BOGUS EVIDENCE/TESTIMONY?CORRUPT JUDICIAL SYSTEM? INJUSTICE?

[Obscuregawdess]

Rumors and Confessions.

West Memphis has a population of 30,000. In spite of this, names and places recur often in this case. The same families often played multiple roles, unlikely connections being made between witnesses, investigators and suspects. This section, in which rumors are traced, includes a large number of names, each person a link in the story. Unlike the group of children in Marked Tree who said they overheard Echols confess, the source of other rumors was often elusive.

Debra O'Tinger testified as to seeing the missing children outside her house at 1309 Goodwin Avenue just before 6:00 pm. She said she and her husband had to wait as the children passed behind her truck before they could back out of their driveway on their way to her mother's for dinner.

O'Tinger's mother, Mae Beshires, lived across town at 506 Balfour along with Debra's fourteen-year-old brother, Craig Beshires. Craig gave a statement about how he and a friend John Graham had, two years ago, seen two men in their late twenties or early thirties with red, white and black paint on their faces dancing in Robin Hood Hills. In his statement, John Graham did not mention dancing and said it was three men in make-up carrying guns. The police used such statements as evidence of a cult gathering near the site of the murders.

Next door to the Beshires, at 504 Balfour, was the residence of Ricky and Debbie McKay. Together with Officer Diane Hester, Ricky McKay would haul off the discovered bicycles. The McKays' daughter, Meredith, would give Damien Echols an alibi for the evening of the fifth. She stated she saw Damien Echols and his family drive up to her cousin's house across the street at 505 Balfour at 7 pm on May the fifth. Her cousin, Stacy Sanders was with her at the time and testified in court to seeing Echols. Jennifer Sanders was at the house at 505 Balfour and testified that Damien and his family had visited. The Sanders had known the Hutchisons and Echols for a long time - years ago they had lived together. If Echols was indeed there, O'Tinger was having her supper across the street from him.

Four houses down the street at 408 Balfour was the home of Richard Simpson. LG Hollingsworth said he spent the evening of the fifth with Simpson, although Simpson denied it.

Photography and the William Jones confession

Karen McAteer [née Beshires] lived at 515 Belvedere, just off of Balfour. She reported her eleven year old daughter, Jessica Bryant, and friend, eight-year-old Heather Smith, had seen Echols photographing them. In her interview, Jessica Bryant said she saw Damien squatting behind a bush looking at them out of the corner of his eyes. He had black under his eyes and "something like" a rabbit's foot in his hair. She did not see a camera. He ran off in the direction of Balfour. There is no statement from Heather Smith.

On May 26, 1993, eighteen-year-old William Jones spoke to the police stating Damien Echols had confessed to him. A transcription of his statement became one of the few documents included as support for the search warrants.

Jones stated Damien was a satan worshipper - but did not explain how he knew this. Jones went on to say that late in the evening on the previous Friday (May 21st) he questioned Damien about his rumored involvement in the murders. ". . .everybody want me to ask him, so I asked him, and he said, that he cut them and that, you know, had sex with them, molested them." [William Jones statement, May 26, 1993] Damien allegedly went on to say he sodomized the victims and cut them with what was described as a ten to twelve inch knife. Jones said he talked to Damien about the confession the next day and at that time Damien denied it.

Jones's aunt, Shari Gilbert, placed this confession earlier. "Approximately 2 days after the boys were discovered my nephew William Jones and I were watching TV and William told me that a boy named Damien told him that him and Jason Baldwin and a third unknown person were the ones that killed the boys." [Shari Gilbert, handwritten note, June 7, 1993]

In undated notes, Detective Shane Griffin wrote: "He stated Damien is a devil worshipper and he is dangerous and he William Jones is afraid of Damien." This contrasted with his taped interview.


Ridge: But, you don't want to go to the police department?
Jones: No sir
Ridge: Because you're scared of Damian?
Jones: Naw, I am not scared of Damian.
Ridge: What are you scared of?
Jones: I've been in trouble before and I just try to stay away I guess, not really you all, you know, but Crittenden County, I try to stay away. They don't like me. [William Jones statement, May 26, 1993]


This echoed Misskelley's confession.


Ridge: Why did you not come forward with this information?
Misskelley: Cause I was scared
Ridge: Scared of Damien? or scared of the police?
Misskelley: Scared of the police. [Misskelley confession, June 3, 1993]


When interviewed by Ron Lax, the investigator for Echols defense team, Jones retracted his statement, saying he just made up something he thought the police wanted to hear.

Ridge was unsatisfied with this retraction and suspected Jones might be afraid of satanists. In a taped conversation with Joneses mother one week before the jury was to be selected for the Echols/Baldwin trial, Ridge asked whether Lax had threatened or intimidated Jones.


Ridge: Even if it's not a direct threat. Kind of like, well, well you, do you really know what you're doing? Testifying against somebody supposedly involved in this Satan worshipping and what they might do to you. Remember what they did to those little kids? [Ridge phone conversation with Dequita Dunham, February 15, 1994]


In contrast, Joneses mother gave a different characterization of the conversation with Lax.


Dequita Dunham: When he was talking to William he was just talking to him more or less as a teacher would or someone. He was understanding, you know. And, he did tell him several times, all I want is the truth. You know, it doesn't matter what the truth is, 'cause I need the truth. [ibid]


Jones did not testify at the trials. According to The Blood of Innocents,

Fogleman and Davis asked for a hearing in chambers, where they alleged an investigator for the defense had been improperly interfering with witnesses. Ronald L. Lax, a Memphis private investigator, videotaped Jones the day before saying, "I just up and said something that I didn't know nothing about." [BOI, page 289]

The specific accusation was: "Your Honor, there's some information to indicate that this Lax may be intimidating witnesses. . ." [BOI, page 290]. An investigation was launched. In a court hearing on February 25, 1994 investigating officer Bobby Stabbs said that the sole complaint of intimidation referred was in regards to the West Memphis Police and not Lax.

The Skating Rink Girls

Jennifer Ball lived at 907 Preston, near where it intersected with Balfour. On March 1, 1993 she made a complaint to the police. While talking to a friend Amanda Lancaster, a stranger stood outside Ball's window and threatened her. She described the stranger as 5' 10", 120 lbs and wearing all black. At the time of her police report, she said she was unable to identify the stranger. She described other incidents in which a neighbor Michael Beshears* (sic) had also been threatening her. In June, after the arrest of Echols, she identified the stranger at the window as Damien Echols. She went on to elaborate that Amanda Lancaster had warned her Michael "was going to blow my house up." She also stated that a Mark Beshires (sic) and Damien Echols were spying on them.


*The city directory lists the next door neighbors of Jennifer Ball as Michael W. and Heather Beshires. There were both Beshears and Beshires living in West Memphis.


In her interview, Jennifer Ball said she had heard that Damien Echols was going to kill two more virgins. She also described an encounter at the skating rink in which Damien followed her with his eyes. Then,


While we were walking out of the blue Amanda started saying shut up shut up. I looked at her & asked her wat was wrong. She said that she could hear Damien in her mind saying "Bitch you're gonna die, you know to much." (Last year Amanda had P.E. w/Damien. She said he would sit there & enter her mind. It really freaked her out.) [Jennifer Ball, June 10, 1993]


Amanda Lancaster confirmed being on the other end of the phone call when the stranger appeared at Jennifer's window. Amanda went on to say "Jennifer Harrison had said that she thought Damean had done it cause he new way to much, and he went around Horseshoe the same day the murders had happened, and had dog intestents around his neck." [Amanda Lancaster statement, June 10, 1993] Amanda Lancaster's cousin, Heather Cliett, was dating Jason Baldwin.

The skating rink was the site of several other stories surrounding Damien Echols. Joni Brown, aged 14, said she was at the skating rink on Friday, May 14th, 1993. She said her friend Whitney Nix told her she overheard Robert Burch say he and Damien Echols murdered the three victims and were going to kill two more. Brown also said Toni Cissell had overheard Damien confess. In turn, fifteen-year-old Toni Cissell stated she had heard this story from Jennifer Ashley and Crystal Hensley.

Whitney Nix, 12 years old, stated she had heard this from a friend Nicol Bumbaugh. And here the story ends, for now, inasmuch as Ashley, Bumbaugh and Hensley documents are unavailable to follow this to its ultimate source. Nix went on to relate this story about Echols.


My friend Natalie told me that he went to her Church one night and it was a lord super and he droped the brade and he would not drinke the o jushe. [Nix statement, June 15, 1993]


Twelve year old Brandy Wilson said she overheard Echols talking about the victims at the skating rink on the Friday night after the murders. Damien was sitting with Jason and Domini when he allegedly made this ambiguous statement.


He said that he had something to do with these three boys and him and Jason just started giggling and laughing. [Brandy Wilson, June 16, 1993 interview]


Brandy's mother confirmed the night although her account was even less incriminating than "something to do with these three boys."


Cummings: Will the girls did say something about it the night that we came home but they didn't nothing the kids or nothing like that just like there was some weird boys there and a couple of other things went on but no I we all really didn't talk about it [until after the arrests] [Penny Cummings, June 16, 1993 interview]

The Softball Girls

Shortly after the arrests, the police received information that a Jenni Deacon, aged 13, had overheard Echols confess. Jenni Deacon stated she had been at J.W. Rich Girls Club softball field on the first of June but that it was her friend Rachael Myers who had told her that she (Myers) had overheard the confession.

According to notes from Detective Ridge, Rachel Myers had said a "Shelly Wolf" (correctly, Wolfe) had overheard Damien confess while at a softball park. Ridge interviewed Wolfe who said she had heard this from Shannon Boals.

Shannon Boals, aged fourteen, described it a bit differently.


Around May 21, 93 [6:30 or 7:00 written above line] I was at the Girls Club in West Memphis at my softball game and this girl name Michelle Carter told me that Damien Echols came up to her and said that he killed those boys and I just said really and she said yes. [Shannon Boals, September 7, 1993]


Returning the favor, Michelle Carter (age unknown) said she was told by Shannon Boals. "About 2 weeks ago at my ballgame at the Girls Club I was told by Shannon Boals from Marion that there was a boy named Damien that said he killed the boys and he didn't cut their thing off he bite it off." [Michelle Carter, June 9, 1993]

Trey Boals [15 y.o.], Shannon's brother, said he and David Smith heard a David Way state he had overheard Echols confess. David Way [18 y.o.] said he heard this from David Smith. There are no notes regarding David Smith's version.

The Wolfes lived at 406 Balfour (next door to Richard Simpson), however, Ridge described going to take Wolfe's statement at 504 Balfour. This was the residence, yet again, of the same Ricky McKay who helped Detective Hester collect the bicycles, whose family was part of Damien's alibi, and whose next door neighbor was O'Tinger's mother. While conducting the interview with Wolfe, Detective Ridge encountered Katie LaFoy.

Thirteen-year-old Katie LaFoy said she was present at the softball field at the Girl's Club (on Shoppingway, near Balfour) on the first of June, when Damien spoke to a group of girls including a "Jody Medford." Although Katie said she missed the beginning of the conversation, she did hear Damien say, "yea that I’m going to do it to some more people too." She said she had heard enough to know he was referring to the homicide. Damien then went on to threaten them so they would not talk. Katie said Jason Baldwin was there.

In a June 7th statement, 14 year-old Jodee Medford said during the week of May 24th, she had overheard Damien Echols talking to a group of five or six people at the Girl's Club. She did not recognize the people, but Jason was not among them that night - although she said he was there the next night. She said she heard Damien say "that he had killed the 3 little boys and that before he turned himself in - he was going to kill 2 more and that he already had one picked out." She said Jackie Medford and Christy Van Vickle were with her. In a June 11th statement she changed this, saying Damien had said this to a group including Jason Baldwin and Heather Cliett.

Her sister, ten-year-old Jackie Medford, confirmed part of the story, saying she was there with her best friend Christy and her sister Jodee when she heard Echols say he killed the three little boys. She did not recognize any of the people to whom Echols was talking.

Although not mentioned as being there in her sisters' or mother's statements, twelve-year-old Jessica Medford said she was sitting with her mother when her cousin, Katie Hindrix (Hendrix) asked Echols a question and Jessica overheard Echols answer he killed the three boys.

Donna Medford, the mother of the Medford girls, said she drove a carload of the children home after the ball game including her daughters Jodee and Jackie, Christy Van Vickle and Katie Hendrix. Noticeably absent from her account was Jessica Medford. "They all started talking at once telling me about what the wierd black haired boy had said that night. The all said they heard him say that he had killed those 3 little boys." [Donna Medford, June 7, 1993] According to Donna, Katie Hendrix went on to say ". . . he had said he was going to bite her titties off. When he left she yelled 'Did you really kill those 3 boys & he yelled 'yes'." [ibid] Donna Medford said she did not overhear Echols say anything, but she did see him there that night. Katie Hendrix does not have an interview folder.

Eleven-year-old Christy Van Vickle in a June 11th statement said two weeks ago she was with Jackee Medford at Girls Club. She said she saw Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin talking to a lot of people. "I heard him say that he killed the three boys. It scared me so I walked away. I didn't hear him say any thing else." [Christy VanVickle, June 11, 1993]

The statements of Christy VanVickle and Jodee Medford were each one short paragraph. They were called as witnesses.


Jodee Medford: Um - I heard Damien Echols say that he killed the three little boys and before he turned himself in, that he was gonna kill 2 more and he already had one of 'em picked out. [Jodee Medford testimony, Echols/Baldwin trial]


Jodee Medford elaborated her account during testimony. They arrived about 5:00 p.m. Her sisters, Jackee and Jessica had early games, she was waiting for her game to start. At about 6:30 pm she walked around the corner of a concession stand and saw Damien Echols about 25 feet away. Echols was talking to a group of six or seven people. Jason Baldwin was nearby and his girlfriend, Heather, was standing next to him. In contrast to her June 7th statement, she said Jackee and Christy were not with her.


Fogleman: Ok. And uh - where - were you with your sister Jackie at that time?
Medford: No sir. [snip]
...cross examination, Scott Davidson.
Davidson: Ok. Did - when you say you heard this conversation, did you see, uh - Christy?
Medford: Uh uh.
Davidson: She wasn't around?
Medford: No sir.


Jodee said after she heard this she told her mother. Her mother said it was in the car heading home, so this would have been after Jodee's game. They didn't inform the police or authorities for two weeks. Jodee testified she had never seen Echols before and did not know who he was until after the arrests when she saw him on television.

Christy VanVickle did not add much to her statement during testimony. She said she was with Jackie Medford when she overheard Echols confess.


Davidson: Ok. And were - who were you with at the ballpark?
VanVickle: Um - Jackie Medford.
Davidson: Jackie Medford?
VanVickle: Um hmm.
Davidson: And anybody else?
VanVickle: No sir. [VanVickle testimony, Echols/Baldwin trial]


In contrast Jackie Medford had stated Jodee Medford was with them and in her testimony Jodee Medford had stated she was alone. VanVickle did not quote Echols words, just that "I heard, um - Damien Echols say that he killed the three boys." [ibid] Christy could not provide any details about the context or tone of the confession. Among the twelve instances when she answered she didn't know or couldn't remember:


Davidson: Don't remember when it was, what day of the week was it on?
VanVickle: I don't know. [snip]
. . . . .
Davidson: Did - what did he say before you say that he said he killed those three boys, what did he say before that?
VanVickle: I don't know.
Davidson: What did he say after that?
VanVickle: I don't know.
Davidson: And how close were you to him?
VanVickle: I wasn't close.
Davidson: You weren't close. Did he scream it?
VanVickle: I don't know. [ibid]


Like all of the softball girls, Christy VanVickle only came forward after the arrests.

The one adult who claimed to overhear a confession was the cult doctor, Dale Griffis. In a statement that would one-up that of the softball girls, he said:


When he [Echols] got done testifying, what you didn’t see on television, what you didn’t see in the movie 'Paradise Lost,' was the fact that Damien Echols said, 'I got three, I had 10 more to go for my coven, but that damn cop from Ohio stopped me.' [Dale Griffis interview with Zachary Petit, Tiffin Advertiser Tribune, March 11, 2007]

There were many rumors of confessions, almost exclusively from children and teenagers. Often the ultimate source of the rumors could not be pinpointed. In the case of the softball girls, there were several witnesses who gave contradictory stories that Echols had confessed at the Girl's Club on multiple nights under multiple circumstances, in front of a crowd or not, with Jason present or not, with Damien either making a short declaration or else answering questions. The names of the girl's friends who were with them at the time also conflicted between accounts. From the many claims of casually overheard confessions, two made it to trial, two young children were left to accuse Damien Echols.

The Softball Girl Lineup

Leadoff:


Jenni Deacon said Rachel Myers had overheard Echols confess at ballpark.


Third base:

Rachel Myers said she overheard this Shelly Wolfe.

Tinkers to Evers to Chance to Evers:


Shelly Wolfe said she heard this from Shannon Boals.
Shannon Boals said she heard this from Michelle Carter.
Michelle Carter said she heard this from Shannon Boals.


Out in left field:


Katie LaFoy said she heard Echols confess at ballpark on the first of June. She said also present was Jodee Medford. No other statements, including Jodee Medford's mentions her presence.


Centerfield:


Jodee Medford said she heard Echols confess during the week of May 24. In her June 7, 1993 statement she said her sister Jackie Medford and Christy Van Vickle were there. In her testimony she said Jackie and Christy were not with her.


Bench warmer:


Jackie Medford said she was with Jodee Medford and Christy Van Vickle when she heard Echols confess.


Backup out in left fielder:


Jessica Medford said she overheard Katie Hendrix ask Echols if he killed the children. Jodee, Jackie and Christy not mentioned as present.


Injured reserve:


Katie Hendrix - No interview is available.


Clean-up hitter:


Christy VanVickle said she was with Jackie Medford when she heard Echols confess.


Team doctor:

Dale Griffis.

Coach:


Donna Medford said the kids discussed the incident in the car afterwards and later during their Memorial Day trip.

http://www.jivepuppi.com/rumors.html


West Memphis, AR, including the victim's neighborhood and the softball park.


Satellite view of Balfour Road. 506 - Mae Beshires, 504 - Ricky McKay,
505 the Sanders, 408 Richard Simpson, 406 Shelly Wolfe.


The bush where Jessica Bryant said Echols was spying on her.
Police photo and markup. Taken from place where Jessica was.

[Obscuregawdess]

Testimony by Brent Turvey and Val Price.


I talked to a reporter from the local NBC affiliate. She admitted that she didn't really know all that much about the case, but that she'd "heard" that there was "overwhelming evidence" against the West Memphis Three. Trying to be polite, I respond, "If there was ANY evidence, I wouldn't be here." She smiled, and seemed to be honestly trying to hear me out as opposed to simply thinking that I was a cult member or something.

Sitting quietly in our nice suits, we were the picture of obedient citizenry, but the bailiff finally approached us and said, "The judge has asked that you remove those patches or go outside." The sound of our "Free The WM3" lapel stickers being ripped off of various articles of clothing was heard several times throughout the courtroom. I felt a little "naughty" as if I'd worn a Marilyn Manson T-shirt to junior high.

Brent Turvey, the forensic scientist/profiler was scheduled to testify, but unfortunately time did not permit him to. His testimony will have to wait until September 2-4 in Marion, Arkansas. There was also talk of Damien taking the stand, but this too, will have to wait until September.

Mallett opened the proceedings in his polite and careful manner, presenting the court with documents relating to the previous hearing. Brent Davis (wearing a snappy Grizzly Bear necktie) made objections to the relevancy of several of Mallett's arguments, as he went over the items. Mallett tried again, unsuccessfully, to request that Judge Burnett excuse himself. "I hope you're not taking this personally," he said.

"No, I'm not taking it personally. I'm on the horse and I'm gonna ride it!" Burnett said in his weary, irritated drawl. His delivery bears a remarkable resemblance to that of an exhausted father scolding a chronically disobedient child.

