NEW EVIDENCE & LOOKING AT OLD EVIDENCE

[Obscuregawdess]

Pam Hobbs on her ex husband...

http://www.wm3.org/live/newsevents/news ... ews_Id=182

Part 1: Nov. 7, 2007

"I found out that my worst nightmare of this lifetime was really true. He was dead."

In 1993 Pam Hobbs said the words no parent wants to say, her son 8-year-old Steve Branch was dead; part of a triple homicide in West Memphis.

14 and a half years later she reflects.

"If Stevie was still here, I would be a very proud and honored mother, just as I am of the eight precious years I did have with him," said Hobbs.

But those years were cut tragically short, and a year later three West Memphis teens were convicted of capital murder.

Now, Hobbs says new evidence makes her think differently about Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin.

"I asked 14 years ago, God if these guys are not guilty grant them another trial and give me the strength to accept who the real person is. I'm prepared," said Hobbs.

Now as she meets with her attorney David Rees and gets ready to help the West Memphis Three fight for their innocence, I ask her if she ever really thought they were guilty back in 93.

"It was a point of anger that someone did this to my child. Did I really believe it, no, not 100 percent that they did it. I didn't believe they were capable enough or smart enough to have committed the crime, cleaned the scene up and be guilty for it," said Hobbs.

So if the West Memphis Three were to get off and get out of prison, the biggest question is how would the parent of a victim react?

"I would love to meet them. I would ask them personally to forgive me. I would let them know that they spent 14 and a half of their years in a world where even I don't know anything about. If I could assist them to learn how to live in the free world, I'm behind them 100 percent," said Hobbs.

And that's only the beginning of what Pam Hobbs shared in our Region Eight News exclusive interview.

Thursday night on Region Eight News at five and six, find out why she says her ex-husband could have been capable of murder, and where she finds peace 14 and a half years after her son's death.

Part 2: Nov. 8, 2007

Pam Hobbs says she is now out for justice and wants to find out who really killed her son, Steve Branch.

She says with the help of her attorney, David Rees, she is hoping for a retrial of the West Memphis Three and to finally get a chance to say she's sorry.

t's part two of a Region Eight News exclusive interview.

"I would love to meet them. I would ask them personally to forgive me, and let them know that they spent 14 and a half years in a world that even I don't know anything of. If I could assist them to live in the free world, I'm behind them 100 percent," said Hobbs.

Those words were the ones many never thought they would hear from the mother of a murdered 8-year-old when talking about those convicted of the crime.

But Pam Hobbs says new evidence produced by the convicted killers' defense team has led her to forgiveness, and now she's teaming up with attorney David Rees to fight for justice.

"I chose to have someone represent me and guide me on what direction I need to take to be reassured that justice will be done, and that the killer or killers of my son will be behind bars," said Hobbs.

Both Hobbs and Rees believe the trials of the West Memphis Three were jaded from the start.

"Everyday I would go down and I would see the evidence as it was presented. I kept wondering where is the proof," said Rees.

That is why Hobbs says she is now hopeful of a retrial for Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin.

"With the evidence now, I really hope it will lead to another trial and show all of the evidence that the prosecution said they had that they did not show the first time," said Hobbs.

Evidence which her attorney feels the prosecution still doesn't have.

"If they have to retry it, they are going to have to figure out totally different theories," said Rees.

And for Hobbs if the West Memphis Three are retried and freed...

"If they are not proven guilty, they will be my best buddies," said Hobbs.

And in our third and final part of the exclusive interview with Pam Hobbs, find out what she says makes her think differently about her ex-husband Terry.

Part 3: Nov. 8, 2007

When new D.N.A. evidence came forward that could prove the West Memphis Three as innocent, fingers started pointing once again.

This time the pressure was off Mark Byers and on Terry Hobbs, the ex-husband of Pam Hobbs.

In an interview earlier this year, he voiced his own opinion of the new evidence.

"It's sad to see that there are people out here trying to get killers out of prison, that deserve, every one of them, to be hung by a rope," said Terry Hobbs.

But D.N.A. evidence could link a hair found on one of the boy's shoelaces to him.

In July I asked Pam if her ex-husband could have been involved in the murders.

"Do you think honestly in your heart that he might have had something to do with this," I asked. "Honestly in my heart...I have to be honest. Possibly," replied Pam Hobbs.

But why did she answer that way? Four months later--the response.

"The manipulation that I lived with through 17 years of living with him, knowing honestly that he was not a loving step-father, that he tries to portray himself to be," said Hobbs.

But character aside, I ask Pam Hobbs if there was ever any abuse in their relationship that would lead her to think this.

"He'd hit me and I'd hit him back. I didn't back down, you know. We would always get into it when Stevie was alive about him being a little bit too rough. He would tell me not to tell him how to discipline our children," said Hobbs.

But were Terry's tactics and ways of discipline enough to warrant him as a murderer?

"Well, I'd have to laugh at that and say there is something wrong with anyone who would think that," said Terry himself.

And only time will tell if the West Memphis Three will be freed, and whether or not anyone else will ever be charged with the crime.

However, as time stretches on Pam Hobbs says she's found her peace in a place where her son can rest.

"I find his grave to be my place of peace now. That's where I go when I really need to just get away from the world and quit thinking about stuff and find my peace, that's where I go," said Pam Hobbs.

And Region Eight News will continue to track the latest developments in the case of the West Memphis Three.

[Obscuregawdess]

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Scientists are building database of bite marks


Scientists are building database of bite marks
By TODD RICHMOND – 1 hour ago

MILWAUKEE (AP) — It has sent innocent men to death row, given defense attorneys fits and splintered the scientific community. For a decade now, attorneys and even some forensic experts have ridiculed the use of bite marks to identify criminals as sham science and glorified guesswork.

Now researchers at Marquette University say they have developed a first-of-its kind computer program that can measure bite characteristics. They say their work could lead to a database of bite characteristics that could narrow down suspects and lend more scientific weight to bite-mark testimony.

"The naysayers are saying, ..You can throw all this out. It's junk science. It's voodoo. This is a bunch of boobs that are causing a lot of problems and heartaches for people,'" said team leader Dr. L. Thomas Johnson, a forensic dentist who helped identify victims of the cannibalistic Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. "It's a valid science if it's done properly."

Skeptics already are taking shots.

"Scientifically illiterate," Dr. Mike Bowers, a deputy medical examiner in Ventura County, Calif., and a member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, said of Johnson's work.

Built around the assumption that every person's teeth are unique, forensic dentistry has used bite impressions to identify criminals for 40 years. Bite marks on a young woman helped convict serial killer Ted Bundy of murdering her and another college student.

But critics say human skin changes and distorts imprints until they are nearly unrecognizable. As a result, courtroom experts end up offering competing opinions.

"If the discipline lends itself to opposing experts, it's not science," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongfully convicted inmates.

Since 2000, at least seven people in five states who were convicted largely on bite-mark identification have been exonerated, according to the Innocence Project.

In Arizona, Ray Krone was found guilty in 1992 of killing a Phoenix bartender based largely on expert testimony that his teeth matched bites on the victim. He was sentenced to death, won a new trial on procedural grounds, was convicted again and got life. But DNA testing in 2002 proved he wasn't the killer. Krone was freed and won a spot on the ABC reality show "Extreme Makeover" to remake his teeth.

In Mississippi, forensic odontologist Dr. Michael West has come under fire after he testified in two child rape-murders in the 1990s that bite marks positively identified each killer. Kennedy Brewer was sentenced to death in one case, and Levon Brooks got life in prison in the other.

DNA tests later connected a third man to one of the rapes, and investigators say he confessed to both murders. In Brewer's case, a panel of experts concluded that the bites on the victim probably came from insects. Brewer and Brooks were exonerated earlier this year.

Determined to prove that bite analysis can be done scientifically, Johnson and his team won about $110,000 in grants from the Midwest Forensic Resources Center at Iowa State University and collected 419 bite impressions from Wisconsin soldier volunteers.

They built a computer program to catalog characteristics, including tooth widths, missing teeth and spaces between teeth. The program then calculated how frequently — or infrequently — each characteristic appeared.

He hopes to collect more impressions from dental schools across the country to expand the database into something close to law enforcement's DNA databanks. With enough samples, the software could help forensic dentists answer questions in court about how rarely a dental characteristic appears in the American population. That would help exclude or include defendants as perpetrators, Johnson said.

He acknowledged that his software will probably never turn bite-mark analysis into a surefire identifier like DNA and that he would need tens of thousands of samples before his work would stand up in court.

But "this is the first step toward actually providing science for this type of pattern analysis," Johnson said.

Bowers, who often testifies for the defense in criminal cases, said Johnson should instead study how skin changes can distort bite marks.

Dr. David Sweet, a forensic dentist at the University of British Columbia, said he has been working on a database similar to Johnson's for the past decade. He said he has offered Johnson casts and reproductions of the hundreds of bite impressions he is making.

Dr. Robert Barsley, a Louisiana State University dental professor and vice president of the American Academy of Forensic Science, said he, too, would send Johnson hundreds of bite impressions.

"His work could certainly be a benefit," Barsley said. "I don't think it will solve the problem, but it would be a step in the right direction."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hBy9 ... QD90LJM6G0

[Obscuregawdess]

New Evidence in West Memphis Murders
Jul 19, 2007 at 10:07 AM
Huge news day on the WM3 front. DNA does not match Damien Echols but does happen to match Stevie Branch's step-father, Terry Hobbs. This also means John Mark Byers has pretty much been cleared of suspicion. A twist no one saw coming.


ARKANSAS TIMES
by Mara Leveritt

Reviving an investigation that ended 14 years ago, West Memphis police recently questioned the mother and stepfather of Stevie Branch, one of three 8-year-old boys murdered in 1993. Three teenagers were convicted of the killings.

In a telephone interview on Monday, Stevie’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, confirmed that West Memphis police had videotaped an interview with him within the last three weeks. Pam Hobbs, Stevie’s mother, also said she had been interviewed by police. The Hobbses are now divorced.

Terry Hobbs, who lives in Bartlett, Tenn., said police requested the interview with him as a result of recent DNA tests on items found with the bodies. Prior to the police interview, he said, he had been informed of the test results by Ron Lax, a Memphis private investigator.

Terry Hobbs said, “Ron claims that a piece of my hair is in the knots that tied up [victim] Michael Moore.”

“Does that bother me?” Hobbs continued. “No, ma’am, it does not. Why? Because I don’t believe a thing he has to say because he’s working for the defense team. And because if my DNA was at the crime scene, I think [Prosecuting Attorney] Brent Davis would be the one to call me about that, and not Ron Lax.”

Attorneys for the convicted men have said no DNA was found that matches their clients.

Terry Hobbs said police asked him “a bunch of questions” about his activities on May 5, 1993 — the day Stevie, Michael and Christopher Byers, the third victim, disappeared — and the following day, when the boys’ bodies were discovered submerged in a drainage ditch. He declined to answer further questions about what he was asked by police.

Pam Hobbs, who lives in Blytheville, said a lieutenant for the West Memphis Police Department also questioned her about her family’s activities around the time of the slayings. In the last couple of months, she has stated publicly that she now believes that the men convicted of the murders — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr . — are not guilty.

“We have stages of grieving that we go through,” she said. “I guess I came to forgiveness. I’ve always wanted to know the truth, and when I was called by the defense — knowing the DNA was being retested — I guess that was the big eye-opener.”

Pam Hobbs said she “chose to believe all those years” that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were guilty, despite her realization during the trials that the prosecutors “didn’t have anything” and persistent doubts afterwards that the defendants “were smart enough or hateful enough to have done it by themselves and clean it up.”

The state medical examiner ruled that Stevie and Michael died by drowning and that Christopher, who’d suffered stab wounds to his groin, died from loss of blood.

Pam Hobbs said that in 2002, at a point when she and Terry Hobbs were separating, she sent a package containing “14 or 15 knives” owned by her husband to one of the defense lawyers.

Pam Hobbs said that she had done so after discovering among the knives “a little pocket knife” that her father had given to Stevie.

She said Stevie “carried it around with him all the time, because it was like part of his granddaddy. He would have had it May the fifth. He carried it with him from the day my daddy gave it to him until the day he was murdered.”

Asked why, five years ago, she had given the knives to a lawyer for the defense, she said it was because she “didn’t trust the prosecution ... because of the evidence that was not presented at the trials.”

Terry Hobbs dismissed the knives as having had “nothing to do with anything.”

“I’d bought some, and found some and Pam bought me some. I just threw them in a drawer, and that’s where they’d been for years.” He added, “Them knives were stolen out of my home and I’m fixing to try to get them back.”

Asked whether one of the knives was a pocket knife given to Stevie by his grandfather, Terry Hobbs responded: “I don’t know. It could have been. And it could have been it was in the drawer because we didn’t want him to have it. I didn’t want a kid of mine to go around with a pocket knife — not a kid who was 8 years old. Would you?”

Terry Hobbs said, “I raised Stevie from the time he was a year and a half, until he was 8. I tried to be a good daddy.”

As for his ex-wife, he said, “Pam’s got some problems. This thing has taken a toll on her. It’s really hurt her.

“I don’t think she really supports the idea they [the convicted men] are innocent. I think she’s doing it out of anger. As a matter of fact, I know it’s out of anger. It’s being angry at the world and not knowing how to deal with her anger.

“It’s kind of sad. And I’m really sorry that people think she supports that theory.”

Pam Hobbs acknowledges that she has “held anger toward Terry,” in part because of his actions on the night Stevie disappeared.

Terry usually got off work by 4 p.m., she said, in time to watch Stevie and their daughter Amanda, while Pam went to her job at a restaurant. On the day of the murders, Stevie, who had gone riding bikes with Michael, was supposed to be home at 4:30. He had not returned by 4:45, when Pam left for her job.

She said she assumed that he was just late, and that it was not until 9 p.m., when Terry drove to the restaurant with Amanda to pick her up, that she realized Stevie was not in the car.

“Terry told me he really thought he was going to find him and he didn’t want to burden me at work,” she said. “ But I held anger toward Terry over that — that he didn’t tell me Stevie was missing.”

Another element of her anger, Pam Hobbs said, relates to her brother, whom Terry Hobbs shot in the abdomen during an altercation 10 years ago. That brother died last year.

Terry Hobbs dismisses the episode. “The truth is,” he said, “when a man is trying to kill you, you have a right under the United States Constitution to defend and protect yourself.”

Nevertheless, he acknowledged that he was charged with aggravated assault, fined and placed on probation.

