John Mark Byers

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yankee-in-france Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:21 am
John Mark Byers Coming Soon		YIF Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 6598 Location: France



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:36 pm
JMB on Leeza Gibbons (when he still believed wm3 guilty) http://members.tripod.com/~VanessaWest/byersint.html Leeza Gibbons: This is one of the most despicable crimes I have ever heard of. I mean, heartbreakingly sad, brutal. As you well know, the guests on this show did not want to appear with you. Do you feel the same way about them? John Mark Byers: Yes, in a way I do because it’s gonna be a real one-sided story. there’s quite a few of them, and I’m the only one standing up for the victims. I am not the villain. LG: Well there are those who feel (and I know this is not news to you) that those three teenage boys who have charged with this crime and who are incarcerated right now are innocent. That they were convicted with no material evidence and that you perhaps are the real killer. JMB: Leeza, let’s talk about material evidence, that’s a very good subject. There was a lot of material evidence: there were hair fibers (sic), there were fibers, and hair that was found and matched on (sic) the homes of the three. There was blue candle wax found on the Boy Scout shirt that Michael Moore wore, and they found a broken [unintelligible] in Damien Echols’ trailer. I think it was by Anton Levey and it had a blue candle sitting there and dripping on the book. Those two candle waxes (sic) matched exactly. LG: That is being disputed. JMB: Well, that’s what was told into the police record, that I believe candle wax was there. LG: Why do you think three teenage boys would abduct these little children and torture them? For what reason? What would be the motivation for that kind of a crime? JMB: The motivation was known a year before it happened. After the court case was over and the documents were released, there was a reporter by the name of Bartholomew Sullivan who writes for the Commercial Appeal. And of course he does like a reporter and starts digging through, and it was found where Damien had been arrested about a year before on some type of charge. And he got to talking to the police, this is on police records and everything, and he told them that there was a cult there because they were asking him about dead animals they had found burnt and sacrificed with candles and things around different places outside the community. He said that he was the leader of a cult group there in West Memphis, and they were tired of animal sacrifices and were going to start to have human sacrifices. LG: He claims he never said that! JMB: Well it’s in the police records. So the police are lying or he is. LG: The criminal profiler who was brought on to evaluate the evidence in this case said there is absolutely nothing to indicate this was a satanic ritual. He goes on to say, and I know you’re familiar with this document, “it is the opinion of this examiner that the primary reason for these killings was punitive, the victims were being punished for some real or perceived wrong.” JMB: I totally disagree with that. It’s his opinion and he’s entitled to it. LG: He’s an expert in the area. JMB: Expert to me, is a spurt to a drip of water. [unintelligible] So he can take his expert opinion and go with it. I’m the one who lost a child, not him. That’s like him trying tell me how to raise my son when he has no children. LG: It must infuriate you then as you sit here as an innocent, grieving father; it must infuriate you that fingers are pointed at you and that someone thinks that you did this. JMB: There are what I classify morons, fools and idiots and that goes across the world wide! Some of them will go to believe anything but you cannot sit there ad deny that you do not know that there are cults and satanic groups across the country. Anton Levay, a very famous man before he passed away, had written many articles on black magic, witchcraft. And Damien’s medical records that his defense lawyer (sic) entered where he had been seeing his psychiatrist and everything. He wrote in there that like he was a wolf and all the people on the face of the earth were his sheeps (sic) and he was going to kill as many of them as he could. Those were his words. LG: What about some of the words that have been attributed to you? Things such as reports that came back from the school that you and your wife had said to the teachers that you’ve been having problems and if you continued to have problems with him, you’re going to have to get rid of him. JMB: "Get rid of him" was never said. Here’s what we did for our son; he was prematurely born, 25 weeks early, -- SIX MONTHS + ONE WEEK-- he fought hard to live and he was premature. He was also diagnosed, we didn’t know ’til he was about four, that he had A.D.D and was hyperactive and he was dyslexic. LG: Did you never say you wanted to get rid of your son? JMB: Ahhh! Would you get rid of your children? LG: Well of course not! JMB: Well of course not. LG: But you never said that? JMB: Never in my life have I ever said I wanted to get rid of my son. He was my best friend, he would come home from school and work with me in my shop, and I’d let him make jewelry with me. We went hunting together, fishing together, I was a Boy Scout ranger (sic) with him and pee wee baseball with him. Uh, the Boys Club footballs. I did everything with him! LG: The day that the boys disappeared, the police reports indicate that you volunteered information about something that had gone on between you and Christopher that day. That he was skateboarding in the middle of the road, you were worried about his safety, and you punished him. You gave him a whipping. JMB: Yes. A whipping accounted to a belt very similar to the one I have on, just a little woven belt, and it was kept there on the door. The children were never beat (sic) or abused. But my stepson, or my son, had on Levi blue jeans and I gave him two swats across the back end, similar to a rolled up paper that you’d pop a puppy dog with. LG: Why did you tell the police about the whipping? JMB: I was telling them the truth. They asked me what all had gone on since you found him, what happened when you came in the house, what happened when (sic) the last time you saw him, what was he doing. And I had nothing to hide, so why not tell them? LG: Much has been made of a knife that you gave to a camera crew, was that a hunting knife? JMB: Oh no, Ma’am, it was a little utility knife bought from Snap-on Tools to cute cable and tape and the camera man had just a little old broken-off piece of a knife that wasn’t worth anything. And they were having Thanksgiving dinner at our house and I had gotten it for Christmas from my wife three years earlier, she thought I would like it because I did hunt a lot, and fish. She thought it would be good for scaling fish basically because of the little narrow serrated edge like on a steak knife. But I didn’t like it, it was kept put up in the living room for quite a while and then was in the bedroom. The police came through the house and the other investigators came through the house two or three times and saw it, looked at it, picked it up and put it right back down. LG: Was this the type of knife that was used in the crime against the boys? JMB: Oh no it certainly wasn’t! The type of knife that they found was like one of the big Rambo survival knives with the great big edges ad gashes on the back side. Let me just ask America to think of this one question: if you’re involved in such a heinous crime and you have the murder weapon, now let’s think logically here people, would you take that knife home and keep it? That and have it cleaned up until there was nothing but a little trace so small that they could only get blood type through DNA (sic). Now would keep that around in your house and give it to a man on the movie crew who’s going to be around everybody in there, or would you take that big Rambo survival knife, and there Jason Baldwin lived at the trailer park with a big lake behind it, and throw that knife as far as you could out in that lake? They found it a few months later, it’s not rusty, it hadn’t been there long at all. Now which would you do? LG: My understanding is that it wasn’t a big knife that was used, that it was a smaller knife. JMB: That’s incorrect. I can tell you how that’s incorrect, the prosecuting attorneys Brent Davis and John Fogelman, when they had started the closing argument to the jury, John Fogelman brought two grapefruits and he showed a picture of one of the boys that was cut across the stomach and abdomen (sic) area. Where the knife had gone in and just kind of gadged (sic) one of them open. Well, when you put the knife down on the picture print and when they applied it to the body, the gap between each one of them was like this far apart. And he took the grapefruit, hit it pretty hard with the big serrated knife and you could see the real jagged jumps like this on the pineapple (sic)! He took my knife, hit it just as hard and it was just a straight line. LG: But that’s the injury to the abdomen and perhaps to the head. JMB: And those other injuries were that type of knife were found throughout the other bodies (sic). Those defensive wounds on Michael Moore on his arms and all, have a straight indention (sic) coming in from the bevel of the blade and then the big jagged edges on the back. My knife had just a fine little serrated edge and cut smooth to the top. I didn’t have that top burr on the top like the survival knife had. And people testified in court that they saw Damien Echols carrying such a knife in his hand. LG: I apologize for the difficult nature of these questions but I know that you’ve been through the trial and you’ve talked about it before.... Of the three boys, your son Christopher sustained the most injuries. He was the only one who was emasculated, he was stabbed repeatedly in the genital area. Expert witnesses have testified that this was done by someone who knew how to use a knife, who knew how to cut basically. Were you trained as a diamond cutter? JMB: No, ma’am. I was a goldsmith, a jewelry man. I would take gold and colored stones or diamonds and put it together and make a ring. Of the lost [unintelligible] wax method or manufacturing it by fabricating the metal and making it (sic). LG: Why do you think your son Christopher was the target? JMB: My only, this is just my opinion, in Jessie Misskelley’s confession my son was hit first over the head with some big club. My prayer’s always been that that knocked him totally unconscious and he didn’t feel anything else and was not aware. LG: The criminal profiler offers an opinion that whoever did this crime did it to gain control over these boys, that this was obviously not a sex crime. That it was done to teach the boys a lesson, and Christopher in particular. JMB: Well, that once again like I said is his opinion. My feeling is that him being the first one that Damien Echols got and he basically was one of the smallest. Michael Moore took off running ’til Jessie Misskelley chased him and brought him back. So Damien had time all alone and Jason Baldwin had Steve Branch. Christopher was basically incapacitated when most of his injuries were (sic). The only defense wounds they found were on Michael Moore when they drug (sic) him back, and he must have had his hands up. You know struggling because they were, you know, defense wounds. And then Steve Branch, his face was almost beat off and he was stabbed and cut in certain places. And Christopher, oh my god, people want to think. You said it real politely and to have your -- Let me back up, there was a man that testified, Michael Carson, okay, of what Jason Baldwin told him that he did to my son. Now the defense lawyers want to state in Paradise Lost through interviews that Michael Carson’s probation officer told him all about it. Well now, how can this be? That all these records from the autopsy report and all that was sealed, and did not