Finally, Val Price took the stand (and remained there for almost the entire duration of the two day hearing). He was carefully questioned by Mallett about the contract that he signed with CTI (Creative Thinking International - the HBO filmmakers), the money that he received from them, and the money that was supposed to be put into a trust fund for Damien's son. It was revealed that Val Price and his partner Scott Davidson partially reimbursed themselves for their expenses from this fund without consent from Damien. The fund was quickly reduced to zero.

Price was questioned about his reasons for not fighting for a better change of venue, and for having the trial so soon after the Misskelley trial (only two weeks had passed). It was suggested that these decisions were made to better facilitate the making of the film PARADISE LOST. It was also revealed that at least one scene in the film had been at least partially "staged." That is, a conversation which had already occurred, was reenacted for the CTI cameras. Price stated "HBO still owes us (meaning Damien) $2,500."

Price was questioned about jury selection. It was suggested that prejudicial questions were asked during the voir dire, and that certain potential jurors may not have been excused despite their knowledge of the case from media reports. Mallett's main argument seems to be that the Defense didn't push hard enough for a more effective change of venue.

During a recess, a reporter asked Pam Echols (Damien's mom) if Damien was still able to stay in contact with his "cult." She responded flatly that Damien had never been a member of a cult and that it was the news media that had started those stupid rumors in the first place.

I spoke with a reporter from the Commercial Appeal, which is the Memphis newspaper notorious in certain circles for publishing excerpts from Jessie's "confession" before his trial. It seemed like he was trying his best to redeem his paper for their indiscretion in 1993, by abandoning the sensational "Satanic" angle that the Commercial Appeal seems so fond of in favor of a more rational approach. The facts of this case are so much more interesting and sordid than any fictional Satanic cult could ever be.

After the recess, Val Price was still on the stand. He was questioned more about the jury selection process, and the HBO contract. It was revealed that the contract had been signed on March 15th, 1994 (the trial started on February 22, 1994). Price seemed to be suggesting that he felt that the deal with HBO would provide better financial resources for their case than a request for additional funds from Judge Burnett would have. "You decided to go to HBO instead of Judge Burnett for funding?" Mallett asked.

"Yes sir," Price responded.

Mallett returned to the issue of "staging" scenes for the film. He brought up the celebrity status of attorneys like F. Lee Bailey and Barry Scheck, and suggested that perhaps Price had this in mind when he was making his deals with the filmmakers. "Did you ever think that the media coverage would impact on your fame because of this trial?" Mallett asked.

"I might have thought about it," Price said reluctantly.

The judge was asked about his own involvement with the film, and he said, "I didn't know that it was going to be a commercial venture of that nature."

Mallett brought up John Mark Byers (stepfather of victim, Christopher Byers) and asked Price if there might have been a conflict of interest concerning his suspicion of Byers, due to the fact that at the time of the Robin Hood Hills murder trial, Byers was also on trial for breaking into a jewelry store. Davis objected, and once again used his favorite saying "Mr. Mallett is going on a fishing expedition with this conflict of interest thing..."

Burnett sustained the objection, "Let's move on," he said.

Davis objected to his objections being ignored. He complained that Mallett has a tendency to continue a line of questioning despite it being successfully objected to. Mallett was finally forced to drop an entire line of questioning and "reorganize."

"I have to be in Hot Springs tomorrow, so we'll have to end this soon..." the Judge said in reference to the next days' schedule. Day one ends at 4:10 pm. We rushed back to the hotel to watch the evening news, which surprisingly seems to be growing more and more "friendly" as time passes, and more information becomes available. A large group of supporters, now including our pal "VeryScaryCarnival," Sara and others hit the road in a small convoy for dinner at an Italian restaurant. Everyone obediently drew pictures on the paper tablecloth with their crayons. Kathy made good on her claim that she can draw any breed of dog that anyone can name. Soon, there were multicolored dogs everywhere.

That night, we all congregated in one of the larger hotel rooms and discussed (guess what) the case. Bruce Sinofsky offered an amazing collection of bizarre anecdotes about the filming of PARADISE LOST... and then all of a sudden it was 2 am.

http://www.wm3.org/live/trialshearings/ ... =98&page=2

[Obscuregawdess]

FBI chief touts investigation into West Memphis corruption
Posted by Mara on Friday November 10, 2006

A high-ranking FBI agent in Arkansas recently cited his office’s work in combating public corruption in the West Memphis area. In announcing the creation of a new FBI hot line for reports of public corruption, Bill Temple, the agent in charge of the Little Rock office, noted that several police officers there had been convicted of crimes. Temple said evidence of the illegal activity was uncovered in an FBI sting called “Operation Gold Road.” In recent years, officers for the West Memphis Police Department and the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office have been tried on charges relating to the illicit confiscation of drugs, money and other property during traffic stops on the highways that intersect West Memphis.

Temple said public corruption is, by nature, “a hidden crime,” because it may involve a closed circle of subjects. He said that anyone with knowledge of public corruption could call the Little Rock FBI office at (501) 221-8200, or report it online at FBI.gov, and remain anonymous. “The vast majority of public officials in Arkansas are honest, and they serve their communities well,” Temple said. “But even a small percentage of corrupton at any level of government is unacceptable and is damaging to our public institutions.

http://www.maraleveritt.com/news/FBI%20 ... corruption

[Obscuregawdess]

(one message from a board)


http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/2555/


Then there’s the issue of nonsense itself, not being tried, but being used to try cases. Those interested are referred to the two excellent, and frightening, documentaries about the West Memphis Three. Then teens, the three were accused of murdering three little boys by a creek in West Memphis in Arkansas. After 10 hours of grilling, the police squeezed a confession out of one of the teens, who also happens to be border-line retarded. A prosecution witness, whose correspondence courses in satanic rituals qualified him as an “expert,” testified that, “Yep, these are just the kind of godless, teenage heavy metal fans who would commit murders like that.” Of course it was off to death row and life terms for the teens, who have now spent half a lifetime fighting for their lives. This miscarriage of justice was also notable for the sociopathic step-father of one of the murdered boys who had all his teeth pulled before they could be matched to the bite marks on his dead step-son. He was never even questioned. The bites did not match the dental patterns of any of the WM3.

We could go into the absurdity of lifetime appointments for judges; the conflicts of interest in the processes to remove crooked lawyers and incompetent judges; the lack of penalties for over-zealous proscutors and lazy defense attorneys; the contradictions in sentencing guidelines… But you get the idea.

The judicial system seems long overdue for some skeptical inquiry and reform.

[Obscuregawdess]

http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/Articl ... 77590f8a9a

Today, Aaron Hutcheson isn’t sure what he saw.

Tim Hackler
Updated: 10/7/2004


Aaron Hutcheson has suffered from nightmares for most of the 11 years that have passed since his two best friends were killed in West Memphis. He recently joined the Army and hopes this will help him get his life on track.

What, exactly, Hutcheson told police officers in his first interviews will never be known. The whole affair began as a result of a coincidence.

Vicki Hutcheson was scheduled to report to the Marion police station on the afternoon of May 6, the day after the murders, but before the three bodies had been discovered.

(Hutcheson had taken a lie detector test after employers at the truck stop where she worked believed she might be responsible for overcharge on a credit card. She was reporting to the police department to learn the outcome of the investigation. She was cleared, but also fired.)

Hutcheson brought Aaron with her to the police station. When a police officer learned that two of the missing boys were Aaron’s best friends, he began to ask Aaron questions.

According to the officer, Donald Bray, who talked to Aaron when his mother wasn’t present, Aaron told him things about the murder scene that only someone who had been there would know. This included the fact that two of the boys had drowned.

Is this accurate? Today, 11 years later, Aaron can no longer be sure he actually witnessed the murders.
There’s no doubt that after several interviews he told police that he did, but after daily sessions with therapists, nightly bad dreams and the passage of 11 years, he says he simply no longer knows whether he was at the scene or whether, in his shock at the brutal slayings of his best friends, he only thought he had been at the scene.

There are many inconsistencies among Aaron’s versions of what happened, leaving no doubt that he imagined or made up at least part of the story.

But was he at the murder scene?

Hutcheson said Bray told her that Aaron knew the boys had been hog-tied, and that only someone at the scene could have known that. Yet, in his first tape-recorded interview with police, on August 25, there was the following exchange.

First, Detective Bryn Ridge asks Aaron if any of his friends have told him what they think happened.

Aaron: Uh-h (no).

Ridge: Nobody has told you?

Aaron: Un-un (no) nobody even knows that … that I know what really happened. … What I think happened.

Ridge: Do you know what really happened?

Aaron: I know most of it.

Ridge: Okay.

Aaron: I think they went down there, they uh, the man the men seen them, and that white tank top man, that had on the white tank top, he told the rest of the men to hold them or something and probably did it.

Ridge did not seem to pick up on the fact that Aaron was no longer sure he had actually seen the murders.

Aaron says he knows what happened – "what I think happened."

He says he "thinks" the boys "went down there" and were discovered, and that the man in the white tank top "probably" killed them.

Eventually, Aaron gives an explanation for his knowledge of the case that the police choose to overlook – news media.

Ridge asks Aaron what he thinks should be done to the murderers when they are caught.

Aaron: I told my mom, that the police should do what they did to Michael, Chris and Steve.

Ridge: Oh.

Aaron: ’Cause I … they shouldn’t really even do it to kids that age.

Ridge: Oh, what did you hear got done to the boys?

Aaron: They got rap … they got raped and they got beaten to death, and they got drowned.

Ridge: Oh.

Aaron: See they hogged tied them and then put bricks on them so they wouldn’t float. [Note: The boys’ bodies were held down by sticks, not bricks.]

Ridge: Oh.

Aaron: That’s what I think, that’s what I heard that said.

Ridge: Who told you that?

Aaron: Nobody. I just, I heard that from the news.

Ridge: Oh.

Aaron: And um, Diane … Diane, Michael’s mom, said that she seen his face and it had knife stabs on it.

Ridge: Oh.

Aaron: On him.

Ridge: Okay, you said that they were hogged tied, now how … how do you think hogged tied is?

Aaron: They put their feet together and their arms together like that, ’cause I been took [to the] rodeo. They have kids and hog and if you tie a hog you get two dollars. I … I always know how to do that.

In this exchange, Aaron not only makes it clear that he, like many others in the area, had heard rumors that spread like wildfire about the case, he made a revealing mistake about the evidence. It was his description of how the boys were hog-tied.

He made the assumption most children or adults would make if they heard that someone had been hog-tied. He assumed the murderers had "put their feet together and their arms together…."

It would seem that the terrible way that the boys were actually tied up would make a lasting impression on anyone. In fact, each boy was bound with his back bowed, left wrist tied to left ankle, and right wrist to right ankle.

'Happy in hell'

Aaron, who is now 19, is convinced the three boys were killed by Christopher Byers’ stepfather, Mark Byers. West Memphis officials have acknowledged that Byers, a former drug informant, once was considered a suspect. He was never charged. Aaron contends Mark Byers hated kids.

Aaron is sure he told the police in the first interviews about Mark Byers. His mother also recalls that, but adds there were so many interviews that she can’t remember details from them all. But she remembers one interview in particular.

She says Detective Gary Gitchell had both her and Marion police officer Donald Bray sign an "affidavit of silence" pledging themselves never to mention that Aaron had named Mark Byers.

At the trial of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, Echols’ attorney, Val Price of Jonesboro, said in court that Aaron had identified Mark Byers as one of the killers. But Gitchell told the Memphis Commercial-Appeal the next day, on Feb. 18, 1994, that Aaron had never implicated Byers.

Aaron is also sure he could not have identified Jessie Misskelley as being one of the killers, because he and Misskelley had been friends and he would have noticed if Misskelley had been a participant in the slayings. ( So did Misskelley know the three boys that were killed? Hmmm...)

Vicki Hutcheson says shortly after the deaths a bulletin came on television before she could turn it off, saying that three boys had been arrested, including Jessie Misskelley. ("They showed Jessie’s picture and Aaron screamed to the top of his lungs, fell in the floor and said, ‘Jessie did not do that.’ I mean he was screaming. I had to call Judy Hicks [his therapist]. She had to administer a shot to him. No one knows the hell Aaron went through.")

Aaron says he had never seen Damien Echols or Jason Baldwin before, and that the only reason he identified them was to please the police officers interviewing him.

In addition, Victoria Hutcheson says she saw the photo "lineup" police showed Aaron. "I wasn’t allowed in the room but when the door came open for Aaron to leave I saw the photos. They were on a poster board like you have in school.

The picture of Damien was in the middle of the others, and it was much larger than the others. So of course Aaron ‘identified’ Damien. He just wanted to say whatever the police wanted him to say."

Understanding of how easily police can coerce statements, even confessions, from children has grown since 1994. Since 1999 a large number of studies and articles have been published on the subject, and state and federal courts around the country have thrown out convictions based on such statements or confessions.

The detectives failed to ask Aaron the questions that could have verified whether he had actually witnessed the slayings.

In his interview on June 8, Aaron told police he was in a tree and badly injured his back when he fell. "I could hardly walk or get up," he said.

In the version he gave police the next day, the killers hurt Aaron with a rock. The detectives neither asked Aaron about this discrepancy, nor asked him to show them the spots on his back or leg where he had been injured.

Nor did they check his wrists to see if there was any evidence of the ropes Aaron said the killers used to tie him up.

The police, then, chose to believe an eight-year-old boy’s story that he watched five men kill and mutilate three other eight-year-olds; that the killers knew Aaron saw the killings, whereupon they grabbed him and tied him up, but he was then able to untie himself and outrun five adult killers.

With each police interview Aaron’s story became more dramatic and less consistent.

In a version Aaron gave police after the Misskelley trial had started, he said he himself had been forced to dismember the body of his friend, Christopher.

In an interview with Mara Leveritt, which she reported in her 2003 book "Devil’s Knot," Circuit Judge John Fogleman, who was the prosecutor in Misskelley’s trial, admitted that Aaron’s story was not credible. "I had some police officers that were absolutely convinced of his story," he told Leveritt, "and I talked to him a couple of times.

"The first time, I was a little bit believing him. The last time, I guess when he started talking about draining the blood into a bucket, or whatever it was he said, it was so inconsistent and stuff that I got real concerned."
As a result, Fogleman did not subpoena Aaron for testimony.

At the time of the killings, Aaron was also sure that one of the five people he saw was a black man. The boy mentioned a black man with yellow teeth in a maroon-colored car in his very first interview with police.

Police and prosecutors ignored the statements, despite the fact that, at around 8 p.m. on the night the boys disappeared, a black man had entered a Bojangles Restaurant a mile from what would later be discovered to be the crime scene.
According to the restaurant’s manager, the man was covered in blood and mud, and his trousers were soaked with water up to his knees. He entered the women’s restroom where he stayed a considerable time.
The manager called the West Memphis police, but the officer who responded took a perfunctory report from the drive-through window and never entered the restaurant.

Though employees at Bojangles cleaned up the mess later that night, West Memphis police did find blood samples when they finally investigated a few days later. That evidence, however, was lost by the West Memphis Police Department.

Now a young man with intense, dark brown eyes, Aaron Hutcheson says today that he would like to become a lawyer so he could help people avoid the injustice he saw in West Memphis as an eight-year-old child.
He especially resents all the "corrections" the police made when he tried to explain what happened.

"It was like, ‘Naw, are you sure about that Aaron?’ They messed with my words a lot."

[Obscuregawdess]

And Letter To Former Governor


http://deathpenalty3.proboards103.com/i ... thread=960

On the afternoon of 6 May 1993, West Memphis was rocked by the news of the discovery of the mutilated bodies of three eight-year-old boys. Rumours regarding the nature of the murders spread like wildfire through the town. It was soon well known that the boys had been cut with a knife, raped and at least one of the boy’s genitals had been cut, many of these rumours were based on inaccurate police assumptions. By 12.00 p.m. the next day, police were questioning their first suspect, Damien Echols. Several weeks later Jessie Misskelley, an associate of Echols, confessed to the murders, implicating Damien Echols and another friend, Jason Baldwin. Soon after, following a confession by Misskelley, the three teenagers were arrested and charged with the murders of James M. Moore, Steven E. Branch and Christopher M. Byers.

The citizens of West Memphis were relieved that the monsters that had committed these heinous crimes had been apprehended and justice would be served. There was a great deal of anger in the community directed towards these three adolescents, supposedly involved in Satanic cults, who were accused of killing three innocent boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Rumors of Satanic groups had abounded in this dominantly Baptist community for decades. Details of their exploits were well known although there was never any proof of any murders actually having been performed in the past. From the time the arrests were made until they were tried, local papers fed the community’s blood-lust, with stories of Satanic abominations appearing on a regular basis.

On Wednesday 19 January 1994, Jessie Misskelley was sent to trial after an attempt to have his confession suppressed was denied. Two weeks later, he was found guilty on one count of first degree capital murder and two counts of second degree capital murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole. He was seventeen years old.

The trial of Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols began on Tuesday 4 February 1994. On Monday 18 April 1994, they were both found guilty on three counts of capital murder. The next day Jason, just sixteen, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of forty years. Eighteen-year-old Damien Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

More than five years after these sentences were handed down the three young men continue to proclaim their innocence and are persevering in their attempts to have new trials granted. This in itself is not unusual. There are many guilty men who have succeeded in tying up the legal system in the process of appeals for as many as fifteen years. What is unusual in this case is that they are not alone in proclaiming their innocence. Thousands of American citizens are convinced that Jessie, Jason and Damien were wrongly tried and convicted and are now lending their support to the fight for justice. Everyday this support is growing and now includes many criminal and legal experts who are throwing the weight of their knowledge and experience behind the three boys.

Damien Echols claims that he was found guilty long before the trial began because he was considered weird by many in the community, having practiced the Wicca religion and listened to the music of supposedly Satanic groups such as "Metallica." Jason believes he was found guilty by association. Jessie claims that his confession was coerced, claiming he had told police whatever they had wanted him to so that they would let him go.

Under question in this case is not merely whether Jessie, Jason and Damien are guilty or innocent, but whether the correct legal processes were upheld to secure their convictions. Was the basic tenet of the American legal system, the presumption of innocence, discarded in order to satisfy a community’s call for the revenge of the dreadful murders of three innocent children?



----------------------------------------------------------------------------



May 6th, 2004



Arkansas Governor’s Office

State Capitol Room 250

Little Rock, AR 72201



Dear Governor Huckabee,



The process by which a police department conducts an investigation is an ever-changing one. Though years of police academy training and examples provided in the books of written law can offer structure, quite often police investigations are subject to exceptions to the rules.



As mentioned in our last letter, the investigation of John Mark Byers, stepfather of victim Christopher Byers, leaves a lot to be desired. Because Christopher sustained more concentrated injuries than victims Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, one would assume his family and close relations would be interrogated with a more scrutinizing eye. However, it is our opinion that this did not happen.



John Mark Byers worked as a drug informant for the West Memphis Police. This could be the very reason the details to follow about Byers may have been glossed over, both before and after the trials of the West Memphis Three: Byers has a history of inflicting physical abuse (specifically, “spankings”) on Christopher[1]; a restraining order was obtained against Byers after he was accused of spanking his neighbor’s five-year-old son[2]; Byers was arrested and charged with terrorist threatening of his first wife; Byers was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor when he forced two teenage boys to engage in a physical fight allegedly at gun point, one of them using a knife provided by Byers[3]; Byers was charged with stealing twenty thousand dollars worth of property from a neighbor’s house; at one point after the West Memphis Three trials, the West Memphis Police Department had thirteen outstanding warrants for Byers’ arrest for passing bad checks; Byers has been diagnosed as having a multitude of psychiatric problems by his doctor[4]; in June of 1999, Byers was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison for attempting to sell prescription drugs to an undercover narcotics officer; John Mark Byers has been concurrently prescribed Xanax, Zoloft, Sinequan, Haldol, and Depakote[5]; Byers has been a victim of abuse and can be quoted as saying [in reference to the crime against his son] that when he heard what had happened to Christopher, it was “like they were reading off what had happened to me, except I had survived it”[6]; Byers said in a lie detector test (years after the murders) that he didn’t steal, didn’t have altercations with police, and only experimented with drugs in college, though he had been arrested on drugs and weapons charges in 1992[7].