When asked if she now considers her ex-husband a suspect in the murders, Pam Hobbs answered, “Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s because of the anger I still hold toward him for not telling me when Stevie was missing, and from some of his other actions or not. But I haven’t been able to shake that feeling.”

For his part, Terry Hobbs said he’s not worried and that he has nothing to hide. With regard to the retested DNA, he said, “I’ve been told that nothing that’s going on right now is going to change a thing.”

Asked who’d given him that assurance, he replied, “Brent Davis,” the prosecuting attorney.

Davis would not comment on what Terry Hobbs said about either the reported DNA or the chance that new findings would change the case. When asked who ordered the renewed questioning by West Memphis police, he explained, “I can’t comment on anything, one way or another, as it’s still in appeals and litigation.”

http://kathybakken.vox.com/library/post ... rders.html


(Also, IIRC, Hobbs refused to take a polygraph.)

[Obscuregawdess]

Friday, January 04, 2008
West Memphis 3 Update: Terry Wayne Hobbs vs. John Mark Byers?
West Memphis, Arkansas--In a case that has had as many twists-and-turns as the aftermath of WWII, there is another bizarre development: John Mark Byers is alleged to have come out for the innocence of the West Memphis 3. At this time, it's impossible to corroborate as Byers is alleged to be claiming that he's been doing "undercover work" towards whether another step-father might have been involved in the murders of the three eight-year-olds back in 1993--Terry Wayne Hobbs.


[John] Mark Byers has recently come out in favor of the innocence of those in prison. He has said he has helped perform undercover work, making tapes of his conversations with Terry Hobbs. He has made some remarkable allegations about Hobbs past. The supporting evidence for these allegations have yet to appear. (http://www.jivepuppi.com/Terry_Hobbs.html, November 15th, 2007)
What's interesting is that there have been suspicions that Byers did in fact do "undercover" informant work for the West Memphis Police Department prior to the murders of his own step-son and the other two children. It's likely that the informant work was related to drug interdiction, as West Memphis is a well known corridor for the flow of illegal drugs through that part of Arkansas. It should be noted that Hobbs's and Byers' step-sons suffered some of the most brutal mutilations and violence to their bodies. This includes what could be a bite-mark (or the lashing from a belt-buckle) on his face. Christopher Byers, step-son of John Mark Byers, suffered mutilation of the genitals.

Is Byers innocent? So far, DNA-evidence found at the scene has not fully exonerated the man, now purported to reside outside of Millington, Tennessee. Some of the results of the DNA testing are still unknown, but one of the hairs found on the bodies of the children in a a shoestring ligature (binding) has a positive ID: Terry Wayne Hobbs. John Mark Byers and Terry Wayne Hobbs--what's common to these men? That's answered easily: both were step-parents, and both were involved in patterns of criminal violence, breaking-and-entering, and heavy drug-use. They also show signs of being abusive in their homes and with the children of others. Both Hobbs and Byers also came from strictly religious and economically comfortable backgrounds. They did not grow-up poor as the West Memphis 3 had. Then, there is the mysterious David Jacoby:


THOMAS FEDOR, FORENSIC EXPERT: None of the defendants could have been the source of that hair. None of the victims could have been the source of either hair. None of the DNA evidence from the crime scene connects any of the defendants to the scene of the crime.

MATTINGLY: So, who could the hairs belong to? A defense petition in federal court says the DNA from one hair is consistent with that of Terry Hobbs. Hobbs is the former stepfather of victim Steve Branch.

(on camera): Mr. Hobbs, do you feel like that the attorneys are accusing you of this crime?

ROSS SAMPSON, HOBBS'S ATTORNEY: The answer to that would be no.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Hobbs agreed to go in front of our cameras while his attorney did the talking. And through most of my questions, Hobbs remained silent.

(on camera) Is it possible, Mr. Hobbs, that that was your hair?

SAMPSON: Sure. It was his son, Stephen Branch, who was murdered, and he's had to deal with this for the last 15 years.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Defense attorneys say a second hair found at the scene is consistent with the DNA of Hobbs's friend, David Jacoby, and that the two were together in the hours before and after the victims disappeared.

Jacoby did not return our calls, but he did volunteer DNA samples to the defense. Authorities say they stand by the old convictions. West Memphis police have no plans to question anyone. ... (CNN transcipt, November 8th, 2007, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... nr.01.html)


And what of David Jacoby? What is his background? Who is he? His hair sample was found at the site where the bodies of the three murdered children were found, located on a tree stump. This is a relatively new name, and it should be noted here that Hobbs and Jacoby--both friends supporting each other's alibis on that day--have all generally remained out of the spotlight of this whole affair, ever since 1993. Hobbs in-particular has gone out of his way to avoid interviews until recently, while Jacoby has been relatively unknown to the general public until 2007.

While the cops try to get their stories straight and lose more evidence in their custody, a real move towards exoneration of the West Memphis 3 is building. It is long-overdue. On November 18th of 2007, Pamela Hobbs was arrested for domestic abuse of her sister, Sheila Muse. Drug abuse is the suspected reason for her behavior, a trait she shares with her ex-husband (as well as problems with drugs). Her own daughter aided her in the beating of Muse.

In an about-face, Pamela Hobbs is now siding with the calls for a new trial for the West Memphis 3. Still, there's the nagging question: what's John Mark Byers up to? Whatever it is, it appears that the real murderers of Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers are growing restless. Everyone has to confess to their transgressions, and it's just a matter of when. When is coming soon.

http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.co ... hobbs.html

[Obscuregawdess]

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_robi6.htm

[Obscuregawdess]

Tuesday, October 09, 2007
West Memphis Three: Interview with Defense Attorney Dan Stidham
In previous posts I have mentioned the case of the West Memphis Three, the three teens (now adults) who were convicted in 1994 for the murder of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas as an alleged ritual murder perpetrated by members of a satanic cult. Despite the sensationalism surrounding the trial, and that two documentaries and several books have been written as a result of this case, it has received little national mainstream media coverage, and next to none in the Christian community. Dan Stidham was the defense attorney for one of the accused, Jessie Misskelley, and he graciously agreed to answer a few questions related to this fascinating and troubling case.




Morehead's Musings: Judge Stidham, thank you for making time in a busy legal schedule to share a few thoughts related to this case. For readers who may not be familiar with it, can you summarize the case for them beyond what I've mentioned in my introduction?


Dan Stidham: John, it would be an almost impossible task to try and briefly summarize a case that is so complicated and fascinating as this one. When I am invited to speak about the case on college campuses, my basic presentation generally lasts anywhere from 4-6 hours. I usually will turn down any requests for a speaking engagement that won’t allow me at least 4 hours as my powerpoint presentation alone takes at least 4 hours divided into two segments, this just to get through most of the slides and answer a few questions.

The only “one-stop,” if you will, reliable and accurate account of the entire case is Mara Leveritt’s brilliantly written book, Devil’s Knot, and it certainly is not a short read. Once you pick it up, however, you can’t put it down.

The only way I can describe the case in just a few short words is to say that the WM3 case has become an icon for “Injustice in America.” It is a chilling account of just about everything that can go wrong within our criminal justice system if we don’t have the proper safeguards in place.


Morehead's Musings: For those interested in learning more about the case I recommend two HBO documentaries, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, as well as the book that you have already mentioned by Mara Leveritt, Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West The West Memphis Three (Atria Books, 2002). But there are a a few aspects of this case that I would like to focus on in our interview if we could. First, I am struck by the lack of any significant emphasis on forensics in either the investigation or the trial, and this in a case of triple murder that should have been filled with forensic evidence. Why was this evidence lacking, and why didn't either the Prosecution or the Defense pursue this area in more depth?


Dan Stidham: John, that is an outstanding question. The lack of any physical evidence in this case, a fact that has always been quite candidly admitted to by the Prosecution, is utterly amazing. The convictions are based entirely upon the ridiculous and confusing confession of a mentally challenged teenager with an I.Q. of a five year old child which was corroborated by no real physical evidence in the case at all. The confession itself is just so plainly and patently lacking of any real substance every person that I have ever talked to who actually bothers to read it in it’s entirety is left scratching their heads wondering how this alone could result in anyone’s conviction in our modern day criminal justice system.

I was asked to prepared a synopsis of the evidence in this case after the trials, and it was later updated after I was finally able to consult with some forensics experts on the case post trial after the airing of the initial HBO film. This synopsis appears on the wm3.org website and the link to that page is:

http://wm3.org/live/caseintroduction/synopsis_dan.php

Justice is supposed to be “blind,” but the reality of the situation in Arkansas in 1993 was that is was not. There was no State funded Public Defender system yet in place at the time of the slayings and no Death Penalty Resource Center or Capital Defense system in place at the time of the trials in 1994. In fact, the County and the State fought a rather protracted legal battle over who would be responsible for the legal costs associated with the trials. The County prevailed, and two years later my law partner and I, Greg Crow, finally received $19.00 per hour for the 2000 plus hours that we had expended on the case in defending our client. We had been told that we would receive an average of $50.00 per hour for our work on the case. In addition, we had no money whatsoever other than what Mr. Crow and I could pay out of our own pockets to retain experts which resulted in my having to beg experts to assist us. Two of the best, Dr. Richard Ofshe and Warren Holmes, answered the call for help because they were so convinced after reviewing the case file that my client, and the other two Defendants, were absolutely innocent of these crimes. Ironically, it took two HBO documentaries on the case before other “Freedom Fighters” started showing up to help. I find it less than amusing that some of the same “experts” who refused to even talk to me back in 1993, because I didn’t have $15,000 to retain them, have now rushed to volunteer to work on the case. What a difference a few movies makes!

The State of Arkansas, obviously understanding the shortcomings of the Arkansas Crime Lab and the quality of the Medical Examiner’s office, consulted with experts and laboratories from outside the State. We did not have that luxury. They had unlimited funds and legions of investigators. We had one volunteer investigator, and all our experts were volunteers. Simply stated, we had no funds with which to defend our client.

At trial, Misskelley’s confession with all it’s impossibilities and factual inconsistencies, coupled with the “Satanic Panic” and hundreds of autopsy and crime scene photographs of the victims that were paraded in front of the juries prevailed over the tremendous lack of any real physical evidence and all the examples of “reasonable doubt” that we were able to demonstrate including evidence of alibi. The crimes were so brutal that someone “had to pay.” It is clear that the juries wanted to punish someone really bad. They did. The three Defendants were poor and expendable, and Damien Echols was the perfect “patsy” with all of his pre-trial and Courtroom antics with the media, and displayed in front of the jury.

Morehead's Musings: There have been forensic developments in this case since the trials. Can you touch on some of this?


Dan Stidham: There are some astounding recent developments in the case. There are some things that I can’t discuss because of confidentiality, and there are others that I simply don’t know about yet because we are waiting for more test results to come in. I can confirm what has been published in recent Court filings which are public record and other things that have been reported in the media. First, there has been some DNA recovered from some items of evidence in the case that does not match any of the three convicted men. Secondly, a hair recovered from a ligature that was used to tie up one of the victims has been linked by DNA to one of the victim’s stepfathers.

This is significant for a couple of reasons. First, the hair from the stepfather was not found on a victim that was not his own stepson. This is important in and of itself, but even more important when you think about where the hair was recovered from. It was lodged in the knot of the ligature itself, making the inevitable explanation by the State that it was merely a normal stepfather to stepson “secondary transfer” so ridiculous that one wonders if they will even have the courage to argue it. I can’t go into any more detail, but there are other significant forensic and evidentiary discoveries as well that will shed significant light on this case and make it even more obvious than it already is that the WM3 are innocent of these crimes. And speaking of “courage,” that’s all this case really needs. A little “courage” to do the right thing would go along way right now. I pray each day for someone to simply accept the challenge.


Morehead's Musings: Another area that intrigues me is the prosecution's claim that the three teens allegedly perpetrated this crime as part of an occult ritual which they did as members of a cult. This would seem a foundational part of their case, and yet as the first documentary reveals, the prosecution's "expert" on the occult and Wicca did not possess the necessary education or credentials to discuss let alone substantiate the prosecution's claim, and there is a wealth of good scholarly material available that debunks the existence of satanic cults and occult ritual crime. Why weren't competent scholars brought in to counter this foundational aspect of the prosecution's case?


Dan Stidham: First of all, as you point out, there is no such thing as “Satanic Ritualistic Homicide (SRH)” This is a mere invention by the so-called experts of the day back in 1993. According to the FBI and other research done in the U.K., there has never been a single case of SRH ever documented on the planet.

I know what you are thinking, “What about David Berkowitz and other Serial Killers who have proudly professed that they killed in the name of “Satan.” The difference is that these killings were the work of one deranged individual who suffered from some rather serious and profound psychological disorders, not the work of an organized group of Satanists who are sacrificing children, or even adults for that matter, as part of an organized Satanic Ritual. The “Devil” told me to do it, or the “Devil” in the form of the neighbor’s dog as in the Berkowitz case, are not the same thing as SRH.

Are there Satanists in the world? Sure there are. Do teenagers dabble in the occult? Sure they do. However, there is no evidence that any known group of Satanists have ever engaged in cult style ritualistic slayings. If you buy into the Prosecution’s theory, as set forth by the now “famous for lack of credentials,” Dale Griffis, then you would have to be compelled into believing that the West Memphis Case is the first ever case of SRH ever documented any where in the world.

I remember years ago watching Geraldo Rivera devote an entire episode of his show to the topic. He even had a Catholic Priest on the show as an “expert.” They told millions of viewers that there was a large group of Satanists in this Country that were kidnapping thousands of our children and killing them in “Satanic Rituals” all around the Country. There was a time when every missing kid was generally believed to have been the victim of SRH. These Satanists must be real good at hiding the bodies! Maybe they know where Jimmy Hoffa is?

I do know this, the three teenagers convicted of these horrible crimes, one of which who is on Death Row, are not sophisticated enough to pull off the robbery of a Seven-Eleven, much less a triple homicide. If anyone does believe that they were even remotely this capable, then I suppose that they would also have to believe that:

1. The kids were so sophisticated that they were able to kill all three victims, and sexually mutilate one victim which resulted in a tremendous amount of blood loss by that particular victim, while not leaving any of their own DNA behind at the scene; and

2. They were so sophisticated that they also managed to put a hair from one of the step-fathers inside a ligature binding one of the victims so that they could frame him for the crime 15 years later.

