314. The West Memphis 3 Part 13 -- The Devil's Knots

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Prosecutors – Episode 314: The West Memphis 3 Part 13 – The Devil's Knots

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Introduction

In Episode 314 of The Prosecutors, hosted by Brett and Alice from PodcastOne, the focus shifts intensely towards dissecting the infamous West Memphis Three case. This episode delves deep into the nuances of the case, particularly examining the autopsy reports, the nature of the injuries sustained by the victims, the peculiarities of the knots used to bind them, and the initial investigative procedures that followed the tragic events.

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Autopsy Findings and Theories

The discussion begins with a profound analysis of the autopsy findings, emphasizing the critical injury to Christopher Byers. Brett highlights the significance of Byers' emasculation, questioning whether it was perpetrated by a single individual or resulted from animal predation post-mortem.

Brett [04:26]: "There are a lot of injuries. The biggest question is about this injury to Christopher Byers... he knows that Christopher Byers was essentially emasculated."

Alice contributes by providing real-life examples to elucidate the concept of degloving, comparing it to medical scenarios such as circumcision and webbed fingers.

Alice [10:13]: "Imagine pulling a glove off your hand. That's essentially what happens, but with the skin."

The hosts discuss Dr. Peretti's testimony during the trial, where he emphasizes the skill and precision required to inflict such injuries, suggesting that it would be challenging to achieve without medical knowledge or a sharp instrument.

Brett [07:00]: "It would take someone who had some medical knowledge, wouldn't it?"

They also explore the alternative theory of animal predation, debating whether animals could cause such precise and horrific injuries.

Brett [09:16]: "The animals, they didn't, you know, with precision, bite the skin off. It was more like a ripping action."

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Knot Analysis

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to analyzing the knots—referred to as the "Devil's Knots"—used to bind the boys. Brett meticulously breaks down the different types of knots found on each victim, questioning the consistency and what it implies about the perpetrators' number and intent.

Brett [30:26]: "There are three pairs of shoes found. The way the knots were tied suggests multiple individuals might be involved."

Alice questions the uniformity of the knots, suggesting that the variations could indicate the involvement of more than one person.

Alice [43:33]: "The different knots point to more than one person tying these."

They further discuss the implications of using square knots versus half hitches, debating whether these variations could be accidental or intentional.

Brett [40:57]: "Is it possible one person is tying all these? I don't think so."

The analysis leads them to consider the possibility of multiple perpetrators, especially given the complexity and brutality of tying the knots differently on each child.

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Initial Investigation and Forensic Challenges

The hosts shed light on the initial investigation led by Detective Gary Gitchell, highlighting significant delays and frustrations, particularly concerning the crime lab's handling of evidence. Brett reads out Gitchell's letter, showcasing Gitchell's desperation for crucial forensic information to move the case forward.

Brett [64:11]: "Three weeks after the murders, and we still have no cause of death... It's like walking blindfolded through this case."

Alice emphasizes the systemic issues within the investigation, pointing out the challenges of working with external crime labs and the lack of timely information.

Alice [70:19]: "This letter gives us a lot of insight into how he's thinking about the case and he's asking all the right questions."

They discuss the implications of the missing forensic data, such as unidentified fibers and residue under the victims' nails, which could have been pivotal in identifying the perpetrators.

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Murder Weapons and Evidence Collection

The episode progresses to examine the potential murder weapons, primarily focusing on the police's theory of the use of large sticks. Brett criticizes the evidence collection methodology, noting the lack of concrete evidence linking the found sticks to the murders.

Alice [25:37]: "They got some sticks, but they could have been sticks fallen from trees after the fact."

They debate the absence of wood splinters or tree bark in the victims' wounds, which undermines the stick theory and suggests alternative methods of inflicting injuries, such as using a baseball bat or physical violence like kicking and stomping.

Brett [28:43]: "There are no wood splinters or tree bark found in any of the boys' wounds."

The hosts also touch upon the mishandling of evidence, citing the example of the homemade club found in Damien's closet, which was mishandled and compromised its evidentiary value.

Brett [27:54]: "The way it was collected is certainly not peak evidence collection methodology."

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Conclusions and Future Discussion

As the episode wraps up, Brett and Alice reflect on the complexities and ongoing debates surrounding the West Memphis Three case. They express the intention to continue exploring the case in future episodes, including delving into alibis, criminal histories, and confessions.

Brett [85:59]: "This is why we're on episode 13 and people are still debating this case."

Alice underscores the importance of understanding the investigative process without hindsight bias, reminding listeners that investigators work under immense pressure and without a clear roadmap.

Alice [87:29]: "Investigators are human beings who have to work on instinct and experience. There's never a roadmap."

The hosts invite listeners to engage with them through emails and social media, encouraging a collaborative exploration of the case.

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Notable Quotes

• Brett [04:26]: "There are a lot of injuries. The biggest question is about this injury to Christopher Byers... he knows that Christopher Byers was essentially emasculated."

• Alice [10:13]: "Imagine pulling a glove off your hand. That's essentially what happens, but with the skin."

• Brett [30:26]: "There are three pairs of shoes found. The way the knots were tied suggests multiple individuals might be involved."

• Alice [43:33]: "The different knots point to more than one person tying these."

• Brett [64:11]: "Three weeks after the murders, and we still have no cause of death... It's like walking blindfolded through this case."

• Alice [87:29]: "Investigators are human beings who have to work on instinct and experience. There's never a roadmap."

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Conclusion

Episode 314 of The Prosecutors offers a meticulous and thought-provoking examination of the West Memphis Three case, focusing on the forensic anomalies and investigative shortcomings that have fueled ongoing debates about the true nature of the crimes and the guilt of the accused. Brett and Alice provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved, setting the stage for further exploration in upcoming episodes.

Transcript

[Alice]

From the waters of Lake Erie.

[Brett]

It was raising flags. He said there's no way that that fish should weigh 7.9 pounds. It's just not big enough. To a nondescript office building in Richmond, Virginia, home to a 700 million dollar.

[Alice]

Fund for children with special needs.

[Brett]

If there was a cliche list of how to blow money that you just stole very quickly, this guy did all of them.

[Alice]

To the ski slopes of Salt Lake.

[Brett]

City, where a former Olympic snowboarder landed.

[Alice]

On the FBI's most wanted list.

[Brett]

Ryan James wedding is one of those interesting Norcos who have had two very successful careers, one legal and one illegal.

[Alice]

We're pulling back the curtain on a.

[Brett]

Fresh lineup of opportunists who stopped at.

[Alice]

Nothing to get ahead.

[Brett]

These are the stories of people who saw a loophole, a moment of weakness.

[Alice]

A chance to get ahead and took it.

[Brett]

I'm Host Sarah James McLaughlin.

[Alice]

Join me for a new season of.

[Brett]

The opportunist on May 19th. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Brett. And I'm Al Us and we are the Prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we dive deep into the details of the West Memphis three case. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my chouette co host, Alice Sweate. Not sweaty. Schwette. Schwete.

[Alice]

So what does schwette mean? Is that like a 90s rap song?

[Brett]

So it's a French word, so it's probably not how you pronounce it, but it means cool. It can also mean owl, though, which is pretty neat, right? I don't know if a lot of owls like coolness or owl's like the animal. Yeah.