become public notice ’til it was brought out in court. And Michael Carson testified that day and had heard nothing about it, other than his discussion with the prosecuting attorneys. There’s no way that the probation officer could have told Michael Carson about it, because he couldn’t have known himself. I’m sure you know what they say he did to my son, you know Michael Carson stated he said that he cut his scrotum open, ate his testicles, cut the end of his penis off and he laid there and bled to death as they drank their blood. These aren’t three normal older teenagers. The defense lawyer for Damien Echols started out his opening with "well, ladies and gentlemen, my client is a little weird.”" LG: Well "weird" and a crime like this is a far stretch in between. These kids -- JMB: But someone who would do that has to be pretty weird! LG: Someone who would do this would have to have had no conscience. These boys claimed that they were railroaded for this crime because they were different. Because they dressed differently, they like different kinds of music and this was a part of the country that was susceptible to “satanic panic.” The police needed to nail somebody, they needed to get answers to this community about this crime and that this one boy who confessed, who’s mentally challenged, didn’t have enough intelligence to recognize he was being coerced into a confession that was full of holes. They said they all have alibis. JMB: Yes, they all had alibis. And in court, Jason, Jessie Misskelley and Damien Echols, every one of their so-called alibi witnesses were met and challenged on the stand and were impeached and found their testimony (sic) totally incorrect. Every one of their alibis were bogus. LG: What about satanic panic? JMB: As for satanic panic, well, if you lived in a town of 25,000 and around the outside of buildings and all outside of town you see satanic symbols and emblems and find little burnt places on the ground where a fire’s been made, and there’s dog’s parts and animal parts that’s been burned had been there (sic), and candle wax left around, and beer cans, and no telling what all else. Wouldn’t a light bulb pop on and go "what in the world could be going on here?" I mean, Leeza, think about it when you ride around in, say, downtown New York. When you’re near a bad part of town, you don’t need you someone to tell you (sic) you’re in a bad part of town, you know bad things are going on all around you by what is going on all around you. LG: You talk about the boys’ past history, are there things in your past history that would make you look suspicious as well? JMB: I cannot see how at all. LG: Do you have a criminal record? JMB: No, I do not. LG: Burglary? Guns? JMB: Ahhhh, the burglary charge when I was in the mountains was dismissed and dropped. LG: There was a bite mark on one of the boys. The three teenagers were asked for dental impressions, as were you, they willingly volunteered. And you, as I understand, mysteriously had your teeth knocked out before you could give an impression. JMB: No, I didn’t mysteriously have my teeth knocked out. LG: What happened? JMB: In 1990, when I was starting to have seizures and realized something was going wrong in my body, for 18 months they treated me for epilepsy. And the medication for seizures was Tegretol and Tegretol causes the [unintelligible] disease which eats your gums away from your teeth. I had been in a car wreck a year or so after that, my teeth were just, they were terrible. I couldn’t live with ’em and I had to have them all surgically removed. It wasn’t anything mysterious and I’ve never had anyone contact me and ask me to give any dental records. And for several reasons, when they interrogated everybody at the start, I didn’t know how many of hundreds of people it was, but the group of questions they asked, they asked me the same ones. You know what’s strange? That even though you cant admit a polygraph, the only three people they said that failed the polygraph were the three that were convicted. Jessie Misskelley is the only one that I can say is any part of a man or has any part of a soul at all because, Leeza, I would have someone torture me, beat me to death, do the most terrible thing they could do to me before I would ever confess to doing something that heinous or being in it if I didn’t do it. I would take it to my grave, knowing in my heart that I did not have anything to do with that. Could someone make you say you killed your child? LG: What if he were not bright enough to recognize it? JMB: Let’s talk about brightness. Jessie Misskelley, they say he was, you know, a little "handicapped," you might say. LG: A seventy two IQ. JMB: Seventy two? Well, if he’s that handicapped, how is he able to pass his GED and a driver’s license and driving test? He must not have been too retarded. True? LG: A driving test and being able to bluff your way through school unfortunately is a sad commentary on our education system at times. JMB: Maybe the system failed him but if he can complete his GED and get his diploma and get his driver’s test (sic), I don’t see where he’s retarded. And I was told this directly from one of the jurors that sat on the jury box in Corning, and Jessie Misskelley says it in the movie too, he confirms what this lady told me, that when they were in Corning, he just kept his head down and just acted like he didn’t know what time it was. But when they would take them back out, the jury out the side, there was a hallway and the jurists could look down the hallway and there was a glass in it (sic) and they could see him in it laughing, talking, smoking cigarettes, drinking Coca Colas Part of the big time. So that was just a act (sic) he was putting on in front of them in the jury. Jessie Misskelley said in his jail cell he was interviewed (sic) "well, they just made me play dumb like that. You know they just made me do that". His defense lawyers made him do that, they were making him perceived to be mentally handicapped where someone could control or manipulate him but if you go that route, Charles Manson mind-controlled Tex Ritter (sic) and that group. LG: Let’s talk about the other loss that you suffered this year, uh afterwards, you lost your wife-- JMB: Yes I did. LG: What happened with your wife? JMB: When our son was murdered and I came up on the crime scene, and I saw the tape at the crime tape (sic) where they recorded it all, I busted through it and was wrassled to the ground by two police officers and the inspector saw me and came to me and I asked him ", Have you found him? Have you found him?" And he said yes. I said, " are they alive or what?" And he said it was a homicide. I can remember just being like the lights going out but we still talked. I said, "How did you find him?" and he named the officer that happened to step into this little creek that ran into the main bough [unintelligible]. He saw a tennis shoe. A purple and white Nikes (sic) and I just bought those for Christopher two days before. And then I had to walk home, which was about three blocks, there were other people at the house with my wife but one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was walk in and see her sitting there emotionally torn up and go over and tell her that our baby’s been murdered. I never had anything that was that hard, it was more than I could even stand. And then the next weeks, it was like I was just in a movie, people telling me when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat something. Ahhh, we totally lost our mind (sic). My wife lost her will to live, my customers that I had that I was trying to do jewelry for the best I could, I couldn’t do work for them. I was basically, you know, torn up. We were just -- words can’t put into the emotions. LG: Did grief kill your wife? JMB: Grief was a big part. She laid down many nights and just begged and prayed god to just take her. She just didn’t want to live any more. LG: But you had another son together, right? JMB: No, he was. My wife had two children, Ryan and Christopher. Ryan was about six or seven when we got married, and Christopher was a little under two. I adopted Christopher, and Ryan-- I wanted to adopt him, but his father paid child support and came and saw him fairly regular so we left that, you know. But you know he called me dad and I treated him just like my son. LG: I understand your wife being overwhelmed with grief but I cant imagine a mother wanting to not live and be there for her other son. JMB: I posed that question to her and the only answers that I could get was that he tried so hard to live and come into this life, Christopher. And he had it all taken away from him so young, just eight years old, still believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. They weren’t out running around being mean kids, they were lured out there and it was plotted. LG: Did the boys know these teenagers? JMB: I don’t think they did. There was another fourth boy that was brought up that we won’t mention his name, that supposedly had been active in that group. He was their age that did befriend them, and I think he might have lured them out there not knowing what was going to happen because that was their clubhouse that they played out there. LG: Everyone believes that whoever took these boys must have been someone that they trusted or knew, that they went willingly. JMB: That why when the other fourth boy I think he had to be with them and they’re like talking to him. One reason, on May 5th of that year was a full moon and sometimes between the first and the fifth is a satanic holiday. Where if you drink the blood of an unbaptized male child, you will have supernatural powers, you could walk through walls, you could fly. This was in some of the literature that they were reading and studying. LG: If that were the case, then why wouldn’t they have gotten just one child? JMB: That’s right, but there were three perpetrators, each one had one. LG: Your wife, as I understand it and please correct me if I misstate, laid down one day with you. You woke up a couple hours later, and she didn’t. JMB: Yes, that was March 28 and we had laid down to take a nap, probably around one o’clock and at 3:30 when Ryan came home from school, he opened the bedroom door and we spoke to him. When I got up it was ten to five and I went and got a glass of milk, came back and asked her, you know, if she was thirsty. I tapped on her and you know she didn’t make any movement but she looked fine. Her color was perfect, her lips. She was laying there speechless as could be, I laid my head over on her chest and I couldn’t feel a heartbeat and I started reaching everywhere I could for a pulse. And my neighbor was a medic in the military, then I called him, then 911 was called right after. He was right next door. While he was coming over, I started CPR immediately. LG: Did you say to the neighbor: "The police are going to accuse me of killing my wife. They’re going to say I smothered her?" JMB: No, what I said was I hope the police do not treat me the way they did when Christopher was murdered. LG: Like a suspect? JMB: Yes, well, everyone was a suspect the police informed me. This is like a jigsaw puzzle and we got to take all the pieces that don’t fit and put them over here, and all the pieces that fit will solve the puzzle. They interrogated me handcuffed to a chair and said "Look we know you did this, we know you’re involved in this, now who helped you and how’d you do it? You might as well come on and confess". I went holding the chair and went over the desk at this officer and got very belligerent and when they restrained me and pulled me back, course I was hyperventilating, the officer looked at me and said "we know you didn’t do it but we had to get your reaction". LG: The medical examiner did find fluid [unintelligible] in the eyes which would indicate she had been smothered. JMB: No, there’s no way they found no bruises or abrasions at all. The cause of her death was undeterminable which the state says seven out of ten deaths are undeterminable. She didn’t have a high enough degree of any type of