Morehead's Musings: Some of the unfortunate chapters in history include the American witch trials and the satanic panics of the 1980s and 1990s. There is a good scholarly body of literature on these topics that might have provided background considerations for the prosecution's argument for motive. Why weren't these considerations brought into the defense case, and in retrospect, do you feel like the socio-cultural context of Arkansas with its fundamentalist Christian population might have produced conditions that led to a contemporary witch hunt with the conviction of the West Memphis Three?


Dan Stidham: In order to answer this question, you really have to put this case into historical perspective. In 1993, the Satanic Bandwagon Folks like Dr. Griffis were mainstream and largely supported by both the media and established religion. We now know better, just like we now know that there are such things as “coerced confessions.” In 1993, virtually everybody believed that the phenomena of Satanic Ritualistic Homicide was very real, and perhaps even more regrettably, that no one, not even a mentally handicapped person, or a child, would confess to a crime that they did not commit. Thankfully, due in large part to pioneers with real credentials like Dr. Gisli Gudjohnson, Dr. Richard Ofshe, and Dr. Richard Leo, we now understand the dynamics of false confessions. By the way, not many people remember that Dr. Ofshe won a Pulitzer Prize for his work studying religious "cults." He had a dual expertise.

The conditions were quite obviously very ripe for this kind of thing to happen in Arkansas in 1993 because it did happen here in Arkansas. But I do not believe for an instant that this type of situation is unique to Arkansas. The atmosphere that allowed this type of phenomena to occur can, and does, happen anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps I am naïve, but I think that this type of thing happens more as a result of simple unadulterated intolerance to anyone different than that held by the mainstream in society, rather than due to any particular set of religious mores, or beliefs. It’s a matter of being “different,” outside the mainstream of society, wherever that happens to be. Is Arkansas different than New York City or L.A.? You bet it is. When you are in L.A., you see a thousand “Damien Echols” walking down the street and no one seems to think anything about it, or even care. People wearing Black clothing and listening to Heavy Metal Music are the norm in some places around the Country, but not in Arkansas in 1993.

Intolerance can raise it’s ugly head in many other contexts besides religion, i.e. race, age, gender, sexual preference, etc., etc. We see examples of this throughout history, both ancient and recent. Also, it is worth pointing out that the similarities between this case and what happened during the Salem Witch Trials almost exactly 300 years ago is absolutely stunning.

Remember, the first “Witch Trial” occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, not West Memphis, Arkansas! Will history repeat itself again, I hope it won’t, but unfortuneatley, I bet it will.

Morehead's Musings: As I have researched the witch trials and satanic panics, and then looked at the situation surrounding this case, it seems to me as if Christian sociophobics and the creation of an evil social other played a large role in arrests and outcome of this case. And yet curiously, while various Neo-Pagans, celebrities, musicians, and people from the general population have rallied around this case to raise awareness and raise funds for appeals, I have not been able to track down much if any concern for social injustice from Christians on this issue. Has your experience been different? Might the concerns about an alleged satanic cult involving a Wiccan confirm the worst fears and stereotypes of Christians and this then turns away any consideration of speaking out on this issue?


Dan Stidham: My experience has been quite different from the inside looking out as opposed to only being exposed to the case based on what I saw in the media. I get a lot more letters, emails, phone calls and other outpourings of support from people all over the World that you would identify more as “Christians,” than I do from people whom you would describe as “Pagans, celebrities and musicians.” The difference is, simply put, that the media shows up when “celebrities and musicians” take a stand on social issues. When John Doe Citizen starts a “WM3 Awareness Group” in Russellville, Arkansas; Lincoln, Nebraska; Ft. Meyers, Florida; or Fort Hays, Kansas, the media just doesn’t seem to care. But these are the folks who fight the fight in the trenches every day. Out there organizing fund raisers and raising awareness in their communities about this case.

Having said that, the “celebrities and musicians” who do get the media attention are an integral part of the fight for justice in this case. These are folks who have figured out that they have a unique power to change things in the World, and they are not afraid to step up and fight for what’s right. For this, I admire them greatly. They also have more resources to assist than most other folks. While I have not met them all, many of the “celebrities and musicians” that I have encountered while working on this case have left me in awe of them when I consider the magnitude of their impact and contributions to the case. I am not in awe of them because they are famous, but instead because they are famously compassionate about social justice, and the plights of others less fortunate. The more I got to know them, the more I realized that they don’t fit the stereotypes of “celebrities and musicians” and are really no different than anybody else and are truly wonderful human beings.

Morehead's Musings: Do these three young men have any hope of appeals left?


Dan Stidham: Yes, tremendous hope is still out there. While this fight is far from over, I am more hopeful today than at any other time during the past almost 15 years that I have been working on the case. Thanks to the generosity and hard work of the people I described above, in response to your last question, we have finally put together a team of lawyers, investigators and forensic experts that are second to none. I can tell you without hesitation that they are the best I have ever seen.


Morehead's Musings: How can interested readers get involved in helping with this case?


Dan Stidham: By just remembering that everyone counts and everyone can make a difference. There are support groups all over the World who are dedicated to this fight. The best place to start is the http://www.wm3.org/ website. It is filled with information on how everyone can help. Also, please continue to pray for Justice, not just for the WM3, but for Justice for the victims’ families who deserved so much better than what they got in terms of an investigation and closure for the death of their loved ones. We can also never forget that a killer is still out there, and this killer needs to be brought to justice.


Morehead's Musings: Judge Stidham, once again, I think you for making time for this interview, and thanks as well for being the only attorney from the original trials who has continued to be involved in working for justice for these young men.

Dan Stidham: I sincerely appreciate your kind and generous words and the opportunity to talk about this very unique case. I hope that you will allow me to thank some very special folks who have inspired me to keep moving forward in this case, even in it’s darkest days, and on the days when it seemed no one cared, and I was all alone in the fight. There were only two days that I wanted to quit. Not just quit the fight, but quit the legal profession as well. This was the two days after the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed Misskelley’s confession in a 7-0 decision. After licking my wounds for a couple of days, I emerged with an even stronger resolve to keep fighting, thanks to the support and encouragement from my family who never complained about all the time I was gone from home working on this case.

Also, I cannot thank enough the people from whom I got all the emails, letters and prayers from. They may have been complete strangers at the time, but a phone call or a letter of encouragement, out of the blue, would sustain me for weeks and even months. Sometimes these strangers became friends, good friends. “Good friends” are like my own family to me, and I have made many good friends from all over the world. Regrettably, I have lost touch with some of these folks over the years, but all of them have become my heroes in this case. My “heroes” have names like Bruce, Mike, Joe, Mara, Lanette, Grove, Burk, Pam, Mark, Richard, Warren, Kathy, Lisa, Eddie, Kevin, Winona, Laura, John, Mandy, Michael, Ron, and a very wonderful and special person whom I have never even actually met, at least not in person, because she lives all the way on the other side of the planet, way “down under.” She inspires me on an almost daily basis, and I must say, Jill, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

John, I thank you, for your interest in Justice, and your interest in this case.

http://johnwmorehead.blogspot.com/2007/ ... -with.html

[Obscuregawdess]

New evidence in the Damien Echols case disputes Satanic ritual theory.
BY BIANCA PHILLIPS | NOVEMBER 15, 2007

During the 1994 trials of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley Jr. — collectively known as the West Memphis Three — there was a mystery that neither the prosecution nor the defense could explain.

Though the penis of Christopher Byers, one of three 8-year-old boys found hog-tied and murdered in a West Memphis ditch in 1993, was removed, there was no blood found at the scene.

In a 500-plus page document filed with the court October 29th, Echols' defense team attempts to explain the lack of blood. It also reports DNA results of hair and other material found at the crime scene.

"People look at this terrible genital injury and say, where's all the blood?" said Dennis Riordan, a San Francisco-based attorney who took Echols' case in May 2004. "But if [Byers] drowned before he was subjected to this wound, it wouldn't bleed."

The document suggests that the boys were drowned in a creek, and then an animal, perhaps a dog or raccoon, removed Byers' penis.

"Have you ever been at the scene where a dog has killed a person? There's no blood because, for the animal, that's the whole point," Riordan says.

Forensic pathology studies show that other wounds on the boys are consistent with those caused by animal claws and teeth.


During the trials, the prosecution suggested the murders of Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore were part of a Satanic ritual led by Echols. He was given the death penalty. Baldwin and Misskelley were both sentenced for life.

In July, news broke that DNA tests had linked hair in a shoelace used to hog-tie the boys to Terry Hobbs, Branch's stepfather. Another hair found on a nearby tree stump was linked to Hobbs' friend, David Jacoby.

In 2003, Echols' lawyers began DNA tests on existing evidence. Arkansas did not allow DNA testing on closed cases until 2001.

According to Gabe Holstrom, spokesperson for Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, it could take months for the state to study the report.

"While the state will look at the new allegations and evidence objectively, it stands behind the conviction of Echols and that of his co-defendants," Holstrom said.

Since the papers were filed in Echols' case, a new trial for Echols would not necessarily mean a new trial for Baldwin or Misskelley.

"But," Riordan says, "it would have a tremendous effect on what the state decides to do with the other two."

[LISA]

Here is New Evidence, OG.

Is this what you are looking for?

BTW. Good Job!!

[Obscuregawdess]

For 13 years, the case of The West Memphis Three has continued to inspire people from all across the globe to coordinate, network and fight to free three innocent men.

On May 5th 1993 in West Memphis, Arkansas, local police and residents alike went looking for three children who had been reported missing and last seen heading towards what was called Robin Hood Hills. The next afternoon, police found the dead bodies of Chris Byers, Steve Branch and Michael Moore. The three 8 year olds were found naked submerged in a drainage ditch, savagely beaten and stabbed repeatedly. Their hands were bound to their ankles with their own shoelaces. Chris Byers appeared to have been the focus of the attack and had been castrated.

Police began to suspect local teenagers had sacrificed the children to the Devil. Authorities eventually arrested Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley after he confessed to them. Misskelley was a mentally handicapped 17 year old, who, with no lawyer or parental consent, was subjected to 12 hours of interrogation, which finally produced a 46-minute error-filled confession that implicated 18-year-old Damien and his best friend Jason. All three were eventually found guilty and Damien was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

The police found no irregularities or incriminating evidence at the home of Damien Echols when they visited and questioned him the day after the murders. The only thing out of the ordinary according to the Police was his knowledge and belief in the Wicca religion. According to a police document, the first thing that stood out to the interviewing officer was a necklace that Damien claimed he had bought earlier that day at the mall. The necklace had a pentagram on it.

Damien was the town weirdo who dressed in black and wore Metallica and Slayer T-shirts. He was the kid who wore black trench coats and army boots and marched to the beat of his own heavy-metal drummer. He was the first person that juvenile officers, who were bent on proving West Memphis was in fact being infiltrated by a satanic cult, looked to whenever anything went wrong in town. He was the kid the cops messed with all of the time. He and Jason, admittedly, mostly just "hung around," which easily gave outsiders the impression that they were "shady. " In reality, they were just poor white teenagers from Arkansas doing the best they could. They loved hanging out, listening to music and trading tapes. Damien’s thirst for knowledge was unquenchable and he loved reading and writing. He was endlessly curious and poured over his books. But his outward appearance to the folks of West Memphis was interpreted as evil. To some, his Iron Maiden T-shirt provided them proof.

Soon after the discovery of the slain kids, an HBO documentary team began making a film about the case. Local media ascended upon the mostly conservative Christian town and contributed fuel to the fire of gossip and rumor that was already running rampant and circulating among residents and families concerning devil worshipping cults and Damien Echols. Soon it seemed everyone had a tale to tell - none too tall to believe.

There were no positive representations of any of the accused. The sensationalism of the media coupled with the core beliefs of the religious community solidified fear and added to what is known as "Satanic Panic. " It appears to many to be the same sensationalism and panic that swept a small Massachusetts village in the 1600s, which led to the Salem witch trials. The West Memphis Three case serves as a stunning example of intolerance and corruption. A modern day witch hunt.

From the very start of the Robin Hood Hills Murder investigation there is evidence that the police began to focus on Satanic worship as the key motivation behind the murders and quickly did away with all other conclusions.

One would think it unimaginable to be convicted in this country by the things that convicted Damien, Jason and Jessie. Police found no evidence anywhere at all of anything that would lead anybody to believe that these murders were linked to a cult or had anything to do with worshipping the Devil. Police, however, did dismiss some things that seem to make much more sense considering the circumstances.

On the night of the murders, local police received a call from the manager of a fast food restaurant near Robin Hood Hills. He reported that a black man, "dazed and covered with blood and mud," had been in the women’s restroom for about an hour. An officer followed up the call by driving up to the drive-through window. She never got out of her car. She never even went inside. She testified later that she had not gone inside because the restaurant was out of her ward. She also agreed that it had been near the area where the boys were last seen. Most people would agree that a disoriented bleeding man with mud on his feet might arouse suspicion, especially when there were three children who had been reported missing two hours earlier and last seen two miles from that location.

After the boy’s bodies were found, police followed up on this report and took blood samples from the toilets. Later an investigating officer testified the he "lost" those samples. Maybe the bleeding man covered in mud had something to do with the murders? There is an overwhelming consensus among supporters that it was Chris Byers’ stepfather, John Mark Byers, that killed the children. He was the last one to see Chris and admittedly disciplined Chris just before he went missing. Mr. Byers has a long history of violent behavior. He was a drug addict and convicted felon with severe psychological problems. His stepson, after all, seemed to be the focus of the attack and was also suffering from psychological problems that were causing problems at home and in school. Chris had become uncontrollable and was supposed to be taking medication.

There was a knife Mr. Byers gave to the HBO filmmakers with blood on it that matched not only his blood type but also that of his slain stepson Chris. When police questioned him, Mark Byers claimed he had never used the knife before. That is until blood was found on it. Then, contrary to what Mr. Byers stated when first questioned about the knife, he testified in court that he remembers that he trimmed his nails with it and might have cut his finger while trimming venison around the Thanksgiving holiday.

Two HBO documentaries have been made about the case of The West Memphis Three. Set against the music of Metallica, these award-winning films inspired Kathy Bakken, Burk Sauls, Grove Pashley and Lisa Fancher to coordinate and began a website called WM3.org. It remains the best place to go for all relevant up-to-date information and has launched a worldwide movement of supporters and activists. The case is also well documented in a book called, "Devils Knot" written by Mara Leveritt, who is one of the only journalists in Arkansas who really looked into the case. This book is also an exceptional resource for information.