[Alice]

Okay.

[Brett]

That was Sonia. Thank you, Sonya.

[Alice]

I'm not gonna lie. I totally understand what you say all the time, but sometimes without context, I can't really make out your words.

[Brett]

You know, you're sweaty. That cools you off. So maybe schwette.

[Alice]

I don't know a lot, but I'm almost positive that's not how you pronounce it if it's French, you know. But I'm gonna stand by the 90s rap song that it's a 90s rap song lyric.

[Brett]

I realize we're on episode 13 or whatever, and I probably shouldn't tell random stories. I'm going to anyways. So my wife and I, we go to France and we tried to learn a little French running up to it. And I was really good at the machine because I could do. I would Just pronounce everything with like a really exaggerated French accent and it would be like 100% right.

[Alice]

So you were like Guitar Hero. The French pronunciation. You were guitar heroing. The French pronunciation.

[Brett]

Exactly. It's a great way to put.

[Alice]

Doesn't mean it's correct. But you knew the right pitches to hit.

[Brett]

We get there and I go into this bar and order a beer and the guy keeps calling me senor. When I left, I realized that the mangled language I was speaking was actually much closer to Spanish than it was French. So the guy just saying I was Spanish. Like they are trying to speak French very poorly. So that was a fail.

[Alice]

So maybe in trying to speak French French, they mistook you for a native Spanish speaker.

[Brett]

There you go. I love the way you think. This is why you are the best co host in the business. Okay, so that's.

[Alice]

Let's get it. Let's get right down to it.

[Brett]

That's enough fun. Okay, so look, we've just spent three episodes on the autopsies, which I know seems like a lot, but the autopsies in this case are more important than maybe any other case we've done. I mean, they are absolutely critical. And I just want to remind you, we're going to talk briefly about these again for like the next 15 minutes. So if you have skipped the autopsy episodes, just skip the first part of this episode as well. Because I just want to reiterate some of the things we talked about as we go into more details about this case. So there's a very big question. There are a lot of injuries. There are a lot of wounds. But the biggest question is about this injury to Christopher Byers. As you're going to see when we get to Jesse Misskeli's confessions, one of the key points that he knows that makes a lot of people think these are legitimate confessions is that Christopher Byers was essentially emasculated. He knows that that happened. And that is a wound that Christopher Byers has. And so the natural inclination is he knows something, something very critical. He knows that it was one person, not all three. So maybe this shows that he's telling the truth. In the years since, there's been an argument that in fact this wound is the result of animal predation after post mortem animal predation is the theory. And if that's true, that obviously blows a huge hole in the confession and in the case for guilt. We've talked to several people about this, but a lot of you have had questions still. So I just want to go through this Very quickly and why this is so critical. Okay, so the difficult part about this, and we're just going to go ahead, this is the hardest part of this case. Christopher Byers, he is castrated, but he is not fully emasculated. So in other words, he still has his penis to some extent. In fact, it has been skinned. And this action is something. And I'm going to read you what Dr. Peretti said about it at trial because I think you need to understand how difficult this would be for someone to do. Okay, so I'm going to read you what he says. So this comes from his testimony. It's actually from the cross examination. Very good cross examination by the defense. A lot of this is in Paradise Lost, if you've seen it, but I know not all of you have watched that episode. So here's what he says. So here's what he says. So this is the question from the defense attorney, in layman's language that I understand with respect, his penis has not been cut off, has it? No, the skin has been taken off the penis. So he says, the defense attorney in this case, the skin of the penis was actually dissected off. Pareti was taken off, yes. And. And the head of the penis was taken off. That's correct. But the glands and the shaft of the penis are undamaged. They're relatively intact. And basically it would take some skill and precision to do that, wouldn't it? I would think so. Okay. And it would take someone who had some medical knowledge, wouldn't it? Dr. Well, I don't know about that. Someone who had some knowledge of anatomy. Some anatomy knowledge. Let's skip a little bit ahead. And it would take a very sharp instrument, would it not? I think it would. Such as a razor or a sharp knife. A very sharp knife, yeah. Okay. Doctor, if you were to do this, say you were back in medical school in gross anatomy and you were asked to do this, or now with the skill and precision and knowledge that you take, how long would it take you to do that, Peretti? That's a difficult question. It would take me some time. It's not something I think I could do in five minutes. In five or 10 minutes, it would take you longer than five to 10 minutes? I would think so. And that's in your lab? I would think so. With a scalpel? That's correct. Now, Doctor, if we add to the equation that you were in the dark, could you do this in the dark? Could you do it in the dark? It would be difficult. And if you were doing it in the dark, wouldn't it take you longer than if you were doing it in your lab, your ideal conditions? Yes. Okay. Could you do this in water? Could you do this in the water? I think it would be very difficult to do. And if you were in the water and it was dark, it would take even longer. That's correct. And if you were doing it in the dark, in the water with mosquitoes all around you, would that make it even much more difficult? I would think so. If not impossible? Well, I don't know about impossible. I think it could be done. Okay. And he says, and it would be very tedious task for you, a skilled pathologist. It would. So. And this. And then afterwards, they talk about how Christopher Byers bled to death. If this is done purely with a knife, then it would have taken a lot of time. It's hard to even imagine doing it with a knife that has been posited as being responsible for this. So you can see why this degloving theory is so attractive. Some people were upset that we kept saying degloving. That is the medical term. So if you think about a glove that you put on your hand, I will say this. Don't Google degloving.

[Alice]

No.

[Brett]

Because if you do, you will see some really horrific stuff. But essentially, I mean, imagine pulling a glove off your hand. Now you have a glove that looks like a hand. That's essentially what happens, but with the skin. And this happens in mechanical accidents. You know, a lot of people who do certain work, they don't wear wedding rings for this reason, because it can get caught in the machine and then basically rip your skin off. It's a very violent thing. And so one of the theories is essentially that the animals, they didn't, you know, with precision, bite the skin off. It was more like a turtle or something else. Grabs onto the parts of the body that are missing, and then as they are tearing those parts away, which is what they do when they eat, as they're doing that, the ripping action, not only do they remove those parts from the body, but they de Glove the penis, they pull the skin off of it. That's the theory.

[Alice]

And just to give you an example of that, and thank you guys for asking these questions, why we use the term like degloving. I didn't even think that, not being in layman's terms, because we see this a lot in, like, civil lawsuits for tort injuries, like a machine, a factory, and there's some sort of machine that's very powerful in someone's hand, limb, sleeve at first gets caught and it happens so quickly that skin is de gloved from like the entire arm, things like that. So again, don't Google it, but you see this in that context a lot, where a machine can work so quickly, so fast that it can tear off, essentially, like say if an animal did that.