medication but I’ve known of other people who have died from grief. My father died on 9/9 of 190, they’d been married 56 years and on 12/3 of 190 my mother was sitting in a chair, in pretty fair health, and at 10 after 9, she just plunked her head down and died. She didn’t want to live anymore after my father died, so it’s not a real rare thing that people have broken hearts and tragedies can, and do, leave their bodies if they lose the will to live. LG: Did you say that Christopher may have suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder? JMB: Yes, he did. We had [unintelligible] pills from the dyslexic school in Memphis and there several other pediatricians to take care of that. LG: He was taking medication? JMB: Yes, and he was getting better. So we found out about it in the first grade. LG: There were reports that show a trace of Ritalin, which is a medication for A.D.D., in him. JMB: Alright he was bad about forgetting to take his medication, as most children would be, so we took a bottle with like five, or however many he had to have through the day, to his school, and they dispensed it to him. And then he’d been changed to another medication which I don’t remember the name of and he was getting off of Ritalin. So that’s a possibility. LG: Was someone else taking his medication? JMB: Not to my knowledge, no. LG: Were you ingesting the Ritalin? JMB: Oh no, why I couldn’t do any type of amphetamine or any type of thing like that with the brain tumors that I have and the heart rate. It would be, you know, it could kill any time at all. LG: Were your medical records subpoenaed with regard to your claims that you’ve had a brain tumor and-- JMB: Yes, the prosecuting attorney Brent Davis. LG: Were you able to produce this? JMB: They weren’t asked for, Brent Davis had ’em. They were the copies of the MRIs, and the CAT scans, and the blood work, and the doctors-- two renowned neurosurgeons-- to say what my condition was. And because of all the mental and emotional anguish that I have suffered and been through, I am currently under a doctor’s care to help sleep and depression. I’m just real emotional and stuff. LG: Two of the boys were found to have, One of them at least, some bruising on his genitals that would indicate that either someone else had been sexually stimulating him, or he had been stimulating himself. At any rate, the sexual appearance is that these were over-sexualized little boys. Do you feel, had there been any evidence, that would indicate that these little boys were having relations with each other? JMB: Leeza, that would be pure speculation. These three eight-year-old boys were into skateboards, driving bicycles, playing with GI Joe toys. They were eight years old and I know my son had never been exposed to any type of thing like that through magazines, TV or whatever because we didn’t allow it in the house. And the neighbor across the street, the Moores, I don’t think so. And the Hobbs were very devout churchgoing people. All three of us (sic) were and that type of material would not have been in there. So where I think that could have come from, all the three were hog-tied in a similar fashion, but there were two knots tied one way, and one knot tied another according to the experts. Which meant one person tied up two of them, one person ties another because the knots revolved in the things that they have it (sic). And Jessie Misskelley told them things that only someone out there would know. LG: But he also told them things like, there were so many discrepancies. What was used to tie up the boys, what he said wasn’t exactly what was used-- he got a lot of facts wrong. And if he admitted he did it with the boys, wouldn’t he know it? JMB: I would imagine because like I said, he was the only one that appeared to have a little decency. He might not have been totally aware of everything that was going to go on. But I have seen and known as you have, many people that confess to a crime they’re in, they want to lessen the part that they did, and add more to what the other did to make themself (sic) not look so badly. So I think he had enough nerve to say what he said, how their clothes were stuck down in the mud. They said it could have been somewhere else than a dump site, there’s no way. After a few weeks I went out there and the police told me it would be like after a nice -- You know how the leaves will just build up in a wooded area? [unintelligible] There was a steep bank up by the water and it was as clean as this glass top table. Not a leaf or anything on it. And they could not use it in court but Gary Gitchell showed me several Polaroid pictures that were taken at night with Luminol, and there were blood spatters everywhere. And the longs -- Damien Echols always wore a long, black trenchcoat in summer, he wore it all the time! That long duster turned up missing, now there was evidence that came out afterwards, that a shirt was found at Jessie Misskelley’s with two of the childrens’ blood type on it, that didn’t get entered into evidence. It was received by a loophole through the prosecution and was inadmissible. Uh, there was also a pair of tennis shoes that belonged to Jessie Misskelley who he gave to a friend because he couldn’t stand to have ’em anymore and he was going to testify for the prosecution. The defense got a ahold of ’em and the shoes disappeared and that lost his testimony (sic). LG: These boys may get a new trial. How do you feel about that? JMB: I feel about, Jenny [I swear to god it sounds like that] truthfully, if they get a new trial, they get a new trial. That, in my opinion, will be a total waste of the taxpayer’s dollars. LG: What do you want to see happen to these boys? JMB: Ultimately, to stand by their gravesides. LG: You want them all on death row? JMB: Yeah, well, one of ’ems on death row, and the other two are in general population so it really doesn’t matter to me. As long as they are never released from jail would be fine but when they’re gone, I made a promise to God to live long enough just to see them dead. That’ll be some closure to me. I’m talking about occult, wicca, those other so-named bands ((sic), they are real, they are out there. Manson1s not preaching Jesus loves you, he’s preaching death, suicide, all types of garbage. Now Marilyn Manson is going to be an idol and someone our teens look up to? What type of chaos do you think we’re in for? This is not rare, a satanic ritual happening somewhere, it’s rare it happened in a small town and got found! It’s not rare because it happens all across America or the world for that matter!		"Bratty Mama Leci" Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 11966 Location: Kentucky



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:40 pm
John Mark Byers' Polygraph Results: Q: What about that polygraph I saw Mark Byers take in PL2? With the medications he was on at the time, it seems that the results would be considered unreliable. Why did they let him take the test under those circumstances? A: You have to realize that John Mark Byers set up his own polygraph for the film PL2: REVELATIONS. It was not an official polygraph (if such a thing exists), it was not conducted by the police (or any other recognized legal entity), and the results were not part of a legal investigation or interview. Polygraph tests are not admissible in court for a reason and they are not considered even remotely accurate if the subject is taking mood-altering drugs. Mark Byers was on at least five during this filmed polygraph, so we don't attach much validity to the result. http://www.wm3.org/live/faq/faq_category.php?id=8		"Bratty Mama Leci" Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 11966 Location: Kentucky



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:42 pm
A Little About Mark Byers and Late Wife... http://www.midsouthjustice.com/melissabyers.htm FACT: On March 29th, 1996, Melissa Byers died. She was found by a neighbor naked and unconscious after John Mark Byers called him for help. Doctors noticed IV puncture marks on the top of both her feet, on the inside of her wrist, and on her upper right thoracic area.” Source: Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, p. 300, 2002. FACT: On the day of Melissa’s death, John Mark Byers called a neighbor to come help. When the neighbor arrived, he found Melissa Byers naked on the bed and told John Mark Byers to perform CPR on her. The neighbor called an ambulance and wondered why Byers had not done so yet. The autopsy report stated the cause of death was undetermined since she had so many drugs in her system. Byers’s girlfriend at the time stated that Melissa Byers died the day she had asked him for a divorce. She also stated that John Mark Byers had threatened Mandy with her life if she disclosed the fact that he had hypodermic needles in his drawer. Ryan Clark was reported as having an “eerie look on his face” when he was putting clothes on his mother before the ambulance arrived. He was reported as “mumbling incoherently” and got in his car and almost flipped it as he screeched away from the household before the ambulance arrived. The autopsy reports were inconclusive and could not determine the exact cause of death of Melissa Byers. Source: Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, pp 300 & 301, 2002. FACT: The neighbor who had been called to John Mark Byers’s household reported that, “John Mark Byers also told him he thought her death was a drug overdose and that they were going to accuse him of smothering her.” Source: Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, pp 302, 2002. FACT: “A prison inmate serving time for drugs told investigators in a written statement that he had known the Byerses. “I can remember Mark giving her pills and other drugs on more than one occasion,” he wrote. A seventeen-year-old from Cherokee Village told Witt that, on the day Melissa died, he had been “partying” with the Byerses at their residence, “drinking Crown Royal and taking Valium and Xanax, and that he saw Mark Byers with a sandwich baggie of K-4 Dilaudid.” Source: Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, p 392, 2002. FACT: “Melissa’s parents said that Melissa’s marriage to John Mark Byers was on the verge of collapse. “We knew he was shenaniganin’,” her mother said. “He was foolin’ with a woman up there. Melissa said she was going to divorce him. She told him she was going to leave him. But he said he wasn’t going to divorce another woman.” Melissa’s parents said that shortly before Melissa died, she’d told them she was coming home to stay with them for a couple of days. They expected her on Friday. When she hadn’t arrived by mid afternoon, “We called the house to see if she was coming, and Mark said, ‘No, she’s not feeling good and she’s asleep.’ Later on that night the phone rang. Mark just laid it out: ‘Melissa’s dead.’ That’s all he said.” Source: Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, p 313, 2002. FACT: After Christopher’s murder, police did not contact Melissa’s parents. After Melissa’s unusual death, the police did not contact them either. Source: Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, p 313, 2002. FACT: In Paradise Lost, Part 2, ~1:10. John Mark Byers is filmed speaking with a polygraph examiner before taking a polygraph test. The polygraph examiner asks, “Have you had any other problems with the police?” Byers answers, “Not major, no sir.” The examiner asks, “You’ve had problems? Is that what you’re saying?” Byers answers, “oh well, speeding tickets, I got a DUI one time after my wife was murdered, uh, nothing really major no.”		"Bratty Mama Leci" Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 11966 Location: Kentucky



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 4:47 pm