This cause has also gained the attention of an assortment of actors, athletes, comedians, bands and celebrities. Margaret Cho, Marilyn Manson, Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, and Alkaline Trio all continue to support this cause. Other organizations such as Music 4 Life, The Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty and The Innocence Project are working to free the men as well.

I began "The Almost Home Campaign" in January 2006 after learning that Damien Echols had written a book entitled "Almost Home Vol. 1." In coordination with WM3.org and Music 4 Life, I produced a 55-city tour to promote his book and raise awareness and support for The West Memphis Three. In May 2006, Damien also had his first art show in San Francisco, which helped raised money for The Legal Defense Fund.

June 3rd 2006 was designated as West Memphis Three World Awareness Day. Supporters, activists, organizations, bands and businesses all over the world staged events, rallies and concerts.

Recently a letter-writing campaign produced hundreds of handwritten letters that were delivered to and laid out on the steps of Arkansas Governor Huckabee's office.

Should an eccentric teenager’s preference for music and art compounded with a belief in the Wicca religion serve as the only evidence that condemns him to death in an American court of law? Should his best friend be found simply guilty by association? Should a mentally handicapped 17 year old's confession, wrought with error and obviously coerced, confine him to life imprisonment plus 40 years?

There is just simply not enough evidence to rationally believe what the state of Arkansas says happened, much less prove it. But still they were found guilty. Members of that jury have since said that they were exposed to outside information. Some of them based their deliberations on Jessie’s confession, which they had heard about. The confession was not admissible because Jessie refused to testify for the prosecution.

Damien Echols awaits the results of DNA evidence as part of his appeals process. This is his last chance.

Burk Sauls articulated what I believe to be the heart of this movement when he wrote that, "the police not only betrayed the memory of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore by not investigating their deaths more effectively, they betrayed Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley by using them as scapegoats to take the fall for their shoddy work.

"This betrayal, the solemn photographs of those three murdered 8 year olds and the young men in prison for something they did not do, are the things that drive people toward a better understanding of the specifics surrounding this phenomenon. If we refuse to turn our backs on this case, and the forces that cause these kinds of things to happen, then maybe, if we really care about things like truth and justice, we can help to keep this type of witch hunt from happening again."

Michale Graves is the former singer for the Misfits. His first solo album, Punk Rock is Dead, was released by Horror High Records in 2005. He has also written songs with Damien Echols, to be released in 2007. In addition to his work in support of the West Memphis Three, he is frequent contributor to www.conservativepunk.com. He can be reached through his Myspace page at www.myspace.com/gravesmichale. More information on the West Memphis Three is available at www.wm3.org or www.myspace.com/almosthomevol1.

(c) Copyright 2006 The Musician’s Atlas. All rights reserved. No portion of this article can be reprinted in any form without the written consent of the publishers.

http://www.musiciansatlas.com/newslette ... e08_06.htm

[Obscuregawdess]

The West Memphis Three: A Modern Inquisition
by Aldyth Beltane
It is an ignoble truth that in many parts of this country, witch-hunts still exist. A person can be persecuted, tried, convicted and even executed for being of a different race, sexual orientation, or merely for just looking “different”.

Three Arkansas teenagers were convicted of murder, on the flimsiest of evidence — because one wore black and studied Wicca.
Such is the case with the West Memphis Three. Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin (known as the West Memphis Three, or WM3 for short), were convicted on April 18, 1994 in West Memphis, Arkansas for the murder of three 8 year old boys, Cristopher Byers, James Michael Moore, and Steve Branch. I refer to their trial and conviction as an inquisition because none of the standard intelligence and procedures that generally define the justice system were applied. Confessions were forced, forensic and expert evidence ignored, and the three teenagers convicted of the crime were done so almost solely on public opinion. And why was this miscarriage of justice so easily perpetrated? Because Damien Echols wore black, listened to heavy metal, and studied Wicca in a small, close-minded community where such things were considered “Satanic”.

On May 5th, 1993, the three young boys were last seen around 6 PM by Moore’s mother, Melissa Byers. They were reported missing at 8 PM by Cristopher’s stepfather, John Mark Byers, who had beaten Cristopher earlier in the afternoon in the presence of Ms. Byers.

The boys’ bodies were discovered on May 6th at 1 PM, brutally murdered, with signs of sexual molestation. The next day Damien Echols, a local resident who had experienced prior suspicion by locals in the evangelical Christian community and local police for his appearance and spiritual beliefs, was brought in for questioning. There was no actual evidence, forensic or otherwise, to implicate Echols, and so he was released.

On June 3rd Jessie Misskelley, a 17-year-old friend of Echols, who is mentally challenged, was held for at least five hours of undocumented questioning, at the conclusion of which he confessed. Echols was implicated in the confession, as well as 16 year old Jason Baldwin, who was a mutual friend of the two other young men. Echols and Baldwin were arrested that day.

Their trial began February 4th, 1994, separately from Misskelley, as his confession had led to their arrest and trial. Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection, Baldwin and Misskelley to life imprisonment without parole. What happened to Echols following his imprisonment is no less an atrocity than the crimes themselves.

There is no argument that the perpetrator(s) of the murders of those little boys should be caught and punished. However, in almost 10 years, there has been no physical evidence that implicates any of the Memphis Three, beyond the bigotry and prejudice of an ignorant community. Moreover there is evidence pointing toward a different suspect, as well as multiple instances of concrete forensic evidence being ignored, and possibly buried. In fact, the only evidence that was presented, aside from the “confession” was an implication based on Echols’ troubled psychiatric history, interest in Paganism, and heavy metal. Soon, Misskelley retracted his confession, which was filled with inconsistencies. Among these inconsistencies were: the times stated for the boys’ kidnapping and murder, the means by which the boys were bound, and the statement that one of the boys was choked, when no evidence of strangulation was revealed.

In addition, Misskelley’s confession was extracted without an attorney present, and without a waiver for his Miranda rights; a lie detector test indicated an 85% probability that Misskelley was innocent. However, expert testimony supporting these facts was not allowed at the trial, as it would contradict the court’s earlier ruling which specifically allowed that the confession could be entered as evidence.

On May 5th, the night of the victims’ disappearance, police were called to Bojangles restaurant, located near the crime scene, to investigate reports of a transient, who went into the women’s room for an hour, covered in blood and mud. Police collected samples the next day, but the samples were lost.

Witnesses who came forth after hearing of offers for a reward, and claimed to have seen the murders, or said they heard Echols bragging about the murders, recanted their stories or were proven to have been lying after the trial.

A tennis shoe footprint was found near the crime site. The print did not match any of the boys who were convicted of the crime. Additionally, no paraphernalia that is generally linked to “Satanic rites”, such as candle wax, altars, or symbols, was found anywhere near the site.

Physical and forensic evidence points to another possible suspect, though, that evidence has been ignored. Mark John Byers, Cristopher’s stepfather, owned a knife that had bloodstains that could have been Cristopher’s. He was also taking, among other pharmaceuticals, a drug called Carbamazepine which was found in “non-therapeutic” volumes in Cristopher’s blood at the time of his death. Yet, because of his “friendly” relationship with local police as an informant, Byers was never considered as a suspect.

Efforts were made by the defense to obtain a forensics expert to analyze the evidence that was presented by the medical and coroner’s offices. At the time of the trial, Dan Stidham, Misskelley’s defense attorney, had been told no criminal profile of the killer or evidence had been made. This was later revealed to be untrue, that the FBI had made a cursory profile, and instructed West Memphis police to trace Vietnam veterans in the area at the time of the murders. After the trial’s conclusion, Brent Turvey, a criminal profiler and forensics expert who agreed to take the case pro bono, approached Stidham. Turvey’s report revealed a wealth of information that had been overlooked, ignored, or misinterpreted by previous examinations.

Among the findings, which would surely have resulted in an “innocent” verdict, had they been submitted at the trials as evidence:

The site where the bodies of the little boys were found was a dumpsite, and not where the killings took place. Due to the nature of the killings it would have taken time, privacy, and light to commit, and there were already search parties in the area at the time that the murders would have been committed. Additionally, due to the nature of the injuries, there would have been much more blood at the site. There were no mosquito bites on the body, which there would have been had the murders been committed in such a damp area.
Even more alarming in Turvey’s report are findings that suggest that the boys knew and trusted their attacker. The fact that three boys were taken together, and that they were transported from the abduction site to the murder site suggests that the attacker was able to gain the boys’ confidence. The brutality and sexual nature of the attack on Cristopher Byers suggests that there was “punitive nature” and higher level of anger in the attack on him. The attack on Steven Branch was similar, though not nearly as severe. Evidence shows that Michael Moore was a “collateral victim” killed simply for being with the other two. Additionally, both Cristopher and Steven showed signs of previous abuse, which might indicate again, a prior knowledge of their killer. This evidence is supported by Christopher Byers’ medical records, and Melissa Byers’ suspicions voiced to a school counselor before his death, that Cristopher was being abused. Melissa has since died under mysterious circumstances.
Most compelling in the physical evidence that Turvey reveals is that the lacerations on James Michael Moore’s face were not knife cuts, as Jessie Misskelley’s confession stated, but bite marks! This undeniably negates the veracity of Misskelley’s confession, regardless of any other evidence. A jury should not have been able to convict Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley beyond a reasonable doubt.
And yet, all attempts to have a retrial have been refused, all petitions for parole have been denied. Furthermore, the Arkansas courts and the governor’s office itself have refused to consider any evidence of wrong-doing on the part of the justice system in any capacity, despite the obviously careless handling and ignoring of evidence.

The community wanted a culprit and a scapegoat, and it was given three. The bureaucracy washed its hands — Arkansas Governer Huckabee refused to reopen or discuss the case, and the judicial system was unwilling to admit the possibility of failure. Meanwhile, the real killer goes free, and three innocent young men face a life of imprisonment, and in the case of Damien Echols, death.

There are a number of resources for more information on the West Memphis Three, and what you can do to help, and protect your own rights.

Official Site for the West Memphis Three:
http://www.wm3.org/
Where to send donations for the defense fund:

The Defense Fund
PO Box 251136
Little Rock, AR 72225
A site with detailed forensic evidence:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics/we ... index.html
Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost: Revelations are two award-winning films by Joe Berliner, which aired on HBO and are currently available on videotape.




http://www.gothpunk.com/news/wm3.html

[Obscuregawdess]

Advances in forensics mean that more Americans are being proved innocent

Echols may walkIN 1993, three eight-year-olds disappeared in West Memphis, a poor town in Arkansas. They were found in a ditch the next day. Their bodies were bound with shoelaces and covered with wounds; one had been partially castrated. Anxious to solve this horrific crime, the police soon focused on three local teenagers.

Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were oddities in this conservative town. Mr Echols wore black clothing, listened to Metallica and carried a cat's skull to school—perhaps, locals thought, as part of some satanic ritual. Mr Misskelley, who is slightly mentally retarded, actually confessed to the murder.

His confession, though, was full of factual errors. He said that he and his friends had committed the murders in the morning, but the boys were in school all day. And no physical evidence linked the three teenagers to the crime. They were just a bit weird. It was a weak case, but the boys were convicted. Mr Misskelley and Mr Baldwin received life sentences. Mr Echols was sentenced to death.

Over the past 15 years there have been mounting calls to free the West Memphis Three, or at least give them a fair trial. There have been dozens of benefit concerts for their legal-defence fund, and HBO has aired two documentaries about them. Now advances in forensic testing are helping their cause. DNA tests show that a hair from the crime scene could not have belonged to any of the three—but may belong to one of the victims' stepfathers.

On April 15th David Burnett, the original judge in the case, agreed to a new evidentiary hearing in September. The hearing will give pathologists a chance to explain the new forensic evidence. If their convictions are overturned, the West Memphis Three will become America's most famous beneficiaries of DNA testing. But they will not be alone. Across the country, 216 people have been freed after new DNA evidence was produced. More might have been, if some courts were not reluctant to revisit old cases.

Consider Texas. In 2001 Governor Rick Perry declared a legislative emergency. He had just pardoned a man who had served 15 years after being wrongfully convicted of rape. So he fast-tracked a bill that allowed convicts to get state-funded DNA tests, if biological evidence was available and if they could show that there was a reasonable chance of exoneration.

Prosecutors agreed with the idea in principle. But dredging up old cases was not a priority in most of their offices. In Dallas county, for example, 350 convicts requested DNA testing between 2001 and 2007. They were lucky that the county had held on to most of the old evidence. That is in contrast to Harris county, which encompasses Houston and hands down more death sentences than any other place in America. There boxes of evidence have been destroyed by leaky roofs and rats.

Bill Hill, who was district attorney of Dallas county until 2006, granted DNA tests to only 32 convicts. Twelve were exonerated. Then the county elected a new district attorney, Craig Watkins, who had promised to be “smart on crime”. Mr Watkins wanted prevention and rehabilitation, but exonerations came first. “Any injustice of this nature,” he says, “creates a sickening of a person's stomach.”

Within weeks of taking office, Mr Watkins announced that he would allow the Innocence Project of Texas, an organisation of law students, to review all 350 claims. On April 15th Dallas county announced its 16th exoneration. No other county has cleared so many. Examination of the claims is still under way, and Mr Watkins admits it will be tedious and expensive. But he sees it as an important step in restoring the credibility of the office.

Dallas county's new approach has changed opinions in Texas. A year ago the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News, a supporter of the death penalty for a century, declared that it now doubted that Texas could guarantee “that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder.” Prosecutors in Arkansas say they still believe the West Memphis Three are guilty. But if they want to keep Mr Echols on death row and his friends in prison, they will have to make a better case for it.


http://www.economist.co.uk/world/na/dis ... d=11057079

[Obscuregawdess]

Critical biological samples were taken from the victims, from suspects and from the collected evidence. The appeals attorney petitioned the courts to have DNA testing performed on this case evidence. The state and the appeals attorneys agreed to examine the following evidence.

Samples from the victims and their clothes.

Routine fingernail scraping from each victim that may or not have tissue from the perpetrator (each hand samples saved separately, three victims for six evidence samples).
Ligatures from each of the three victims
Tissue, skin or hair samples obtained from the ligatures of each victim.
Swabs taken from each victim.
Cuttings from blue jeans.
Cuttings from blue pants.
Anomalous hairs taken from the victims.

Two Caucasian hairs removed from Moore.
Dyed hair removed from Moore.
Hair found on Byers' body
Hair on lower body, Byers
Hair, perineum, Byers
Two dark Caucasian hairs removed from Branch.
Although all hairs from the ligatures were requested as mentioned above, specific hairs were also requested from the bindings Moore and Byers ligatures.
Anomalous hairs from clothing and fabrics in contact with the children and the crime scene.