[Brett]

Now, I think another option here that we have to consider, and I mentioned this in both our discussion of the autopsies and with Joseph Scott Morgan of Body Bags. And thank you so much for him for coming. And I also want to say thank you. In the very first episode, I asked if people had those photos to provide them to me. People did have them. They provided them to me. I gave them to him. You may have noticed as you're listening, he was looking at them as he was doing the episode. So he is actually looking at the photos describing the injuries he's seeing. The other possibility, I think, is you have somebody who is attempting a castration and does the same thing. They essentially don't cut all the way through, and they also are ripping and it's pulling the skin off. One thing about this, you might think, wouldn't that take a lot of force? We've been talking about machine injuries. Yes, it would. But we had someone who is in emergency medicine who wrote in and they said they actually see these injuries on occasion. And that one thing to note, two points. Number one, the skin on children is not as difficult to remove as an adult would be the first thing. And the second thing, that the skin on the penis is more loose than skin on a lot of the other areas in your bodies, for reasons I'm sure you can understand. So it actually probably would not have taken as much force for this degloving action to happen as maybe a finger or a hand or something like that.

[Alice]

Can I give a very gross.

[Brett]

Go for it, Alice?

[Alice]

I had been thinking about that. The skin of a child and also the skin on this particular anatomy part. So maybe an example that more people can relate to in life is if you have a boy child in the hospital. If you have a child in the hospital, which I did many times, they're going to ask you if you want your child to be circumcised and what circumcision is to cut skin off of the penis. And this last time, they used a new method, I guess, with my son. When you cut skin, it can reattach right on any part of your body. Think about your ears being pierced. If you don't keep a stud in your pierced ear until it heals, it can close back up. Because your skin always wants to read here. And so my son's circumcision continues to read here. Sorry, that's a lot of tmi. And he's probably going to be really mad at me in, like, 15 years about this. But this is just. Mom, you told everyone about this. It just keeps readhering. But here's the thing. And this didn't happen before, so maybe some of you have had this example. And I was like, why does it keep re adhering every time I go to a doctor checkup? When you have a baby, you go to the doctor like every two weeks, every month. Like, we're at the doctor all the time and it just keeps re adhering. And I was like, oh, do we just have to, like, recut it? And the doctor was like, no, just pull it up, pull it apart so the skin is, like, healed back together. It's like if you have webbed fingers. And all I have to do is tear it apart very gently. By the way, I'm glad 85% of.

[Brett]

Our audience are women, because 15% of you are out there cringing.

[Alice]

But I say this because we were in the midst of reading the autopsies in this case, and I asked my pediatrician about this very thing, actually. And so I actually asked, am I going to hurt him by tearing this? And he said, no. At such a young age, basically until puberty, like, the readherence, all of these things are very malleable. And he was speaking about my son's situation. But I was thinking about the autopsy specifically in this case. And I thought that was a very helpful real life example for me to understand kind of the differences in anatomy based on age. Sorry, my son is going to, like.

[Brett]

Sue me when he's 15. That'd be a great Legal Briefs episode. Legal Briefs 893. Okay, so with that look, I know this is something people want to talk about. This whole question of how the boys are found. Were they in the mud? Were they not? At one point, they're described as sort of on their knees in the mud, which has made people think that maybe their sort of rear end was sort of elevated. I don't actually think that's true. If you look at the way it's described and if you've seen, unfortunately, the photographs of how the boys were tied with their hands and their feet behind them, I think their knees were in the mud, but basically their thighs would have been in the mud as well. So that is a difficulty here because it makes it more difficult to imagine some sort of animal having access to this area. So this is all very complicated. I don't have any answers for you. I wish I did. This is one of those things. You kind of can go either way. The one thing I think is absolutely true, no one skinned this in those woods. That didn't happen. I think this is a degloving incident. The only question is, could it have been a person who did it versus an animal?

[Alice]

Can I note one additional thing from our experience in putting experts on the stand for a variety of cases, experts in all sorts of things in the sciences and finances, et cetera. Whenever you give. And this doesn't discount what Peretti is saying, this is what he thinks from his expert opinion. But whenever you give something to an expert, they view it through their lens. As an expert, he's view what he sees in this degloving incident or the autopsy with the de gloving from his perspective of it needing precision to accomplish that. Lawyers do this all the time. I look at something and I only see it through my lawyer lens when in reality there's so much happening in the world that is outside of the expertise that can happen without precision, without happening X, Y and Z to be able to accomplish whatever. I see this a lot in perfect crimes. Right. Crimes where, like, everything is perfect. He must be a mastermind. Nothing is left behind. There's. There's no prints. He was able to pick up all the bullet casings after he shot, and he evaded every single camera. And every. All the investigators are like, he's a brilliant man and we catch him. And it was like he was just a guy who got lucky, breaks left and right. And he was like, not smart at all. And in fact, he left so many clues behind, it was just everything broke in his favor. And so I want to also say I have to view Pareti's testimony in that lens as well, because we always tend to, if you give something to an expert, they're going to view it in their expert lens. So if he had to recreate that, I completely understand and agree that likely it would take a lot of skill to recreate that exact thing. But in life, we know that there are so many events that they can happen without necessarily having precision.

[Brett]

Yeah. And I'll just. I'll add one more thing to that. You see this sometimes with, like, people will see what looks like structure on Mars, and they'll say there's perfect right angles and perfect straight lines. And there are no straight lines in Nature, because that's something people say, but in reality that's not true. Nature can create straight lines and it can make it look like something that was engineered or created purposefully. I feel like that very much, as Alice was saying, could be what we're seeing here. It looks purposeful. If you're looking at it in a vacuum, maybe you think it is. Maybe if at the time someone had suggested this to Peretti, he would have been like, oh yeah, actually that's a good point. Now once again, Pareti is a turtle expert, so that's something to think about. But this is one of those things. We wanted to give you all the information so you guys can decide. And I think we have talked about this about as much as we can. So with that we're going to move on for the autopsies pretty much forever. We may talk about a little bit obviously when we get into Jesse's confession, but. And we're going to talk about some other things like potential murder weapons. So this never really leaves us forever. But these episodes, I hope they were informative but we're going to move on now.

[Alice]

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[Brett]

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[Alice]

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[Brett]

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[Alice]

So let's talk about the murder weapons now that we spent so much time talking about the injuries, which are very important because that is what the killer left behind, right? We don't have much to go on, but we have the injuries that we can look at. So it's obvious whether you believe in the animal predation theory, what have you. Lots of things happen, but one thing is obvious, and that's that the boys were beaten severely. They had wounds consistent with being stabbed or cut as well. So the police decided that the boys were beaten with large sticks. And because of that, they collected a number of sticks in the area, though only after some time had passed, having not collected them initially, and they didn't get them all. So you can understand this, right? They are found in nature, in the woods where there's a lot of sticks. This is something we talked about in the Delphi case as well. When you come up on the crime scene, the entire crime scene, it's hard to know where to draw the lines and obviously the extent of their skull injuries that would have likely Been caused by some sort of weapon, like a stick. Wasn't known until after the autopsies were done. Obviously they were in the water. It's very possible they drowned. But after the autopsy, they realized that there were some massive, massive head injuries that could have been done with something like a stick. So they went back and got some sticks. They didn't get them all at the time. Even if they did at the time, it's likely the beating didn't happen in the water. So it's not even clear which sticks were the ones around, if they were sticks at all that they were beat with. So let's be clear.

[Brett]

They got some sticks.

[Alice]

They got some sticks.

[Brett]

They were in the area.