When bite mark evidence was introduced into an appeal hearing for Damien Echols, Byers was mysteriously ready and willing to comply with any requests for dental impressions that might be made. John Mark Byers, though, has no teeth. He has said his teeth were knocked out in fights, or that they had fallen out as a result of a side effect from taking Tegritol (for an alleged brain tumor; this, however, is not a known side effect of Tegritol)[8]. Byers’ dental records show that his teeth had been extracted by an oral surgeon in April of 1997 for reasons undisclosed. Byers has also claimed to have suffered from the following ailments (though not all can be confirmed): brain tumor, epilepsy, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, manic depression, anxiety and/or panic attacks, and hallucinations.



John Mark Byers’ wife, Melissa, died suddenly in 1996 as the two lay in their home to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. The cause of death remains undetermined, as the medical examiner for one reason or another was unable to decide whether the death was a suicide or a homicide.



The list of “gray area” surrounding Byers goes on and on and on. While we contend that he was never given equal consideration as a suspect, the West Memphis Police Department has produced documents that prove they considered Byers a possible suspect at various points throughout the case. What caused them to give up on their suspicions is where we remain confused. The real question at hand is, if the police had to give up on Byers because they were somehow unable to establish enough evidence against him, why were they able to arrest Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr., whose characters were relatively innocent?



Sincerely,





Jenn Onofrio Paul Rhyand

[Obscuregawdess]

West Memphis Three
In this day and age, "Salem Witch Trial evidence" should not be admissible in a court of law. Such is the evidence by which Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley were convicted of the murder of three eight-year-old boys.

These murders were committed in Robin Hood Hills in West Memphis, Ark. The local "good old boys" methods of obtaining crime scene evidence left much to the imagination and speculation of the local police investigator, Gary Gitchell. In his efforts to solve these heinous crimes under his watch, he grasped at straws as to who might be a likely suspect by enlisting the speculation provided by a juvenile probation officer who happened to be present at the crime scene.

On this flimsy evidence Damien Echols, a loner who liked heavy metal music and the occult, was blamed for it. His friend Jessie Misskelley, 17, was coerced into a confession even though a lie detector test proved that he was innocent. Through a tearful confession of more than five hours the police concluded that this young man, whose IQ was 72, was guilty as well.

Jason Baldwin was found guilty for no other reason than merely being associated with them. The evidence, what little of it was available, was so contaminated the conclusions were ineffectual.

Powerful media hype added to the paranoia surrounding the three young teens. No other suspects were even considered nor investigated and DNA evidence was not pursued. The victims did not appear to have died where they were found in the wooded area. Lack of blood evidence at the crime scene confirmed the murder probably did not occur there. The supposed "crime scene" had no notable footprints even though the ground had been saturated with rain.

Further evidence revealed the bite marks on the children did not match those of the defendant's teeth. Furthermore, 24 hours had passed before a report was investigated about a bleeding and muddy man who was spotted at a short distance from the crime scene.

The bible-belt satanic paranoia in Arkansas influences the fanatics who wish to blame people that do not fall into their strict ideals of Christian traditions. This idea of satanic blame comforts the local population into the belief that all will be right as soon as the devil worshippers are brought to trail. Paranoia and media hype combine to distort and invent clues as well as obscure the truth from being revealed.

Since these murders occurred in the early 1990s in a small town, the science of gathering evidence and information were somewhat limited. Important evidence and clues were not followed through because the police in charge of this case saw three easy suspects.

Henry Rollins, Lemmy Kilmister and other musicians are in the process of raising money to get the DNA evidence necessary to clear them.

--Mike M.

http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/20 ... ne2004.htm

[Obscuregawdess]

http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/vickih.html

MR. FOGLEMAN: We call Vickie Hutcheson.
MR. CROW: Your Honor, may we approach the bench?

(THE FOLLOWING CONFERENCE WAS HELD AT THE BENCH OUT OF THE HEARING OF THE JURY)

MR. CROW: I may be anticipating what they are going to try to elicit from this witness but I anticipate she’s going to testify that she saw him at some alleged cult meeting after the murders. If she wants to testify that she saw him with Damien, that’s fine, but all this cult stuff - - I don’t think there’s been a proper foundation laid for it. It is prejudicial and we would strongly object.
THE COURT: After - - is that what you’re going to do - -
MR. FOGLEMAN: Between the murders and the arrests.
THE COURT: But after the event.
MR. FOGLEMAN: That’s correct.
MR. STIDHAM: Just because he was somewhere drinking and carrying on with somebody doesn’t mean he’s satanic - -
(p. 961)
THE COURT: I’m reminded of the Strobbe objection, the first trial - - it wasn’t Strobbe - - it was the biscuit man - - where y’all persuaded me to let in some evidence that happened after the time of the charge that indicated either criminal activity or wrongdoing and the Court said you couldn’t do that - - the Ridling trial. Is there any difference in what you’re trying to do here?
MR. FOGLEMAN: In this particular case the defendant in his confession talked about this cult activity. We contend that the proof is going to show that within maybe a couple weeks after the murders she got Jessie to introduce her to Damien, and Damien invited her to an Esbat, some kind of witch or satan worship deal. Damien and Jessie took her there.
And while there she observed the kids. Some of them have their faces painted black, they begin to have sex. She asked to leave and Damien took her home and Jessie stayed.
MR. STIDHAM: We have already brought out in cross examination why the police were looking - - why they picked up Jessie that morning, and this is highly prejudicial in that it occurred after the murders if it occurred at all, and I think any probative value is surely outweighed by the prejudicial effect of this.
(p. 962)
MR. DAVIS: Judge, one thing that you need to remember - - in their entire cross examination of the officers yesterday they kept asking, “Do you have any evidence that Jessie was involved in cult activity? What evidence do you have?”
MR. CROW: It has already been discussed.
MR. DAVIS: We can put on witnesses to show what evidence they have.
MR. FOGLEMAN: And they were the ones in their examination of the officers who asked about, “Where did you get this information about Jessie being involved in with this cult stuff with Damien?”
THE COURT: I’m going to take a recess and think about it.

(RETURN TO OPEN COURT)

THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, you may take a ten minute recess at this time with the usual admonition not to discuss the case.

(RECESS)

(THE FOLLOWING CONFERENCE TOOK PLACE IN CHAMBERS)

THE COURT: Let the record reflect that is a hearing out of the presence of the jury. All right, gentlemen, the Court is considering the testimony of Vickie Hutcheson. State for the Court what your theory and notion of relevance is to this testimony.
(p. 963)
MR. FOGLEMAN: Your Honor, we expect that the witness would testify that approximately two weeks after the murders - - two to three weeks after the murders - - she was introduced to the co-defendant Damien Echols by the defendant and after being introduced she kind of played detective and got Damien or led Damien to believe that she was interested in occult activity and Damien invited her to an Esbat, which I understand is some kind of witch of satanic meeting.
That Damien and the defendant took her to this meeting and that at this meeting a group of young people were there. They had their faces painted black and began to take off all their clothes and have sex with each other.
Let me back up. I don’t think she’s - - I think she’s going to say she left before that actually took place. They began to touch each other is what I think she said. Then she asked to leave and Damien took her home and the defendant stayed.
The theory of relevance is that the defendant in his confession stated that he had been engaged in cult activities with Damien Echols, and there were orgies that took place and the defense has taken the position that we would not be able to prove any of (p. 964) these cult activities or any connection with any cult, and this is offered to corroborate what the defendant said as far as his involvement in these activities which the defendant in his statement relates to the murders by his statement that there was a photograph of the little boys that was passed around at one of these meetings.
MR. CROW: Your Honor, first, the prejudicial effect of this type of testimony in front of your average American juror is obvious. Very few members of American society are anything but Judeo-Christian ethic.
This activity allegedly occurred two weeks after the murders. There’s no alleged connection between this event and the murders. There’s nothing been put forth so far in the prosecution’s case or anything I’m aware they’re going to put on saying the actual murders were cult related other than the fact that these guys may have been in a cult together.
Jessie doesn’t say in his statement it was a cult killing. There’s no physical evidence to my knowledge, on the scene making it cult related.
And the effect this thing is going to have on the jury is very substantial and the probative value for something that happened two weeks after the murder is (p. 965) so limited.
THE COURT: I’m not going to let you do it.
MR. FOGLEMAN: You’re preventing us from being able to corroborate the things he says in his statement and - - I am not arguing with the Court.
THE COURT: The last time I did it I restricted the defense and the Court reversed saying that I - - but the issue there was entrapment and it was conduct of the police that they wanted to demonstrate afterwards.
MR. FOGLEMAN: That’s correct.
THE COURT: This is a little different situation, frankly. The conduct is conduct of the defendant.
MR. STIDHAM: But it’s after the murders.
THE COURT: The issue is whether or not that portrayal of him involved in cult activities with the co-defendant would so prejudice the jury against him that it would outweigh any probative value, that is, the corroboration of his statement.
MR. STIDHAM: Your Honor, would you consider this? We are not here to determine whether or not Jessie was in a cult meeting in Turrell. We’re here to determine whether or not he was involved in a homicide.
THE COURT: It’s relevant inasmuch as you’re (p. 966) questioning and have since the outset of the trial the statement itself made by Misskelley. You are alleging that it was contrived, that it’s false and it is simply not true. So - - and basically that is the only evidence that ties Misskelley directly to the commission of a crime is his own statement. So it is extremely important and relevant that the jury be provided all evidence necessary to decide whether or not that statement was voluntarily given and whether it was truthful at the outset. So I certainly understand the State’s position. I’m trying to balance the thing.
MR. FOGLEMAN: Your Honor if - - if you want to - -
THE COURT: I’m more concerned about all of the fact and details that occurred at the - -
MR. FOGLEMAN: Do you want us to ask her not to say about what they were doing?
THE COURT: What took place. I think I’m inclined to let her testify that she attended, whatever you called it, occult activity with Jessie Misskelley and Damien Echols.
MR. STIDHAM: That’s the prejudicial part that we are objecting to.
THE COURT: You’re not objecting to black painted faces and sex?
(p. 967)
MR. CROW: We’re objecting to that, too.
THE COURT: I think it is relevant, and they’re entitled to show that it’s true that there were cult activities, based upon at least this witness’ representation.
But I’m more concerned about all the details and circumstances that the witness would be prepared to testify to. Those to me are more prejudicial than the fact that he went to a cult activity.
MR. STIDHAM: Your Honor, the State is required to corroborate the homicides, not corroborate that maybe he was at a meeting - -
MR. CROW: - - two weeks after the murder.
MR. STIDHAM: - - with teenagers drinking and having an orgy - -
MR. CROW: - - two weeks after the murder.
MR. STIDHAM: He’s here on a homicide. That is why we are here before the Court is to determine if he was involved in a homicide.
MR. CROW: If they want to prove that he was at some cult activity prior to the homicides as he says he said in his statement, that’s one thing. But proving he was at cult activity after the homicide - - something he didn’t discuss in his statement - - is totally out of bounds.
(p. 968)
MR. FOGLEMAN: If we were talking about three months after, I could see the point about - - but we are only talking about a few weeks. And, really if y’all were not arguing false confession, we wouldn’t be in a position like we are because all we would have to do is corroborate that the crime occurred. But with you arguing false confession, we feel compelled to try to corroborate as many details as we can.
In fact I think your expert says that some of the things that are important is whether or not you are able to corroborate details unrelated that he says in his statement.
MR. CROW: Corroborating with stuff - - his activity prior to the crime, which is things he talked about, is one thing. Maybe he said he was a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan and saying he went to a St. Louis Cardinals game after the crime - - I just don’t see the - - obviously that is not prejudicial.
MR. STIDHAM: That’s why they are wanting to hang this boy and that is why the newspapers have been splashing this cult stuff and that’s why everybody’s got their mind made up about his guilt or innocence because they are so petrified and horrified by this cult stuff. Mr. Crow made a good point that people - -
THE COURT: Everything they’ve just said are (p. 969) certainly subject matters of cross examination if he takes the stand. There’s no question about that.
I’m going to let them develop from the witness that she went with Jessie and Damien to a cult activity and that - - to that extent, basically. Don’t go into all the circumstances of what was seen and what was done and that sort of thing.
I think the fact that you are challenging both the police activity - - overreaching of the defendant in taking a confession - - the fact that the confession is false, that is a fabrication on the part of Jessie Misskelley, that the State should be given some latitude to prove that this is not false. These are the underlying facts that support the truthfulness of the statement. I think just basic fairness allows him to do that.
On the other hand, I’m trying to balance the harmful effect by - - I agree to some extent if they went in there and started telling about black painted faces and children having sex in the woods with devil signs around and all of those sorts of things, that would be prejudicial to some extent. But whether or not that prejudice would outweigh its probative value, I’m not certain.
I frankly think that maybe fairness would allow (p. 970) it to all go in to show the circumstances immediately after the crime. But I’m going to limit it to the fact that she did attend with them some kind of cult activity without allowing her to go into all the details.
MR. CROW: Note our objection.

(RETURN TO OPEN COURT)


(p. 970)
VICTORIA HUTCHESON

having been first duly sworn to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then testified as follows:

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. FOGLEMAN:
Q: Will you please state your name and the address where you lived in May of 1993?
A: My name is Victoria Hutcheson, and at that time I lived in Highland Park in a trailer there.
Q: Where did you live before you moved to Highland Park?
A: I lived at 1502 East Barton in West Memphis.
Q: Do you have children?
A: Yes, I do. I have two boys.
Q: How old are they?
A: I have one that just turned eleven and one that’s eight.
Q: Your eight-year-old - - was he acquainted with Mike or Steve or Chris?
A: Yes, he was really good friends with Chris and Mike and (p. 971) Steve, and they ran together, but Steve more or less ran with my older boy.
Q: Did they go to the same school?
A: Steve and Aaron and Chris were all in the same class together.
Q: And Aaron is your eight-year-old?
A: My eight-year-old, yes.
Q: When did you move to Highland Park in relation to the murders, approximately?
A: Approximately April. Like the second week of April.
Q: After you moved to the Highland Park area, did you become acquainted with the defendant?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: And how did you become acquainted with him?
A: Jessie and I became really close friends.
Q: After the murders, were you also friends with the families of any of the victims?
A: Todd Moore, who is the Cub Scout - - leader over the Cub Scouts - - both of my boys were in the Cub Scouts troop.
Q: You were acquainted with - -
A: With Todd.
Q: At some point after the murders, did you decide that you wanted to play detective?
A: I thought I would play detective.
Q: And in the course of that, and without saying what you had (p. 972) heard, had you heard some things about Damien Echols?
A: I heard a lot of things about Damien Echols.
Q: What did you do to try to learn more about this person?
A: I had Jessie Misskelley, Junior introduce us.
Q: Are you referring to the defendant?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: After he introduced you to Damien, did you do any particular things to try to gain Damien’s confidence?
A: I had went to the library. Don Bray, the police at Marion, had given me his card to check out some satanic books because they can’t be checked out just by normal - -
Q: All right. You said Don Bray of the Marion Police Department?
A: Marion Police Department.
Q: At this time was the West Memphis Police Department aware of what you were doing?
A: West Memphis knew nothing.
Q: After these books were obtained, what did you do with them?
A: I just like spread them out on my coffee table like it was everyday reading.
Q: For what purpose?
A: If he was into witchcraft - -
Q: Who?
A: Damien.
Q: Okay.
(p. 973)
A: If Damien were into witchcraft, naturally he’s going to be curious why I have all this stuff, I thought.
Q: At some point did Damien invite you to go to some meeting?
A: He did. On a Wednesday night, an Esbat.
Q: Is that E-S-B-A-T?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: Did you learn what that - -
A: I had to look it up but it was in one of the witch books and it’s an occult satanic meeting.
Q: Okay. And did you go with him to this?
A: Yes.
Q: Who went with you?
A: Jessie.
Q: What did y’all go in, what vehicle?
A: A red Escort.
Q: Who was driving?
A: Damien.
Q: And about how many people were there?
A: Approximately at a distance I would say ten, twelve, even fifteen.
Q: After a period of time as things developed, did you ask to leave?
A: I did.
Q: And when you asked to leave, did somebody take you home?
A: Yes.
(p. 974)
Q: Who was that?
A: Mr. Echols.
Q: What did the defendant do?
A: Um, stayed.
Q: Are you familiar with - - or aware of this tape that’s been played in court with the voice?
A: Yes, sir, I am.
Q: Do you know who that voice is?
A: That’s my child.
Q: Was the defendant acquainted with your child?
A: Yes, he was.
Q: Had the defendant spent time where you were living?
A: Jessie and I - - I thought were very close and good friends, and so he did spend quite a bit of time with us.
Q: At the time that you asked the defendant to introduce you to Damien, did you have any reason to believe that he was involved in the murders?
A: Never.

CROSS EXAMINATION

BY MR. STIDHAM:
Q: Miss Hutcheson, you say that you asked Jessie to introduce you to Damien?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Did he tell you that he knew him?
A: He had told me on several occasions that he knew him.
(p. 975)
Q: Knew who he was from school?
A: He was a friend of his.
Q: Why did Don Bray, the officer from the Marion Police Department, give you his library card?
A: Don --
Q: Let me ask you this way: How did you come in contact with Mr. Bray?
A: Through a Delta situation, which I’m not going to elaborate on, but ah - -
Q: I want you to elaborate on it.
A: Would you like for me to elaborate on it?
Q: Yes, ma’am.
A: There was a credit card mess up, and I was working during the time that this happened and another boy. And it was a two hundred dollar transaction that had been done without - - I don’t really know the particulars of the credit card, but there was an investigation. All charges were dropped.
Q: Why did you go see Don Bray that day?
A: For that.
Q: Did you go for a specific reason, to take a test or anything?
A: I did take a lie detector test.
Q: A lie detector test was conducted?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And all charges were dropped, you say?
(p. 976)
A: I have the file.
Q: Have you ever been convicted of writing bad checks in this state?
A: Yes. In Arkansas I have.
Q: Mr. Fogleman asked you if you at some point wanted to play detective?
A: Mr. Fogleman?
Q: Um-hum.
A: I had never met Mr. Fogleman until like a month or - - about two months ago.
Q: You testified that you were going to play detective in this case?
A: I decided that on my own. Those boys I loved, and I wanted their killers caught.
Q: Did that thirty thousand dollar reward have anything to do with your decision?
A: No. It had nothing to do with it.
Q: Did you ever tell anybody that you were going to get that reward?
A: Not to my knowledge, no.
Q: Mr. Fogleman asked you if you had anything to do with this at the time you went to this so-called meeting?
A: No one mentioned Jessie Misskelley’s name to me whatsoever until he was arrested and on TV.
Q: Fact is he spent the night with you the night before he was (p. 977) arrested?
A: Exactly. To protect me.
Q: To protect you from a prowler?
A: From a prowler.

REDIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. FOGLEMAN:
Q: This Delta situation - - were you ever charged?
A: No, I was not.
Q: In fact the day that you were in Mr. Bray’s office - - is that the day - - which day was that in relation to when the boys - -
A: The boys were still missing at the time I was sitting in his office, and he asked me - - I was obviously upset, and he asked my why I was upset.
Q: It was the day the boys were found?
A: Yes, they were found Thursday.
Q: It was that same day?
A: Yes.

(WITNESS EXCUSED)

[Obscuregawdess]

A crucial witness says her testimony in the West Memphis Three case wasn't true, but a product of police pressure to get results in the death of three children.

A woman who provided crucial testimony in the West Memphis 3 case now says her testimony was a complete fabrication.

Victoria (Vicki) Hutcheson says she was told what to say by West Memphis Police Department detectives, and that if she did not testify as instructed they could take her child away from her and implicate her in the slayings.

She also says the police hid her from defense attorneys after she testified in the first of the case's two trials, and that she knows of at least one piece of evidence destroyed by police.

Hutcheson's son Aaron, who was 8 years old at the time of the slayings and a close friend of two of the three little boys who were brutally murdered in 1993, is also recanting statements he made shortly after the murders. Aaron, now 18, says police "tricked" him and led him to say things that were not true.

Aaron's interviews with the West Memphis police were used to back up their theory that the slayings were related to the occult and to tie the teen-agers - now famously known as the West Memphis 3 - to the killings.