Negroid hair removed from white sheet 1.
Hair from blue pants.
Hair from Scout cap.
Hair on tree stump (crime scene)
And, finally, other items.

Bag of clothing, area of homicide.
Hair from two knives from Richard Cummings.
Hair from knife from Jason Crosby/Richard Appling.
Wooden stick, crime scene.
Biological specimens were also obtained from 44 other suspects and family members for matches or exclusion. These samples can be tested by the modern DNA techniques of STR fingerprinting and mtDNA. The results can then compared to known samples from the children, the convicted and others to determine the source.

STR Fingerprinting

Along with the meaningful DNA that encodes for physical traits, we have a lot of "junk DNA," strings of repeating patterns and filler material. STR stands for short terminal repeating sections, and this area of DNA represents a pattern, 2 to 7 letters long that repeats itself many times. How many times varies between people. Any given STR sequence is about as good as HLA DQalpha technique for determining relatedness. Fortunately, there are such sequences of each chromosome, each with its own length. By testing nine of these sites on different chromosomes you get a one in a billion unique signature. Nine sites as standards are used by the military for paternity matters. Thirteen sites are commonly used for forensic tests and for the CODIS database.

To perform STR analysis, you divide up a sample for separate PCR reactions. Each yields a product of a specific length of DNA, the length determined by the number of repeats within the sequence. These are then run on a gel to determine the exact length of each sequence. Again a specific stepladder-like pattern of DNA pieces with different lengths can be compared to a source sample.

Presented below are six STR loci, using the analogies of sentences. The various sequences "yada_yada," "etc_etc_etc" are present in differing amount of copies among individuals.

Suspect A

Site_one_yada_yada_yada_yada_yada_yada_site_one_end (51 characters)
Site_two_oy_oy_oy_oy_site_two_end (33 characters)
Site_three_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_site_three_end (49 characters)
Site_four_ooga_ooga_ooga_ooga_ooga_ooga_site_four_end (53 characters)
Site_five_whatsit_whatsit_whatsit_whatsit_whatsit_whatsit_site_five_end (65 characters)
Site_six_booga_booga_booga_booga_booga_booga_site_six_end (57 characters)

Suspect B

Site_one_yada_yada_yada_yada_site_one_end (41 characters)
Site_two_oy_oy_oy_oy_oy_oy_oy_oy_site_two_end (45 characters)
Site_three_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_huh_site_three_end (57 characters)
Site_four_ooga_ooga_ooga_ooga_ooga_ooga_site_four_end (53 characters)
Site_five_whatsit_site_five_end (30 characters)
Site_six_booga_booga_booga_booga_site_six_end (45 characters)

The first PCR reaction makes copies of the DNA beginning with the sequence "site_one" through "site_one_end" and the other reactions proceed with "site_#" through "site_#_end." The DNA products are separated on a gel. The results appear something like this.




STR products separated on a gel extending the above analogy using sentence fragments.
In this case the sample from the crime scene matches suspect A.


Matching a sample to a known suspect is not the only way to find the source of the DNA evidence. The United States has a database of gene sequences known as CODIS. If the suspect is arrested in another crime that requires his or her DNA to be examined it can be matched. Or, if an evidence from another crime scene is taken, the DNA can be sequenced and entered into the database thus linking two crimes.

With high sensitivity and an excellent ability to discriminate among all but identical twins, is STR fingerprinting the perfect method? With 13 sites needing to be amplified contamination of multiple runs would be necessary for the results to lead to a false identification. However, contamination of a small portion of the runs could result in a missed identification.
A one in a trillion chance of matching doesn't mean a trillion to one odds that a person is guilty. Samples are still vulnerable to human errors and faults include mislabelling and evidence falsification. In regards to the latter, there are examples where suspects have gone out of their way to make sure a wrong sample is provided.

Cross-section of a cell. The purple bodies are mitochondria.

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondria are small bodies that exist inside of cells and provide the cell's energy. They have their own DNA and divide. The process of making spermatazoa eliminates mitochondria from the sperm cells, all of our mitochondrial genes are inherited from the egg cells of our mothers. Mitochondrial DNA is small by comparison to nuclear DNA - only 16,000 "letters."

In the case of mtDNA, two highly variable regions are sequenced. This results in the entire area of DNA "spelled out." The forensic scientist then compares the suspect sample to the evidence sample. The analysis can be a bit complex, but when the sequences are identical they are determined to be a match. The FBI does not provide official statistics on how unlikely it is that two unrelated people would have the same type of mtDNA. The odds are probably greater than a thousand to one. If people are related through the same mother (or maternal grandmother and so on through the maternal line) they will have the same mtDNA.

There are several advantages and disadvantages to the use of mtDNA. Some samples can not be analyzed using STR or other nuclear DNA fingerprinting methods because they only have mtDNA. These may include hair shafts, bones and teeth. Also, since cells have multiple mitochondria, this method is better able to find DNA in minute or highly degraded samples. The disadvantages are the lack of resolution among related individuals and the smaller number of mtDNA samples entered into the SORIS database. While some think of mtDNA as the method used when only hair samples are available, the root of hairs have nuclear DNA and STR fingerprinting is also an option.



MtDNA inheritance across three generations.
Individuals with the same colored circles share the same mtDNA.
Although many have the same mtDNA, even maternal half-siblings,
there are still eight mtDNA types represented among these 21 individuals.




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

[Obscuregawdess]

The DNA results have been officially released. In a recent DNA Status Report, the DNA did not match any of those in prison for the crime. Almost all of the DNA from the crime scene matched the victims. Hairs that previously had been found "microscopically similar" to those of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin did not come from them. The Status Report went on to say, "Although most of the genetic material recovered from the scene was attributable to the victims of the offenses, some of it cannot be attributed to either the victims or the defendants." [DNA Status Report, July 17, 2007] More tests are going to be performed to compare the unknown DNA to additional suspects.

One hair, described as being beneath the binding of victim Michael Moore, came from Terry Hobbs - the stepfather of the victim, Stevie Branch. Stevie Branch's mother, Pamela Hobbs, has come out in favor of a retrial and says she believes her ex-husband may have committed the crime. The Hobbs have had a rocky marital history capped by Terry Hobbs shooting Pamela's brother in November, 1994.

Terry Hobbs accused the defense attorneys of planting the evidence - and said it was normal transfer.


Hobbs said he believes the DNA results are the work of "crooked defense attorneys ... trying to get their killer SOBs out of jail.''
"It ain't gonna work,'' said Hobbs, now a salesman at a North Memphis building supply company. He said a private detective working for defense lawyers told him one of his hairs was found on a shoelace used to tie up one of the murdered boys.
"That's understandable,'' said Hobbs. "All three of them boys used to come play at my house.'' [Commercial Appeal, July 20, 2007]

Mike Allen, in 1993 a West Memphis police officer and the discoverer of victim Michael Moore, and now assistant chief of police, said the DNA news is "nothing earth-shattering." [ibid] In another interview, he went on to say, "If you test my clothes, you're going to find trace DNA evidence from my wife, my son, my black Lab and my brown Lab. . . In 1993, Terry Hobbs wasn't a suspect, and he's not a suspect in 2007." [West Memphis Evening Times, July 23, 2007]

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

[Obscuregawdess]

On July 7, 2004, Bode Laboratories of Springfield, Virginia received evidence items for DNA testing. These items were numbered in a series "2S04-114" from 01 to 36. Although 36 items are listed, many of these represented multiple samples. In the extreme case, 26 hairs found on Chris Byers comprised item #11 and were identified as 11A to 11Z.

Samples included:

From victims:
Swabs from each of the three victims from their mouths, rectums, and nasal passages, swabs from Moore's and Branch's penises, and scrapings from each victims' left and right hand fingernails.
Possible tissue from ligatures of each victim and a "red-brown stained string" from Stevie Branch.
Hairs from Michael Moore's ligature (described as 3 hairs on two slides).
Hair from Stevie Branch's ligature.
Hair from Chris Byers' ligature.
Dark Caucasian hairs from Stevie Branch. (described as 3 hairs on two slides)
Hair from the lower body of Chris Byers.
Hair from the "perineum of Chris Byers ligature." (sic)
Hairs found on Chris Byers (slide with 26 hairs).
The ligatures from each of the three victims.
From morgue sheets:
Slide with nine hairs including one described as a Negroid hair fragment and one described as animal hair from white sheet used to cover Chris Byers.
Dyed hair from white sheet used to cover Stevie Branch.
From victims' clothes:
Hair from blue pants (E3) (slide with 2 hairs)
Hair from Scout cap (E5) (slide with 2 hairs)
Cutting from blue pants.
Cutting from blue jeans.
From recovery area:
Hair from tree stump.
Bag with clothing and miscellaneous items found near crime scene.
Three tree branches (identified as E17)
Knives:
E27 - Hair from Richard Cummings knife.
E28 - Hair from Richard Cummings knife.
E126 - Hair from knife seized at Domini Teer's residence.
E147 - Two hairs from knife found at school.
E178 - Kershaw knife from Byers household. (blade, handle and hinge tested).
The initial items did not include reference DNA from the victims or from those in prison, precluding the possibility of contamination from reference samples. Samples from Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were received on October 12, 2006. Samples from the victims were received on April 5, 2007.

Forty of the above items and subitems were sent for STR (nuclear DNA) testing as were the reference samples. Samples from swabs were divided into sperm fraction and non-sperm fraction before PCR analysis. This does definitively identify sperm as a source for the sample results, but can clarify trace sperm material separate from victim DNA if sperm is present.

Results from the STR analyses:

Significant samples with no results or no reportable STR results.

The Kershaw knife.
Hair from Stevie Branch's ligature (also described as skin, tissue, hair from ligature).
Several swab fractions.
Cutting from blue pants.
Razor blades from bag at crime scene.
Most nail scrapings (exceptions listed below).
Most ligatures (exceptions listed below).
Hairs 18E, F and I from white sheet.
03B Hair from M. Moore ligature.
20B Hair from E3 (blue pants).
Finding #1. The victims' DNA matched most evidence samples.

The STR (nuclear DNA) attempted to amplify either 13 or 14 sites and determined sex. Because of the number of reactions and the age of the samples, the only samples that amplified at all sites were those with larger quantities of source material. Specifically, most of the swabs from the victims (oral, penile, rectal and nasal) had complete amplification. For each victim at these sites, the nuclear DNA was their own. The "red-brown stained string" from Stevie Branch also had complete amplification and the DNA matched his own.

Partial STR (4 or more sites) amplifications were achieved from other evidence samples. These are sufficient to exclude other sources and indicate whether the DNA was consistent with the reference DNA. Several of the swabs and their fractions fell into this category. In each case, the DNA belonged to the victim. The three hairs (of the collection of 26) that were found on Chris Byers were consistent with Chris Byers DNA. The right hand nail scrapings from Chris Byers were also consistent with his DNA (6 out of 6 site matches). Stevie Branch's ligatures matched at five sites with Stevie Branch's DNA and had a single additional band (described below).

Partial STR (less than 4 reportable sites) was achieved from several of the swabs, two fingernail scrapings and the ligatures. These were consistent with the victims with additional bands being found in the sperm fraction of Stevie Branch's penile swab, in the combined left and right nail scrapings of Michael Moore (described as possibly below detection limit), and the nonsperm fraction of the penile swab from Michael Moore.

Finding #2. None of the DNA profiles were consistent with those imprisoned.

The STR was only able to resolve at multiple sites for a limited number of samples, but none of these were consistent with those in prison, beyond genes that matched the victims. The results were more profound for the mitochondrial DNA where complete resolution took place in 26 of 29 samples - none of which corresponded to those in prison (nor did the two with partial resolution).

Finding #3. Several samples had "mixed results."

The following evidence samples produced DNA from more than one source. In each case, one source was consistent with being the victim, with an additional band or bands being from another source. The fact that these were few bands suggests presence at the lower limit of detection. The presence of additional bands from Moore's and Branch's penis is suggestive of perpetrator contact with the penis. The additional band in Moore's fingernails may be related to the killer as he had the clearest defensive wounds.

Being a single locus in each case, it is inadequate to use to determine with confidence a specific source and in all but one case these bands could have come from sample contamination between victims. For example, transfer of a small amount of blood between victims as they were taken from the water. Alternatively, they could have come from the perpetrator. Band 8 (locus D16S539) was not present in any of the other victims or those imprisoned. Two of the mixed results came from penile swabs, suggestive of criminal contact.

Mixed results:

A single additional band, not matching Stevie Branch's DNA, was present on the amplified extract from the mix of Branch's left and right ligatures. D5S818, band 11.
Two bands, not matching Stevie Branch's DNA, were present on the sperm fraction from the penile swab. D16S539, bands 8, 11.
A single additional band, not matching Michael Moore's DNA, was present in the combined left and right nail scrapings from Michael Moore. D5S818, band 10.
A single additional band, not matching Michael Moore's DNA, was present in the nonsperm fraction from the penile swab on Michael Moore. D5S818, band 12.
Mitochondrial DNA results.

Almost all human cell types have hundreds of copies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This allows mDNA to achieve test results when nuclear DNA tests fail. Hair shafts only have mtDNA, no nuclear DNA.

Twenty-nine of the above items, all hairs, were tested for mtDNA as were the reference samples. Two samples had partial results. One sample 20A (one of the hairs from the blue pants) did not have a reportable sequence. The other 26 had full mtDNA results.

Samples 03B (one hair from Michael Moore ligature) and 21A (hair from scout cap) were consistent with the mtDNA of Michael Moore.

Samples 08A, 08Ba, and 08Bb, three hairs found on Stevie Branch, were consistent with the mtDNA of Stevie Branch.

Samples 11B, 11C, 11P, 11Q, 11V, 11Z (six of a set of 26 hairs found on Chris Byers), 14 (hair from lower body of Chris Byers), 17 (partial sequence, hair from perineum of Chris Byers), 18B, 18C, 18D, 18E, 18F, 18H, 18I (7 hairs from morgue sheet) and 20B (hair from blue pants) are consistent with the mtDNA of Chris Byers.

The following samples each had different individual profiles, not matching the victims or those in prison:

03Aa (Hair from Michael Moore ligature)
15 (Hair from Chris Byers ligature)
18A (Negroid hair fragment, morgue sheet)
21B (Second hair from scout cap) (only partial sequence available)
23 (Hair from tree stump)
27 (Dyed hair from sheet used to cover Chris Byers)
The hair from Michael Moore ligature was later found to match the mtDNA profile of Terry Hobbs. The hair from the tree stump was later found to match the mtDNA profile of David Jacoby (friend of Terry Hobbs).