[Alice]

It may have nothing to do with this. They could have been sticks fallen from trees after the fact. Right. It was kind of one of those things like, oh, we got to go find a murder weapon. Let's pick up these sticks. If you've ever been in the woods, there's probably going to be a lot of sticks. So all this is to say, is it shoddy police work? Not necessarily. Were they trying to, like, make the best of it when they go back? Yes. Do the sticks that they have collected, if they have nothing on them, does that tell us anything? Probably not, because there's really nothing that points to the fact that these were even the weapons that were used to cause those beating injuries. Now, so the problem with the stick theory, I can see why the police would look to sticks, because there's a lot of sticks around to be able to be used as weapons. But what happens when you beat someone with a stick, especially a natural branch that is not smooth? You probably have some splinters or something, right? They have bark, they have, you know, splintered edges. But there's no wood splinters or tree bark found in any of the boy's wounds. And the wounds were just as consistent with a baseball bat, or actually maybe not even a weapon like that. It could have been consistent with something like kicking and stomping. Now, of course, any evidence of what caused the wounds would have been washed away, too, because likely the beating happened on the banks and then they were put in the water for some time before they were found. Now, at one point, the police found a 36 inch homemade club of Damiens. And when they found it, there was a red stain on it and there were hairs stuck to the end. Now, this next part is a little infuriating, but the police did collect it. But the officer who collected it didn't bag it. He saw it and he grabbed it with his bare hands and he threw it in the back of his car. So what evidentiary value may have had was definitely compromised by the way it was seized. And the police weren't able to find anything usable when they tested this club they found at Damien's. According to the book Devil's Knot, the club, an old axe handle, was eventually shown to have red paint. So not blood and dog's hair on it, not human hair. So whether that's true or not, I don't actually know. But the way it was collected is certainly not peak evidence collection methodology.

[Brett]

And this is actually found in Damien's closet after he left. The person who moved into the trailer was actually a reporter, which was interesting. And there was sort of like a place in the closet that you wouldn't really normally be able to see. I forget how exactly it was described, but it's like a little, you know, like a little cubbyhole. And he finds this and he sees the red paint and he sees the hairs and he calls the police. He's obviously didn't take that much care with it. One thing that's interesting, I know the, the red stain is supposedly paint, but there are these allegations that Damian would beat dogs to death. That was one of the things he would do. He'd beat him to death, take the skull, bleach it, and there were several dog skulls found in his room. Well it's interesting that this handle has dog hair on it. So maybe it's not proof that Damien beat a child to death, but it might be proof that he did something to a dog.

[Alice]

Poor dogs. Okay, so there were some other things actually found that might point to something interesting. And that's when Christopher Byers body was unwrapped for autopsy. They found quote a knee groid hair fragment. Now this hair was never explained. Recall Mr. Bojangles, the guy who showed up at the Bojangles with blood and stuff all over him, but he was gone by the time the police officer came. Well, he was reported to be black. And several witnesses reported seeing at least one and sometimes two black men in the area of Robin Hood Hills. Now the fact that a hair described as a negroid hair was found in the autopsy bag on Christopher Byers, does that tell us anything? It's honestly impossible to say because remember what we said about evidence being washed away in the water. Hair is, unless it's like, I don't know, adheres somewhere. I can imagine that any hairs on them would have been washed away if they were in the water. Remember they were taken out of the water, they were put on the bank for quite some time. And it was not the best practices in which they were put into the autopsy bags and transported. And Joseph Scott Morgan had even talked about, like, it seemed like a nightmare of a case. Usually they have to keep such a tight rope on all of these things. They even like zip tie it with a special number, the autopsy bag, to make sure no one gets in it. And we know that this case had a lot of interest in it because we have three young boys in the neighborhood who appear to be horrifically murdered. And we don't know what steps were taken to secure the body. That's what Joseph Scott Morgan told us. So was this hair there when the boys were murdered was a part of the crime scene? We really don't know.

[Brett]

And look, I mean, this case sort of demonstrates the iron law of forensics. Everyone who walks into a crime scene leaves something there. Everyone who walks out of a crime scene takes something with them. And it's one of the reasons you really try and lock these scenes down. And I think one thing that Joseph Scott Morgan said, I hate to keep calling about three names. Joe said, I'll be familiar with him, is when people find children, they lose their minds. And I think you saw some of that. The bodies are on the banks. You know that the fly larva in the eyes. We see people reference this all the time. How is that possible? If they were killed at the scene, immediately put in the water, they were out there for hours on a hot day, and there are flies everywhere. Right. So a lot of this stuff is happening. I have no idea if anyone in the recovery team was African American. I don't know if there were any black police officers in West Memphis at the time. I just. I have no idea. And because we don't have anyone to compare this hair to, it's impossible to know. There are failures in this. People always accuse us of defending the police, and we do because we're fans of the police and we think usually they're doing their best. And maybe they were doing their best here, but there were huge mistakes made in this case. Not locking down the scene was one of them. Now part of that they couldn't control. There were people in and out of those woods looking for the kids before it was clear it was a murder. They also lost the evidence from the Bojangles. You know, if they had those scrapings of blood, you probably could have compared some DNA here and said, same person. I mean, imagine if you had that. If that Hair matched the blood and Bojangles. Wow. Earth shattering, right? It probably didn't. It probably wouldn't have, but we can never know. So all this stuff we're just having to speculate about and it's unfortunate, but what it is and this where we are here 32 years later.

[Alice]

And I just keep thinking about the water aspect, right? Like we're talking about how there's no splinters, but it might just be because the water washed them away. But then there's not that same kind of analysis for this hair. To me, it was probably picked up along the way because of where the boys were found kind of stuck into the mud.

[Brett]