"I Needed Somebody to Hate" Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Child Murders, the new book on the case that many are calling the crime of century, is nearing completion, and more details will be available soon. The book chronicles the life of Mark Byers, arguably the most controversial character in a case steeped in disagreement and debate. Long regarded as the chief alternate suspect in the eyes of the public, Mark continues to spark as much contention today as he did back in the days when he was shooting pumpkins and burning mock graves to vent his anger against the three men he was sure murdered his son. "People have tried to take me out", he said to the cameras in Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, "but I’m still here, Jessie, Jason, Damien. Those names ring in my ears daily. And I still hate you." More recently, however, his words and actions are angering those who have maintained that the so-called West Memphis Three belong in prison and that two juries in 1994 convicted the right people. So what has changed? John Mark Byers has lived through the murder of his eight-year-old son Christopher and two other boys, the unexplained death of his wife Melissa three years later, spent fourteen years as a suspect in the public eye, and a hellish fifteen months in the Arkansas Department of Corrections. But a startling series of new developments - including the discovery of DNA evidence pointing to another victim’s stepfather - has turned Mark Byers into a staunch advocate for the release of the convicted killers, dubbed the West Memphis Three by their supporters. Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. have spent fifteen years in prison for a crime that Mark Byers no longer believes they committed. "It's the worst nightmare you could ever imagine", Byers said recently on Larry King Live. "I know the nightmare that the three in prison feel to be wrongly accused." He also told Johnny Dodd at People, "I was fooled for fourteen years. But now I know that an injustice was dealt upon these boys by the State of Arkansas." When asked by Jason Miles of WMC-TV in Memphis, "Do you think [Steve Branch’s stepfather] Terry Hobbs killed your son and the two other boys?", there was only a slight hesitation in his response: "In my opinion", Byers said, "I do. If it takes the last breath in my body, [seeing Terry Hobbs in jail] that’s my goal." Regarding the convicted men - notably Echols, who sits on death row in the Varner Supermax prison in Grady, Arkansas, Byers says, "I want him to know I’m here for him." During his interview for Larry King Live, Echols said of Byers, "I appreciate everything he’s been expressing lately. I’ve heard him make comments like that several times on different local news stations and I’ve heard people repeat that to me. And I really, really do appreciate that. It means a great deal." Byers and Echols, once fierce adversaries, are now united in the fight to save Echols’s life. They have joined forces with a cadre of celebrity supporters - Winona Ryder, Johnny Depp, Jack Black, Natalie Maines, Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), and Margaret Cho, to name a few - who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund a technical showdown with the State of Arkansas that promises to rival the O.J. Simpson and Sam Sheppard trials in drama and visibility. Forensic experts Dr. Michael Baden (O.J. Simpson), Dr. Vincent Di Maio (Scott Peterson), and former FBI profiler John Douglas (Mindhunter, Inside the Mind of the BTK Killer), have supplied the Echols defense team with enough horsepower to file a writ in federal court to have the conviction of Damien Echols overturned, or to grant a new trial. Echols’s attorneys have declared that they will be ready to file with the state courts by the middle of February, a step that was mandated by U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson, Jr., after which a hearing in federal court is expected in late spring. Others are less enthusiastic about Byers’s change of heart. Amanda Hobbs, 19, daughter of Terry and Pam Hobbs, and the younger sister of victim Stevie Branch, thinks Byers is a hypocrite. "It makes me sick, it really does. It’s just crazy, you know? It’s like Mark Byers has been in these shoes for fourteen years and now he wants to try to put my father in those shoes?" Byers remains unmoved. "I personally believe it was a punishment crime that got out of hand." But Terry Hobbs is still not considered a suspect by the West Memphis Police Department, though according to a CNN news story, WMPD Chief Bob Paudert says, "If they have DNA evidence that would give evidence that these three did not commit that crime, I would want to see it absolutely. I’m the first to say that if they have evidence to free those three I would support it 100 percent." The state prosecutor’s office has so far issued a "no comment" to reporters seeking information on the case. Hobbs himself is stung by the accusations. "It’s hard as a parent to live with the loss of your home, of your wife, your family and then to have your friends and neighbors look at you and think, ‘Is there something else there?’ That hurts," he said. But Mark Byers is haunted by the way he has felt for the last fifteen years. "I needed to hate somebody at that time in my life and I was blinded by rage, and anger, and grief", he told Miles, referring to a time not too long ago when he had no reason to believe anything other than what the state of Arkansas told him during the 1994 criminal trials. The new evidence has convinced him otherwise. Only time will tell what this uniting of the strangest of bedfellows will bring. http://blog.johnmarkbyers.com/2008/01/15/i-needed-somebody-to-hate.aspx		"Bratty Mama Leci" Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 11966 Location: Kentucky



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 4:51 pm
The strange demise of Melissa Byers The mother of one of the three boys murdered in West Memphis died, but investigators have yet to figure out how. By Mara Leveritt December 26, 1997 On March 29, 1996, at approximately 5:40 p.m, Sonny Powell, the sheriff of Sharp County, called Investigator Stan Witt of the Arkansas State Police to report a suspicious death. Powell told Witt that a woman named Melissa Byers had been taken by ambulance from her residence in Cherokee Village to Eastern Ozarks Regional Hospital. She was pronounced dead after efforts to revive her failed. Powell was acquainted with Melissa Byers. As most people in the area knew, she was the mother of one of three boys who were found murdered in West Memphis in 1993. The following year, three West Memphis teen-agers were convicted for the killings in a pair of sensational trials, which hinged on allegations of Satanism. Throughout the trials, Melissa Byers and her husband, John Mark Byers, were seen frequently on TV, often cursing the defendants. Since moving to Cherokee Village in 1994, the couple had had frequent run-ins with police. In 1996 they appeared on television again, this time in a highly praised documentary about the West Memphis murder case that was shown on HBO. Now, not quite three years after the murder of 8-year-old Christopher Byers--and with some criminal charges against her and her husband still pending--Melissa Byers was dead. The problem facing Sheriff Powell was that no one at the hospital could figure out why. That inability on the part of the doctors to determine the cause of Melissa Byers' death was what prompted Sheriff Powell to telephone Witt. Melissa Byers was only 40 years old. Her body showed no visible signs of trauma. To Powell, her death looked like a possible homicide. Witt arrived at the hospital about 35 minutes later. There he met with local law enforcement officers and with John Mark Byers, Melissa's husband. While a Sharp County deputy took a statement from John Mark Byers and got his permission to search his home, Witt began taking notes about the condition of Melissa Byers' body. It was nude and lying on the stretcher where she had died. "A visual observation of Byers' body revealed IV puncture marks on the top of her right and left foot, on the inside of her right wrist, and on the upper right thoracic area," Witt noted. "The right thoracic puncture mark and the right wrist puncture mark were both covered by Band-Aids. The puncture marks on the top of her right and left foot were not covered. ... The victim had a silver-colored necklace with a cross around her neck." The investigator entered several other observations and had the body photographed. While he did that, another state police investigator was questioning a woman who had contacted Cherokee Village police upon hearing that Melissa Byers had been taken to the hospital. The woman told Investigator Steve Huddleston that she had known the Byerses for years, that the couple had recently been estranged, and that Melissa had been taking Dilaudid, a powerful narcotic that, when diverted to the black market, is one of the most popular illegal drugs in the country. At approximately 9:40 that night, Witt and eight other officers organized a search at the Byers' home. Before granting his permission for the search, John Mark Byers had told a deputy sheriff that police would probably find a small amount of marijuana in the house. The deputy signed an agreement stating that, if they did, Byers would not be charged with possession. Consent thus obtained, the team searched the small, two-bedroom house at 75 Skyline Drive, while Byers waited outside. They found marijuana in a closet of the master bedroom and on a night stand in the other bedroom. They seized the marijuana as evidence, along with a glass on the night stand which contained an alcoholic beverage, believed to be peach schnapps. In addition, they seized six types of medication that had been prescribed for Melissa Byers. Dilaudid was not among them. At midnight, Witt went to the house next door to interview Norm Metz, a neighbor who had followed John Mark Byers to the hospital. Metz had been one of the last people to see Melissa Byers alive. He told Witt that at a little after 5 p.m. that evening, John Mark Byers had called him on the phone, saying that he could not awaken his wife. Byers asked Metz to come over and see if she had a pulse. Metz responded by asking Byers why he didn't call an ambulance. The neighbor said Byers responded, "Well, come over. Come through the kitchen door." As Witt later recorded: "Metz advised that he went to the Byers' residence and went inside through the door leading from the carport and saw the Byers' son, Ryan Clark, and his girlfriend nude on the couch. He advised he went immediately to the bedroom and saw that Melissa was totally naked lying on the far side of the bed on her back. He advised her mouth was wide open, her eyes were closed, she was totally limp, and her arms were down by her side. Metz advised he checked for a pulse, lifted her eyelids, and looked at her eyes. ... He told Mark he was going to call EMS." When Metz returned to the room, Witt wrote, "Ryan was trying to help John Mark put some pants on Melissa, and he asked John Mark if Melissa was dead. He advised that John Mark advised no, and Ryan had a funny, eery [sic] look on his faceŠ. He advised that when the EMTs got to the residence, Mark kept telling them, 'They've got to bring her back.' Metz advised that Ryan kept mumbling something and he did not seem coherent. He advised that when [Ryan] left, he almost flipped the car over he left so fast, spinning gravel." According to Witt's notes, when Metz later joined Mark Byers at the hospital, "Mark told him he was afraid Melissa had overdosed on a drug that is in the streets of Memphis. Metz advised that Byers told him it could be bought for $50 on the street. He told him the name of the drug. Metz could not remember it but thought it started with the letter 'D.' Metz advised that John Mark Byers also told him he thought her death was a drug overdose and that they were going to accuse him of smothering her. He advised that Byers did not clarify who 'they' were." The Byers family has been part of the news in Arkansas since the morning of May 6, 1993, when the bodies of three 8-year-old boys--Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers--were found in a drainage ditch in a wooded area near the West Memphis subdivision where they lived. Autopsies revealed that two of the boys had drowned