Item 15, a hair from Chris Byers ligature, was successfully sequenced but a match has not been found (or named). The origin of the dyed hair, the Negroid hair, and an additional hair from the Cub Scout cap are also undetermined.

Two items which failed STR analysis can still be examined by mtDNA. These are the hair/tissue from Stevie Branch's ligature (#09) and the cutting from the blue pants (#25).

Serological Research Institute.

Fourteen items have been received and processed at the Serological Research Institute (SERI), Richmond, California, as of October 2007. The identities and results from items 1 through 7 are not presented in the appeal documents. Items 8 through 14 were cigarette butts gathered from the home of Terry Hobbs, a swab from Terry Hobbs, cigarette butts from David Jacoby, and hair and a cheek swab from David Jacoby.

The cigarette butts from the front yard and ashtray of Terry Hobbs provided a mtDNA profile. There was one nucleotide difference between the hair in the ligature (#03Aa) and the mtDNA profile of Terry Hobbs. This can be due to "heteroplasmy" a natural variation in mtDNA within a person. The report also said there was a polymorphism at one site.

Similarly, the cigarette butts and cheek swab from David Jacoby displayed one nucleotide difference between the hair at the tree stump. This can also be due to a natural variation in mtDNA within a person.

The swab from Terry Hobbs and the cigarette butts from his driveway were not successfully clarified. The hair from Jacoby was saved for possible future testing.

Summary.

The DNA results so far are tantalizing. The hair from Michael Moore's binding is consistent with Terry Hobbs being the source. The hair from the stump is also consistent with David Jacoby being the source. Jacoby has stated he was not in this area during the search. Both of these sequences have at least one nucleotide difference from their respective matched samples - explainable by heteroplasmy and diminishing the statistical power of the conclusions.

The source of several hairs can provide additional answers, particularly matching the successfully amplified DNA found beneath Chris Byers ligature.

Nowhere has it been mentioned in the appeals documents that DNA has been tested for any other prime suspects. The samples of DNA from Terry Hobbs were surreptitiously obtained. A formal and larger sample could bring clearer results.

Items not tested by STR or mtDNA.

03Ab Hair from ligature of M. Moore.
04 Possible tissue from ligature from M. Moore.
11 Hairs found on C. Byers body. 26 hairs found, 10 were tested.
16 not tested: 11A. 11D through 11O. 11U, 11W, 11X.
16 Possible tissue from C. Byers ligature.
18 Hairs from white sheet. 9 hairs found, all but one tested.
18G Described as animal hair.
22 Hair from knife. (E126 - seized from Domini Teer's residence)
24 Two hairs from knife. (E147 - knife found at school)
26 Cutting from jeans.
28 Hair from knife. (Cummings knife)
29 Hair from butterfly knife (Cummings knife)
30 Hair from folding knife (E134 - knife from Principal Heath, found at school)
32 Items from bag of clothing
32A Pair of white socks.
32B Leather (or vinyl) pull tab of unknown origin.
32C Plastic bag "Time Saver"
32D Tan button down shirt.
32E Black thermal shirt.
32F Cargo style jeans.
36 Three tree branches.






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

[Obscuregawdess]

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Science plays leading role in review of DNA laws


The bite-mark debate
York Daily Record - York,PA,USA
But Krone, 51, questions the validity of bite marks, saying they do not possess the same unique qualities that DNA or fingerprints do. teeth that are ...
Potential Bite-Mark Database Causes Concern
findingDulcinea - New York,New York,USA
Opponents to such evidence argue that human skin can distort bite marks, teeth can change over time, and the matter can become highly subjective. ...
Researchers Create Bite-Mark Database
RedOrbit - Dallas,TX,USA
Although the use of bite marks as evidence in criminal trials has been looked down upon by some forensic experts, researchers at Marquette University claim ...
DNA tests exonerate 'Lizard Man' in van attack
The Associated Press -
Bite marks were left on the wheel wells and blood was found on the vehicle. The Item of Sumter reported that a veterinary lab in California tested the blood ...


Science plays leading role in review of DNA laws
ScienceAlert - Australia
"It is physical evidence, including DNA profiling, that has been critical in a number of exoneration cases, most notably in the United States. ...
Organization at crime lab is long overdue
Houston Chronicle - United States
Wicoff, an appellate attorney whose work led to the exoneration of Josiah Sutton in a rape case based on flawed evidence, was hired by the county to review ...

(Extensive articles on above topics on blog/website)
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... =395512962

[Obscuregawdess]

By TChris, Section Innocence Cases
Posted on Fri Apr 07, 2006 at 08:51:11 AM EST

Jessie Misskelley and two others were convicted of the gruesome murders and mutilations of three 8 year old boys in West Memphis in 1993. A reporter and a lawyer are raising serious questions about their guilt.

[Attorney Daniel] Stidham contends Misskelly had the I.Q. of a 5-year-old and was told by police what to say though hours of interrogations. "It's not really difficult to get someone mentally handicapped to confess to something they didn't do," says Stidham.


Police called the murders a satanic ritualistic homicide. Stidham says Misskelly, who was labeled a Satan worshiper, didn't even know who Satan was. Stidham is calling for a new trial for his clients.

He says, "We now know there's no such thing as a satanic ritualistic homicide, we now know that false confessions do happen. Back in 1993, no one understood that." ...

Stidham says in the past 13 years, more evidence has surfaced and witnesses have retracted their statements. He believed his clients will be free if jurors can hear the case again.

Stidham says he also believes West Memphis police mishandled the crime scene and never found any forensic evidence. He also believes a serial killer murdered the boys.

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

Responses:

*Thanks for creating this important thread. I have always thought that what happened to the West Memphis Three was tantamount to a modern day witch hunt and part of the "Satanic Panic" that hit the U.S. and abroad during the late 80's and early 90's. (I read "The Devil's Knot" and watched the two documentaries on the case. I have even written to Damien Echols in the past, offering to help out with his appeal in any way that a freelance paralegal could). What happened to those murdered boys was horrible. But what happened to Damien, Jesse and Jason was horrible, too.


*Too often the public believes that every person on death row is there because there was an ironclad case against them. This is simply not true. Of course there are guilty people there, but so many have been convicted on circumstantial evidence, shaky confessions or false testimony from jailhouse informants. BTW, the "Satanic Panic" hit the UK in the form of children being taken away from their parents due to suspected abuse. As far as I'm aware, none of this was ever proven. The evidence against one set of innocent parents was two lollypop sticks tied together in the shape of a cross and a vessel containing holy water found in their house. (They were Catholics.) Accurately applied psychology is one thing, but psychobabble in the place of facts and common sense is unacceptable and leads to poor decisions. In West Memphis, a crime actually did occur, so not only does it seem that innocent people were wrongly accused, but in this case, the real perpetrator(s) may well have gone free.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2006/04/07/113/28489

[Obscuregawdess]

March 14, 2008
Friends of Arkansas Take Action

Points That Prove The West Memphis Three are Innocent
Dear Friends and Supporters:
DNA evidence completely exonerates all three men. There was no DNA testing done during the trial 15 years ago. As this technology has become more available and accurate, several pieces of evidence from the crime scene have been tested. All tests failed to link Damien, Jessie or Jason to the crime scene in any way. DNA testing did, however, place other individuals at the crime scene. This new evidence proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Damien, Jessie and Jason are not guilty. The lack of their DNA alone proves the WM3 are innocent.

Jessie Misskelley’s “confession” is a textbook example of a coerced, false confession. Even though he recanted his “confession” within hours, it was a major factor in all three convictions. Jessie is mentally challenged with a low IQ of only 72. Knowing he was mentally challenged, the West Memphis police still interrogated Jessie for 12 hours without his parents or an attorney present. Only 46 minutes–a mere 6%–of this entire hostile interrogation was recorded or videotaped.

It is a proven fact that Jessie did not know key details of the crime, including the time of the murders and the materials with which the boys were bound. He simply wanted the $30,000 reward. Since he did not know real details, in his attempt to falsely accuse Damien and Jessie so he could get the money, Jessie ended up saying he was present during the murders to make his made-up story believable. Damien and Jason were not even high school friends with Jessie. They barely knew each other.

Satanic ritual, the only purported motive in this case, is utterly baseless. Scientific evidence proves that knives were not involved in this crime, effectively debunking a large part of the prosecution's theory about how and why the crimes were committed. Some of the nation’s leading forensic experts, including a former chief of the Investigative Support Unit of the FBI for twenty-five years, agree that the wounds on the victims were caused by animal bites – not by knives, as the prosecution claimed. This discredits the prosecution's theory that the motives were part of a satanic ritual, and exposes it as a baseless, fictitious claim. Further highlighting the mishandling of the evidence in this case, the knives presented as evidence were never owned by Jason, Damien or Jessie and were never linked to them as part of any witness’s sworn testimony.


Literally every piece of evidence or testimony that was used to convict the three has now been flatly refuted, either by science or through statements from actual witnesses. Substantial, irrefutable evidence shows that they had nothing at all to do with the tragic deaths of the boys.

This is a lengthy and complicated case. Please review these Frequently Asked Questions to help clarify the facts and falsehoods surrounding the wrongful convictions of the Damien, Jason and Jessie.

What were the WM3 convicted of doing?
Three eight-year-old boys were found murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. Shortly thereafter, local newspapers stated the killers had been caught. The police assured the public that the three teenagers in custody were responsible for these horrible crimes. Yet there was and is not a single piece of evidence linking any of these teenagers (now men) to the crimes.
Why are WM3 supporters confident these men are innocent?
Damien, Jason and Jessie all have strong alibis. There is not a single piece of evidence indicating they were involved --- not one. In fact, recently tested DNA evidence and physical evidence has shown that others were with the boys at the time of their murder. Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. For over 14 years, the West Memphis Three have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Echols waits in solitary confinement for the lethal injection. They were all condemned by their poverty, incompetent defense, satanic panic and a rush to judgment.

With all the other causes out there, why are all of you involved with the WM3? The right to a fair trial and being judged innocent until proven guilty are cornerstones of a free nation. When our legal system actively prosecutes innocent people, our system of government is badly damaged. We love our country and seek to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans. Some supporters have also stated that they relate to Jason and Damien’s curiosity-filled teen years and feel a “there by the grace of God” kinship.
Why were Jason and Damien arrested in the first place?
To respond to pressure from the community for a prompt arrest, a large reward was offered for information about the crime. Being young and poor, Damien and Jason were easy targets for a set-up. A mentally challenged young man (Jessie Misskelley) was sent to false witness against these two teens who were not friends, but mere school acquaintances. His interrogators enticed Jessie with the prospect of reward money and the promise that he would be sent home a free man just as soon as he told them what they wanted to hear. In short, Jessie just wanted the money.
Why did Jessie get charged and convicted?
After a 12-hour hostile interrogation (of which only 46 minutes were video taped or recorded), without legal or parental counsel, Jessie Misskelley ended up implicating himself in order to satisfy his interrogators and get the reward money for his family. Court records show that Jessie knew little about the crime. He was coached and coerced by police detectives to rectify the multiple inconsistencies in his confession, which proved Jessie simply did not know the facts of the crime.
I heard Damien changed his name as part of his devil worshipping. Is this true?
No, this is totally false. Damien Echols changed his name when he converted to Catholicism at age 13 as a way to honor Father Damien, who selflessly worked with a leper colony until his own death from leprosy. This is recorded in the Catholic church Damien attended in West Memphis. One of Damien’s most ardent supporters is a member of the Catholic clergy. It is correct, though, that Damien’s name worked against him due to a popular horror movie’s demonizing of this name.
How could a jury of our peers convict three men of murder without any evidence?
Due to prosecutorial misconduct, the jury was misled and misinformed. Jessie’s coerced confession was legally inadmissible. Despite this fact, the confession was highly publicized in the media and the jury was not sequestered so they saw and read all the inflammatory stories being published during the trial. The jury was assured that the prosecution had irrefutable evidence proving the boys’ guilt. For example, Prosecutor Fogelman gave illegal and false information to the jury in his closing stating that he was able to duplicate the marks on Byers’ body by cutting into a grapefruit with the knife in question. Fogelman was not under oath and this proven false statement concerning injuries to the victims was never even admitted into evidence.
What about Damien’s seemingly bizarre behavior and statements during interviews and during the trial?
Damien Echols was an immature 17-year-old boy from a tragically poor family. He was being treated for depression to help him get through an abusive home life. He also fully trusted in our legal system. He believed he had a right to a fair trial and, like anyone would, he believed that an innocent young man would never go to prison. Out of disbelief, frustration and fear, he made many comments that were totally inappropriate. These words and actions reflect a scared kid who became defensive and angry at how unfairly he was treated simply because he was poor and from the wrong side of the tracks. An easy target for a police force out of ethical control with huge community pressure for an arrest---any arrest, at any cost.
It is sad beyond words what bigoted, ill-informed people did to three innocent young men. Damien, Jason and Jessie have spent their entire adult lives (15 long years) in prison enduring untold physical and mental abuse. Their only crime was being young, naive and members of very poor, uneducated families. It is tragic that the actual murderer(s) of the three little boys have not been punished.
What started the satanic ritual theory in the first place?
A completely false forensic conclusion of the crime created mass hysteria in this delta community. During his sworn testimony, the prosecution’s “forensic scientist” who came to a completely wrong conclusion of the murders admitted he had no formal medical training. The prosecution’s “forensic scientist” testified he received a mail order degree from now defunct Columbia Pacific University without spending a single classroom hour learning the science of forensic medicine. Yet, the jury was told repeatedly that this man was an expert by the prosecution. Further more, no DNA testing of any crime scene evidence was done before or during the trial.
How was the satanic theory dispelled?
Qualified forensic scientists, several of whom have authored textbooks used by the FBI, have proved there was no satanic ritual involved in this crime whatsoever. These expert scientists have proven the postmortem injuries (incorrectly identified during the trial as part of a ritual) were the result of animal bites. It was nature, not a satanic ritual that abused these dead boys. As often occurs when a victim is outside, animals scavenging for food will take advantage of the opportunity.
These experts also established that no genetic material of the defendants was present on the victims’ bodies, as it would have been if the crimes occurred in the manner hypothesized at Echols’ trial. There was, however, genetic material on the penis of Steve Branch that did not come from any of the defendants or victims.
Of equal importance, new forensic evidence has established that most of the wounds suffered by the victims, and particularly those to the genitalia of Byers, were not inflicted with a perpetrator’s knife, but resulted from post-mortem animal predation. That analysis and conclusion, reached by more than half a dozen leading forensic pathologists and odontologists who reviewed the autopsy tests, photos, and reports, were shared months ago with the state’s prosecutorial team. These new findings have gone without prosecutorial rebuttal.