The next thing is one of the most important things we're going to talk about in this entire series. So I want you to pay attention and we're going to try and give you more detail on this than you normally get. Because what you will see is people really gloss over this because it's so important. It's so important that the lead book for the defense is called the Devil's Knot. And that is the knots that were used to bind the boys, remember, they are tied in what we'll call some sort of modified hog tying fashion with arm, wrist to ankle, wrist to ankle, basically with their arms behind their back, but their, their legs and their hands aren't tied together. Whether this was for control, whether this was to make them smaller and put them in the water is hard to say. But what we do know and what was recorded were the knots that were used to bind these three boys. And this is really important, so pay attention. Because one thing we Talked about with Dr. Joseph Scott Morgan was how many people are involved in this crime? Is this a one person crime? Is it multiple people? I was kind of surprised, frankly, that he thought this was the kind of case where maybe you had multiple people. Rule of thumb is usually it's one person. It just usually is. You know, even in cases where you think that's unlikely, it just usually is one person. That's just a fact. Whether you like it or not doesn't necessarily mean that's true here. Multiple people commit crimes, so that could have happened here, but usually it's one person. But we see all these different kinds of wounds on the boys. The fact that there are three of them, the fact that it was so vicious and violent and would have taken time, and you just wonder, could one person have done this? What do the knots tell us? What can the knots tell us about this case? Okay, so first of all, the police found three pairs of shoes in the creek. So they found all the boys shoes. Two of them were missing their shoelaces and entirely one of them was missing only one. So according to reports and testimony at trial, the knots were as follows. I will explain what these words mean in a second, but I'm just going to give you how they were tied. Christopher Byers, he was tied with what are called double half hitch knots. Every one of his ligatures were double half hitch knots. So around his legs and his wrist, that's how he was tied. All the same knot. Looks like whoever did this, they did the exact same thing for every single knot that was involved on Christopher Byers. But then things get strange. So Stevie Branch, he has three half hitch knots on his right leg with an extra loop. So you've got three half hitches. So not double half hitches, but single half hitches. But there are three of them around his right leg and there's an extra loop around it. Then there is a single half hitch around his right wrist, but it has something that is described as a figure eight around his wrist as well. And this has been described by some people is maybe the way a butcher might tie up a package of steak. So if you've ever seen this, they tie it up and they do like an extra thing at the top, right? And they make sort of this. It almost looks like the way you tie your shoes. Right. So we go from all entirely uniform on one person. Then we have a slightly different knot on Stevie Branch on his right side. On his left side, there are three half hitches around the wrist and three half hitches around the leg. So different again from what we saw on the other side of his body. All using half hitches, but no extra loop, no extra figure eight. Right. We don't have that on the other side. So one boy, all the same knots, one boy, they all have hitches, but they're done in different ways and they're different numbers depending on which side of his body you're talking about. Then you have Michael Moore. And this is even stranger because we've been talking about half hitches and double half hitches before. But on Michael Moore, his left side, his entire left side wrist and ankles are tied with square knots, which is a different kind of knot than the one we've been talking about. But then on his right side, he's tied with three half hitches on the right wrist and four half hitches on the right leg. So left side, all square knots. Right side half hitches down that side of his body. So Interesting thing about this. There's always this argument about how many knots were used. Was it one, was it two, was it three? Some people will tell you, and I'm about to describe to you how these knots work, that really, it's all the same. You know, these knots are pretty similar. So really it's one type. You can mess up tying a half hitch and accidentally tie a square knot. And I will tell you. So I had my wife tie me up and so I could try this out. And it is true. I'll tell you two things about it. Number one, they are much stronger than I thought they would be. I'm going to describe to you how these knots are made. And you're going to think that doesn't sound like it would bind anything. Right. But they are actually stronger. A half hitch is. It's not great, but it's not bad. A double half hitch is really good square knot as well. One thing that's interesting about it is the more you, like, struggle against it, the tighter it gets. It's kind of that kind of knot. Right. So, you know, if you're moving around a lot, you're not necessarily going to get out of it. It's still going to be tight on your hands. Okay, so let me describe to you what these kind of knots are and then we can talk a little bit about where this is significant. So a half hitch knot is about as simple as it gets. You basically have a rope, it goes over itself, creates a little loop, and then you go back through the loop. Doesn't get any simpler than that by the simplest knot you could possibly tie.

[Alice]

So that's like the first step of tying a shoelace, right?

[Brett]

Well, no, no.

[Alice]

Is it not?

[Brett]

So it's not.

[Alice]

I've tried to figure out these knots.

[Brett]

Okay, So a shoelace. Let me get through this and then we'll come back to it. Okay. So that's the half hitch. You basically. It just goes over. I mean, it's kind of like tying a shoelace, but it's a very simple thing. If you're going to do a double half hitch, guess what, you do it again, right? And it makes the knot more secure. A square knot is actually more like a shoelace square knot. Usually you're tying two separate ropes together or two ends of, like a shoelace together. So you take the two ends, you tie them like you would a shoelace, and then you do that again. And if you think about it as you're doing that, it kind of makes a square because you do the first Time and you got the bottom part of the square, and you do it the next time. And now you have these two knots kind of on top of each other with a little bit of a side. It kind of looks like a square. I think that's why it's called square knot. Now, what's interesting about the square knot, and I kind of spent some time on this, that's how you tie two pieces of rope together. I gotta say this, after all this, I'm much better at knot tying. I've been like, using square knots. They're very effective if you need them. But here it was weird to me that you would use square knots because they were using one string. So they're tying the string to itself, not two ropes together. So square knot was a little strange. And I wondered, could you even do that? Once again, practiced it. You can do it. But still, some people say it would be easy to make this mistake or trying to make a half hitch and you make a square knot. And I can see that. I don't deny that to be true. But actually, when you're doing it with one piece of rope, I think it actually takes a little bit more intentionality to make that square knot as opposed to a half hitch. And I would say if you're fascinated by this, get you a couple pieces of string, go online, see how this is done, and tie these knots and see, because you'll see that, yes, you can make that mistake. You're trying to tie half hitches and you tie a square knot. But I think you'll also see how they are different. Now, what I think is fascinating about this, so people explain away the square knot by saying, well, it's probably one person and they just made a mistake. They meant to tie a half hitch and they tied a square knot. The problem is you're not seeing, you know, he had one square knot on his left ankle and one square knot on his right wrist. Yeah. It was. The entire left side of his body was all square knots. And that's the only place we see him, was that one place.

[Alice]

Let me. Let me ask you this then. Okay, Now I got what the hitch is. With one rope or one string, it seems like it would be easier or more natural to do a hitch. A half hitch.

[Brett]

Absolutely.

[Alice]

Rather than a square knot. And so this is why I think we can get into theories why the square knots were tied. First, because I've tied, like packages before where I tie how I normally tie things, and I naturally go to a square knot, because the thing I tie the Most are shoes. And so I naturally go to that knot. But when I tie with one string, it's a little more difficult. And after tying one side, I can imagine that's more difficult to tie. So then you switch to a different knot that is actually faster to tie.

[Brett]

I think it's your best argument. And there's going to be something that supports that. Because the square knots are found on Michael Moore, I think it's pretty clear that Michael Moore was tied up first. Explain that in a second. But I will say this. It's a good argument. I think that's the best argument you have for why they would all be the same on one side. Where it gets unusual is the fact that you then don't see the consistency. The fact that on Stevie Branch you have this weird extra loop and the figure eight thing, that is really weird. Is it possible one person is tying all these? Of course it is. I mean, it could just be. I don't know. They're in a rush. Weird things are happening. You have one person who. Everything is consistent in the way they're tied up. One person who. They're completely different on the two sides, actually, two people, both Michael Moore and Stevie Branch. The different sides of their bodies are tied in entirely different ways. And I think that leads to a thought that it's more than one person. Now, there's one speculation is the killer made the boys do it. I mean, that's possible. I'm gonna tell you why I don't think that's right in a minute. It's possible, but that's pure speculation. These knots are not complicated. You wouldn't need to be a sailor to know these. You don't need a Boy Scout badge to know how to tie these. The square knot, like I said, is a little bit more complicated. But if you're trying to tie double hitch, maybe you could do that, and that's what you would end up doing. But it is striking to me, the number of knots used on the various sides, the style of knots used, the fact that you have these extra flourishes on some of them, to me, point to more than one person is doing the tying. Whether it's the boys doing it, being forced to do it, and then maybe the killer ties the last person. You know, the killer is the one who ties up Christopher Byers. He's the one who ties up Christopher Byers. And that's why it's all double half hitches all the way around. That's a possibility. But I definitely think in my mind, one person didn't do all these. I could be wrong about that, but I just don't see it. I don't see one person doing all these different kinds of knots.