Assistant Police Chief Mike Allen dismisses Hutcheson's account. "It appears that Vicki Hutcheson is trying to get her 15 minutes of fame," he said.

Allen noted that she'd testified under oath in the trial of one of the three - Jessie Misskelly Jr. - and that the defense had a chance to cross-examine her. "I don't know anything about Vicki Hutcheson or her motives for over 11 years later coming out and lying about the events of 1993, but I can say that the case gets more bizarre everyday."

Hutcheson testified only in Misskelley's trial. Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were tried together later. Misskelley and Baldwin are serving life sentences. Echols was sentenced to die. All three are appealing.

Mara Leveritt, a Times contributor and author of a book, "Devil's Knot," about the case, puts Hutcheson's significance this way:

Hutcheson's interviews with police gave them a theory to build a case around. With that theory, and a confession from the 17-year-old Misskelley, whose IQ was subnormal, police had what they needed to arrest Damien Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16.

The prosecutor had little else in the way of solid evidence and Misskelley soon recanted his confession. Nonetheless, the confession was leaked to a Memphis newspaper, which put it on the front page, and it was raised by the prosecution in the trial of Echols and Baldwin.

Dan Stidham, defense attorney for Misskelley, said that Hutcheson's testimony in Misskelley's trial was critical in all three convictions. "Vicki Hutcheson's testimony was crucial to the prosecution because it was the only real corroboration that they had for Misskelley's ridiculous statement to the police. Even though she did not testify in the next trial of Echols and Baldwin just two weeks after Misskelley's trial, everyone on the jury in Jonesboro knew about Misskelley's statement and Hutcheson's testimony.

"Hutcheson's recantation of her trial testimony was not all that shocking to me in that I have always known that she was lying. The real shocking thing to me about her recantation is the level of misconduct on the part of the West Memphis police. It obviously knew no boundaries." Stidham, a district judge in Paragould, no longer works on the case, but follows it closely.

On May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys - Michael Moore, Stevie Branch and Christopher Byers - were savagely murdered in a wooded area near Interstate 40 in West Memphis. One of the boys was sexually mutilated.

After a month passed with no promising leads, police turned to three local teen-aged boys - Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley - and charged them with the murders. To establish a motive, the police and prosecutor said the three were devil worshippers and had killed the three younger boys as part of an occult ceremony.

In four recent interviews, Hutcheson said she has been carrying the burden of putting three innocent boys in the penitentiary and can no longer keep the truth bottled up.

"I lied, instead of trusting in God," she says. "I was raised in a Pentecostal home and I knew to do right but instead I let the West Memphis Police Department scare me to death."

Hutcheson became linked to the case on May 6 - the day after the boys had gone missing, but before their bodies had been found - when she and Aaron were at the Marion Police Department on unrelated business.

Marion police officer Donald Bray tried to strike up a conversation with Aaron, who at first wouldn't talk or make eye contact. But eventually Aaron warmed up to Bray and told him two of the boys missing in West Memphis were his best friends.

The children's bodies were found while Hutcheson and Aaron were still in Bray's office. After talking with Aaron alone, Bray notified the West Memphis police that the child had told him he witnessed the murders.

But in a recent interview, Aaron said he is no longer sure whether he actually witnessed the murders or whether his mind was playing tricks on him during a traumatic period. The West Memphis police paid little attention to the changing and contradictory accounts he told or to the possibility that he could have gotten his version of events from news reports and neighborhood gossip. (See sidebar.)

Bray met with Vicki and Aaron Hutcheson again a week later. He told her he suspected the killings were somehow linked to the occult or devil worshippers.

At this point, Hutcheson decided to "play detective," to try to determine if a boy mentioned by Bray - Damien Echols - was guilty.

Hutcheson denies accusations she was offered a reward to help the police. Bray, who might have known whether a reward was a factor, suffered a debilitating stroke shortly after the trials.

The 'lost' recording

When Hutcheson learned that a 17-year-old neighbor named Jessie Misskelley knew Damien, she asked Jessie to introduce her to him.

Jessie did so and the three of them met in Hutcheson's trailer one evening. She reported on the meeting to the West Memphis police the next morning.

The police encouraged Hutcheson to bring Damien back to her trailer, and obtained her permission for them to install a listening device under her bed, with the microphone attached to a lamp in the living room area.

"They put the recorder under the bed," she says. "It was a fancy one with several reels of tape so that one would begin when the other was filled."

Police suggested she tell Damien she was interested in becoming a witch, and that she check out books on witchcraft from the library to leave in prominent places in the trailer. (She didn't have a library card, so one of the detectives lent her his.)

Hutcheson turned the recorder on when Damien showed up a few days later. Hutcheson says he just laughed when she said she wanted to become a witch.

She told him she had heard that he liked to suck blood. Damien said he encouraged such stories as a "mechanism" to keep people from prying into his life.

"What's a mechanism?" she asked. She says Damien replied, "It means leave me the fuck alone."

Damien never said anything incriminating during the conversation, Hutcheson says.

The police retrieved the tapes the next morning, and asked her the following day to come to the police station to listen to portions of them.

"They would play parts of the tape and then stop it and ask me a question like, " 'Well what did he mean by that?' "

She said West Memphis Det. Bryn Ridge changed the tapes while Gary Gitchell, the department's chief detective, asked the questions.

"The quality of the tape was excellent," says Hutcheson. "You could hear Jessie, you could hear me, you could hear my roommate Christy. You could hear Damien excellent because he was sitting right next to the lamp."

But, according to the West Memphis police, the tape was of such poor quality it was not usable. Later, the police said they lost the tape.

Today, assistant chief Allen says he'd listened to the tape and it was not intelligible. "I also asked several other individuals about what I remembered about the tape and they remembered the same thing - that there was loud music playing in the background and you couldn't hear what was said."

Hutcheson says that on the day she was called in to review the tape, she noticed that photos of Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin had been put above Gitchell's desk and were being used as a dart board.

"I said that was absolutely uncalled for and Gitchell laughed. And he thought that was funny that I would take that personally. ... They already had their minds made up."

Playing detective

In Misskelley's trial, Hutcheson testified that she had personal knowledge that Misskelley, Echols, and Baldwin were involved with the occult.

Lacking solid evidence or leads and under intense public pressure, the police decided to pursue the "occult" angle. For that, they needed some shard of evidence to persuade the jury. According to Hutcheson, they chose her for the dirty work.

The highlight of Hutcheson's testimony was her description of a witches' meeting she said she'd been taken to by Damien Echols, with Misskelley along for the ride.

"Every word of it," she now says, "was a lie."

Hutcheson says she first thought it would be fun to cooperate with the police and "play detective." Within a few weeks, though, she had become enmeshed in a web she'd never imagined.

Hutcheson's testimony was a repetition of a statement she made to Detective Ridge on May 28. In this statement Hutcheson appears to tell the police without prompting that she attended an "esbat" (a witches' meeting) and that Damien Echols took her there. She said Misskelley went along.

Hutcheson says this May 28 statement followed a number of earlier interviews, of which there are no records. In those earlier interviews, she says, police told her what to say.

"It was like this: I was either going to say exactly what they needed - or else. 'We're going to make this easy on you, Victoria, and you're just going to say exactly what we need or things can get rough on you. You could be implicated in this murder. You could lose your son.' "

Hutcheson was susceptible to police pressure at that point in her life. She had been a suspect in another crime. "I was just … I didn't know what to do," she remembers.

In 1992, Hutcheson and her second husband moved from Fayetteville, where she'd worked as a legal secretary, to West Memphis. They moved into a comfortable three-bedroom home.

But then, she says, her husband walked out on the family, and Hutcheson and her two sons had to move into a house trailer.

She describes her situation this way: "My husband had just left me. I'm in a town I don't know. I have no money, a truck about ready to break down and a job on the line. I've got a child that's ADD. I'm paying $90 for his medications.

"There were times that I got down on my knees and said 'God, what is it? What have I done to deserve this?' "

The witches' meeting

Hutcheson said the "witches' meeting" was dreamed up by Jerry Driver, a county juvenile officer, at a meeting detectives held at Bray's storage facility in Marion.

(Hutcheson says that such meetings were part of a pattern. Rather than at police headquarters, they interviewed her either at a commercial storage facility owned by Bray, or at the Crittenden County Drug Task Force office, several blocks from police headquarters.)

Driver considered himself an expert on the occult, and had been watching Echols, whom he considered suspicious, for years. Gitchell and Bray were also at the meeting, Hutcheson says.

"Well, we were sitting there and he [Driver] goes, 'Okay, what really needs doing here is, I guess that maybe Victoria goes to one of those meetings they have - an esbat.'

"I'm not stupid, I knew what they wanted me to do. But I had no idea what an esbat meeting was, so he defined it for me."

Hutcheson says that when detectives tape recorded interviews with her, "they would shut the tape off, and tell me, 'No, that's not how it happened, Victoria. You come up with something better.' "

She says she believed their threat to implicate her in the murders if she did not agree to lie on the stand.

"Gitchell said to me, 'Don't you understand you could be the link between the two? On the one hand, you knew Michael and Christopher. And on the other hand, you know Jessie, and you've had Damien over to your house.'

"Of course, Damien was at my house for the police, but now they've got me as knowing Damien."

Even when she agreed to comply, Hutcheson says, the detectives were worried that she might flub the testimony.

When the Misskelley trial began in January 1994, Hutcheson says she was still so nervous she did not know if she would be able to pull it off either, though she'd been prescribed Valium.

On the day she was to testify, she says, she was kept in the judge's chambers while the trial proceeded.

"Gitchell and Ridge came back from time to time and they would ask, 'Are you sure you're going to be okay, do you need to take some more medication?' "

At one point she told them she did, so one of the detectives went to the spectators' area in the courtroom and solicited Valium tablets from the mother of one of the victims.

"We were all given the same thing, you know. We all went to East Arkansas Mental Health Clinic."

Hutcheson added that Brent Davis, one of the prosecuting attorneys, "would come back to check on me and say 'remember you're going to say this or that.' "

She also claims that assistant chief Allen, then a West Memphis detective, told her officials would arrange for her to leave town after the first trial, because they did not want her or Aaron available to defense attorneys in the second trial.

"They told me I would have to go to a place where defense attorneys couldn't find me - and I was all for that!"

She says she was given directions to a motel in Memphis where she and Aaron stayed during the second trial.

Today Allen says, "I never had any knowledge of Vicki Hutcheson being placed in a motel." He also says he never saw Jerry Driver at the police department during the investigation. He was a juvenile officer in Marion and had "very little" to do with the case.

A question of motives

If Hutcheson lied in 1994, why should she be believed today? And what moved her to come forth now, 10 years after the trials? There are reasons why Hutcheson might be better off by remaining silent.

Since the 1993 murders, Hutcheson has been to prison four times, for using drugs and writing hot checks. She is still on parole.

It is unlikely her coming forward now will make her popular with the law enforcement communities that have so much control over her life.

Hutcheson says she is speaking out now because of the ministry she encountered in prison. "I learned some principles in my life," she says. "And I learned, in order for God to forgive me, I had to clear my conscience."

In April, Hutcheson was talking with her Fayetteville attorney, Mima Cazort, about a Social Security issue. Cazort was questioning Hutcheson about her health when Hutcheson broke down and said she had been carrying around a secret that she thought had taken a toll on her health.

Hutcheson told Cazort her story, and said she wanted to do what she could to free three innocent boys from prison. Cazort asked Hutcheson if she wanted to go public with her story, and she replied that she did.

"Jerry Driver planted those boys … And I guess I implicated Jessie, because I said I know Jessie and Jessie knows Damien ...

"I guess I'm the whole reason Jessie is locked up. And that makes me very, very - I can't tell you what it does to me.

"And that's why I'm doing this now. I have to clear my conscience not just for me but for God. And I can't live like this anymore, with this on my shoulders.

"I know what I did was wrong, and I should have stood up to the police and done what was right no matter what.

"They had me so scared, and I seen what they were doing.

"I seen 'em set up three boys for murder, and not just one murder but three. And getting by with it.

"And who was I? They were going to put me right in the middle of it.

"I was scared. I mean I was scared to death."

Tim Hackler is a writer who lives in Fayetteville.



http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/Articl ... b8013254ec

[Obscuregawdess]

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku. ... forum/id/8

[Obscuregawdess]

There's PLENTY more to be listed... lots more!

[yankee-in-france]

There's PLENTY more to be listed... lots more!

-- I was afraid of that!

[yankee-in-france]

How can there be so many weird people in one small town?

[Obscuregawdess]

How can there be so many weird people in one small town?

We have it here in Kentucky, too! I am from Illinois and knew some oddballs, but I think West Memphis has every place I've ever lived beat. I only live 3-4 hours from there, and I was there about a year ago for further work training when I was managing. I was sent to Memphis but I made a trip to West Memphis just to get a feel for the area and to look at it... intuition. No matter how disturbed or weird Damien was, I do feel it was all Satanic Panic. I believe many of the Christians there were scarier than he would ever try to be.

[Obscuregawdess]

As shown by farms comments: From this info, they get a profile... a list of characteristics to look for in a potential suspect. Damien exhibited a lot of these characteristics, and was questioned further, as were others.



SUSPECT 1 = DAMIEN

SUSPECT 2 = BYERS



1. ASK: NAME, ADDRESS, PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT, TELEPHONE NUMBERS FOR HOME & WORK.

SUSPECT 1 = Damien Echols, # address & phone #, No employment

SUSPECT 2 = John Mark Byers, # address & phone#, No employment



2. ASK: HOW LONG THE HAVE LIVED THERE.

SUSPECT 1 = Residence in West Memphis - many years; Residence in victim's neighborhood - none

SUSPECT 2 = Residence in West Memphis - many years; Residence in victim's neighborhood - same house as one of victims




3. ASK: WHO ALL LIVES IN THEIR HOME AND WHAT THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS AND WHERE THEY WORK.

SUSPECT 1 = Family members

SUSPECT 2 = Family members



4. ASK: HOW MANY KIDS THEY HAVE, WHERE THEY ATTEND SCHOOL, AND NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THEIR FRIENDS.

SUSPECT 1 = No children N/A

SUSPECT 2 = 4 (known) children: 2 non residing with suspect, 2 residing with suspect, including one of the victims; Schools: In Neighborhood


5. ASK: THE TYPE OF VEHICLES THEY OWN AND GET COMPLETE DESCRIPTION: COLOR, YEAR, MAKE, MODEL, TAG NUMBERS.

SUSPECT 1 = No vehicle; N/A

SUSPECT 2 = 2 vehicles - 1 smaller silver hatchback, 1 full size pick up truck with camper shell


6. ASK: NAME AND ADDRESS OF ANY VISITORS THEY HAVE HAD BEFORE, DURING OR AFTER THIS INCIDENT.

SUSPECT 1 = Personal friends and family; WM Kops

SUSPECT 2 = Personal friends and family; WM Kops


7. ASK: ABOUT ANYONE NORMALLY SEEN IN THE AREA THAT HASN'T BEEN SEEN SINCE THE INCIDENT.

SUSPECT 1 = None

SUSPECT 2 = None


8. ASK: ABOUT ANYONE THAT LIVES IN THE AREA THAT APPEARS STRANGE OR HAS BEEN ACTING STRANGE.

SUSPECT 1 = Himself

SUSPECT 2 = Himself


9. ASK: WERE THEY AT HOME ON WEDNESDAY EVENING.

SUSPECT 1 = Home with family, 3 miles away

SUSPECT 2 = Partially searching for missing victim; MIA one hour May 5th; MIA up to 5 hours May 6th


10. ASK: IF THEY OR ANYONE THE KNOW IN THE AREA IS A VIETNAM VETERAN.

SUSPECT 1 = No


SUSPECT 2 = No



11. ASK: IF ANYONE IN THE AREA WEARS A UNIFORM, ANY KIND OF UNIFORM.

SUSPECT 1 = No

SUSPECT 2 = No


====================================

MATCHES: 9 OF 11

SUSPECT 1 = Q's: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11


SUSPECT 2 = Q's: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11



MATCHES RELEVANT TO CONNECTIVITY WITH VICTIMS


SUSPECT 1 = 0


SUSPECT 2 = 6



===========================

What I'm saying is he fit the FBI's profile and so warranted further investigation.


What I'm saying is that there was no profile, however he fit 4 out of 11 questions in this questionairre. Byers, on the other hand, fits 9 out of 11 questions in this questionairre, so by your own logic here, Byers fit even more so than Damien.

Why then did Byers warrant no further investigation?



Since we already know how you feel about


Damien's documented mental illness,

Byers also has documented mental illnesses



history of violence,

Damien's history of violence was personal and inward, manifestations of OUTBURST and never an actual physical attack on another human being.

Byers has a history of violence, had just ended probation on the charges of threatening his ex and biological children with a cattle prod, the DAY BEFORE those kids ended up dead, had held his parents at knifepoint, as opposed to Damien *threatening* his dad, AND even after this event, was charged in 2 different cases: giving a teen a knife, and holding them at gunpoint so the kid could beat another kid unconscious, and then *spanking* the neighbor's youg 5 yr old hard enough to leave whelts, thus having the protection order called. Byers was connected to a murder in Marked Tree, and possibly in Houston Texas prior to moving to Ar...all of which is a hitory of violence AGAINST ANOTHER PARTY, UNLIKE DAMIEN'S HISTORY OF VIOLENT OUTBURST.


When you can PROVE Damien actually physically hurt another individual in a violent attack, then we'll let ya have this one. dog tales don't count cause that was never even remotely verified. Just another RUMOR.


and his "dabbling" in satanism,[/]


Damien never dabbled in Satanism. Period. Damien had an interest in the graceful and humble Wiccan religion, was more acedemic than active practice, but was never involved in any groups, cults, nor covens while interested in this, AMONG MANY OTHER, religious subjects. You, obviously, do not know the difference between Satanism and Wicca. Not even on the same playing field those two.


However, if you are convinced Damien dabbled in Satanism, please post the evidence of this. If you're afraid to post, email it to me and I'll post it for ya....what documentation do you have, or other relevant evidence can you point to that clearly reveals where and how Damien dabbled in Satanism?


(((Note: If you post anything along the lines of so and so said so, he had black hair, he wore a black anything, he looked too goth, I'll personally *boot* ya myself... )))


he matched the pro

There was no profile to be matched. Damien *matched* (even this has no legitimate context) 4 out of 11 points of a questionairre. Byers *matched* 9 out of 11 points of a qustionairre.



http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2271
(Poster: Unregistered(d))

[Obscuregawdess]

A portion of this information was being discussed in 'Beyond a Reasonable Doubt,' but this veers into some new territory. Sorry it's so long -- I hacked out everything I could.

As I have said before, there are no "standards" that medical examiners are required to follow. They are bound simply by the policies and standard operating procedures of their particular office.

In September of '94, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that "an inspector from the National Association of Medical Examiners told staffers the office would be reaccredited." At the time in question, May of '93, the office had already lost its accreditation -- and over a year later was still working to regain it. While accreditation doesn't affect the office's ability to operate, it DOES indicate that it functions at nationally accepted standards.

While the office was not bound to the National Association of Medical Examiners' standards, if one applies their Autopsy Report Review parameters to Dr. Peretti's written report, it could be argued that he would receive an 'unsatisfactory' rating on at least one point:

"Were descriptions of injury, if present, appropriate for the complexity of the case, and consistent with diagrams and photographs?"

According to the College of American Pathologists' (hereafter known as CAP) guideline for forensic pathology (as prepared by the Forensic Pathology Committee):

"Any existing injuries should be documented in detailed descriptions, noting characteristics of size, shape, and pattern. Diagrams and photographs
(with scales as needed) should be included as is appropriate.

Observations should be correlated with the findings at internal examination relative to course, direction and depth of each wound, and the internal
structures involved by the injury.

There are several types of traumatic injuries that should be described separately in an orderly manner, including:
(irrelevant ones snipped)
(1) blunt force injuries such as abrasions, contusions, lacerations, and fractures; (3) incised, stab, and chop wounds caused by sharp cutting instruments; (5) patterned injuries that reflect the configuration of the inflicting object or instrument, such as ligature marks, tire marks, shoe imprints, and tool marks.