The presence of animal predation exposes the falsity of practically the entirety of the state’s case against Echols, putting the lie to: (a) Dale Griffis, a “witchcraft expert” with a fraudulent Ph.D., who claimed the wound pattern of the victims reflected satanic motivation; (b) Michael Carson, the jail-house informant who testified that Baldwin admitted drinking Byers’ blood and putting the victim’s testes in his mouth, a horrifying but wholly perjured assertion-relied upon by Griffis to support his theory of Satanists at work; and (c) the state’s claim that during a pre-arrest interview, Echols had displayed knowledge of Byers’ injuries available only to one who witnessed his castration.

What do the victim’s family members think?
Years before the DNA link between Hobbs and the crime scene was discovered, Pam Hobbs, the mother of Stevie Branch, came forth with evidence that she believed linked Terry, her former husband, to the murders. John Douglas, former chief of the Investigative Support Unit of the FBI for twenty-five years, has done an offender analysis of the murders, which applies to Hobbs. Mr. Douglas wrote that accepted profiling practices do not support the guilty verdict of the WM3.

Was there prosecutorial misconduct?
Yes. The new forensic evidence also exposes the misconduct of prosecutor John Fogelman in closing argument when he conducted an experiment, which he claimed proved that a knife recovered from a lake behind Baldwin’s residence was the instrument that maimed Byers. No evidence in the record permitted the conclusion that the lake knife was used in the crime, yet Fogelman informed the jury in closing that he was able to duplicate the marks on Byers’ body by cutting into a grapefruit with the knife in question. The prosecutor’s un-sworn testimony in this regard violated petitioner’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935) (holding that prosecutors have a “special obligation to avoid ‘improper suggestions, insinuations, and especially assertions of personal knowledge’”).

Was there police misconduct?
You judge for yourself. West Memphis police officers coerced an error-filled "confession" from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes of the entire 12-hour interrogation. Jessie recanted it that evening, but it was too late— Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were all arrested on June 3, 1993, and convicted of murder in early 1994. Jessie Misskelley refused to testify against Jason and Damien even when offered a deal for significant reduction in jail time.

How can you get involved in the release of three innocent men from prison?
1. Donate to the defense fund. The DNA testing and legal procedures that will eventually set these three innocent men free are themselves not free. Any amount, big or small, that you can spare will go a long way.

Please make checks payable to:

Damien Echols Defense Fund
PO Box 1216
Little Rock, AR 72203

You can also donate online, through PayPal. It's easy, free and allows you to use your credit or debit card. We also suggest that International Supporters use this option. Please use LDavis11@hotmail.com as the recipient address and kindly include your name and address in the notes box. The button you can click to include your address does not always work.

2. Write to Damien, Jason and Jesse. Each letter they receive provides a little more hope and encouragement, knowing they are being supported by total strangers from literally all over the world.

3. Spread the word! Tell your friends, family, neighbors…anyone who will listen! The more people that know about this case, the more pressure will be put on the powers that be to right this wrong.

4. For comprehensive case information and more ways to get involved, please visit www.wm3.org.

Thank you so much!
Arkansas Take Action

http://www.freewestmemphis3.org/

[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.

"I learned later on there is no such thing as an affidavit of silence," says Hutcheson, "but that’s how he described the document we signed."

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]

BY CATHY FRYE

Posted on Friday, November 2, 2007

The slayings of three West Memphis boys weren’t the work of three unsophisticated teenage killers, but that of a single person who set out to taunt and “punish” the victims, contends John Douglas, a former longtime FBI criminal profiler.

That person would have known both the children and the area in which their bodies were found on May 6, 1993, said Douglas, who was part of a four-member panel hosted Thursday by Damien Echols ’ defense team at the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Echols, now 32, was one of three teenagers convicted in 1994 of killing three 8-year-old boys: Steve Branch, Chris Byers and Michael Moore. Echols, who was tried with Jason Baldwin, was sentenced to death. Baldwin, now 29, received a life term, as did Jessie Misskelley, now 32.

Monday, Echols’ attorneys filed a second amended petition for writ of habeas corpus, arguing that new DNA and other forensic evidence has failed to link the three convicted men to either the crime scene or the victims.

Rather, they said, the findings of six forensic pathologists and odontologists — which include unknown genetic material on Steve Branch’s penis — suggest the boys were killed by someone else.

The Arkansas attorney general’s office, which will oversee the state’s response to Echols’ petition, issued a statement Tuesday, saying a response may be some time in coming because the agency “is seeing many of these allegations and supporting exhibits for the very first time.”

The statement continued: “While the State will look at the new allegations and evidence objectively, it stands behind the conviction of Mr. Echols and that of his codefendants and does not anticipate a reversal of the juries’ verdicts.”

Defense attorneys, riding the momentum of national media attention to Monday’s federal court filing in the Eastern District of Arkansas, hosted a discussion panel Thursday so their experts could explain their testing and results in more detail.

Douglas, who interviewed the country’s most prolific serial killers during his years with the FBI, is known for developing profiles to help police in their searches for violent criminals. He was joined by three other panelists: forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, who testified in music producer Phil Spector’s trial; Dr. Richard Souviron, a Florida odontologist who matched serial killer Ted Bundy’s teeth to one of the victims in the Chi Omega killings; and Thomas Fedor, a California forensic serologist, a blood specialist.

The three scientists offered more details about the new forensic and DNA evidence, with Spitz and Souviron criticizing the state’s medical examiner. The two also said there’s no evidence that a knife, serrated or otherwise, was used in the killings. They contend all three boys drowned and that animals later preyed on the bodies, leaving behind numerous claw and bite marks.

During their presentation, close-up photos of what Spitz said were claw marks were displayed on a large screen.

“When these pictures came to me, I couldn’t understand what the issue was about because it was so obvious,” Spitz said.

He added: “None of these injuries occurred during life.”

Souviron, the odontologist, also said he saw no evidence that a knife had been used on the boys. The wounds were shallow, surface ones, he said. “Why, if you were using a knife, would you scrape with it ? C’mon. You stab with a knife.”

Chris Byers’ genital injuries, he said, were the result of “degloving” — when an animal removes skin and tissue from an area of a body.

There’s no evidence any of the boys were sodomized, the panelists agreed.

Souviron called prosecutors ’ theory regarding knives and satanism a “ridiculous assertion,” adding, “To sell that to a jury was unconscionable.”

Kermit Channell, director of the state Crime Laboratory, said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of the defense’s petition.

The advances in science and technology will result in an increasing number of cases in which old evidence is retested, he said. “That’s something that is good. You need to do that on historic cases.”

He added: “We have been open with any information or materials we have. We are impartial. We’re not there for either side of the fence.”

New technology, expected to be available soon, will be used to test genetic material found on Steve Branch’s penis, Fedor said. The amount found was too minute for current methods of identifying DNA, he added.

Fedor suggested this might lead to new and unexpected developments in the coming months. Recent tests already have possibly linked two hairs — one found in Michael Moore’s ligature and another on a tree stump — to Steve Branch’s former stepfather, Terry Hobbs. The second hair came from a friend who was visited by Hobbs the evening the boys disappeared, attorneys say.

Douglas, the last to speak Thursday, said he has interviewed Hobbs twice. Knowing what he knows now, Douglas said he would have “put [Hobbs ] on the front burner back then.”

Attempts to reach Hobbs have been unsuccessful.

West Memphis investigators approached the FBI shortly after the boys’ murders to ask whether satanism could have played a role in the crime, Douglas said.

FBI agents advised police to avoid such allegations, he said. “We told them, ‘Better not use it.’”

In the 1970 s and 1980 s — “back when cops were throwing around the word ‘ritual’ in association with satanism — we didn’t see one case of it,” Douglas added.

He said he believes the killer knew the children and lived in the area. This person, Douglas said, set out to taunt and punish the boys. This, he said, is based on the fact that they were found naked and hogtied with their own shoelaces. Douglas said he believes things unexpectedly “went beyond teaching a lesson.”

Dennis Riordan, who represents Echols, said it’s not up to defense attorneys to identify an alternative killer. All they have to do is show that the new evidence would have provided a jury with reasonable doubt that Echols was responsible, he said.

The biggest obstacle they face, he said, is a reluctance to consider the possibility that someone else killed the children.

“If we don’t stick these guys, who do we have ?” Riordan asked. “That would mean someone else is out there.”
_________________
"Sell Crazy Someplace Else. We're all stocked up here."

Line from the movie As Good As It Gets


Some Responses:

*Liam1306



Joined: 27 Sep 2004
Posts: 470
Location: Texas
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 10:05 pm Post subject:

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Crime boards all over the world are silent about this case and the recent conclusions


rumaj



Joined: 27 Sep 2004
Posts: 12732
Location: wherever my mind takes me
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:11 pm Post subject:

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Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0117293/

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills - US Home Video Trailer
http://snipurl.com/1t92a


Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000) (TV)

http://imdb.com/title/tt0239894/

Amazon.com video review: Directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky return to the scene of the crime with this urgent follow-up to their harrowing 1996 documentary, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. That profoundly disturbing film chronicles the tragic and twisted case of three young men--Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley--who were convicted of the brutal 1993 murders of three second graders. The film suggests that perhaps their only crime was dressing in black and liking Metallica. To the townspeople, this smacked of Satanism and marked them as made-to-order suspects. Meanwhile, Mark Byars, the stepfather of one of the victims emerged from the film as a "Why-isn't-anyone-following-up-on-this?" suspect. Revelations, which, for those who missed the first film, efficiently recaps the case, and charts the trio's maddening appeals process (police browbeat a confession out of Misskelley, who has an IQ of 71, after 12 hours of questioning), as well as the efforts of a group of Internet advocates to "Free the West Memphis Three." Byers is back as well, and he is infinitely more terrifying than anything in Book of Shadows, Berlinger's Blair Witch sequel. We learn that Byers had all his teeth extracted in the years after the murders (human bite marks are among the new evidence introduced). We also learn that his wife has since died of undetermined causes. When Byers passes a suspect lie detector test, he exults, "I knew I was innocent." A further mystery is why both Paradise Lost films have not garnered the media attention or sparked the outrage that attended Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line, which led to the release of an innocent man who was imprisoned for more than 10 years. Both films give new meaning to the concept of reasonable doubt. --Donald Liebenson

http://imdb.com/title/tt0239894/amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Lost-Rev ... B00005MKOU



http://www.docurama.com/productdetail.h ... 6-NVG-9483
_________________
"Sell Crazy Someplace Else. We're all stocked up here."

Line from the movie As Good As It Gets





http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/fo ... b5e276ef85

[Obscuregawdess]

By Kelley Risker
Northeast Arkansas Tribune Staff Writer
February 19-20, 1999

It doesn't happen much around here, not in a small town. Capital murder cases happen far away, to other people. They are tried in court by other lawyers, not attorneys that we know personally, not someone we might bump into at the post office or grocery store. But this time something far-reaching and big city came uncomfortably close to home.
Though not in recent news, the case involving the deaths of three West Memphis boys almost six years ago still remains in the mind and life of a defendant's lawyer, Dan Stidham. A Paragould native, Stidham graduated from ASU in 1984 with a bachelor of science degree in Sociology. His law degree was earned in 1987, and for the last 11 years Stidham has been quietly practicing law in his office on North Second Street.

Even after being involved in a handful of murder cases, though, this one was unexpected. Appointed to the defense in 1993, Stidham admits that this particular homicide is the most complicated and biggest case he has ever been involved in. He was handed the case due to a personal conflict of the West Memphis public defender, and though the trial itself is over, the facts of the case linger.

The case itself involved the murder of three eight-year-old boys and sexual mutilation of one of the victims May 5, 1993. The boys returned home from school one by one and disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Three older boys were charged with this triple murder; enter Dan Stidham.

Stidham represents Jessie Misskelley, a then 17-year-old with a five-year-old mental capability. With an I.Q. of 72, Misskelley was diagnosed in 1993 as border line mentally retarded. An earlier test, done while Misskelley was in grade school, diagnosed Misskelley as completely retarded. A fact, Stidham believes, that enabled police to coerce his client into a false confession.

About four months after his appointment to the case, Stihdam realized two things: one, there were problems with the facts, and two, Misskelley's questionable mental capabilities. "Initially I thought he was guilty," Stidham said. "It's difficult to imagine that someone would confess to something he didn't do."

Stidham is adamant about his client's innocence, though, for many reasons. Though Misskelley confessed to the crime, many aspects of his confession did not match the crime scene, said Stidham. Several pieces of his testimony were inaccurate with the details of the case. For example, Misskelley stated in his confession that the killings were at noon, whereas Misskelley and the victims were at school during that hour. He additionally "confessed" to police that the victims were bound with brown rope though they were actually tied with shoe laces. Additionally, some of the wounds on the victim's body that Misskelley described did not even exist. The most interesting aspect of the case, setting aside the conflicting issues, said Stidham, was the fact that no physical evidence linked his client to the killings-no footprints, fingerprints, "nothing. The only link was the confession."

"It was apparent to me that there was a problem," Stidham said. We normally don't question confessions except with glaring inconsistencies."

Misskelley was "suggestible" and did not realize what to do, said Stidham. His client was given a lie detector test immediately and prior to his confession and was told by West Memphis Police that he had failed. According to Stidham's synopsis of the case, experts say that when a person of limited intellect and who is very suggestible is told they have flunked a polygraph test, they will often confess falsely as their perception of reality is changed, and they see it as their only chance to avoid getting into trouble, please their interrogators and leave the pressure of the interrogation.

Polygraph expert Warren Holmes of Miami, Fla., was retained by Stidham and reviewed the polygraph charts. According to Holmes, Misskelley had passed all of the questions about the homicides. This fact, however, was moot because lie detector tests are inadmissible in a court of law.

An additional expert, Dr. Richard Ofshe, was added ot the list of Misskelley advocates. Ofshe is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his work in the Synanon Cult in California, making him all the more valuable in the case since the murders were believed to be cult related. Ofshe's second area of expertise is false confessions, and after reviewing the transcript of the confession Ofshe was convinced of Misskelley's innocence.