[Alice]

So to play devil's advocate for why you could be seeing so many variations across the board, okay. Christopher Byers is the only one who had all uniform knots on all of his limbs. He's also the one that was said to have bled out rather than to have drowned. We have no idea in what direction. Right. But potentially with the bleeding out, if that's what they're seeing, and no water in the lungs, I think that he was likely with less amount of water in his lungs. It's very possible that he was less mobile and less squirmy. I guess that's where he went. Yeah. Before he went into the water.

[Brett]

I think this is actually important for a lot of reasons, because I think it tells you when they were tied up. John Douglas, I believe it is, thinks they were tied up as a method of control. He's the one who says maybe the boys had to do it. What Alice is pointing out actually shows that that's not true. But I want to give you a few more facts about this which I think will support what Alice is saying. Whether it supports Alice's ultimate conclusion on this, I'm not sure. But we talked about this. They found three pairs of shoes, but only five shoelaces were used. One of them was cut or possibly torn in half. But if you've ever had a shoelace, it's hard to tear shoelace in half. It was cut in half. And based on the testimony, it's likely that Michael Moore's bindings were made of two pieces of a single cut shoelace, one part of which is referred to as a string. And part of the testimony. Now this. Some people get tripped up on this. They're like, oh, it's a string. Talking about shoelaces now, talking about strings, I don't know if maybe where you guys are from, you don't call them shoestrings. We call them shoestrings. And I think it's likely that just in the testimony, they're referring to them as strings, as in shoestrings rather than lace. I don't think there was, like, shoelaces were used, and then they pulled out a piece of string and did that as well. I don't think that happened. They cut a shoelace in half and they used it. This supports what Alice was saying earlier about, you know, maybe the killer. They cut the shoelace in half. They're doing the square knots, like, God, this is terrible. They then go to the half hitch and they also think, you know, it's easier just to use. I got enough shoelaces. I'll just use a whole shoelace. Right. It seems like Michael Moore was tied first. And then they go to using a full shoestring for each person. Now, what's interesting is that both Michael Moore and Stevie Branch did show significant contusions around their wrist, but Christopher Byers did not. He had only very faint contusions on one wrist. I think that supports two things. Number one, as Alice was saying, that when Christopher Byers was actually bound, he was very near death, almost deceased. I mean, he was very close to death, while the other two struggled more against their bindings. This is also consistent with the manner of death. Remember, the other two showed significant evidence of. Of drowning. Whereas Christopher Byers, maybe he drowned. He had some evidence of drowning. You can debate whether or not it's a drowning or the beating killed him or the loss of blood killed him. People do debate that, but the fact of the matter is he doesn't show as much evidence of drowning. What do I think this says? I think all three boys were bound at the very end of this to conceal them in the water, not to control them. They were then put in the water. Two of the boys are still alive. They're struggling against their bindings and they're drowning. And I realize that's a terrible thing to think about, but I think that's basically what they. What's happening. Christopher Byers is much closer to death. To the extent he struggles at all, it's very minor. It might even be just natural reflexes of the body more than actual struggle. He shows very little evidence of drowning. He shows very little evidence of contusions on his wrist, and he dies as well. So I think all of that supports what Alice is saying about when he was bound. And I think it also supports the notion that the bonding happened much later as a concealment mechanism, not as a control mechanism. Now, what's interesting about that is if that's what it was, then I also think it tells you the boys didn't do this. The boys weren't tying each other up at the end of this, after the beatings and whatever else happened, the stabbings or anything, right before they're put in the water. I think whoever did this is the one who tied the knots.

[Alice]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think this is near the end, and I don't. This is why I do think it's interesting there are so many different knots, but I think it tells us something different. That this was at least Christopher Byers, I don't think, was done in much of a rush. That's why it could have been done uniformly. But because he wasn't done in a rush, I think it's likely all three were not done in a rush, because I don't think you're going to be slowly tying one boy up while one is running. Right. You're going to do it all at one time. And the fact that they're all not uniform first tells me that they may have been in different stages of being able to fight back, as the contusions show. But also that it's possible, I think, more likely that there was more than one person tying these knots because they had the time to tie it and they weren't all uniform. But I also think we may not want to read too much into the fact that Stevie Branch had all those figure eights and the loops. I think what that probably shows is that whether it was involuntary or not, he probably had more movement. And there was an indication by whoever was tying the knots to do extra things to make sure he didn't get out. Whereas with Christopher Byers, they were looking at him and like, he's not going to get out of this. It's fine. Whereas Stevie Branch, it may have been involuntary muscle convulsions or something. But we also know that he likely was fighting and he had intake of air. So there was still intake of air when he was being tied up. That they may have seen him maybe struggling for breath or maybe moving. If you've ever tried to, you know, I'm not very good at tying things. When I tried to tie down my trunk, for example, I don't actually know how to do it. I. I do a bunch of crazy loops, you know, to try and make sure that my trunk doesn't open. I don't actually know what I'm doing. I couldn't recreate it, but I'm doing that because my trunk is kind of moving. And like, you know, the lawn chair or whatever I put in the back of my car is at a strange angle. So I'm just kind of looping it around whatever is available to make sure it's as sturdy as possible. I think it indicates this. The loops is less so telling us about the killer, more so, I think about Stevie and maybe his state at the time of being tied up. And then you get to Michael Moore. Michael Moore was the one who was down from the others, right?

[Brett]

Correct.

[Alice]

This one, I think is very interesting because I do think it's two people tying him on either end, because I do think he was the one who ran. That's why he's where he is. I don't think they put him 50 yards away. I think he got himself there was stopped. And because of that, what do you do when one of the three boys appears to be almost getting away? You're going to put your resources after it. So I think two ran after him and threw themselves on him and tied the two separate sides. So it's two separate people tying on the two different sides, which is why I think we see the different knots on either side, the square knots and the half hitches. But I think that whoever tied the square knots, maybe they didn't tie up anyone else, which is why we only see square knots.

[Brett]

Look, I'm very hesitant to ever think there are multiple people involved in a murder for all the reasons we've talked about before. Number one, if there were multiple people involved in the murder, you would expect someone to talk. Now, people who think the Westman was three are guilty are going to say, exactly. And Jesse Misskelley did talk, so I get that. But number one, you would expect people to talk. And number two, remember, there's almost no forensic evidence found in this case. Now, look, people overestimate how often forensic evidence is found. But nevertheless, the more people there, the more likely you would see forensic evidence. Somebody's gonna make a mistake. Somebody's gonna leave something. Particularly because I don't think this was a premeditated murder in the sense of like, you know, and take Delphi in Delphi, Richard Allen went to that park that day looking to kill someone, or at least to sexually assault someone. I think probably to kill someone. And in order to facilitate that, he dressed up from head to toe. He covered basically every part of his body. And in doing that, he ensured he wasn't going to leave fingerprints behind, he wasn't going to leave much DNA behind. I don't think that happened here. I don't think whoever did this went into those woods thinking, I'm gonna find some boys and I'm going to kill them, such that they were that prepared. I don't think that happened. But nevertheless, you don't find anything. Now, there's reasons for that. We've discussed before, the number of people in the woods, the fact that the scene was not contained very well. There's all reasons to think you wouldn't find anything. There's also just statistics. As we said before, ordinarily crimes are committed by sole perpetrators. That's just the way it is. There are multiple people who've committed crimes like this before. Not saying there aren't, but just if you're playing the odds, it's going to be one person. And as we always say, I think you try and start from the perspective of what is most likely. Most likely is it's one person. But when the evidence starts coming in, I think you have to reconsider your preconceived notions. And to me, when you look at the way the boys were killed, the injuries on the bodies, you think about where they were found. As Alice said, one of them is a good distance away from the other two. You look at the bindings, no single thing might convince you. Alice makes a really good argument for why all the bindings can be different. Even if it's one person, they're freaking out. They're dealing with different things with each boy. Some boys are beaten more severely than others. And so maybe they're more docile. Maybe the last one you can take more time with because you've already dealt with the other two. All reasons to imagine how it would be different. But I think when you put all of it together, all the different circumstances, this is really powerful evidence that multiple people are involved in this crime, whether it's a West Memphis three or somebody else. And I don't think you can ignore that. And I feel like the knots are often glossed over. I mean, to me, it's pretty striking how different this was done. Like, I think a mistake people make is to talk about, are the knots different? Is a single hitch versus a double hitch versus a square knot different? Because you can make arguments that they're not. Because a double hitch is just two single hitches, and a square knot could be a mistake. It's not that simple. It's the way they're bound, the way they're bound on each side of their body that I think is really striking. So something to think about, and I'm sure you guys will. And I'm interested to hear what y' all think about the knots. Get yourself some string and practice them and let me know what you think.