Injuries not only should be measured and recorded in all dimensions, but also should be located by measurement with relationship to planes of the body and fixed anatomical landmarks, such as the top of the head and soles. Each wound should be individually described in a separate section. Multiple injuries of various types should be correlated with their descriptions by numbers, diagrams, and photographs. Descriptions of color, swelling, and healing may assist in the determination of the age of an injury.

When incised, stab, or chop wounds are present, their location, size, shape, and general features should be described and documented by diagrams and photographs.

When the margins of the wounds are approximated, the measurements should be rerecorded. In some cases it may be possible to determine whether the weapon had a single-or double-edged blade. A patterned injury may be caused by the hilt. Wounds through cartilage and bone should be preserved since the cartilage and bone may contain identifying tool marks. The hands, forearms, and lower extremities should be examined carefully for defensive wounds and geographic groupings of injuries.

In sharp force injuries, an estimate of depth and direction of the track from the wound of origin on the skin surface should be recorded. Depth and direction of a stab wound, however, may be significantly altered from their original state by body compression, body posture, flexion, and other factors."

A cursory examination of any of the autopsy photos will reveal that Dr. Peretti most certainly did not detail every injury. Confirmation, from Bryn Ridge's pre-trial hearing testimony:

Q. When you talk about "pick marks," what are you talking about?
A. It appears like a double edge knife will be used to repeatedly stab -- peck at the skin of the victims with entry having been gained to the flesh.
Q. Where were those little stab wounds?
A. Well, on the one with the cutting to his face, it was like all away around the wound. He had marks on his eyelids. The one that the penis was removed was all the way around -- was about a foot in diameter around the genital area.
Q. Are you talking about just three or four of those stab wounds?
A. No, sir. I would call it hundreds.

HUNDREDS.

Dr. Peretti recorded the general depths of only one area of injury, according to the autopsy reports:

Christopher Byers:
"The gaping defect was surrounded by multiple and extensive irregular punctate gouging type injuries measuring from 1/8 inch to 3/4 inch and had a depth of penetration of 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch."

The only other vague reference to depth in all the reports included no actual measurement.

Steve Branch:
"The cutting wounds measure from 1/8 to 1 3/4 inches. Many of these wounds terminated into the oral cavity."

Anyone see any reference to direction of wound tracks in those reports?

CAP recommends:
"Prior to refrigeration, the body temperature should be noted in at least general terms. Core temperature, rectal or liver, may be used in special cases, preferably with at least 1 set of temperatures recorded from the scene."

Dr. Peretti's Rule 37 testimony:
Q. Does your report tell what was the temperature of the bodies when you commenced your examination?
A. No. We don't take body temperatures.

CAP recommends:
"Fluid accumulations should be characterized by color, volume, location, and whether they are due to injury or medical intervention. When appropriate, fluids should be cultured or submitted for other laboratory testing."

"Physical evidence, body fluids, formalin-fixed tissues, paraffin blocks, and microscopic slides under the control of the medical examiner or coroner should be stored in such a way as to ensure their physical integrity and security. In general, it is desirable to maintain these materials long enough to satisfy reasonable investigational and judicial interests."

From Michael Moore's autopsy report:
"The sphenoid sinus contained 2 ml. of bloody fluid."

As this was part of Peretti's evidence of drowning, this fluid should have been preserved. While I doubt that it would yield any information at this late date, it was potentially useful in comparison to the ditch water collected.

From the evidence list:
E-42 ONE GLASS MASON TYPE JAR CONTAINING A WATER SAMPLE FROM THE AREA OF HOMICIDE

Just as Dr. Peretti was under no obligation to take the body temperatures, he was under no obligation to perform any further testing to determine if/where Steve Branch and Michael Moore drowned.

Unfortunate, really, since it's a very simple process to test for the presence of diatoms. In an interesting 1988 study (authored by A. Auer and M. Mottonten, titled 'Diatoms and Drowning') 107 bodies of subjects known or suspected to have died by drowning were compared to a control group of 15 bodies of subjects who had died of various diseases on land.

All the fresh, well-preserved bodies for which death by drowning could be regarded as certain from the macroscopic autopsy findings and police reports gave quantitative diatom results that supported a diagnosis of water aspiration. The diatoms identified in the qualitative analyses served well to describe the ecological properties of the environments in which death had taken place, and the site of drowning could be defined by means of comparative water samples provided that sufficient diatoms were present, the local environment was not too homogeneous or the diatoms were not of quite different species due to a completely unknown location of death.

CAP recommends:
"Collection of insect specimens on and about decomposed bodies" as do innumerable other sources. Mr. Mallett quoted one at the Rule 37 hearings: "In Bernard Knight's book on page 76 he writes -- this is under the title of the Entomology of the Dead and Postmortem Interval -- "This is a highly specialized subject and when the issue of time since death is important such as a criminal investigation, it is essential that whenever possible the pathologist has the assistance of an entomologist with forensic experience as in forensic toxicology and serology. When serious medical/legal issues are at stake, there is no place in forensic entomology for the occasional expert who dabbles in the subject when the opportunity arises."

Peretti's Rule 37 testimony:
Q. I notice that in your autopsy report you detected the presence of larvae in the left orbit of one of the victims. Do you recall that finding?
A. Yes.
Q. Does your report make any reference to preserving any of those specimens of larvae?
A. I didn't preserve them.
Q. Does your report make any reference to your decision to preserve or not preserve?
A. No, it doesn't.
Q. Are you trained as an entomologist?
A. No.

While it is impossible to know if this entomological evidence would have yielded anything useful, we'll simply never know.

In addition, we don't even know how much time Dr. Peretti spent on these autopsies, thanks to his record keeping.

More Peretti Rule 37:
Q. By the way, can you tell me what time of day you received these victims for examination on May 6th?
A. What time they were logged in the Crime Lab?
Q. What time you began to examine them.
A. I examined them -- I believe the 6th was a Wednesday - and - I started first thing in the morning.
Q. Does the report tell what time you started?
A. We don't put on the autopsy reports the time we started. They were the first cases in the morning. I generally start at 7:30.
Q. So if my question is does the report tell what time you started, your answer is, no, it doesn't?
A. That's right.

The date on the autopsy reports reads May 7, which was a Friday. Since Coroner Kent Hale pronounced the children dead at the scene between 3:58pm and 4:02pm on Thursday, May 6, Dr. Peretti could not have autopsied them first thing that morning. Therefore, he must be referring to Friday morning. We have no actual recorded times to work with, but interestingly it was reported in the Commercial Appeal on Saturday May 8: "Dr. Frank Peretti, a forensic pathologist with the Crime Lab's medical examiner's office, completed the autopsies about 1 p.m. [on Friday, May 7] At 4 p.m., he issued a statement that said "all three children died of multiple injuries." "

May 7, 7:30am to 1:00pm.
Did Dr. Peretti spend a mere 5.5 hours autopsying all three victims? Including a consultation with Dr. Dugan AND going over the bodies with Dr. Sturner?

Impossible.

By 1pm on Friday, May 7, Dr. Sturner wouldn't even have been back from Memphis yet.

Sturner's Rule 37 testimony:
A. Yes, by telephone. I happened to be over in Memphis
inspecting the Medical Examiner's Office of Shelby County, which includes Memphis, and I was called at some point in time, I believe around noontime and informed of that by Doctor Peretti and/or his staff.

In his Rule 37 testimony Dr. Peretti claims:
A. Well, it took me probably a day and a half to do all the autopsies, and what I did was after I did each autopsy, I made my notes. I dictated the case.

Something's not adding up around here, eh?

Let's look at Dr. Sturner for a moment.

He did not leave Rhode Island (his position prior to Arkansas) under pleasant circumstances.

"I wish you luck in the state of Arkansas with Dr. Sturner," said Jim Carney, chief of Community Affairs at the Rhode Island Health Department. "I am not criticizing his credentials. It's his method of administration and management that I would certainly look at." (Comm App, 2/92)

While employed by Rhode Island, Dr. Sturner was investigated by a State Senate panel for selling pituitary glands (used for a hormone which treats dwarfism) from autopsied bodies without the permission of relatives, supposedly using the revenue for office parties and travel. He stopped the practice after the investigation began. Luckily for him (and any other ME's who may have been engaging in this practice), he wasn't governed by today's AMA Code of Medical Ethics. Section 2.08 - Commercial Use of Human Tissue:
3) Human tissue and its products may not be used for commercial purposes without the informed consent of the patient who provided the original cellular material.

Dr. Sturner resigned from his position in Rhode Island on June 7, 1991, a mere four hours before a Health Department Commission was to hold a hearing concerning a number of charges of misconduct. (Providence Journal 6/91)

"Sturner, 58, left his Rhode Island job during an investigation of allegations that he used state property and facilities to operate a private consulting business. He also was accused of giving testimony regarding autopsies he did not perform." <--- READ THAT TWICE (CommApp 2/92)

It all began in March of '91, when an inquiry was launched because Dr. Sturner had a little problem with using 'forensic agents' (non-physician employees, used to transport bodies and assist with autopsies) to perform actual autopsies. A number of forensic agents claimed that they performed autopsies that should have been supervised by Sturner, but were not.

According to a former forensic agent in Sturner's office (Wayne Bright, speaking to a local television station), he performed "many autopsies," most of which Sturner did not supervise. Sturner told the station that it was standard procedure for forensic agents to perform autopsies.

Dr. Sturner was suspended by Governor Sundlun from his position as Chief State Medical Examiner of Rhode Island on May 20, 1991. At the time, Sheldon Whitehouse, the governor's legal counsel stated: "Sundlun has made it clear that Sturner will be fired if the State Medical Examiners Commission decides the charges are accurate."

From a letter written by Governor Sundlun to State Health Director Dr. H. Denman Scott:

"there is evidence that Dr. Sturner used state lab equipment to perform non-state autopsies and state computers to send letters and invoices to private clients."

"There is evidence that he has met with private attorneys on private business matters in his state office."

And my personal favorite:
"In addition, the documentation indicates that Dr. Sturner has met private clients in Massachusetts and has testified in a Massachusetts court in private consulting cases on a day he reported himself present and working on the State's behalf for the entire day."

Apparently Dr. Sturner DOES have the ability to be in two places at once.

Rather than fight these allegations, Dr. Sturner quit.
Of course, this was a wise choice, since his resignation cancelled the Commission's investigation.

Governor Sundlun's take on this resignation?

From the Providence Journal:
"...Sundlun said Sturner "jumped. He wasn't pushed."
"I think the timing of his letter before the hearing scheduled for this afternoon speaks for itself," Sundlun said.
"As a federal prosecutor, it was my experience that guilty pleas were always rendered just before you went to trial," he said.
"As a civil prosecutor, most cases were settled just before you went to trial. You can draw your own conclusions," the governor said.
Sundlun later issued a clarification, saying his statement was not designed to leave the impression that the medical examiner's resignation was an admission of guilt."

The case was turned over to then Attorney General James O'Neil. However, Dr. Sturner was not prosecuted by the AG's office, because Rhode Island apparently had no specific regulations forbidding his actions.

Dr. Sturner left Rhode Island and began his career in Arkansas in the spring of '92.

While I have no direct proof that Dr. Sturner did not inspect the bodies for bite marks, I now have more questions than I had before about his veracity.

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2094

[Obscuregawdess]

Des wrote in another thread:
there's a 99.9% likelihood the softball girls were ~ like little Aaron H ~ ALWAYS fullashit, and nothing but a couple of little gossipy pre teens who wanted their 15 minutes of glory...

Glory...maybe. Maybe not.

I wonder if they werent more like William Jones, who told his mom that Damien confessed to him on 5/22/93. Mom called the cops, so he gave a completely false statement based on the RUMORS hed heard. He later recanted and refused to testify, saying I just up and said something that I didnt know nothing about.

The softball girls may have found themselves in a similar situation where they repeated rumor as truth, and did not want to back out and admit it.

The only adult involved, Donna Medford, could only repeat what the children told her later in the evening. She personally overheard none of what they claimed to hear.

Mrs. Medford wrote in her 6/7/93 statement that when they "got in the car they all started talking at once telling me about what the weird black haired boy had said that night." And they "all said they heard him say that he had killed the 3 little boys." ALL, as named in her statement are: Jodee Medford, Jackee Medford, Christi VanVickle and Katie Hendrix.

When she testified, she could only offer that they told her this story. Mrs. Medford had no direct knowledge of what exactly was said or by whom.

So we're left with children.

Strangely, only two of the four girls who supposedly heard Damien "confess" testified at the Echols/Baldwin trial. I do have to wonder why the prosecution didn't use all of them, if their story was so credible.

Let's see what the two who did testify had to offer:

One, Christi VanVickle:

Fogleman: Did you hear somebody say something about the murder of the three little boys?
VanVickle: Yes I, I heard, um, Damien Echols say that he killed the three boys
Fogleman: Where were you, was he saying that to you, or what were you doing?
VanVickle: I was walking by, with my friend

Okay, but...

Davidson: Um, first of all, uh, do you remember what day this was that you heard this?
VanVickle: No, sir.
Davidson: That's the first time you'd ever seen him in your life?
VanVickle: Yes sir.
Davidson: What did he say before you say that he said he killed those three boys? What'd he say before that?
VanVickle: I don't know.
Davidson: What'd he say after that?
VanVickle: I don't know.
Davidson: And how, how close were you to him?
VanVickle: I wasn't close.
Davidson: Did he scream it?
VanVickle: I don't know.
Davidson: Did he yell it?
VanVickle: I don't know.

Prosecution must have been pretty hard up to put her on the stand. She's so clueless, there's nothing there to work with.

Hard to believe the jury took her seriously.
Even harder to believe that some folks still call that proof of a confession.

Let's try the only other one who testified.

Two, Jodee Medford:

Fogleman: Jodee, I want to direct your attention to, uh, May of 1993, after the murders of the three little boys. Did you have an occasion to be at the softball field and hear a comment in regard to the murders?
Medford: Yes, sir.
Fogleman: Alright. Tell the jury, uh, first tell the jury first what you heard.
Medford: He said 'I killed the three little boys and before I turn myself in that I'm going to kill two more and I already have one of 'em picked out.'

Hey, now that has an appealing 'urban legend' ring to it. Like the one about the girl in her dorm room who wakes up to the dead roommate and the lipsticked message on the mirror...oh, nevermind. But like many urban legends, it does have that "OOOOH, scary" kinda thing going on.

Keep in mind that despite VanVickle's memory loss on the stand, these girls claimed to hear Damien confess during "the week of May 24th." According to one of the investigative reports: "Thinks that this was Monday 5/24/93 & Tuesday 5/25/93." The softball girls only came forth with their stories post-arrest; statements and reports concerning them are dated 6/7 and 6/11.

So, let's look back for a sec, see who else heard this "kill 2 more" story about Damien.

Statement given 5/22/93, by Joni Brown (14 years old):

"On Friday night, May 14th, about 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. Whitney Nix told me that Robert Burch had told her that him and Dameon Echols had murderd them three boys and that they were gonna murder 2 more kids before they turned themselves in to the police. And Jennifer Ashley told me before Whitney did. And then a guy came up to me and told me that he suggested that I stay away from them guys."

According to Gitchell's notes, "this conversation took place at the skating ring on Friday May 14th, 1993."

AH! Interesting. Looks like that "kill 2 more" rumor surfaced barely a week after the murders at the SKATING RING, and perhaps before. This happens to be the earliest documented example that I have.

Joni's statement was given BEFORE the day the softball girls even CLAIM to have heard their version, and long before they brought it to the attention of the WMPD. And, bonus, this confession was attributed to Robert Burch, not to Damien, although it implicated him.

HEY! If Burch "confessed," why ain't he in prison? Could it be because all this stuff was found to be simply teenage rumor bullshit?

[As an aside, Jessie started out on June 3rd telling Gitchell and Ridge that he'd heard that Damien and Robert Burch did the crime. Guess he heard some of the same rumors as Whitney, Jennifer A. and Joni, eh?]

Anyway, seems like that "kill 2 more" idea caught on nicely.

CommApp, 6/5/93:
Roxanne Harrison, talking about her 13-year-old, Jennifer:

"My daughter kept on telling me when this happened, 'Mama, he [Damien] done it. Mama, he done it,'" Harrison said. "She said, 'Mama, he said there's going to be two more killed'...she was scared to go outside."

And a different Jennifer -

Jennifer Ball, 6/10/93:
"I had heard that Damien was going to kill 2 more girls his girlfriend & Jason Baldwin's girlfriend."
AND
"Then yesterday some woman that had come swimming w/my aunt told my mom that she heard Damien was going to sacrafice 2 virgins next."

HA, mostly have to laugh at that one.
That sacrificing virgins stuff is too goofy.
Kind of a nifty twist on the rumor, though.

We got a couple wanna-be softball girls, too.

Shannon seems to think Damien "confessed" on or around 5/21, which was the Friday BEFORE the Medford/VanVickle girls think they heard him.

Shannon Boals, age 13:

"Around May 21, 93 I was at the Girls Club in West Memphis at my softball game and this girl name Michelle Carter told me that Damien Echols came up to her and said that he killed those boys and I just said really and she said yes."

WOW! What does friend Michele say about the conversation SHE supposedly had with Damien, when he confessed DIRECTLY to HER?

Michele Carter, 6/9/93:

"About 2 weeks ago at my ballgame at the Girls Club I was told by Shannon Boals from Marion that there was a boy named Damien that said he killed the boys and he didn't cut their thing off he bite it off. Shannon showed him to me and pointed him out to me.
(snip)
We all sat down and as we sat behind the blechers we saw Damien sitting beside us. We tried not to look at him so we moved over a little. He never talked to me except he asked who we were I told him Michele Carter he never said another word to me.
(snip)
Right before my game started Shannon Boals also told me that he wanted to kill two more people and he knew one of them was his ex-girlfriend. Shannon Boals and her brother Trey Boals knew more and that it was his friend Shawn something that told him. I think that was his name. I never saw him after that."

WHOOPS! If you want to be an OFFICIAL softball girl, you gotta say you heard it straight from Damien. Sorry, girls.

But hey, got a little more "kill 2 more" rumor in there, cool. And a new victim! This time, it's an ex-girlfriend.

What about the softball girls who didn't testify?

Jessica (Jackee) Medford, 6/11/93:

"I was at the girls club about 2 weeks ago. I was sitting with my mom. I heard him say he did kill the 3 boys. My cousin asked him. I heard her voice and turned around. I then heard him say it after she asked him. My cousin Katie Hindrix. And he is Damien, there was another boy with him but I don't know who it was."

Funny, how she somehow heard this "confession" from her seat, but her mom didn't.

Jodee said she was near the concession stand when she just (luckily) "overheard him say this to a group of people when I was walking by him." She said in her statement that she "was with my sister Jackee and her friend Christi Vanvickle." Hold on, didn't Jackee just say she was SEATED (with her mom) when she heard Damien confess?

Ah, starting to see why Jackee wasn't called to testify...

Last one's Katie Hendrix, who supposedly heard RIGHT from Damien. Yet, no testimony. According to Donna Medford, Katie told her: "When he left she yelled "Did you really kill those 3 boys & he yelled "yes." "

Odd that SHE didn't get on the stand, eh?
I mean, with that direct "confession" to her and all.
Guess she went the way of Shannon Boals and Michele Carter?

Jennifer, daughter of Roxanne Harrison, in the CommApp on 6-5-93, pretty much said it all:

"After the murders, "everybody was saying it was him," Jennifer said."

"Him," of course, refers to Damien.

And the softball girls just joined the crowd.



http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2091

[Obscuregawdess]

Duelling doctors.