where they had been thrown, hog-tied, into the water. The third boy, Byers, had died of loss of blood suffered during the removal of his penis. The mutilation appeared to have been inflicted with a knife. The murders shocked West Memphis, but weeks passed without an assailant or assailants being found. Finally, a month after the murders, three West Memphis teen-agers--Jessie Lloyd Misskelley, 17; Charles Jason Baldwin, 16; and Damien Wayne Echols, 18--were arrested and charged with the crimes. Their trials were recorded by a pair of documentary filmmakers working under contract with HBO. The trials were sensational from start to finish, partly for the gruesomeness of the crimes, and partly because the police case was predicated on the belief that the killings had been part of a Satanistic orgy. No physical evidence was produced linking any of the accused teen-agers with the crime, and no motive for the killings was introduced other than that the murders had been part of an demonic ritual. All three boys were found guilty. Misskelly and Baldwin were sentenced to life in prison, and Echols, who was identified as the ringleader, was sentenced to death by lethal injection. A year later, when the film "Paradise Lost" was shown on television and then released to theaters, John Mark and Melissa Byers were brought to national attention. Not only had their son Christopher sustained the most savage of the attacks, but John Mark and Melissa Byers stood out as the most demonstrative of the parents in the film. At one point, Melissa looked into the camera declaring her hatred for the three accused teen-agers "and the mothers that bore them." In another scene, John Mark and the father of one of the other murdered boys appeared shooting pumpkins which they pretended were the defendants. In April 1994, eleven months after the murders, John Mark and Melissa Byers and their surviving son, Ryan, moved to Cherokee Village. But from the start, their residence there was marked by turmoil, including several incidents verging on violence: --In early 1994, shortly after their arrival, John Mark and Melissa Byers were jailed in Sharp County on charges of residential burglary and theft after more than $20,000 in antiques were taken from a neighbor's home. --In July, John Mark Byers was involved in an incident in which a group of teen-agers fought while Byers reportedly stood watch with a rifle to make sure the fight went on. One of the boys in the altercation carried a pocket knife belonging to Byers. The boy he was fighting was injured seriously enough to require hospitalization. Byers was later charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. --In September, Melissa Byers was charged with disorderly conduct after a neighbor reported that Melissa had threatened to kill her family. The neighbor quoted Melissa Byers as having screamed, "You can't watch your family 24 hours, and you are going down." --In October, Melissa Byers was arrested once again and charged with aggravated assault, this time for pointing a rifle at carpet layers who refused to work in her home until the floors were cleaned. By the time the Byerses had been in Cherokee Village six months, police had been summoned to their residence at least eight times. --In January 1995, John Mark Byers was found guilty on the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was sentenced to a year in jail, with nine months suspended, and ordered to pay half of the injured boy's medical bills. --Other charges against Mark and Melissa Byers, including those for the residential burglary, were still pending in Sharp County Circuit Court on March 29, 1996, when Melissa Byers mysteriously died. Her body was sent for autopsy to the office of the medical examiner at the Arkansas Crime Laboratory in Little Rock. Witt, stymied until he knew the cause of death, waited--and waited. By the end of August--five months after the death--he still had received no word from the crime lab concerning the autopsy results. But life was continuing for John Mark Byers. On Aug. 28, 1995, he entered into a plea agreement negotiated by his attorney and Stewart Lambert, a deputy prosecutor for the Third Judicial District. According to the negotiated plea, Byers was to pay $20,000 to the woman whose house was burglarized, make restitution to the father of the boy who was injured in the fight, and pay a $250 fine. An additional part of the agreement was that Byers would leave the Third Judicial District, which is made up of Sharp, Lawrence, Randolph, and Jackson counties and not come back to them, or to Fulton County either. Lambert, the prosecutor, said he entered the plea agreement with Byers because a key witness in the burglary case was a minor whose mother was reluctant to have him testify, making a successful prosecution difficult. As for ordering Byers out of the district, Lambert said, such an arrangement can be legal if done with the agreement of the party being banished. Byers accepted those terms, but has not made the required payments. At the end of September 1996, a month after Byers' appearance in court, investigator Witt received the medical examiner's report on Melissa. It noted that she had been 68 inches tall and weighed 211 pounds. Both wrists bore multiple, well-healed, linear scars. A tattoo of a heart and scroll were present on her right upper back, with the name "Christopher" written in the scroll. No distinct scarred needle tracks were present. However other needle marks were evident. Two of those, which were covered with bandages, were clearly the result of unsuccessful medical attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation, as were a couple of fractured ribs. The origin of the other needle puncture wounds--in the groin, arms, and feet--was undetermined. There were a few small bruises on the body, some or all of which may have occurred on the way to and at the hospital. And there were some signs of deteriorating health, such as obesity, narrowing of some arteries, and a gallstone. But none of the conditions the pathologists observed would normally prove fatal, either alone or in combination. Under the circumstances, they were particularly interested in what toxicology tests would reveal. But those findings did not solve the riddle of Byers' death either. Although a glass of peach schnapps had been found at her bedside, she had apparently drunk very little, as no alcohol was detected in her system. Nor were any opiates were found in her blood. Traces of one of her prescribed medications, an anti-seizure medicine used to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome, were present, as were traces of lithium, a medication that had been prescribed for her to treat manic depression. But that was all, and the amounts of neither of those substances exceeded therapeutic levels. Only her urine was abnormal. It tested positive for marijuana and for hydromorphone, the synthetic narcotic more commonly known as Dilaudid. Melissa Byers did not have a prescription for Dilaudid. On the street, it sells as much as $50 per tablet. The drug is a potent opiate. It can slow breathing, heart rate, and brain activity. What was strange was that, while the drug showed up in Melissa Byers' urine, suggesting recent use, it was not found in her blood, which would be expected of a lethal agent. Moreover, that anomaly in the body was matched by an anomaly in the report. Through what Jim Clark, the director of the crime lab, recently described as a "typographical error," no mention of the finding of Dilaudid appeared in the autopsy report's conclusions. Instead, on the report's final page, the word "hydromorphone," or Dilaudid, appeared as "hydrocodone," which is another drug entirely. Nor was the Dilaudid mentioned on the page listing the medical examiner's findings. Asked if the discovery of an illegal drug in the body of a possible homicide victim was not a finding worth listing, Clark affirmed that, "There may be room for some further investigation as to how she obtained the drug." As for the needle marks in the body's arms, feet, and groin, Clark said, "In the pathologist's opinion, all those wounds were probably done at the hospital." When Witt received the report, it offered no indication that Byers' death might be connected to illegal drug activity. Instead, he had the crime lab's vague conclusion that, "because of the lack of definitive anatomic or toxicological findings, the cause and manner of death are left undetermined." According to Clark, the causes of about 4 to 8 percent of deaths that are presented to medical examiners nationally are found to be undetermined. In December, Investigator Stan Witt closed his case on Melissa Byers. Sheriff Powell is keeping his open. 'This is a deep story' John Mark Byers contemplates the deaths of first his son and now his wife. After her 8-year-old son Christopher was murdered, Melissa Byers became depressed, her widower, John Mark Byers recalled. "She gave up her will to live," he said in a telephone interview. "She didn't want to live without him." Asked if his wife had been using illegal drugs, Byers answered: "To my personal knowledge, no. I did not see her taking illegal drugs. But, if she was or if she wasn't, I'm not going to talk bad about my wife who's passed away. Melissa's death was another tragedy, another heartbreak. I'm the victim here, let's not forget that." The two had been married for 10 years. After the murders of Christopher and two other boys in 1993, the couple moved to Cherokee Village to get away from what Byers described as persecution in West Memphis. "This is a deep story," he said. "There's a lot of crazy people out there. I mean really crazy people." After the trials in which three West Memphis teen-agers were convicted of killing the younger children, Byers said residents of the city left dead animals on their car and in their yard, along with notes "saying all types of terrible things." He described the time there as being "pure hell." But life in Cherokee Village proved no easier. "It was very hard," he said, "because of the backward people that live up there, people that are so narrow-minded. We thought there would be intelligent retired people from up north, but instead there were a lot of inbred, banjo-picking hillbillies living there, people whose family trees run in a straight line." Asked if they did not perceive him and Melissa as sympathetic figures, being the parents of a murdered child, he said no, that for some reason "they got it confused; they thought I was the father of one of the boys who committed the killings." Byers now lives "in a modest little apartment" in another city, the name of which he does not want revealed. He subsists on a Social Security disability check which he receives because of a tumor he says is located "in the front right lobe of my brain." Because of the tumor, he said, he cannot work--he used to be a jeweler--and he suffers "terrible migraine headaches." In the interview, Byers described his life as an unmitigated series of woes, as "pain piled upon pain." Publicity about the West Memphis deaths has kept them "an ongoing thing," he said, prompting people to "want to open the wound and pour salt in it." Asked why, then, he and Melissa had agreed to cooperate with the filming of the documentary "Paradise Lost," he explained, "I just could not stand for my son and his two friends to die for nothing. We didn't want people to forget who he was. We wanted them to know that this witchcraft and black magic and demon worship was real. There's black and there's white, like we said on 'Maury Povitch.'" One of the most remarkable parts of the film was a segment in which Byers and Todd Moore, the father of one of the other dead boys, blasted pumpkins that they pretended were the heads of the convicted teen-agers. Byers said the producers "asked us what we did with our aggression and our anger. We said we go out and target practice. We said we go out and shoot. We were out there basically just releasing anger, and in our minds, thinking, 'If that was the three of you. ...' We were still very raw with anger. I think