[Alice]

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[Brett]

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[Alice]

You guys know at this point, between Brett and me, we have a gaggle of kids. I have a lot of little kids at home and I'm always worried if they're getting enough nutrients and it's honestly hard to find a vitamin that they enjoy taking. I don't like having to force them to take vitamins and then enter hiya. Because they loved getting their own personalized glass bottles that holds their own vitamins. And it even came with stickers that they decorate their bottles with. So it's personalized just for them. And it's actually my kids who remind me every single day. Don't forget we have to take our hyav vitamins. It is such a relief to know that they are getting the best vitamins with zero sugar. I also recommend checking out their new kids probiotic and nighttime essentials. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off. Your first order to claim this deal, you you must go to hiahealth.com prosecute this deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H I y dash A H E A L T h dot com PROSECUTE and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.

[Brett]

Okay, so the boys are obviously found in the water. In addition, much of the clothing was found in the water as well. But it wasn't just thrown in the water. Remember, there was a real effort by whoever did this to conceal both the bodies and evidence of the crime. So the clothes were actually twisted around long sticks that were then jabbed into the creek bed down into the mud to hide the clothes. They obviously didn't do that entirely successful because seeing a shoe is what led the police to get into the water and to find the first body. Now, the police did find all the clothes, with the exception, as we said before, of five socks and two pair of underwear. Hard to say where that went. They could have just missed it. Though that feels unlikely. I still think it's possible they floated down the creek into the diversion canal and down into Ten Mile Bayou. It's a possibility. It's also a possibility, frankly. Maybe not all the boys are wearing underwear, maybe not all the boys are wearing socks. But I think it's also possible the killer, whoever it was, might have taken some trophies. So there's a lot of different possibilities there and we can just speculate. One thing that people have talked about that I feel like people have put too much emphasis on is that all the pants were found. All three were found. Two of them were inside out and all of them Were zipped up and buttoned. Now, before I had a little boy, I thought maybe this was significant. Like man who would, who would rebutton and re. Zip the pants. They're taking them off all of my. Now my little boy's four, he's not eight, but all of his clothes are inside out. He pulls off his pants, they're inside out. They're still buttoned, they're still zipped. He doesn't bother to do all that, he just takes them off, right? And if I'm taking him off of him, I do the same thing. So I don't think they were rebuttoned. I think that's just how they were taken off.

[Alice]

One thing I would note though, is the fact that they were completely inside out. That suggests to me that they were taken off with both feet, that the boys were not standing right. Because you can imagine if you can pull pants straight down, but my kids don't unzip or unbutton their pants either. You can pull them straight down and then they're like scrunched at the bottom of your ankles and you can step out of them. And it's hard to actually inside out them if you're feet are on the floor because the floor stops you from being able to totally inside out them. But if you're say, laying on your back and your feet are not touching the ground, it's a lot easier to pull them so that they are inside out. So this suggests to me that the boys were. I don't know, but I can imagine that perhaps they were incapacitated in some way so that they were not standing upright and these pants were ripped off of them without them being the ones to take them off. Now it's very possible that they pulled them off themselves and they were inside out and they were going swimming. Maybe it had nothing to do with this, but. But I do think it's interesting that it's not scrunched up or it's not halfway inside out, but like in one fell swoop kind of motion to pull off the pants, to inside out them.

[Brett]

I think you're right. If they were taken off by someone else, if they were taken off by the boys, then that is imagining how my son does it.

[Alice]

You pull your leg out, Inside out.

[Brett]

Pulls the leg out. And when he pulls the leg out, it pulls it fully inside out. And then he takes his leg out. Right, and leaves him behind. So I don't know. I don't know.

[Alice]

I agree with you. I think this is really hard. Like, I don't actually think the boys were swimming, but, like.

[Brett]

Oh, I don't either. But.

[Alice]

But you can imagine how, like, you could see this happening in any way, right? It could have been someone taking them off. They taking them. Maybe they were going to the bathroom in the woods. Do you know what my boys do all the time? Go to the bathroom outside? Now, they don't take off their entire pants to go to the bathroom, but they also definitely pull their pants way lower than they need to go to the bathroom. All to say is, I agree with you. I think it's really hard to dissect anything about this, about the fact that the pants were buttoned or zipped. I think that's why they were taken off, because I think it's hard to zip things up inside out. But this is interesting. Without knowing more, without maybe some fact we could find out along the way, would change my analysis of what's going on. But unlike the knots, which I think couldn't really tell a story, the pants, other than the fact that they don't have clothes on, I can't read anything more into it right now.

[Brett]

Let's go through the end of the initial investigation because I want to read that letter.

[Alice]

Okay, so let's talk about the Blue Beacon truck stop. We've talked a lot about Robin Hood Hills, how it's really not the woods. It's essentially like a football field, you know, size of trees to block out the sound from business and the highway from this neighborhood. And one of the businesses right there next to to the woods is the Blue Beacon truck stop. It's right off the interstate as truck stops typically are, and it's just above the woods where the bodies were found. In fact, the police used the Blue Beacon as a staging area to kind of investigate this crime scene. People who worked at the Blue Beacon on the days of the murder were interviewed by police. And from all those interviews, people said they saw no one going into the woods that day. Now, it's often said that the police were completely tunnel vision in on Damien from the very beginning. As the bodies were being removed, at least one juvenile officer, remember Jerry Driver, he did suggest that Damien had finally killed someone. But whatever Jerry Driver was thinking, initially, the West Memphis police were actually more focused on the usual suspects. People compiled a list with scores of recently paroled sex offenders, and police pulled the credit card purchase slips from local truck truck stops. They also pulled the names of drivers from local truck stops who were coming through this area. And all this information was sent to FBI offices for background criminal Checks. Now this included running a background check on John Mark Byers, Christopher Byers stepdad. Because the FBI had a file on Byers which indicated that Byers had been arrested in July of 1992 for cocaine conspiracy and possession of a dangerous weapon. Now John Mark Byers, as it would turn out, was a confidential informant for the police as well. So that cocaine conspiracy report didn't tell the whole story.