I recently read over the Echols/Baldwin trial testimonies of Drs. Peretti and Jennings. (Dr. Jennings was called in by the prosecution to clean up some of the damage that was done when Peretti gave a time of death of 1 to 7 am.) I am naturally drawn to the medical/scientific end of the testimony. The remarkable lack of anything scientific that ties the WM3 to the crime has always been of interest, along with the scientific testimony that seems to contradict the possibility of their involvement.
I have signed on to be an expert witness just once in my life (although I've consulted on other cases). In the case where I was to be an expert witness (it never went to trial) I tried to decline the fee. Reading over the statements given by the other expert witnesses, it seemed to me that they had sold their scientific integrity and were presenting indefensible arguments. The lawyer who was contracting me responded quite candidly that he did not want me to decline the fee, that he would prefer to have his expert witnesses "in his pocket." I finally arranged for my fee to go to charity.
This colored my view of expert witnesses. Many are hired guns there just to promote one aspect of the case. When the side they are arguing has substance they don't have to stretch the scientific merit of their positions. It is possible to read testimony of expert witnesses and determine the merit of their arguments. When the side they are arguing has little substance (and the opposing counsel is sharp) you will find a lot of statements that strain credibility or else the expert resorts to saying that such matters are unknown. This latter argument has some truth to it. A lot is not known, many areas of forensic science lack critical research. The potential number of uncontrolled variables in a given case can be enormous. My point is that someone whose arguments are not very solid can always hide in the area of "you never know." There are also times when "you never know" can be the proper qualifier in doubtful circumstances.
This plays out in the testimonies of Drs. Peretti and Jennings. With Dr. Peretti, every key point of the prosecution's case was answered equivocally (on cross-examination). With Dr. Jennings the time of death determinations made by Dr. Peretti were worthless because of unknowns.
When Peretti was questioned by the prosecution he sounded like a prosecution witness. When cross-examined by the defense, he sounded like a defense witness. Jennings on the other hand, strained his credibility to sound like a prosecution witness.
One other thing that struck me in reading Peretti's testimony is that the prosecution was not surprised by Peretti's remark regarding time of death. (It would make sense for the prosecution to ask him about such a crucial matter beforehand.) I say this because the prosecution leads Peretti by the hand through different determinants of time of death, gets his opinion on each and how the test wasn't performed in this case. The prosecution ends by bringing up lividity, the main scientific determinant that gave Peretti his time of death estimate. The prosecution repeats the same pattern of discussing lividity but then fails to finish it with the crucial question, what did lividity say about the time of death in this case? Also, the prosecution had available for cross-examination a text book statement regarding the equivocalness of using lividity as a measure. (I say this, but in the very unofficial transcript that we have here, the statement that Peretti is asked to read is regarding rigor mortis. Could this be a typo?)
And finally they had Dr. Jennings respond to Dr. Peretti's statement regarding lividity. There is the suggestion the Dr. Jennings was being prepared for this in advance. He makes a statement regarding the articles he had read to prepare for this from the beginning of the case (which he quickly corrects to say since Dr. Peretti's testimony). It would be interesting to note whether Dr. Jennings was on the witness list from the beginning of trial since his primary testimony was only regarding Peretti's time of death estimate. What other purpose would someone so unfamiliar with the case be doing in reserve?
This begs the question: did the prosecutor know about Dr. Peretti's time of death estimate (which Dr. Peretti says he consulted with two other forensic specialists regarding) but fail to notify the defense about this potentially powerful exculpatory evidence. (Or, as a prosecutor might say, it was not exculpatory because time of death estimates are imperfect.)

Highlights of Dr. Peretti's testimony:

After identifying the sticks as possible sources of some of the wounds on the children:

Ford: Now Doctor, did you examine the uh - any of the wounds to see if there were wood fragments?
Peretti: There were no foreign bodies such as - such as wood fragments, glass or debris.
Ford: So, if someone were to be hit with a stick like this that had bark that just crumbled and comes apart, wouldn't you expect there would be some evidence of that left behind in the wounds?
Peretti: Um - yes, unless it was washed off being in the water.
Ford: Ok. But you would expect to find those - some sort of wood fragment left behind?
Peretti: I think I would expect to find some fragments.
Ford: Did you?
Peretti: No.
Ford: Any fragments?
Peretti: No fragments.
Ford: On any of the three boys?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: Now, you testified that some of these injuries could be caused by being hit with an object of this size, is that correct?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: Could those same injuries also be caused by a baseball bat?
Peretti: Baseball bat have um - a different type of pattern of injury, but you could get a similar pattern.
Ford: And a baseball bat could clearly cause a skull fracture, couldn't it?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: And it could clearly cause a bruise to the top of the head?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: Ok. And so could a rolling pin?
Peretti: Oh, yes.
Ford: Ok. The flat part of a shovel?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: There's any number of things that have - hundreds of items that could be willed in as a weapon, that could cause these types of injuries?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: Ok. Now, you also indicated that something of this diameter could have done it, is that also correct?
Peretti: That and I believe I stated a piece of wood - a 2x4.
Ford: A 2x4.
Peretti: - Could do that.
Ford: A broom handle?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: A mop handle?
Peretti: That's correct.
Ford: A shovel handle?
Peretti: Objects similar to that appearance, yes.
Ford: A tire iron?
Peretti: Sure.
Ford: A jack handle?
Peretti: Possibly.
Ford: A flashlight?
Peretti: Sure.
Ford: So there's any number of items - hundreds of items located in almost any household that could be willed as a weapon to cause the types of injuries that you saw?
Peretti: That's correct.

After having identified the serrated edge of the lake knife as a possible source of some scraping wounds on the children:

Ford: So what you're saying is, based on the elasticity of skin just about any serrated edge could cause it, couldn't it?
Peretti: Well, if um - one with a very fine serration, I think you can rule out - a very, very fine serration. But um - most serrated knives - depending on the position of the deceadant, the elasticity of the skin can cause those type of serrated um -
Ford: - So, most serrated knives could cause this injury? Most serrated -
Peretti: - No, I think we can rule out a butterknife ok, a serrated butterknife.
Ford: Ok, but most serrated knives can cause it?
Peretti: Yes.

He becomes even more equivocal:

Ford: Is that your opinion based upon a reasonable degree of medical certainty that in your opinion that injury was caused by a serrated knife?
Peretti: Well, it may be caused - it may be caused by another instrument also. But it has the appearance - you know, of the distance. If you look at it there is a pattern to it, but it may be caused by another object also.

And:

Ford: But anything could have caused it, you don't know what caused that injury - anything? I'm asking, do you know what caused that injury?
Peretti: No.

Later, regarding the gouging injuries:

Peretti: The um - the facial injuries.
Ford: Ok. In what - in what photograph number?
Peretti: I'm sorry, um - 71B, um - 72B, 63B, 62B -
Fogleman: - Your Honor, so we don't get bogged down, I'd understood earlier that uh - that Dr. Peretti had said that a regular edged knife could cause those injuries, too. Is that - did I misunderstand that?
Peretti: Yes, sir. A regular um - a straight edge knife can also cause these type injuries.
Ford: So there's nothing peculair about this knife that would cause those facial injuries?
Peretti: No.
Ford: Any knife in the world could cause those?
Peretti: That's correct.

And he also says it might not have been a knife at all:

Peretti: Well, we generally see these types of injuries with an object such as a knife or piece of glass, a sharp object was put into the skin and either the person doing the - the um - stabbing, is twisting and pulling the knife or a combination of the person being stabbed - I mean, that skin's soft so if you move around or moving the knife with a twist, the knife is going to cut it out - it's going to pull out the soft tissues of the skin.

Peretti comments on the grid-like pattern and offers a picture of it:

Peretti: Um - yes, you would need a lot of force. Ok. State's exhibit 60B is a photograph showing the back of the neck, showing an area of abrasion - irregular type of abrasions on the back of the neck. State's exhibit um - 59B is an area of the um - of the inner aspect of the thigh where you see a band - you have a pattern here of a band, here. You see, it's diagonal and you have these two areas. You see the darkened area is a contusion um - and the area of the palor or paleness inside, so that indicates some sort of object. You know if your big finger - you know picks up on the wrist what happens is, as soon as you pull your um - finger off you're gonna see an area of blanching and inside you're going to see um - the redness where the blood is pushed out of the vessels. Well, this is the general principle that we see here. He was hit with an object and it left its pattern.

Peretti is also equivocal about the injuries related to the children having to perform oral sex:

Davis: Now Dr., in your experience as a medical examiner have you seen instances or are you familiar with cases in which there were injuries and bruising to the ears and also injuries to the mouth of victims?
Peretti: Well, those types of injuries we generally see in children who are performed - who are forced to perform uh - oral sex.

compare to later:

Ford: Now, you testified yesterday about some of the injuries to the mouth -
Peretti: - Yes.
Ford: - Of these three boys. You testified that that - those injuries could be caused by a punch?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: By a slap?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: By something firmly being placed over the mouth?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: Could these injuries have been caused by a gag?
Peretti: Um - the injuries - the contusions um - and the superficial cuts inside the lips may be caused by a gag. But not the cutting wounds on the outside of the lips.
Ford: Ok. So, some of the wounds would be - are consistant with being caused by a gag?
Peretti: A gag would cause those types of injuries to the inside of the lips, yes.

After suggesting that some of the injuries of the children were consistent with anal rape he is fairly unequivocal that anal rape did not occur during cross-examination:

Ford: Did you examine the swabs of their anal and rectal cavities for presence of sperm?
Peretti: What I did, I submitted to the um - the serology section of the laboratory and they examined the -
Ford: And well -
Peretti: - And they issue a report.
Ford: Were there sperm cells present there?
Peretti: No. No semen was identified in all three boys.
Ford: Ok. Now if someone is forcefully sodomized, would you expect to find injuries to their nus and rectal areas?
Peretti: Uh - in the cases that I've um - in my experience, I have always seen injuries to the um - anal and vaginal regions.
Ford: Would you expect to find lacerations?
Peretti: Um - yes.
Ford: Uh - contusions and abrasions?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: Would you expect to find, microscopically - evidence of hemorrhage?
Peretti: There should be hemorrhage there, yes.
Ford: Ok. There was some discussion yesterday about hyperemia.
Peretti: Yes, it's reddening of the uh - mucosa.
Ford: That's just red, isn't it?
Peretti: Congestion, yes.
Ford: Red. If a capillary is filled with blood, that would be hyperemia - more blood than normal?
Peretti: Right. It's just that the - the vessels um - are filled with blood um - part of it depends on - it's positional.
Ford: Ok. And hemorrhage is when those small microscopic capillaries break?
Peretti: That's right.
Ford: Ok. Now, did you examine them and make microscopic efforts to determine whether or not there was hemorrhage to the anal areas?
Peretti: Yes, I did.
Ford: And was there any hemorrhage?
Peretti: Well, in the slides I took there was no hemorrhage identified.
Ford: Ok. So it's - one can conclude that there was not enough force to break and damage a microscopic capillary?
Peretti: That's correct. There was no injury noted to the um - anal rectal mucosa.
Ford: And in your experience and your training, if someone was sodomized you would expect to find injuries?
Peretti: In a child - definitely.

Peretti doesn't mention any of the injuries being related to the children being hit by fists. This is significant because hands are the only weapon that Jessie brought up during his confession (other than the gun in the briefcase). Peretti fairly well ruled out Chris being strangled as was described in Jessie's confession.

Peretti gave a variety of other statements that were helpful to the defense such as that it would be unlikely for the riverbank to be the place of the murder and that it would be difficult to impossible for an unskilled person to skin Chris's penis. It should be noted that the possibility that Chris was conscious and fighting back when this occurred was not brought up. According to Jessie's various confessions Chris was struggling at this time.

Peretti gives the time of death as being 1 to 7 am, although the questioner immediately offers back 1 to 5 am. Peretti goes into detail the various measurements he considered to assess the lividity.

Ford: I`ve got one, just as second......Approximately here, Doctor. Does it indicate there um - what the temperature of the water was?
Peretti: It says um - approximately 60 degrees.
Ford: And did you know that? Were you aware of that fact?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: When you gave your opinion here today?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: Ok. And did you take that into consideration?
Peretti: I took that into consideration, yes.
Ford: And Doctor, did you also take into consideration your experience?
Peretti: Yes sir.
Ford: And all of the knowledge that you have gained over the years of being a pathologist.
Peretti: Yes sir.
Ford: Ok. And you also told me earlier Doctor that there were um - you took into consideration factors like how hot it was that day.
Peretti: The ambient temperature.
Ford: The air temperature.
Peretti: Yes sir.
Ford: Ok. You took that into account. You took into account the water temperature?
Peretti: Yes sir.
Ford: Took into account when they disappeared?
Peretti: Yes sir.
Ford: Took into account when they were found?
Peretti: That`s correct.
Ford: Took into account the cause of death?
Peretti: That`s correct.
Ford: Took into account the manner of death?
Peretti: That`s correct.
Ford: Um - you also indicated that you had um - two other doctors that you worked with?
Peretti: Yes.
Ford: Ok. And did you discuss your opinion with them?
Peretti: We discussed it.
Ford: Ok. And do they concur your opinion?
Peretti: Uh - they're in agreement.

Dr. Duke Jennings was brought in on a Monday to try to undo the damage resulting from Dr. Peretti's statements regarding the time of death. This was practically the sole subject he spoke on. In comparison to Dr. Peretti's his credentials were pretty thin. He had 3 months training in forensic pathology and hadn't performed a forensic autopsy in 10 years. His "extensive research" regarding time of death involved reading chapters in several textbooks along with probably 10 to 12 review papers. The most intensive part of this research took place since the trial began. He also only obtained a copy of Dr. Peretti's testimony on the morning he was called to the stand.

Let me note several problems here. Reading review papers and text books does not make you an expert. The notion that he had read 10 to 12 review papers on the time of death seems a bit odd. Such review papers are not published that often. I imagine to dig up 10 to 12 of them would have publication dates stretching over years, probably more than a decade. Not necessarily recent. Secondly, in the three literature sources I have read (textbooks), they don't put down lividity as being highly uncertain or the worst method for determining time of death. Thirdly, he wasn't able to study Dr. Peretti's testimony very well and mischaracterizes it (more on that below).

Dr. Jennings' conclusion that Dr. Peretti's time of death estimate was bad is based on the following: 1) His statement that the general opinion of pathologists and other sources (presumably literature) is that lividity is the worst possible measurement of time of death. 2) The bodies may have been rocking or rotating in the water. 3) The water temperature was listed as approximately 60 degrees rather than an exact figure. 4) Bleeding to death could change the blanching. 5) Rapidly cooling in water could change the timeframe for onset of lividity. 6) Dr. Peretti did not take into account (as far as Jennings remembered) water temperature or air temperature. 7) The position they were found in the water was unknown. The movement of the bodies after recovery could change lividity response. 9) The coroner didn't arrive for awhile. 10) The coroner didn't take body temperatures.

In response:

1) As I mentioned above, in my own search of the literature, I found no mention that lividity is the worst method. 2) The bodies rocking? Rotating? In a stagnant creek? 3) Approximating the temperature at 60 degrees is very important information presuming they didn't just stick a finger in and guess. The rate of cooling doesn't change that much if it were 55 or 65 degrees, not enough to throw the blanching with lividity off by so many hours. The necessary thing to do (and perhaps Peretti did it) would be to find out how the water temperature was determined. 4) Only one child bled to death, it wouldn't affect the finding of lividity on all three. 5) Yes, of course, however Peretti says he took that into account which only 6) proves that Jennings didn't have time to prepare. He also says he did not see the crime scene video. 7) I seem to recall the position was known. Reasonable. 9) Again, this is a reasonable complaint. Doesn't affect the blanching with lividity though. 10) Not taking body temperatures makes a difference for algor mortis, not for lividity.

Dr. Jennings mischaracterizes Dr. Peretti's statement regarding time of death. He says:

Dr. Jennings: . . .Dr. Peretti is a competent pathologist - is by all indicators that I have. Dr. Peretti said multiple times in his testimony you can not determine this, you can not determine this, you can not determine this, you can not determine this and we can count the number of times in his testimony. And at some point, he said one sentence more. And I - it is baffling as to why. I would not say he's incompetent, his associates are not incompetent, and I think they were severely disadvantaged in this case - as was the coroner. And they had nothing in which to base an estimate.

It was hardly a single sentence and Peretti went into detail about he based his estimate. Dr. Jennings didn't recall that Peretti took into account water or air temperatures.

Ford: Alright. Did Dr. Peretti say he took into account water temperature?
Jennings: I saw no mention of that in his autopsy report.
Ford: In his testimony, did he say he took into account water temperature?
Jennings: Not that I recall.
Ford: You don't remember reading that?
Jennings: I do not recall that.
Ford: Ok. And you don't remember him saying he took into account air temperature, do you?
Jennings: I do not recall that. I do recall his saying he based it only on lividity in the coroner's report.
Ford: So if I asked him questions about air temperature and water temperature, you don't remember that by reading it - do you?
Jennings: I don't - I do not.

On the other hand, prepared or unprepared, qualified or unqualified, Dr. Jennings did not suffer from Peretti's disease of equivocality.

Ford: Ok. So again, what you're saying is the factors that you would take into account - when asked, you said you would take into account air temperature and water temperature and you said you would also take into account lividity. You're saying that these are three factors that I'll take into account, but in this case they're worthless. Is that what you're telling us?
Jennings: Absolutely and clearly.

I hope this thread undoes some of the belief that Dr. Peretti was a prosecution shill. I think Fogelman's anger at him is because he refused to shill for the prosecution the way Jennings did.


jivep.

AL: Edit to uncheck emoticon box so appears as intended

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2098

[Obscuregawdess]

READ ME FIRST!!!!

Do NOT open these links and then complain. There is graphic material in them that might be offensive to some. They are in sketch style but still represent something that could be upsetting, so again DO NOT OPEN and THEN COMPLAIN!

Scott did most of the work on this project, but it was sort of my brain child so it is truly a BCandScott deal here. What we have done is take the morgue shot of Steve Branch's face and the bite mark, and we have used modeling software to create a 3-D model. There are a couple of places that don't match up exactly (nose for example) but we used the "bitemark" as the focal point, scaling the rest of the picture to that and anchoring the "bitemark" around the end of the eyebrow per the photo. The results are pretty startling....and we learned some other stuff too....some stuff that really sucks. Scott had to get pretty intimate with the full head shot to do this and he's steaming about how the photos were done...as he should be.

1) Apparently, nothing was cleaned off of the wounds to allow for careful examination of the wounds only. Instead, there are large patches that are apparently blood smears, not wounds, where it's incredibly difficult to tell where the wound begins and ends because it runs into undamaged skin that is covered with blood.

2) The photo we used is lighted from the left and not the right. This is just stupid, since all of the wounds are on the right and while this 3-D imaging does some amazing things with regard to being able to see the wounds and how they would have actually looked on the body, it can't show things the idiots failed to LIGHT when they took the original photo. There may be a photo that is a better representation of the side of the face, but I don't have it if there is.

Anyway, this is interesting to us, and may be of interest to you. On these sketch pictures, red is a discernable wound, orange is most likely a wound as far as we can tell, bloody areas where the skin looks undamaged and we think it's just blood splattering or smearing is left plain.


www.bcandscott.com/salvius/SBSketch3QFull.jpg
www.bcandscott.com/salvius/SBSketchFront.jpg
www.bcandscott.com/salvius/SBSketchFrontFull.jpg
www.bcandscott.com/salvius/SBSketchSide1.jpg
www.bcandscott.com/salvius/SBSketchSide2.jpg
www.bcandscott.com/salvius/SBSketchSideFull.jpg


http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2097

[Obscuregawdess]

(very good post from CCKilnfired on yuku)

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2099

I was on the other board, discussing the Crime Lab report that said the wax found on Chris Byers shirt (item E-2 on the WMPD submission list) was similar to candle wax. IMMemphis had stated that it wasnt jewelers wax because the lab said so, basically. I hadnt seen jewelers wax on the list of items submitted to the lab, so I wanted to know how the lab could be sure it was candle wax. Memphis posted a link to a web site www.performanceadditives....xtypes.htm
with rather technical information on various kinds of waxes. Thank you for that, Memphis! There was no mention on the site of either candle wax or jewelers wax, but it got me thinking, so I started researching.

There are many suppliers of wax and supplies for home candle making. However, I only found one (during this mornings research) that sells to candle manufacturers.
www.candlewic.com/
Most of their wax is sold in 50 pound blocks, and thats a minimum order.