anybody would be. But it was not detrimental to anyone. And if we wanted to think that that was them we were shooting, and it made us feel better, what was wrong with that?" First, he said, he had to suffer being viewed as a suspect in his son's death. "I did not know that when a child is murdered that sometimes they think Š like in the Jon Benet Ramsey case Š that they look at the family members. The police had to explain to me that this is a big puzzle. They said, 'We've got to look at all the pieces and throw away the ones that didn't fit.'" Byers knows that there are people who still believe that he may have been involved in the three boys' murders. "They just don't have anything better to do with their time," he says of them. "They could just watch the movie "Paradise Lost" and they would know that I'm just a victim. I'm not the villain." Suspicion of Byers intensified when, toward the end of the filming of that movie, he offered as a gift to the HBO camera crew a knife that, though he said he had never used it, turned out to bear traces of human blood. The blood type matched his own, as well as Christopher's. Critics of the West Memphis Police Department have complained that officers allowed the incident to go uninvestigated. But Byers has other complaints against the department, chiefly that police did not act quickly enough to find the murdered boys when their families reported them missing. He is also critical of police in Cherokee Village, who he said failed to respond when neighbors threatened him and shot up his house. "I was railroaded up there," he said. In court, when he was tried on the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, he recalled, "I told them, 'The boys got in a scuffle. The boy who went down seemed to be all right. It was no big deal. It's not like boys up there or anywhere else don't get in fights when people talk about their mama. ...' "The boy who was knocked down, his daddy just happened to be a freakin' lawyer. He got a judgment against me, but I didn't have to pay a dime. I didn't have anything to give the man. I'm judgment-proof. I'm indigent. That's why they told me up there just to pack up and leave, to get out of Sharp County, and don't come back. "I went from my big, fine home and being a responsible citizen to feeling like I'm just an outcast and thrown to the bottom of the pit, when I didn't do anything. It feels so unjust and so unfair, but there's nothing I can do about it." He was also disappointed with the way the ambulance workers treated Melissa, who he said had drunk a little peach schnapps before the two of them had settled down for a nap at 3:30. When he woke up at quarter to five, he tried to awaken her but she didn't respond. "When the paramedics came in, they jerked her off the bed and onto the floor. They didn't shock her with the paddles but one time. That kind of bothered me. They kind of acted like they didn't care, like, 'Well, good. She's dead. Maybe now he'll leave.' I just felt like they didn't care if she died or not." Byers had not seen the autopsy report on Melissa, which only became public in December, when the State Police closed their investigation. Asked about the reported comment by his neighbor Norm Metz, that when Melissa was brought to the hospital Byers had said, "he was afraid Melissa had overdosed on a drug that is in the streets in Memphis," the name of which he thought "began with the letter 'D,' and that "could be bought for $50 on the street," Byers denied having made such a statement. He also denied telling Metz, as Metz had reported to police, that "he thought her death was a drug overdose and that they were going to accuse him of smothering her." In the years since Christopher's death, evidence has come to light suggesting that, prior to the murders, John Mark Byers had worked with Memphis narcotics police as a confidential informant. Asked if that were true, he answered, "I'd have to say 'no comment' on that." When he was told that the police and autopsy reports on Melissa mentioned "numerous needle puncture marks" on her arms, feet, and groin, he responded, "That's news to me." He also expressed surprise that Dilaudid was found in her system. Rather, he spoke of "drugs and all" as evil. "I think there's a lot of evil in the world," he said, "and if you live in today's society, you will experience evil. It's sent from the devil himself to kill the world. The devil has it out for everybody. The Bible says he's like a roaring lion seeking to and fro to whom he may consume." But he added, "I have to believe that all things work for good for those who love the lord, so maybe he's letting me live to tell people that there is a devil out there, that there is evil and it will consume your life if you let it." He has said he considers his son's killers as having been sent from hell. "Anyone who takes anyone's life, it's got to be someone that's very depraved and very twisted," he observed. "Not retarded sick, mean sick. They must have some type of problem that's deeper than I can imagine." He added, "I don't know what makes someone like that tick, because I'm not that way, so I can't say. I don't have the mind or the consciousness of a murderer, so how could I say?" The fact that no cause has been found for Melissa's death "hurts even more," Byers said. And he wondered toward the end of the interview, "Did she have to die? Did she will herself to die? Did she not want to live anymore because of her son's being murdered? Did God just answer her prayer and take her off this earth?" http://www.prisonpotpourri.com/JUVENILES/WESTMEMPHISTHREE.damienechols/The%20strange%20demise%20of%20Melissa%20Byers%20-%20By%20Mara%20Leveritt%20-%20December%2026,%201997.html		"Bratty Mama Leci" Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 11966 Location: Kentucky



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 5:42 pm
Police interviewed boy's father Questions stemmed from knife given to film crew member By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Contact) JONESBORO — West Memphis police interviewed the father of one of three slain 8-year-olds as a potential suspect the same day testimony began in Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr.'s capital murder trial, a detective said Thursday. Defense attorneys for Damien Wayne Echols and Charles Jason Baldwin, now on trial in the May deaths of three second-graders, Thursday continued efforts to suggest suspects other than their clients. In a related development, Circuit Judge David Burnett of Osceola blocked the introduction into evidence of a six-hour videotape made by a California police department whose officers interviewed a West Memphis man who reportedly confessed and then denied the crime. West Memphis police inspector Gary Gitchell testified Thursday he interviewed Mark Byers, the adoptive father of one of the boys, on Jan. 26 after a documentary film crew mailed Gitchell a knife that a cameraman obtained from Byers. The knife had "possible blood stains," he said. In earlier interviews, Gitchell said investigators found no evidence linking Byers to the crime. Prosecutors called Gitchell to the stand on the fourth day of testimony in the capital murder trial of Echols, 19, of West Memphis, and Baldwin, 16, of Marion. Police arrested Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley, 18, of Marion, in the deaths of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steven Branch. A jury last month found Misskelley guilty of first- and second-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison, plus 40 years. The boys disappeared May 5, 1993, and authorities found their bodies the next day. Gitchell confirmed he received a Kershaw folding knife with a serrated blade from Creative Thinking International on Jan. 8. Home Box Office, the cable TV channel, hired Creative Thinking to produce a documentary on the case. Gitchell testified he immediately sent the knife to Genetic Design, a North Carolina-based DNA testing laboratory. But, he said, he was unable to interview Byers about the knife until Jan. 26. Echols' attorney, Val Price of Jonesboro, noted that Gitchell told Byers of his rights before the 25-minute interview. "At the time you read the rights to Mr. Byers, did you consider him to be a possible suspect to these homicides?" Price asked. "That possibility was there," responded Gitchell. Gitchell called it "standard investigative process" to read someone his rights in the event his statement might later be used against him. Burnett refused to allow Gitchell to comment on what Byers said. He told Price he could call Byers to the stand when the defense presents its case. During the hearing, Price indicated he would call Byers to the stand. Price declined to comment further when the trial recessed. On Wednesday, Byers' wife, Melissa, said her husband gave the knife to a Creative Thinking cameraman last summer. Michael A. DeGuglielmo, director of forensic analysis for Genetic Design, testified blood on the knife could have come from either Mark Byers or Christopher. With the jury out of the courtroom, Price read a transcript of questions Gitchell asked Byers. Gitchell told Byers the test results meant he had to account for the blood found on the knife. "I've got to ask you point-blank, were you around or did you participate in the deaths of these boys?" Gitchell said. Price did not read Byers' response. Gitchell declined comment about the interview after court adjourned for the day. Also, with the jury out of the room, Price entered into the record a case file and videotape of Christopher Morgan, 20, of West Memphis. Price described the statement as a confession taken during an interview with the Oceanside, Calif., Police Department. "He left West Memphis within a week of the murder," Price said. He said Morgan told police, "Maybe I freaked out, blanked out, and killed the little boys." "If there's been a confession, I'd sure like to see it," Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Fogleman said. "It's news to me." Burnett quickly scanned the material, pointing out that Morgan said the boys' arms had been cut off, which is not true. "What I read here doesn't amount to a confession," Burnett said. "Most of it is denial." Price noted that the judge read from a police report and the entire interview has not been transcribed. Price said Morgan has been issued a subpoena to testify and was in court Monday. Price said he's still considering whether to call Morgan to the stand. April Ferguson, an assistant federal public defender in Memphis, represents Morgan. She said Morgan faces no criminal charges in Arkansas, but did send attorneys a letter saying that she wanted to be notified before authorities contact her client. She said she didn't know anything about the statement to the California department. "I was only appointed to represent him in a federal drug case," she said. Ferguson said authorities arrested Morgan on a charge of possession of LSD. Sgt. Tom Bussey, spokesman for the Oceanside Police Department, said all records involving Morgan have been sent to Arkansas. "We did some work for some authorities in Arkansas, but I don't know what was in this interview nor when it took place," Bussey said. With the jury in the room, DeGuglielmo said no evidence sample submitted to him for testing matched those from either Baldwin or Echols. DeGuglielmo did say that stains found on one victim's pants tested positive for male DNA. Kermit Channell, a serologist with the state Crime Laboratory, forwarded the samples to Genetic Design when preliminary tests indicated the presence of semen, but no sperm could be found. Burnett denied an attempt by Price to submit a "suspect" list prepared by the Crime Laboratory containing blood-test results for about 25 people. When Price tried to suggest it helped prove that police investigated other suspects before focusing on Echols, Burnett ruled the list "irrelevant." "I'm not going to let you confuse the issue for the jury," Burnett said. Jurors also heard the first testimony that placed Echols near the crime scene. Anthony Hollingsworth and his mother, Narlene, testified that they saw Echols and his girlfriend, Domini Teer, walking near the Blue Beacon Truck Wash off Interstate 40 after 9:30 p.m. May 5. The boys were last seen shortly after 6 p.m. Testimony will resume Monday. Burnett decided not to hear testimony today to allow him to handle other court business and to attend a legal conference. This article was published Friday, March 4, 1994. http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/1994/mar/04/police-interviewed-boys-father/		"Bratty Mama Leci" Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 11966 Location: Kentucky



