Lucas, like there's so like there's so many other suspects to talk about those ones we know of

Right. Yeah, what do you know of and there's not even really any evidence that ties anybody Conclusively to this even if we talked about it for hours. I agree. I agree look at Delphi, right? I mean, there's so many suspects in that case turns Turns out to be someone who nobody or allegedly, allegedly who nobody had on their radar, zero people had on their radar. And it wouldn't be surprising if that was the case here. We just, you know, overall, I appreciate you guys sticking with us for the, for the eight parts. Some of you really love it. We talked about it. Some of you guys really love it. Some of you were ready to move on to a new case. And so we're going to do that next week. I'll give you the floor, Stephanie. You did all the, you brought us through this whole thing.

I'm exhausted now. So we are going to, I really want to know, obviously we, we, we want to know, what do you think about this out of John Mark Byers and Terry Hobbs? Who's more likely? Do you think that it was somebody that these kids knew and then they, it was kind of just like this murder that happened out of accidental, you know, abuse or, you know, discipline or just an angry adult who felt he wasn't being listened to or obeyed and kind of outraged? Or do you think it could have been, you know, some young teens or young adults in the

woods who kind of just went too far with these younger kids? What do you guys think? What's your theories after listening to all of this? Let us know in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube, send us an email or talk to us on social media if you're listening in audio. And Derek's going to tell you where you can find us on social media. Yeah. Crime Weekly pod on both. See how easy that was? That's really that simple. Twitter and Instagram. Definitely follow us over there.

We're posted on there. And that's the easiest way to have the conversation because not only are you sharing your thoughts, but people can respond to you. It's usually pretty amicable. So it'll be good. We appreciate you guys joining us this week. We start a new case next week. Stay safe out there. We will see you joining us this week. We start a new case next week. Stay safe out there.

We will see you very soon. Bye.