They sell 48 different kinds of CANDLE wax. There are 6 separate categories (16 straight waxes, 8 blended, 11 Honeywell (a manufacturers line), 1 granulated, 9 natural and 3 gel). They have different melting points (the temperature it has to reach to become liquid) and different properties. The type of candle being made determines what wax should be used. Some are for pouring into a mold, some are for carving, some are for tapers, while others are for pillar candles, etc...
Im not going to bore you with the list of 23 different additives they also sell for you to custom formulate your wax and manipulate the properties you want. These additives are not for fragrance or color, but they sell those too.

So, my question for the lab is WHAT THE HELL DOES SIMILAR TO CANDLE WAX MEAN? Similar to what kind of candle wax? Could these people be any more vague? Crime labs are supposed to be scientific, and science is NOT supposed to be vague!

I have not found this kind of detailed information on jewelers wax yet. What I have found are basic descriptions of the 3 kinds of carving wax, and their melting points,
www.lacywest.com/24waxes.htm
which are much higher than any of the candle waxes. (Candle wax is 120-160F, jewelers at 220-240F.) The particular qualities are different enough from candle waxes that Im going to guess (based on the technical info in the link from Memphis) that jewelers wax is a synthetic, and quite different than candle wax.

Im willing to admit the wax on Chriss shirt was probably not jewelers wax, assuming the lab actually compared different types of waxes. I havent seen any information on what the Arkansas State Crime Lab did and did not do in the examination of evidence in this case. Im not saying they didnt do a through exam, but if they did theyre keeping it secret!

Which brings me to my final point. What if the wax has nothing to do with the murders at all? No satanic ceremony, no jewelers wax dropped, nothing.

Remember, Chris had been setting fires. www.wm3.org/html/evidence...ers_m1.jpg
What better way for a kid to play with fire than with candles? It looks harmless enough, and its an good excuse to carry matches. Maybe he got the wax on his shirt all by himself.

( I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. )

[Obscuregawdess]

(post from jivepuppi on yuku--- worth reading!)

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2090

The first part of my post is a transcription of Exhibit B of the warrants. It is commented on below.

EXHIBIT "B"

The following is a summary regarding the investigation of the murders of Steve Edward Branch - age 8, Christopher Byers - age 8, Michael Moore - Age 8.

Branch, Byers, and Moore, were last seen riding two bicycles towards a wooded area known as Robin Hood Hill. This wooded area is located at the dead end of McAuley Street and North of Ten Mile Bayou in West Memphis, Arkansas. The last time of sighting was about 6:00 p.m. 05-05-93.

The victims were reported missing by their parents at approximately 8:10 pm 05-05-93 at which time a search was initiated.

At about 1:30 p.m. 05-06-93, the body of Christopher Byers was located by Sgt. Mike Allen after he sighted a black tennis shoe located in a creek approximately 60 yards south of Interstate 55.

Byers body was submerged in approximately 2-3 feet of water. Byers hands and feet were bound by shoe strings from tennis shoes and he had an obvious trauma wound to his left forehead and other locations on his body.

Branch and Moore's bodies were located submerged in water approximately 5 feet from Byers. Both Branch and Moore were bound in the same manner as Byers. Branch had obvious injuries and gouge wounds to his left cheek. Moore had been obviously castrated and had susstained other injuries. All three victims' were nude when located.

All clothing belonging to the victims including shirts, shoes, pants, and underwear were located in the creek in close proximity to the victims.

On 06-03-93, Jessie Misskelley Jr. was asked to come to the West Memphis Police Department where he was advised of his rights according to the Miranda rule and gave a voluntary statement concerning his involvement in the above noted homicides. A copy of a transcribed statement will be attached hereto. Misskelley gave the police information that only a person who had been involved in the homicides would have known. Misskelley stated that he witnessed the cutting of the penis of Chris Byers by Jason Baldwin, the forcible rape of Chris by Damien Echols, the striking of the heads by Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin including the severe beatings of all three boys, and the act of the victims being placed in

(SECOND PAGE)

water by Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols. He stated that he did see one of the victims being drug into the water. Misskelley stated that when the beatings of the three victims began that Michael Moore ran from the scene and that he, Jessie Misskelley, Jr., did chase Michael Moore, caught him and returned him to the other two suspects who began beating him. Misskelley stated that he did witness one one the victims to be beaten until unconsciousness and that one of the victims was choked to what he thought was death with a piece of wood. He further stated that Damien had grabbed one of the victims around the head with his hands on either side of the head forcing the boy to perform oral sex on him. Misskelley stated that the victims were being held by their ears while being forced to perform these acts. Misskelley stated that he saw the bicycles that the victims had ridden to the scenes on to be parked on the south bank of the bayou by the victims as they approached the scene where the murders occurred. Misskelly also described the area where the murders occurred very specifically as to the high bank on the west side of the ditch where the bodies were placed and the flat area on the east side of the ditch where the murders actually took place.

This information given has been corroborated through the investigation conducted at the scene of the homicides by the West Memphis Police Department Criminal Investigation Division and the examination of the victims and evidence by the Arkansas State Crime Lab.

Exhibit B of the warrant is illustrative of the biased tone of the investigation and the outright dishonesty of the WMPD. This is the section that is supposed to give the justification for the warrant. It has three parts. The first describes the crime. The second describes the justification for the warrant. The third affirms that this information has been corroborated by the investigation.

The basis for the justification is made explicit. "Misskelley gave the police information that only a person who had been involved in the homicides would have known." Thirteen examples are then provided (the numbering is mine). Then, finally: "This information given has been corroborated through the investigation conducted at the scene of the homicides by the West Memphis Police Department Criminal Investigation Division and the examination of the victims and evidence by the Arkansas State Crime Lab."

This establishes two aspects by which the enumerated points can be assessed. First, that Misskelley gave the police the information. Second, Misskelley's statements can be corroborated by the evidence. This is to assess whether the details included in the warrant matched the facts of the case. In some cases, the police told Misskelley the details. In others, the details provided in the warrant were sheer fabrications by the police; Misskelley made no such comment. And, finally, there were some details that were provided by Misskelley and not the police. For these there was no corroboration or else they simply contradicted the facts of the case. Sometimes a given statement had all of these problems.

The first part is an odd rehashing of the description of the crime. Some facts are corrected (multiple injuries on Chris Byers). Others remain incorrect (Michael Moore was castrated).

The meat of the justification of the warrant begins with this section.

"On 06-03-93, Jessie Misskelley Jr. was asked to come to the West Memphis Police Department where he was advised of his rights according to the Miranda rule and gave a voluntary statement concerning his involvement in the above noted homicides. A copy of a transcribed statement will be attached hereto. Misskelley gave the police information that only a person who had been involved in the homicides would have known."

#1. Misskelley stated that he witnessed the cutting of the penis of Chris Byers by Jason Baldwin.

Facts of the case. Chris Byers did have injuries to his penis and groin area, specifically, the removal of his testicles and the skinning of his penis.

Problems with this statement. Lots of them. First of all, Misskelley never connects this incident to Jason Baldwin. Second of all Misskelley never states who had his penis cut. He points at a picture, the police identify the picture, and Misskelley agrees. (Misskelley had already shown that he could not correctly identify the victims from pictures.) Third, Misskelley only states that a child was cut "on the bottom." The police offer that Misskelley meant groin and then penis. Misskelley relates no specific knowledge in these exchanges until the police say it first. And, finally, Misskelley ends by saying he doesn't know if he saw them cut the penis.

DETECTIVE RIDGE: Cutting in the face. Alright, another boy was cut I understand, where was he cut at?
*A63 MISSKELLEY: At the bottom
DETECTIVE RIDGE: On his bottom? Was he face down when he was cutting on him, or
*A64 MISSKELLEY: Mm-hmm.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Now you're talking about bottom, do you mean right here?
*A65 MISSKELLEY: Mm-hmm.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: In his groin area?
*A66 MISSKELLEY: (Note: there is no audio register for an answer here. Is it possible that Misskelley nodded?)
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Okay
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Do you know what his penis is?
*A67 MISSKELLEY: Mm-hmm, that's where he was cut at.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: That's where he was cut.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Which boy was that?
*A68 MISSKELLEY: That right there.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: You're talking about the Byers boy again?
*A69 MISSKELLEY: Mm-hmm.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Okay
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Are you sure that he was the one that was cut?
*A70 MISSKELLEY: That's the one that I seen them cutting on.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Alright, you know what penis is?
*A71 MISSKELLEY: Mm-hmm.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Alright, is that where he was cutting?
*A72 MISSKELLEY: That's where I seen them going down at, and he was on his back. I seen them going down right there real close to his penis and stuff and I saw some blood and that's when I took off.

Interestingly, Misskelley never of his own accord brings up the name of Chris (or Byers) in regards to any act of violence. Each time he is prompted by the police who tell him whose picture he pointed at. Misskelley never brings up Chris (or Byers) at all except in the statements regarding rape.

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Which, which boys were raped?
*B44 MISSKELLEY: Uh, Byers and the Branch.

and, later:

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Did anyone have oral sex with the boys?
*B50 MISSKELLEY: Yes, Damien and Jason.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: How many of them did they do that to?
*B51 MISSKELLEY: Just two, Branch and Byers.

In between the above two, Misskelley mentions "Myers" in regards to rape:

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Do you know which one raped which boy, or how did that happen?
*B48 MISSKELLEY: Damien raped the Myers by hisself and and Jason and Damien raped uh the Branch.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Alright, give that to me again now.
*B49 MISSKELLEY: Damien raped uh the Myers by hisself and Jason and Damien raped uh the Branch.

#2. The forcible rape of Chris by Damien Echols.

Facts of the case. None of the children had anal injuries, bruises or trauma, associated with forcible penetration. Ergo, none of them were forcibly sodomized (pretty much stated by the medical examiner at trial). Byers had an "injected anus" with "marked hyperemia." The other two did not have their rectal areas so described.

Problems with this statement. Lots of them. First, it doesn't match the facts of the case. Second of all, Misskelley gave all sorts of contradictory statements related to this. He said, at various times that only Echols raped Chris (B48, above), that only Baldwin did (A135), and that neither of them did (A134). It's hard to get less specific than that.

DETECTIVE RIDGE: Okay, and the one that they were cutting the penis off of, did any of them, or cutting the penis or whatever was being done, did they have sex with him at all?
*A134 MISSKELLEY: No
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Did any one of them?
*A135 MISSKELLEY: Jason did
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Jason did?
*A136 MISSKELLEY: Jason was screwing him while Damien stuck his in his mouth and got a blow job.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Okay, how did he have sex with that one?
*A137 MISSKELLEY: Damien, he was holding him down like, and Jason had his legs up in the air and that little boy was kicking, saying, 'don't, no' like that.

#3. The striking of the heads by Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin (sic).

Facts of the case: all three children had injuries to their heads consistent with being struck in the head.

Problems with this statement: lots of them (remarkable for such a short statement). Misskelley does say that Damien hit a child (A30). Misskelley does go on to say that that child was Michael Moore but then points to the picture of Chris Byers (A31). The police correct his identification (A32) and then tell him "Okay, so you saw Damien strike Chris Byers in the head? (after A34)" It is the police not Misskelley who corrects the identity and tells Misskelley that he saw the child struck in the head. Blows to the head are never mentioned again by Misskelley. Misskelley never says Jason hit a child in the head.

*A30 MISSKELLEY: When I was there, I saw Damien hit this one, hit this one boy real bad, and then uh, and then he started screwing them and stuff and then uh,
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Alright, you got in front of you a picture, that was taken out of the newspaper I believe, it's got three boys and these are the three boys that were killed on that date in Robin Hood Woods, okay. Which one of those three boys is it you say Damien hit? The third picture (Jessie seems to be affirming this in the background), which will be
*A31 MISSKELLEY: Michael Moore
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: This boy right here,
*A32 MISSKELLEY: Yeah,
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Alright, that's uh the Byers boy,

#4. Including the severe beatings of all three boys.

Facts of the case: all three boys had multiple bruises consistent with being beaten.

Problems with this statement: Misskelley gets this correct. He does say all three of the boys were severely beaten. A36 continues a discussion regarding Chris Byers and Damien Echols.

*A36 MISSKELLEY: He hit him with his fist and bruised him all up real bad.

and:

*A56 MISSKELLEY: Right after I, they beat up all three of them, beat them up real bad

and:

*A138 MISSKELLEY: They beat them up so bad so they can't hardly move.

#5. The act of the victims being placed in the water by Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols.

Facts of the case: all three victims were found underwater, sunk in the mud at the bottom of a creek.

Problems with this statement: Again, this is not "insider knowledge" on the part of Misskelley. After telling the police twice that the children did not get into the water, the police tell Misskelley that they did. Only then does Misskelley agree with the premise and say they were pulled into the water. "Placed" is an odd choice of words, as it does not coincide with any of Misskelley's statements.

DETECTIVE RIDGE: Besides just playing, the little boys, had they been in the water? Did they get into the water with you all?
*A175 MISSKELLEY: No, they didn't get into the water with us

and:

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Did you ever see the boys in the water?
*B33 MISSKELLEY: Uh, yeah, down by the water.

then:

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Alright, how did the boys get into the water?
*B34 MISSKELLEY: They pulled them there into the water.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Alright, when you say they who is it that pulled them into the water?
*B35 MISSKELLEY: Jason and uh, Damien.

#6. One of the victims being drug into the water.

Facts of the case: There is no evidence of the manner in which the children were taken into the water.

Problems with this statement: A bizarre statement. Misskelley makes no comment regarding one of the children being "drug" into the water, by that I mean, he never singles out one child. The only statements regarding the children and water are mentioned above.

#7. When the beatings of the three victims began that Michael Moore ran from the scene and that he, Jessie Misskelley, Jr., did chase Michael Moore, caught him and returned him to the other two suspects who began beating him.

Facts of the case: no supporting evidence that this happened and some evidence to the contrary. Misskelley's comments, in their entirety, say that Moore headed off to the south. Moore's body was found to the north, separate from the other two.

Problems with this statement: There is the above problem of the contradicting evidence. Misskelley also says he held Moore until "they" got there, not that Misskelley brought Moore back. Of course, this makes no sense, because this was supposed to have happened at the beginning of the melee and Jason and Damien would have had to have abandoned Chris and Stevie. The police must have picked up on this inconsistency so they correct Misskelley in the following question, telling Misskelley that he brought the children back together (in agreement with what is in the warrant). The police also elaborate that when Michael Moore was returned "the other two suspects. . . began beating him." There is nothing in Misskelley's statement as to that, although Misskelley does state elsewhere that all three were beaten.

*A37 MISSKELLEY: And started doing the same thing, then the other one took off, Michael uh Moore took off running, so I chased him and grabbed him and held him, til they got there and then I left.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Okay. Alright, when you get the boys back together, where you at from the creek?

#8. One one the victims to be beaten until unconsciousness. (sic)

Facts of the case: All three were severely beaten. No specific evidence that supports that they were beaten until unconscious, but neither does this assertion contradict the facts.

Problems with the statement: Misskelley made no such statement especially regarding the odd particular that it is one of the children being beaten until unconscious. The police are the first to bring up the subject of unconsciousness, and then it is after the cutting. Again, the police provide the "inside knowledge." Nothing is mentioned as to how they became unconscious.

*A128 MISSKELLEY: I saw them cutting on them, and then they, they
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: So, what else, what else left is there, after that?
*A129 MISSKELLEY: Then they laid the knife down beside them and I saw them tying them up and then that's when I left.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Were the boys conscience (sic) or were they
*A130 MISSKELLEY: They were unconscious then
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Unconscious

#9. One of the victims was choked to what he thought was death with a piece of wood.

Facts of the case: no evidence that any child was choked. This lack of evidence basically says that no child was choked.

Problems with the statement: it contradicts the facts of the case. Furthermore, Misskelley told the police the child was choked to death with hands, then a stick. The police then correct him, telling him that he just thought the child was dead. This correction was necessary because the means of death did not match Jessie's mention.

DETECTIVE RIDGE: How was he actually killed?
*A208 MISSKELLEY: He did, he choked him real bad like.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Choked him? Okay, what was he choking him with?
*A209 MISSKELLEY: His hands, like a, like a stick, he had a big old stick, and he's kind of holding it over his neck.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Okay, so he was choking him to the point where he actually went unconscious, so at that point, you felt like he was dead?
*A210 MISSKELLEY: Yeah

#10. Damien had grabbed one of the victims around the head with his hands on either side of the head forcing the boy to perform oral sex on him.

and

#11. The victims were being held by their ears while being forced to perform these acts.

Facts of the case: the bruises on the ear can be argued with being consistent with a perpetrator using them as a means of forcing oral sex. They could also be caused by holding ears for other reasons. No semen was found in the oral cavities, and no bruising was found in the back of the mouth. Peretti indicated that these signs would be expected with forced oral sex.

Problems with this statement. Like in #1, 2, 6 and 7 the warrant is particular, where Misskelley is not particular or else contradictory. Misskelley clearly says both Echols and Baldwin received oral sex (B50). Furthermore, when Misskelley goes into how the children were held during the oral sex, Misskelley refers to both Damien and Jason (the warrant statement only mentions Damien). There are other problems with this statement centering around the 12 exchanges before Jessie finally is led to say that they held the children by their ears. This has been discussed elsewhere, but suffice it to say, Jessie did not spontaneously display insider knowledge in this matter. He was laboriously taken there by the police.

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Did anyone have oral sex with the boys?
*B50 MISSKELLEY: Yes, Damien and Jason.

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: How did, how did, they force these boys to have oral sex on them? How did they have a hold of them?
*B66 MISSKELLEY: One of them had holding them by the arms while the other one got behind them and stuff.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Did he ever hold him up here or
*B67 MISSKELLEY: Uh, the one that was holding him up there at the front grabbing him by his headlock.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Had him in a headlock? Did he have him any other way?
*B68 MISSKELLEY: He was holding him like this by his head like this and stuff (Note: was indicating the victims being held by their ears)
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Could he have been holding him up here like that?
*B69 MISSKELLEY: I was too far away he was holding him up here by his head like this (Note: showed the same as above)
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: So, so
*B70 MISSKELLEY: And he was pulling him.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Ok, so who was one of them doing that or both of them was doing it? Was Jason?
*B71 MISSKELLEY: Jason was holding him while Damien did it and then they took turns.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: So, they both did it to all three of these boys?
*B72 MISSKELLEY: Just them two as far as I know.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Just the two of them?
*B73 MISSKELLEY: Yeah.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: But they, they both Jason and Damien did it to two of the boys and they took turns?
*B74 MISSKELLEY: Uh huh.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: And they would hold, tell me again about their hands on, I mean I know you're, you're holding it up here.
*B75 MISSKELLEY: It was up here by their heads and stuff and was just pulling and stuff.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Alright, so they are up here, had their hands
*B76 MISSKELLEY: By their ears and pulling them and stuff.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Alright, Ok, say, say that again for me now.
*B77 MISSKELLEY: Hold them by their head, by ears and pulling

#12. He saw the bicycles that the victims had ridden to the scenes on to be parked on the south bank of the bayou by the victims as they approached the scene where the murders occurred. (sic)

Facts of the case: the children on the bicycles were last seen about a quarter mile from the above described place. The bicycles were found on the north half of the bayou, under water, about thirty to forty feet from the south bank.

Problems with this statement. Jessie makes no such comment. Jessie's comments regarding the bicycles are:

*A88 MISSKELLEY: They skipped school
DETECTIVE RIDGE: They skipped school?
*A89 MISSKELLEY: They's going to catch their bus and stuff, and they's on their bikes and so, (interrupted)

The children didn't skip school, they didn't take their bikes to school, and they didn't take a bus to school. Furthermore, there is no indication that Jessie knows that there were two bikes for the three kids.

and:

DETECTIVE RIDGE: Alright, they were on their bikes, where were the bikes at?
*A90 MISSKELLEY: They, they laid their bikes down when they come out to the, I mean, when they hollered for them to come, come out there
DETECTIVE RIDGE: Where did they lay their bikes down at, that's what I'm asking?
*A91 MISSKELLEY: I don't know where they laid their bikes down at, cause I was, I was behind Damien and nem, way, way behind them.