Obscuregawdess Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 5:53 pm
Who Is John Mark Byers? http://www.jivepuppi.com/john_mark_byers_1.html John Mark Byers. "One friday we are lined up to go to the store (comm.) There was this black mjr. he was a real hater of all gangs more so the white ones. The guy beside me had in very large block letters GFBD across his neck, the mjr,grabbed him out of line & started in on his tat. What does that mean he knew very well what it ment (God forgives Brotherhood Dosent) you got the picture?? The mjr. was driving him for the answer to this day I can still see him right in the mjr. face his answer with a straight face. He said going fishing with bill dance. I fell out laughing & got one week in the hole it was worth the laugh." John Mark Byers relating a prison story about the white supremacist gang, GFBD. [mjr. is a major, a senior corrections officer] JOHN MARK BYERS - GFBD Trust me YOU DONT WANT TO MET ME. Also it is real sick of you trying to talk crap dont you know you CANT CON a CON I can smell game a long way off. !st & last words that I will have with you. GFBD,, GFBD,, GFBD,, GFBD,, GFBD,, GFBD read it & YOU better BELIVE it. .....(snip, another excerpt, a posting directed to another person) GFBD,,,GFBD.....GFBD,,,GFBD,,,,GFBD,,,,,GFBD,,,,,GFBD Think about that. JOHN MARK BYERS 20yr member of GFBD UNLEASE HELL ON YOU .....(snip, a posting directed to still another person) I really hope I get to met you again .Because this time I am going to be real nice, oh PLEASE bring your big bad boyfriend. You have talked much crape about me, now I am ready to TALK to you UP CLOSE>Bring your friends bring who ever, just remember i know a few myself (GFBD) maybe you would like to meet them real nice group of folks. Just country like me. Your call,, time, place, day???? Get you some, you are no more then a tick on a dog just needs to be stepped on. Hope to see you soon. John Mark Byers threatening various people on line. John Mark Byers At six foot five and 238 pounds, John Mark Byers (usually called Mark), the stepfather of victim Christopher Byers is an imposing figure. Outspoken, he is a magnet to controversy. The documentaries chronicle him in a series of ranting proclamations and threats delivered with fire and brimstone fervor. He has identified himself as a member of the white supremacist group, the Brotherhood. Some see this and his criminal history as evidence that he is the real killer. Others see him as a harmless good old boy and fellow sufferer of the tragedy that consumed his family. He can be an articulate man. He was a Master of Ceremonies for his Masonic Lodge in 1991. He can be a model citizen. The Christmastime opening of his jewelry store in 1988 was featured in the local paper declaring him "the first member signed on the 1989 Chamber of Commerce roster." God Forgives, Brotherhood Doesn't, is the motto of a thuggish white supremacist group. Searching online, this group is associated with violent crimes. In fact, when the actual group is identified, most of the web pages are related to murders. Examples are presented below: Exhibit #1. The [Nevada] high court ruled against Robert Rowland and Tony Smith, convicted of killing Steven Silva at the Nevada State Prison. Rowland and Smith, part of a white-supremacist gang called GFBD, which stands for "God Forgives, Brothers Don't," also were found guilty of burglary and conspiring to rob the victim. (Associated Press) Exhibit #2. Craig told the court last month that he witnessed the murder of Johnston. He said when he walked up to a car he heard Elisarraras say "This bitch won't die," as both Elisarraras and Williams repeatedly stabbed the 19 year-old with knives. . . . God Forgives - Brothers Don't - A Tattoo on Raymond Elisarraras Neck (Madera Online News Top News Stories 2004) Exhibit #3. Hoyt was a piece of work. Just 22 years old at the time of Genore Guillory's murder, he already had a string of arrests for aggravated battery and assault. . . .He was also the founder of a fledgling skinhead gang called "The Brotherhood." Phillip Skipper and John Baillio were two of the gang's original members. All three had the letters "G.F.B.D." tattooed across their backs. The letters stood for "God Forgives, the Brotherhood Doesn't." (Crime Library, CourtTV) Neighbors and law enforcement officials also knew about his dark side. A note was made near the time of the murders from a neighbor who had lived three doors down from him. Byers - $11,000 - in 3- wks Won a judgment - He declared Bank Rupsy - Substituting - Fake diamonds for real diamonds. Mother has big drug problem. Father deals to supply habit. Another neighbor passed along this: "[name removed] said he knew who did it, his stepfather because of the crack." Chris Byers mother, Melissa Byers had a longstanding addiction. Chris Byers biological father, Ricky Lee Murray, stated that Melissa had been a heroin addict since the age of twelve. (Devil's Knot (DK), p. 298). Mark Byers lamented that he was warned about marrying a drug addict. "The first rehab I put her in was nine months after we were married. And I had a doctor tell me then that you all just go ahead and divorce her, he said, heroin junkies one out of, I don't know the statistics exactly he had, ever stay clean, he said, this is going to cause you a lot of pain and misery." Paradise Lost, Revelations (PL2). At the time of her death in March 1996 at age 40, Dilaudid was found in her blood. The death scene was described in Devil's Knot. At 9:40P.M., a team of local and state investigators began a search of the Byerses’ house. While the search was being conducted, Byers stood outside the house with a woman who was identified in the state police reports as Mandy Beasley. One investigator videotaped the interior of the house while another took still photographs. The lead investigator dictated a careful description of the single-story wood-frame house, paying special attention to the bedroom where the ambulance workers had found Melissa. A third state police investigator prepared a diagram of the “crime scene.” In the bedroom, they seized as evidence three towels and a shirt, all found on the bed; “suspected marijuana and paraphernalia”; a couple of glasses, one of which was believed to contain peach schnapps; and “seven different types of prescription medication prescribed for Melissa Byers,” all of which the investigators listed. [DK, p. 347] Cause of death remains undetermined. Also in DK, Mandy Beasley was described as a girlfriend of Mark Byers. "Beasley told both that she had been having an affair with Byers, that Melissa had found out, and that on the day she died, Melissa had told Mark she was going to divorce him." Amanda Beasley died July 26, 2002, age 46. (I have no information on cause of death.) Together with and separate from Mark Byers, Melissa Byers had a criminal record. In 1994 Melissa Byers was charged with assault for holding a gun on a carpet installer. Other joint crimes are listed below. Mark Byers was also identified as an addict. Just two days after the bodies were discovered, this tip came into the West Memphis Police Hotline: "Byers is in drug re-hab in Mphs and on methadone - sourse in Mphs called him + told him" An officer wrote at the bottom of this note: "OLD NEWS" "You don't know all of the wrongs I've done. . . After twenty something years of living like a savage on this earth that He [the Lord] knocked at my heart's door and spoke to me and I'm so glad I invited him in." Mark Byers, church sermon, 1993, Paradise Lost: Revelations. John Mark Byers has a long series of criminal, drug use and violent behavior as chronicled in The Devil's Knot (DK), documentaries (PL1 and PL2) and other sources. 1970s. "I can remember quite vividly the day that I came to from the comatose state I had overdosed in my parents home. . ." PL2, church sermon. "Marijuana, I've tried coke, and some pills. . . just experimented as a teenager going to college." PL2, pre-polygraph interview. 1973. Byers threatened parents with butcher knife. Police called in. Threatened to cut the throat of the officer. DK, p. 299. 1980s. Ex-wife stated that Byers beat her and her children. Reported to Ron Lax, quoted in DK. p. 205. Melissa Byers father said, Mark Byers "beat Melissa up more than once; he blackened her eye." DK, p. 311. September 1987. Conviction for threatening to kill his ex-wife. Three years probation. Wife cited previous death threats. DK, p. 20-21. 149 1990. Sued for disappearance of $65000 in jewelry. Not held liable. July 1992. Arrested for conspiracy to commit felony cocaine and possession of dangerous weapon, Memphis. No time served. DK, p 46 December 1992. Investigated for the disappearance of $11000 in gold watches. Byers confessed. No charges brought. DK, p. 22, above note. 1994. West Memphis police have 13 outstanding warrants against Byers for bad checks. Reported by KAIT8 News, as shown in PL2. (Twelve outstanding warrants reported in DK) No time served. September 1994. Mark and Melissa Byers jailed for stealing $20,000 in antiques. The complainant had her motor home burn down, cause undetermined. Ordered to pay restitution, banished from area. September 1994. Contributing to delinquency of a minor. Providing a minor a folded knife to use as a bruising weapon. Byers held a .22 rifle to insist the fight take place. Sentenced to one year in jail. Ordered to pay half of hospital bills, $2000. No time served. 1994. Restraining order by Kingsbury's after Mark bruised their child. Kingsbury's stated that the Byers had threatened them. Bullet holes appeared in their trailer, the source undetermined. DK p. 299 and 390. 1996+. "I got in a DWI after my wife was murdered." PL2. June 1998. Convicted of writing a bad check. One year suspended sentence. DK, p. 305. April 1999. Sells Xanax to undercover officer. Five year prison sentence, sentence suspended. DK p. 306. With this judgment, prior probation is revoked and he is sentenced to eight years for the prior crimes of burglary and inciting a fight. He served fifteen months. There is also the matter of violence directed toward his stepson, the victim, Christopher Byers. From the door to door interviews in the days after the crime, there is this note from a twelve year old neighbor who said Chris had come to visit him that night. Bobby Posey - Chris said daddy whipped him + was going to run away. . .Chris left + dad came to door + asked Carlos where Chris on Goodwin + Dad stated going to have to whip him again. Mark Byers described the whipping in court testimony: Price: Alright. Earlier that afternoon, had you given Chris a whipping? Byers: Approximately around 5:30. Price: Ok, this was around 5:30 and was this with a belt? Byers: Yes sir. Price: Ok and approximately how many times did you hit him with a belt? Byers: I spanked him two or three times. Price: And what part of the body did you spank him? Byers: It would have been just on his behind. Price: Ok. Was his, was he wearing his pants or did you have him pull his pants down? Byers: No, he had on blue jeans. This description has an eerie parallel to an incident a year after the murders. As was reported of KAIT8 News. Reporter: Problems began when Mark spanked the Kingsbury's five year old. Mark Byers: "I took the fly-swatter and I just on it, just the plastic end, just on the back of his blue jeans." Reporter: But the Kingsbury's say the whipping bruised their son. Kingsbury: "We did have to put out a restraining order put on them because