The jury was not allowed to hear the compelling testimonies of these two expert witnessess, even though crucial to the defense. The defendants were sentenced in February of 1994. Damien Echols was sentenced to Death Row, Jason Baldwin to life without the possibility of parole, and Misskelley to life plus forty years for the murders of James Moore, Steve Branch and Chris Byers. Although there was no acquittal, Misskelley did avoid a capital murder conviction, and thus the death penalty. Since the sentencing, Stidham has been appealing this conviction.

For a new trial, in addition to the issues previously argued on appeal, Stidham would also rely on on the words and findings of the forensic analysis of and psychological profile of Brent E. Turvey, MS. This criminal profiler agreed to look at all physical evidence, autopsies, the crime scene, which had not been properly secured resulting in a loss of potential evidence. Stidham purposefully did not tell all the information to Turvey about his client's confession or who he believed was guilty because he wanted an independent analysis.

Turvey additionally identified several things on the victims bodies that were inconsistent with upholding the guilt of the suspects. The most integral was a bite mark on one of the bodies. A forensic odontologist (dentist) examined the bite mark and compared it to the dental impressions of the three suspects; none matched. "We're hopeful that this, coupled with other evidence, will lead to a new trial for these kids," said Stidham.

"anyone who looks at the facts of the case will come to the conclude that these kids are innocent," Stidham said. It has become a "personal quest for justice" for this small town lawyer. "I'm willing and eager to talk to anybody about it," he said. "I believe so much in the innocence of my client…it's a terrible injustice."

In 1998 Stidham received a call from the producers of the "Leeza" show in Los Angeles, California. Ofshe and Turvey were invited to speak and Stidham said that he was reluctant to appear because he had previously turned down two invitations to appear on Geraldo and one on the Maury Povitch Show, because "I felt they were trying to sensationalize the case and not present actual facts," he said. Nevertheless, Stidham agreed to participate in a taping of the show. According to Stidham, the "show went real well, no surprises, the audience asked good questions. I was impressed with how it went." The program was originally slated to air January 7, 1999, but was pulled at the last minute because of concerns about airing the graphic details of the case on daytime television. Producers are editing the show for content. Stidham was told by the senior producer that the show will air eventually as it cost almost a half million dollars to produce. The Leeza Show itself is ending soon and will then be syndicated, in which case, Stidham said, the show may not air for several more months.

Stidham said that the experience of the case has "carved an impression in his life, and until appeals are completed, he will not put the case to rest.

http://www.stidhamlawfirm.com/justice.html

[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]

Television viewing tends to induce a deep passivity. It is a narcotic escape from reality. A click of the remote wipes forever from sight and memory anything disturbing, provocative or even slightly irritating.

Even a documentary can seem "unreal", an entertainment with plot, players, villains, and heroes. Rarely is one moved to reshape the reality of a television spectacle.

But Kathy Bakken, Burk Sauls and Grove Pashley did just that after viewing the HBO documentary Paradise Lost. They founded the West Memphis 3 Support Group. Says Sauls, "There are many people out there who saw the HBO movie, and said, oh, that's terrible - what's for dinner?. . . But this happened".

Just how did the lives of three media professionals from Los Angeles become intimately intertwined with those of three complete strangers in a maximum-security prison in Arkansas? It starts in 1993. Three eight-year-old boys, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch are found savagely mutilated and murdered in a wooded area of West Memphis, Arkansas. The sickening crime gains national attention, including that of documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Their film, Paradise Lost documents the trial of the teenaged boys, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin charged with the murders. We see them convicted on the basis of the mentally retarded Misskelley's confession, a confession riddled with inaccuracies and made in the final 45 minutes of a twelve-hour interrogation. No physical evidence is ever presented linking the suspects to the crime. The bulk of the prosecution's case appears to be made up of vague suggestions of devil worship and human sacrifice. In the end, all three are convicted. 17 year old Misskelley and 16 year old Baldwin to life in prison, and 19 year old Echols to death by lethal injection.

In 1996, Bakken and Pashley, working for an advertising agency, screened an advance copy of the documentary. Shaken by what they saw, they passed it on to another friend, Burk Sauls, a writer with a lifelong interest in the phenomenon of “Satanic Panic”. Haunted by the thought that the wrong people may be in prison for the crime, their response was immediate and has not wavered from that day to this. Then, in 1998, HBO made a follow-up documentary, Paradise Lost II: Revelations, prominently featuring the activities of the West Memphis 3 support group. In a process Bakken likens to “crossing through the looking glass” they entered into the two dimensional world of the film, becoming its subject, trying to rewrite the ending.

sauls: We couldn't believe that nobody was freaking out about this. What was the evidence against them? Black T-shirts and Stephen King novels. All the talk about devil worship and satanic rituals... These boys had nothing connecting them to the victims. bakken: It had been three years since the trial: I was actually shocked they weren't out yet. sauls: We couldn't find any information. There was nothing on the Internet. We called people trying to find out what happened... nobody was doing anything. Damien hadn't spoken to his lawyer in two years. We said if no one's helping you, can we do anything? pashley: We saw the film in March or April of ‘96, and went to West Memphis in October. But in the meantime, Burk had struck up a good correspondence with Damien. They were friends by then.

Speaking to all three together, each seems to hold a complete picture of the complex case in their head, with instant access to the most arcane details. Seamlessly, one picks up the thread where the last leaves off. They began their grassroots effort with flyers they distributed in theaters where the documentary played. They went on to create a website, wm3.org°, a repository for as much official publicly available information on the case as they can gather, as well as updates on various appeals and hearings.

They're not the only out-of-towners taking an interest in the case. They're not even the most famous. Metallica, supplied the soundtrack to both films (and the title of this article) after hearing the boys were condemned partly for their affinity for heavy metal, and a benefit CD featuring Eddie Vedder, L7, Steve Earle and others was recently released. But Bakken, Sauls and Pashley are the most ardent and committed of supporters.

sauls: I put about as much time into this as I put into what is left of my career. bakken: We have writing, photography and design. Without one of the points in the triangle, there would be a big imbalance. We're packaging savvy. We know the value of image. sauls: Our website gets 1-2000 hits a day. The day after Revelations came out, we got about 75,000, and about 30,000 the day after that. pashley: Burk and Kathy got about 7,000 emails each, I had about 5,000. bakken: About 99% were positive... whenever you get hate mail, it's always anonymous, and everything is misspelled. sauls: It says things like, you're going to burn in hell with your master, Satan. They told Kathy she's a bleached blonde and she needs a nose job. bakken: They're guilty because I need a nose job. sauls: Why are people afraid of our website? Gary Gitchell (the retired chief investigator on the original case) says "these people from California don't know anything about the case, and their website has inaccuracies and fabrications." bakken: We've always gotten our information right from the evidence room or from the lawyers. We don't print rumors. sauls: They say we're hiding facts, not telling the whole story. We say, then give us the whole story. If you've got something that shows these guys are guilty, please tell us, then we cannot be broke anymore. We can have our lives back. pashley: We want people to come away from our website and just keep talking about the case. Keep spreading the word.

In a dramatic twist, they themselves were responsible for startling new evidence coming light. In a subplot we watch unfold in Revelations, Bakken asks criminal profiler Brent Turvey to take a look at the evidence in the case. He concludes from autopsy photos that there is a bite mark on the face of one child, one that has never been identified as such. A bite mark, he says, is as distinct an identifier as a fingerprint. Bite impressions are taken from Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin, and there is no match. It is explosive, potentially exculpatory evidence. But in the course of new hearings, despite expert testimony, the judge rules that there is no bite mark. Still, the evidence is now a matter of public record, and may yet prove crucial.

This new information, along with the mysterious death of Melissa Byers, mother of Christopher Byers, and wife of John Mark Byers, led HBO to commission the 1999 follow-up to Paradise Lost. About halfway into the film comes an unforgettable moment as a 6' ft. 8" John Mark Byers, stepfather of murdered Christopher Byers, confronts Bakken, Sauls and Pashley as they sit on the courthouse steps in West Memphis. They challenge him to provide a dental impression, as Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley have done. He answers by yanking out his dentures and thrusting them out defiantly, trailing a great streamer of drool. It happens too quickly to allow you to look away.

Shambling, hulking, charming, blustering, and never at a loss for a soliloquy, Byers is a character Faulkner might have dreamed up. The first film raises questions about some of his bizarre behavior, and there are suggestions that he himself may have had something to do with the murders. Mark Byers is a half-grotesque, half-pathetic spectacle that you can't take your eyes off of. pashley: The confrontation with Byers was a surprise. We didn't plan that at all. That big scene of us on the steps... you only saw five minutes. We were there for 45 minutes with him. I thought, what are we doing? Should we be doing this? But in hindsight, I'm sure glad we did. We brought up some good questions and we caught him lying. bakken: Everyone says we're making him look guilty Byers is on camera making himself look guilty...he always came after us. When we were leaving, he said, "why don't you all come back? I'll go get some of your favorite beverage." He could turn it on and off like a switch. sauls: Like an actor. bakken: He treated us as if, "you guys are all in on it, right? you guys are acting too, right?" No, we're not. sauls: One time he made a nasty comment about Kathy on camera, then once they were gone, he comes back, takes both of her hands, and says, "I'm so sorry about what I said. I didn't mean it. I know you are good people. You come out here to do something you believe is right." bakken: What's weird is I felt sorry for him, and I thought, God, I hope he's not guilty, cause despite myself I kinda like the guy. sauls: He was in prison for several months recently. He just got out. And he wrote me some letters and sent some poems. He wanted to write a book and have me be his agent. bakken: He's not a horrible writer either. He's not stupid.

They can speak tirelessly of "Damien, Jason and Jessie", like favorite nephews, glowing over their accomplishments and abilities, aching over their suffering. Sauls and Pashley attended Echols' recent wedding in prison. sauls: He could only have four people come in, and Damien chose me as one. Grove came to try and get some photos, and at the last minute they let him in. It was a really rare thing. It was the first Buddhist wedding on death row. They allowed us to take in a disposable camera, so Grove got photos. It was beautiful. Weird. bakken: Jason is probably the most misrepresented in the films. Nowhere do you get a sense of how sharp and quick and optimistic he is. He's the brain. He's always been proactive in his case, trying to find angles, writing to lawyers or legal organizations.

Barry Scheck's "Innocence Project" is now involved in Damien's defense, and Echols is being represented by Ed Mallett, one of the country's most preeminent death penalty lawyers. sauls: It's "The Crucible." It's a witch trial. They even use the word witch. Except they intend to use lethal injection instead of burning at the stake. bakken: We can only hope that a miracle will happen and the Federal Court will say "new trial" which is all we really want.

Some of the most touching letters are from people who saw the first movie, and wrote to us after the second movie saying, "you know, I watched that film, and I was very disturbed and I did nothing. I'll never forgive myself for seeing that and not doing anything about it."

http://www.thebookla.com/ws_2001_justice.html

[Obscuregawdess]

West Memphis Blood Money
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/west- ... cid=acvsv4

John Mark Byers VERY RECENT rant about Terry Hobbs/ Opinion on him murdering the boys
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/byers ... cid=acvsv4

[Obscuregawdess]

Advances in forensics mean that more Americans are being proved innocent.

In 1993, three eight-year-olds disappeared in West Memphis, a poor town in Arkansas. They were found in a ditch the next day. Their bodies were bound with shoelaces and covered with wounds; one had been partially castrated. Anxious to solve this horrific crime, the police soon focused on three local teenagers.

Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were oddities in this conservative town. Mr Echols wore black clothing, listened to Metallica and carried a cat's skull to school—perhaps, locals thought, as part of some satanic ritual. Mr Misskelley, who is slightly mentally retarded, actually confessed to the murder.

His confession, though, was full of factual errors. He said that he and his friends had committed the murders in the morning, but the boys were in school all day. And no physical evidence linked the three teenagers to the crime. They were just a bit weird. It was a weak case, but the boys were convicted. Mr Misskelley and Mr Baldwin received life sentences. Mr Echols was sentenced to death.

Over the past 15 years there have been mounting calls to free the West Memphis Three, or at least give them a fair trial. There have been dozens of benefit concerts for their legal-defence fund, and HBO has aired two documentaries about them. Now advances in forensic testing are helping their cause. DNA tests show that a hair from the crime scene could not have belonged to any of the three—but may belong to one of the victims' stepfathers.

On April 15th David Burnett, the original judge in the case, agreed to a new evidentiary hearing in September. The hearing will give pathologists a chance to explain the new forensic evidence. If their convictions are overturned, the West Memphis Three will become America's most famous beneficiaries of DNA testing. But they will not be alone. Across the country, 216 people have been freed after new DNA evidence was produced. More might have been, if some courts were not reluctant to revisit old cases.

Consider Texas. In 2001 Governor Rick Perry declared a legislative emergency. He had just pardoned a man who had served 15 years after being wrongfully convicted of rape. So he fast-tracked a bill that allowed convicts to get state-funded DNA tests, if biological evidence was available and if they could show that there was a reasonable chance of exoneration.

Prosecutors agreed with the idea in principle. But dredging up old cases was not a priority in most of their offices. In Dallas county, for example, 350 convicts requested DNA testing between 2001 and 2007. They were lucky that the county had held on to most of the old evidence. That is in contrast to Harris county, which encompasses Houston and hands down more death sentences than any other place in America. There boxes of evidence have been destroyed by leaky roofs and rats.

Bill Hill, who was district attorney of Dallas county until 2006, granted DNA tests to only 32 convicts. Twelve were exonerated. Then the county elected a new district attorney, Craig Watkins, who had promised to be “smart on crime”. Mr Watkins wanted prevention and rehabilitation, but exonerations came first. “Any injustice of this nature,” he says, “creates a sickening of a person's stomach.”

Within weeks of taking office, Mr Watkins announced that he would allow the Innocence Project of Texas, an organisation of law students, to review all 350 claims. On April 15th Dallas county announced its 16th exoneration. No other county has cleared so many. Examination of the claims is still under way, and Mr Watkins admits it will be tedious and expensive. But he sees it as an important step in restoring the credibility of the office.

Dallas county's new approach has changed opinions in Texas. A year ago the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News, a supporter of the death penalty for a century, declared that it now doubted that Texas could guarantee “that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder.” Prosecutors in Arkansas say they still believe the West Memphis Three are guilty. But if they want to keep Mr Echols on death row and his friends in prison, they will have to make a better case for it.

http://meloralynn.vox.com/explore/famil ... en+echols/