Here Jessie clearly says he doesn't know. Furthermore, this statement does match the geography when taken with his other statements, particularly that Damien and Jason were in the creek when they saw the kids and hollered to them to come over. But the police ask Jessie again:

DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Did they call them by name?
*A182 MISSKELLEY: Un-uh, they just hollered at them, and they, they slowed up.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Where did the boys put their bikes?
*A183 MISSKELLEY: Close to right where there before you come in and they laid them down right there, and I don't know, after I left I don't know what they done with the bikes.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: You didn't do anything to the bikes at all?
*A184 MISSKELLEY: No.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: Are you sure?
*A185 MISSKELLEY: Positive.
DETECTIVE GITCHELL: You didn't touch the bikes?
*A186 MISSKELLEY: I didn't touch them.

"Close to right where there before you come in" is Jessie's definitive statement on where the bicycles were left and sufficient to put in the search warrant Jessie's inside knowledge regarding the bicycles that the bicycles were left on the south side of the bayou (for which there was no evidence, anyhow).

#13. Described the area where the murders occurred very specifically as to the high bank on the west side of the ditch where the bodies were placed and the flat area on the east side of the ditch where the murders actually took place.

Facts of the case: the flat area on the east side of the ditch was alongside where Michael Moore's body was found and about 10 yards from where the other two bodies were found. Too long an argument to go into whether this was the murder scene. According to the police's own case summary, the lack of blood at the site where the bodies were found indicates that it was not where the murders took place.

Problems with this statement: I have gone into this statement at length elsewhere. There is no evidence that Misskelley knew anything about the area around which the bodies were found. The police supplied him with these details on tape.

DETECTIVE RIDGE: Alright, and you know where the little creek is that goes out to the expressway, and it doesn't have a lot of water in it, but it's got some water in it, and it's flowing through there, which side of that creek were you on, were you on the Memphis side of the creek or were you on the Blue Beacon side of that creek?
*A76 MISSKELLEY: Blue Beacon.
DETECTIVE RIDGE: On the Blue Beacon
*A77 MISSKELLEY: Yes
DETECTIVE RIDGE: So, there is like a tall bank, were you, where were you at on that bank?

and:

DETECTIVE RIDGE: Alright, we're going to correct that even further, that's the east side, Memphis side is the east side and you were standing at the top of the bank on the west side, were you looking down at what was going on?
*A82 MISSKELLEY: I was looking down, and after I seen all of that, I took off

In summary, of the 13 statements made regarding Jessie's inside knowledge of events that were also corroborated by evidence, only number 4 was correct. Jessie correctly stated that all three were beaten up badly. The other statements were provided by the police, unsubstantiated, or simply invented when composing the search warrant.

jivep.

----

To quote Misskelley and myself:

" *A91 MISSKELLEY: I don't know where they laid their bikes down at, cause I was, I was behind Damien and nem, way, way behind them.

Here Jessie clearly says he doesn't know. Furthermore, this statement does match the geography when taken with his other statements, particularly that Damien and Jason were in the creek when they saw the kids and hollered to them to come over."

I meant to say this statement doesn't match the geography. This statement by itself goes a long way to pointing out how Jessie invented this whole confession on the fly and with a short attention span.

Previously he had Damien and Jason in the water taking turns going under water when they called for the kids to come over. Now he seems to be saying that he was way behind Damien so he couldn't see where the kids laid down their bikes. If they were on their bikes and he could see them on their bikes, he could certainly see where they were no longer on their bikes. If he was way behind he is either referring to them all getting there together at the same time and Jessie tailing behind or somehow positioned in the Blue Beacon Woods in a manner that he was a distance from Jason and Damien and further away from the kids. From the density of the woods, this makes no sense. Nor does it make any sense that Jason and Damien could have seen the kids riding on the bikes (here left on the South Bank of the bayou) and called them over.

jivep.

[Obscuregawdess]

(fascinating post by jivepuppi)

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2089

I think it is fascinating that there were four snitches that I know that were involved in this case. Each had its own set of alleged perpetrators and idiosyncracies and accuracies or inaccuracies. They were:

Name: Jesse Hurst
Person that he claims to have heard confess: Damien while in prison.
Date of statement to police: 7/21/93
Alleged perpetrators: Jason and one of the children's stepfathers who has a long ponytail (more on that below). Jessie and Damien watched from a distance but did not participate.
Status of statement: Never used at trial. Reasons rather obvious.

The identity of the stepfather is not made clear. Hurst says that Damien thought the name was Branch, but Stevie Branch, Sr. was not a stepfather. (Terry Hobbs was Stevie Branch's stepfather.) The other main clue is that Damien is supposed to have said that "the stepfather got on tv and said that he was vicious said that Damien was a vicious animal and that he should, he should be killed for what he's done this stepfather was on television. . ." Of course, JMB had long hair, sometimes in a ponytail, and was on television calling Damien a vicious animal.

Problems with statement: Says footprints of the perpetrators were left behind. The children were tied with rope, back to back. Variously describing cutting the children up or open (could be construed as incorrect statement). They were thrown in the ditch rather than placed (even though Fogelman feeds him the term "placed." Repeatedly refers to Jason's confession when he seems to mean Jessie.

Interesting accuracies: The children were riding two bikes and one skateboard. Left them in the ditch to be found, "they found bodies because there was a shoe floating on the water and that's how they found the boys cause someone pulled their bodies out." Hurst (or via Damien) seemed to know something about the autopsies:

Hurst: he (Jason, below) said, they said the boys were uh, they had sex with them anal,
Ridge: uh um (yes)
Jesse: he said but the autopsy showed that, that didn't happen, he said that's what the autopsy showed said that was a liar that didn't happen, because he said jason said that the boys were raped after they were killed and he said that in the autopsy it would show that, that didn't happen. . ."

And this interesting detail: "he said someone got checked out of school early, for some kind of appointment or something."

There were also instances of the police putting words in his mouth:

Ridge: Okay, said he cut one of the boys penis off, what did he say he did with that penis?
Ridge: And did he say what he cut with, who's knife or was it a knife?

Hurst has Jessie Misskelley's knack for describing a scene:

Hurst: He said it was, it was off, it was off of a long road out, it was a secluded area more or less it was off and it was just a long road and woods were down at, at, they were down and the street was up so you know how the water runs off the street into, into the gutter.

Summary: Most interesting of the four snitches, maybe because he had a lot of varied things to say. The accurate portions of the statement suggest that some specific information was flowing into the prison. Also, this is a very early notion that JMB was actively involved in this crime. Some of the statements seem to be reasonably related to what Damien might say. For example, what the autopsy showed could have come to Damien via his lawyer. Some of the specificities either had to come through Damien or else through media or prison gossip. (Hurst denied reading or seeing any media reports on this.) This leaves the problems with the inaccuracies and what to think of the alleged involvement of JMB (or other stepfather).

Name: Michael Johnson
Person that he claims to have heard confess: Jessie while in prison.
Date of statement to police: unclear. After trials, before appeals.
Alleged perpetrators: The WM3.
Status of statement: Never used at trial.
Problems with statement: Not much information is included. The most glaring inaccuracies is that a woman's nightgown was left behind at the scene of the crime. The only other "details" related to this case are: one boy's testicles were cut off (correct); Jason had sex with a child after the child was killed (unverified, also inconsistent with evidence, although what is meant by sex is unclear); and, Damien said a prayer (unverifiable) before children were thrown into ditch (the children had to be carefully sunk in the ditch, if they were thrown in before that, it is unverified). This boils down to two facts that could have some verification, the castration (correct and well-established), and the nightgown (false).
Summary: Well established that Jessie confesses. Even after the trial still getting details wrong. (Or of course, Johnson could be making this up).

Name: Michael Roy Carson
Person that he claims to have heard confess: Jason while in prison.
Date of statement to police: February 1, 1994
Alleged perpetrators: Jason. No statements referring to Damien or Jessie.

His statement: A ten page interview but he basically repeats a single statement (ascribed to Jason) over and over. "He was saying like, okay, dismembered them, and sucking the blood out of their scrotums and playing with there balls in his mouth and stuff like that." (In repeating this, he adds bloods being sucked from the penis.) Accurate in that someone had testicles removed. Inaccurate in that only one did. No evidence for the blood sucking, etc.

An interesting statement he makes at the end: "Huh, yeah, if I was offered any money or anything, I mean I'm not doing this for money, or anything, I'm just doing it to help the family out." This seems to suggest that he was offered money for this. During his testimony he denies being offered a reward.

Other relevant information: supposedly stayed in prison with Jason just six days and on the third day this information was revealed in August or September. Came forward with this three weeks before the trial in February, as he testified, because of his good nature.

Summary: The whole of this statement is almost as skimpy as what the softball girls overheard. The one fact from it (other than saying that Jason confessed) has a major flaw. One child was castrated, not more than one.

Name: Timothy Cotten.
Person that he claims to have heard confess: LG Hollingsworth while in prison.
Date of statement to police: March, 1994
Alleged perpetrators: LG Hollingsworth and Damien.

This is second-hand through a news article. There is little information on the details of the confession to confirm or refute its accuracy. LG Hollingsworth and Damien were supposed to kill Chris Byers in order to get even for JMB's drug snitching. Interesting thing about this is how much anyone would have known JMB's role as a drug snitch in March 1994.

Summary: It can be said this is the only statement with no identifiable inaccuracies. That is mostly because there is so little information. It would be interesting to see what the original more complete statement had to say.

Overall summary: We have four snitches, two identify Damien as a perpetrator, three identify Jason, one Jessie, one "a stepfather," and one LG Hollingsworth. These multiple statements and scenarios do not add to each other, but rather subtract from the validity of jailhouse snitches. Various theories can be put forward about how these snitches came up with this information. None of the snitches statements is without major flaws, except perhaps for that of Timothy Cotten, where there is insufficient information to judge. This plethora of snitches is consistent with my theory that the police assembled a haphazard case from whichever liar most fit their theory of the crime -- and ignored the others.


jivep.

edited because I had said Jason appeared in two of the statements, when he had appeared in three.

[Obscuregawdess]

OCTOBER 29, 2004

Defense Lawyers Claim Juror Misconduct

By Peter Blumberg
Daily Journal Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - Three jurors in the West Memphis Three case have recently admitted that they reached guilty verdicts by considering deeply incriminating evidence that was strictly off limits, according to habeas corpus petitions being filed today.

The petitions allege that during the heavily publicized 1994 capital trial in Jonesboro, jurors were improperly influenced by a grisly confession that of the one teenage defendants gave to police implicating him and his two friends in the murder of three 8-year-old boys.

The potentially explosive petitions were filed by San Francisco defense attorneys Dennis Riordan and Donald Horgan in state and federal court in Arkansas.

They contend that Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were deprived of a fair trial because jurors were well aware from news accounts that co-defendant Jessie Misskelley gave a confession attributing the slayings to their joint participation in a satanic cult.

Misskelley was tried and convicted first. But because he refused to testify against the others, rules restricting hearsay testimony barred his confession from being used in any way in the Echols/Baldwin trial, which started two weeks later.

"Echols was tried separately from Misskelley precisely in order to ensure that the Echols jury would not be exposed to the Misskelley statement," wrote Riordan and Donald Horgan, who represents Echols. "Yet notes taken by a juror, as well as statements of jurors themselves, establish the central role played by the Misskelley statement during the deliberations of the Echols jury."

In the 11 years since Echols was sentenced to death and Baldwin and Misskelley each got life in prison, defense attorneys have struck out in every appeal they've filed with the Arkansas Supreme Court. The state high court has rejected dozens of reasons why the defendants claim they deserve new trials.

The state and federal habeas petitions prepared by Riordan and his partner mark the first bid for a reversal based on juror misconduct.

Riordan's detailed narrative portrays the jury foreman as downplaying his knowledge of the Misskelley confession during voir dire and then flouting the judge's explicit orders not to even think about the confession while assessing the charges against Baldwin and Echols.

According to the narrative, based on interviews with jurors about their two days of closed-door deliberations and their own notes, the foreman of the 12-member jury drew up large charts for both defendants to consider all factors weighing toward guilt or innocence. Misskelley's statement appeared on the lists as a major factor.

"The items on those original lists appear to match the items listed in Juror Seven's notes, except that the written references to the Misskelley statement on both the Echols and Baldwin list have been blacked out over by someone," Riordan wrote.

To protect their privacy, the jurors are identified only by their assigned numbers, not by name, in the petitions. Their names are being filed under seal.

The foreman, Juror Four, had been contacted many times by reporters and lawyers following the trial but never granted an interview until Oct. 8, when he was interviewed by two attorneys representing Echols. He refused, however, to sign a declaration.

"In Juror Four's opinion, it was unreasonable to expect the jury to ignore the Misskelley confession despite the court's instructions to do so," Riordan wrote, summarizing the interview. "The Misskelley confession was published in the newspapers. It was a primary and deciding factor in the case. It was a known event."

By contrast, during voir dire, when the foreman was questioned sharply about his prior knowledge of the Misskelley case, he did not disclose that he even knew there was a confession, according to excerpts of the court transcript quoted in the petition.

"I don't know anything - I couldn't tell you anything about Misskelley except that I understand he was convicted of something, and I couldn't even tell you of what," he said.

Jurors Six and Seven also revealed in recent defense interviews that they had more knowledge about the details of the Misskelley prosecution going into the Echols/Baldwin trial than they admitted during voir dire, according to the petition. Several other jurors indicated that they, too, had been exposed to extensive pretrial publicity.

During the Echols/Baldwin trial, a prosecution witness made an oblique reference to the Misskelley statement, but he was quickly cut off, and the judge warned jurors to put it out of their minds.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are instructed and told at this time that you are to disregard and not consider the last response by Detective Ridge to a question from Mr. Price and you're to - if you can remember it - you're to strike it from your mind and not give it any consideration," Circuit Judge David Burnett said.

Riordan's petitions cite a litany of state and federal precedents holding that a new trial is the only constitutionally proper remedy when jurors have been influenced by extraneous prejudicial information.




**********
2004 Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2562

[Obscuregawdess]

http://westmemphisthreediscussion.yuku.com/topic/2575

The silence of the governor
'Paradise Lost' stirs dispute.

By Mara Leveritt
March 31, 2000

The lawyer representing Damien Echols, a death row inmate convicted of the 1993 murders of three West Memphis children, says that a statement about DNA evidence in that case, which apparently was e-mailed from the office of Gov. Mike Huckabee last week, is false.

For the past two weeks, the governor's website has received hundreds of e-mail messages about the West Memphis case. The flurry of interest corresponds to the repeated airing on HBO this month of "Paradise Lost: Revelations," the second of two films the network has shown about the case. Most of the letters, which may be read on the governor's site, express viewers' concern that Echols and two other young men convicted of the murders may be innocent.

Last week, Johnny Bratton, Jr, a viewer from Cabot, contacted the site asking that Huckabee "look into this case." On Mar. 23, Bratton received a reply from "teena.watkins@gov.state.ar.us." Teena L. Watkins is Huckabee's liaison for criminal justice affairs. The message began: "The Governor has received your e-mail and has asked me to respond. As the Chief of the Executive Branch of government, the Governor has no investigative authority. He cannot re-open the case nor have any investigation done.

"I do want to assure you that DNA testing was done, and that a match was found among the men convicted. I am sure you realize that Paradise Lost and it's [sic] sequel are fictionalized accounts based upon a true story. These shows are not documentaries or news stories."

The Times placed several phone calls to Watkins, attempting to confirm that she had sent the message, but the calls were not returned. The Times then contacted Rex Nelson, the governor's spokesman, for a response. He said that he would check, but the following day, another member of the governor's staff reported that Nelson "never got answers" from Watkins, either.

Bruce Sinofsky, one of the producers of "Paradise Lost," reported that he did get through to Watkins at the governor's office. But Sinofsky said that when he asked Watkins if she had e-mailed the statement, "She said, 'I can't comment on that,' and then she hung up on me."

The part of the message drawing the most fire concerns the statement that, "DNA testing was done and that a match was found among the men convicted." Edward Mallett of Houston, Texas, who is representing Echols in his appeals, says categorically, "That statement is false." Mallett contends that "no match was found" linking "any of the defendants and any evidence found at the scene or on the persons of any of the little boys."

Brent Davis, the prosecutor for Arkansas's Second Judicial District who is representing the state in the high-profile case, refused to comment on the allegation. He added, however, that he did not know where the governor's office might have gotten its information.

According to trial records, four pieces of evidence were submitted to laboratories for DNA testing. They were a necklace, a knife, a swatch of material from a pair of blue jeans worn by one of the victims, and shoelaces with which the victims were bound. All three defendants volunteered to have samples of their DNA taken. In their trials, no testimony was presented establishing a link between their DNA and DNA discovered on any of the items tested.

The second point at issue is the statement that the HBO films "are fictionalized accounts" and "not documentaries." The films' makers dispute that contention. They point out that HBO bills the films as documentaries, reviewers internationally have regarded them as such, and that the first film, which contained actual footage from the trials, received an Emmy in the category "Outstanding Achievement in Informational Programming." Joe Berlinger, who made the films with Sinofsky, criticized the statement from the governor's office as "shocking" and "emblematic of the corruption of truth that has epitomized this case."

[Obscuregawdess]

Evening Times
4/13/94

Prosecutors deny any misconduct

JONESBORO (AP) --

Prosecutors in the trial of two teen-agers convicted of capital murder in the slayings of three West Memphis boys denied Tuesday any misconduct in the trial last month.

Prosecutor Brent Davis and Deputy Prosecutor John Fogleman made the denial in a motion filed with Craighead County Circuit Court, responding to an earlier motion by the teen-agers' lawyers, seeking a new trial. The prosecutors' motion argued against granting a new trial.

Damien Wayne Echols, 19, of West Memphis, and Charles Jason Baldwin, 17, of Marion, were convicted March 18 of capital murder in the slayings of three 8-year-olds, Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. Echols was given the death penalty and Baldwin was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A third teen-ager, Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr., 17, was convicted in an earlier trial of one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder in the slayings, and given a sentence of life plus 40 years.

On March 29, Baldwin attorney Paul Ford and Echols attorney Val Price filed separate motions claiming that a new trial was merited because prosecutors and Circuit Judge David Burnett engaged improperly in a conversation without involvement of defense attorneys.

Ford and Price also claimed that Burnett discussed with jurors an attempt at jury tampering, but didn't tell defense attorneys of the discussion.

The motion filed Tuesday by the prosecutors said they were not aware of any information about threats being made to jurors, and denied any misconduct.

In an affidavit supporting the motion, Davis said he recalled that defense attorneys were told March 11, before the state rested its case, that blood had been discovered on a necklace worn by Echols on the day of his arrest. Prosecutors were told on March 15, after court had recessed for the day, that testing on the necklace indicated the blood was similar to that of Baldwin and Steven Branch, one of the victims, the affidavit said.

Prosecutors tried to reach the defense attorneys to tell them of this development, the affidavit said, but when they were unsuccessful, they sought and obtained a one-day continuance from Burnett.

"On March 17, the court reconvened and, at that time, the state advised the court of the results," Davis said in the affidavit. "It is my recollection that an ... off-the-record hearing was held in chambers wherein defense attorneys for both defendants, the prosecutors, and the judge were present."

During that hearing, Davis said, Burnett stated he was inclined to grant a motion for mistrial and to sever Baldwin's trial from that of Echols if the new evidence was allowed into the trial.

As a result of defense objections to introduction of the new evidence, a hearing was held, after which Burnett declared a recess, Davis said. During the recess, Davis said, Burnett summoned prosecutors and told them of his ruling, finishing his statement as defense attorneys entered the room.

"No actual conversation or discussion took place other than the court advising the attorneys for the state of his ruling," Davis said.

Baldwin's lawyers "were aware of the circumstances of the court informing (prosecutors) of his ruling and had an opportunity to make a record if they objected to this procedure and declined to do so," Davis said.

Burnett said Tuesday evening that he had not reviewed the state's motion and could not comment on the matter.

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