I was worried about my family." Another neighbor recounted a more horrific beating of Chris. One of the times i went to hang out at Ryans [Chris's brother] (seems like it was one of the first times) Ryan and I were going up the stairs to play nintendo. Mark was beating the crap out of chris, who was either already naked or had shorts and such down to his feet. mark was cursing chris and hitting him everywhere with, i think, a belt. I nudged Ryan on the way up the stairs with a crazy look and he said something like "dont worry about that, it happens all the time". Something in that region anyway. Mark stated somewhere in his yelling at chris that it was because chris had left a toy on the stairs. we were up in Ryans room for a while and when we came back down chris was covered in whelps and no longer crying... maybe he passed out or gave up or something. At that point, the poor kid was sweaty and completly naked. It was really bad. Although in the autopsy, the defense failed to emphasize that Chris had multiple old scars, two on the face, one on the chest, and "a few" (unenumerated) on the legs. These could not come from Chris's biological father because, as Mark Byers notes in his 5/19 interview, Chris's biological father abandoned him before he was born. His alibi: The following is a comparison of Mark Byers alibi to the statements of those who could potentially corroborate it. Mark Byers gave an extensive interview to the police on May 19, and this is the basis for much of the timeline presented below. In contrast, there are only minimal notes for family members of other victims. Although much of Mark Byer's time is not corroborated, this is not the same as saying it could not be. For example, he describes two occasions in which he went to Robin Hood Woods with Dana Moore, mother of victim Michael Moore, on the night of the fifth. Although she is his alibi, a detailed accounting of her evening is not available. Statements that refer to events in which the person was not present was not considered corroboration. For example, neighbor recounting Mark Byers saying he was angry at Chris for breaking into the house is not confirmation of Chris breaking into house. (Although it is confirmation of Mark Byers being angry.) May 5th, 1993 3:10 - 3:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Got home from clinic. Chris didn't have key to house. Mark arranged for Ryan to let Christopher in the house on days Mark wasn't there. Ryan wasn't yet there. Corroboration: Ryan notes he got there at 3:38 (referenced below). Chris's grandfather gave this version: "I was on my way up to the schoolhouse, which was right near their, you know, when Mark saw me and told me he was going to pick up Chris by himself." DK, p 312. 3:30 - 3:50 pm Mark Byers statement: Ryan arrives. Ryan waits with Mark for Chris until 3:50. Corroboration: Ryan Clark interview notes: "States he got home at exactly 3:38pm. -- Chris was not @ home." 3:50 - 4:50 pm Mark Byers statement: Takes Ryan to court. Stays at court until 4:50. Corroboration: Christine Roberts (below). Ryan Clark, interview notes: "Ryan had to be in court @ 4:00pm. --his dad took him. Dad dropped him off @ court [no mention of Mark Byers staying with him for nearly an hour]." 4:50 - 5:10 pm Mark Byers statement: Goes to pick up Melissa Byers from work in Memphis. Corroboration: Ryan Clark, interview notes: "[Dad] told Ryan he was going to go pick his mom up from work and go look for Chris. Notes, Christine Roberts (neighbor) says: ". . .were at court with Chris father and left 5:00" 5:10 - 5:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Returns from Memphis with Melissa. Finds Chris has tried to break into house. Corroboration: Statement, Ryan Clark: "Dad told him that Chris had broken a seal on the window to get into the house." Testimony, Melissa Byers: "Melissa Byers: - And I got home around 5:20 - you know, between 5:00 and 5:30, I got home - sometime - you know, and I - Fogleman: - And how did you get home? Melissa Byers: My husband came and picked me up from work." Notes, Christine Roberts, neighbor: "[Mark Byers, upon returning to court] saying he was pissed off at Chris about breaking out window + taking food." around 5:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Leaves Melissa, goes to get Ryan at court. Finds Chris in street on skateboard. Returns to house with Chris. Punishes Chris "2 or 3 licks." Corroboration: Melissa Byers corroborates Chris returning to house and punishment by Mark Byers. Melissa Byers, court testimony: "Fogleman: Ok. And did Christopher come home? Melissa Byers: Yes, my husband brought him home. [snip] Fogleman: Did he get spanked? Melissa Byers: Yes he did, uh Fogleman: Ok. Melissa Byers: He got a good talking to and then uh - about three swats with a belt 'cause he could have been run over." Notes, neighbor, friend, Bobby Posey: "Daddy whipped him + was going run away." 5:30 - 6:00 pm Mark Byers statement: Mark left home to get stepson Ryan at court. Chris under carport. Returned with Ryan. Statement, Ryan Clark: said they returned 5:30 to 6:00, closer to 6:00. Testimony, Melissa Byers: "Byers: My husband left to go back to court to sit with my son, and Christopher was given a paper sack to go out under the carport and pick up paper and stuff. You know, as part of his punishment." Christine Roberts, notes: "[Mark Byers] returne (sic) [to court] 6:30." approx. 6:00 to 6:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Began looking for Chris around house and calling to neighbors. Corroboration: Statements, Melissa Byers and Ryan Clark. 6:30 to 7:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Drove around neighborhood looking for Chris with Ryan and Melissa, streets mentioned were Ingram, Goodwin, Wilson and McCauley. The only name Mark Byers gives in this initial hunt is the Garner family. ". . . we went up to the Garner's house and asked if they knew where Steven lived. [in JMBs statement it makes clear asking for Steven is in seeking Chris.]" Statement, Clint Garner and mother: "[Officer] Ridge: Somebody came by? Garner: Uh, Ryan did. [snip] Ridge: Okay, and what was it he was talking about when he came by? Garner: He came by looking for Chris. Ridge: Okay, about what time do you think that was? Garner: Um, right when it was getting dark Ridge: Okay, sometime before dark 7:30, would that sound right to you? Garner: Around in there. Ridge: How about you Mrs. Garner, is that sound right to you about 7:30? Mrs. Garner: 7:30 it May Even Be Close to 8. Ridge: You were here when he came by? Mrs. Garner: Yes sir." Although not in his statement, Ridge includes Melissa in the investigative report: "Clint stated that Melissa Byers had brought Ryan to his house and that the time was about 7:30 pm or just before dark." Mark Byers does not mention his encounter at the Poseys. Notes, Bobby Posey: "[following above excerpt] Chris left + dad came to soon + asked Chris where Chris - on Goodwin + Dad stated going to have to whip him again." In this time period but not mentioned by Mark Byers, but Jimmy Sellers stated Mark Byers spoke with police officers outside the Flash Market at 6:30. Police logs mention two officers there at that time Meek and Covington. No corroboration of the encounter at Flash Market from Mark Byers, the officers, Ryan or Melissa. About 7:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Encountered black officer in front of Dollar General Store on Broadway. Melissa Byers and Ryan Clark corroborate this incident. No confirmation from officer or identification of the officer by name. Before 8:00 pm. Mark Byers statement: "And it's now, you know, dark's going to be coming on pretty soon. So I called the Sheriff's Department, and the guy answered. I told him my situation, who I was. It was the dispatcher. Just whoever answered at the Sheriff's Department, which was a little bit before 8 o'clock. And he said, you need to, he asked me where I lived, and I told him. He said well, you need to call the West Memphis Police Department." 8:09 - 8:30 pm Mark Byers statement: Called WMPD to inform them of missing child. Officer Regenia Meek responded. Corroborated by WMPD police log, Officer Regenia Meek, Melissa Byers, Ryan Clark and Dana Moore. Shortly after 8:30 pm (indefinite) Mark Byers statement: Going door to door to find them. Encounters "little boy and girl that Christopher would play with" (live on 14th) who said "we saw 'em going in the Robin Hood area." No corroboration or identification of these two children. After 8:30 (indefinite) Mark Byers statement: Mark Byers together with Ryan, encounter Dana and Terry Hobbs outside Moore's house. All converged looking in the woods. No corroboration from Hobbs or Moore. Ryan does not include this in his account. This may be the same as the following event, described in more detail. After 8:30 (indefinite) Mark Byers statement: "It's now probably 8:30. It had got dark. And Terry [Hobbs] said, well, he was going to spread out down, you know, towards where they were found. I don't know how far down that way he went, but he was going to look that way and my son, Ryan and I and Richie Masters, just somehow Richie Masters showed up to help look. And my son Ryan and I think, Brett Smith. Richie Masters goes with Brett Smith's sister.* So that's how they were kind of together. So, we're looking in that area kind of where the loop is." No corroboration from Terry Hobbs. In notes from his interview, Richie Masters tell the story of the search in the Robin Hood Woods [beginning 9:15] including Ryan Clark, Brit Smith, Robbie Young but leaves Mark Byers out of the narrative. In the interview notes from the interview of Robbie Young, Young recounts this search [called at 8:45, searched until 10:00 pm] including Brit Smith, Richie Masters, Ryan Clark, but does not mention Mark Byers. In the interview notes of Brit Smith, Brit Smith, his mother, Richie Masters, Ryan Clark, and Robbie Young are all described as being in on the search [initiated after an 8:30 phone call from Ryan Clark]. Mark Byers is not mentioned. Ryan Clark, in his interview notes, describes the above search including Britt Smith, Richie Masters, Robbie Young, and Britt Smith's mother [waiting in car while they searched]. He does not include Mark Byers. Melissa Byers corroborated a portion of this, although her times are unclear. She said Ryan Clark, Mark Byers, and her went to the woods once. She did not enter the woods. *The comment "Richie Masters goes with Brett Smith's sister [Michelle]" probably refers to the fact they were dating [confirmed in Robbie Young's interview notes] not that Michelle Smith was part of the search. Approximately 9:00 Mark Byers statement: Mark Byers returns home after abovementioned search of Robin Hood Woods to change from shorts and flip-flops to boots and coveralls. Melissa Byers in testimony corroborated that Mark Byers had been wearing shorts and flip-flops, although did not describe when he returned to change clothes: "Davidson: Ok. Uh - do you remember what your husband was wearing at the time [before getting ready to go to Shoney's]? Melissa Byers: Shorts. Davidson: Shorts. What kind of shoes? Melissa Byers: Just like khaki shorts and a t-shirt and some flip flop things, just like sandals." Approx. 9:45 - 10:15 pm Mark Byers statement: Mark Byers returns to searching Robin Hood Hills. Encounters Officer Moore and they search Robin Hood Hills further. Note: The 9:45 to 10:15 is not from Mark Byers statement but from Officer John Moore's log and testimony. Corroboration, testimony Officer John Moore: Fogelman - Alright after taking this report from her [9:23 on report] did you participate in any of the search? Officer Moore: Yes sir. Fogelman: Alright and what involvement did you have in doing that? What did you do? Officer Moore: Okay, I went down, down the street from Catfish Island to an area and I met with Mr. Byers and he and I searched an area off Goodwin Street. From E & B trial: Officer Moore: Uh - the other officer said that there were some people over on McCauly and I went over in that area. and did an initia