[Brett]

John, my bars. He's an interesting guy.

[Alice]

Interesting guy.

[Brett]

You know, he's like singing in the church. If you've seen West Memphis three, he's crazy person. He was very much a low level criminal though. He's involved in various drug trafficking things, he was involved in fraud, these other types of things. Now I will say this. There's nothing about John Mark Byers criminal history that makes me think he killed three 8 year olds. You know, to me this is my bias. That is a different kind of crime. Show me he's a peeping Tom. Show me he's a burglar. Then I'm like, okay, I can say I kind of see it. Show me he's a child molester. Show me he's like, he does crazy violent things. Okay, but drug trafficker, No, I don't see that. And as we've said, the more powerful reason to think he didn't do it is there was no time for him to do it. I think he's basically clear. We'll talk about some other things that make people think maybe he was involved. But he's a character and he's an interesting character. But I don't think he's a murderer.

[Alice]

So one thing to note here for kind of the critics who say that Damien was just like the police were not doing their investigation because all they did was hone in on Damien. Okay, Jerry driver, remember, he's the juvenile officer who had a lot of experience with Damien. So I can see why he would be like, huh, this troublemaker who's been on, you know, kind of my radar for all these things. I can imagine that he's thinking that, but he's actually not the one running the investigation. There's a lot of police here. This is the biggest crime that's happened in this area. And at least with respect to the initial investigation, they did all the things you would do to look for the usual suspects. Pulling these receipts, finding out the passerbys, the truck drivers in this area, finding out who would be here. What do you do when you have children who are naked and murdered? Look for sex offenders. Pull that sex offender Registry. That's what they did in this initial investigation. So I think that even if they did ultimately hone in on Damien, they didn't do it at the expense of not doing all the regular investigative things right after they found the boys. And the police themselves had a lot that they had to work against as well. They were frustrated. On May 26, which was three weeks after the murders, we see that Gitchell sent a terse message to the crime lab, which had, to that point, given him almost no information. And he is waiting on the forensics to come back to get something from the lab to be able to help him with this investigation. So three weeks in, he writes this letter that is. We're going to read it. But he goes through everything that you're probably thinking right now, and he's like, I need this information. And he sends it over to the Arkansas crime lab and says, specifically, I have a list of questions which is vital to our investigation. I understand Dr. Peretti will be out of the office for possibly another week, and we still have many questions left unanswered. And he starts, this is an enumerated list going down. He gets right to it. He didn't say, I know you're busy. You're backlogged. He's like, look, I need this for my investigation. One time of death. That's it. Number two, cause of death. Under it, he writes, Dr. Peretti stated he would send me his report over a week ago, and I still have yet to. To see it. You can. Frustration.

[Brett]

I just want to. This is three weeks later. Look, Gary Getchell gets a lot of grief in this case, and maybe he made some mistakes, maybe he was in over his head. But the crime lab failed this investigation in a lot of ways. Three weeks, 21 days after this murder, and we don't even have a cause of death yet. I mean, he should have known that immediately. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna write up the report. But here's what happened. And Peretti will later testify that he had this weird block about this case that basically it was so important that he couldn't even share information with the police, because what if the police leaked it? And so he's not giving them the information they need to solve the case. And it just. It goes from here.

[Alice]

And one thing to note about this, a lot of people say, oh, West Memphis was just too small of a jurisdiction. They were in over their heads. They didn't know what they were doing. These are questions sent to the crime lab of Arkansas in Little Rock this is the big city. This is the like professional lab, right? And they're the ones not giving information. And by the way, a lot of these, you have to send things off in order to continue your investigation. Like cause of death, for example, number three, pictures of clothing of the boys and the other set of clothing found away from the crime scene. And under that G wrote we took some pictures. However, we did not disturb clothing so not to lose any possible forensic evidence which the lab could possibly find. Again, see this is showing they were trying to take the steps to preserve this evidence. And they're like, we did the best we can. How hard could it be? You clearly have taken pictures at this point. Why haven't you sent them to us? Number four, which clothing belonged to which boy under that he wrote, if the lab can lay out the clothing and take photos, we could get parents to ID the clothing. They don't even have pictures of the clothes for the parents to help them with this. We feel this is important due to two sets of clothing were turned inside out and one set taken of in a more proper manner. Can it be determined from the clothing if the boys were wearing their clothes when they were initially taken? Is there any tears or blood or punctures found in clothes of the boys? The clothes are huge pieces of evidence as you can tell by the questions that Gitchell's asking here. Yeah, he shouldn't have to explain this by the way. Of course the crime lab knows this. This is showing his frustration, like my hands are tied. You literally have my evidence. I can't even figure out whose clothes belongs to whom.

[Brett]

And this is three weeks later. The man is trying to figure out, is this a stranger, is it a family member, is it a friend, is it a satanic cult? I don't know. But he can't do anything unless he has this information. And this is so basic, the things he's asking for, it's wild. He's not saying, you know, have you done a comprehensive toxicology screen to make sure that they weren't poisoned with succinycholine or whatever? Like it's not that he's not asking for them to go above and beyond. He's asking for the very basic stuff that you would expect, you know, would be determined. And look, I don't know what Dr. Peretti was doing, but got a triple homicide of 38 year olds. Why are you out of the office for a week? I mean, I don't want to judge, you know, maybe had a pre planned vacation or something but, but it, but.

[Alice]

It was three weeks later. He had two weeks before that.

[Brett]

What's going on? Like, why, why do you not have this information at this point? It's just wild. They don't know this, especially because some.

[Alice]

Of it's just pure administrative. Right? It all. It is helpful to understand that Peretti was like, I had a mental block because pictures of the clothing have nothing to do with like forensics. It's just literally because the evidence is with your lab that I can't do that. And I need you to take some pictures for me because I tried to keep it in tip top form for you to be able to glean some sort of forensic evidence from it.

[Brett]

How is it possible we're three weeks into this investigation and we don't know which clothes belong to which boy? How is that possible? I mean, a lot of the questions we have to this day stem from this kind of lackadaisical approach to this investigation.

[Alice]

And to get your credit, you can see, again, a lot of people are like, oh, the investigation is not thorough. I think this letter gives us a lot of insight into how he's thinking about the case and he's asking all the right questions. He's having to write this out. And that in and of itself is probably frustrating to him. We usually don't get into the mind of an investigator of what questions they're asking because they're just working the case. He's like, I have to itemize this for you.

[Brett]

This is such a good point that Alice makes. I want to highlight it because this is a window into investigations that you guys don't often see, but that Alice and I experience in a prosecutor's office. So for Gitchell, you know, it's directed at the medical examiner. We see this though. I mean, there are times where you have a case and you want the case to move. Maybe trials coming up, maybe, you know, there's a motion to suppress, maybe there's some sort of negotiation about plea agreement and there's all this information you need and you can't perform your job properly without it. And you're begging the investigator, you know, at the same time you're begging the investigator. You're putting on a good face for like the defense. Oh, no, we got it, we got it. And then you're turning around, you're like, you have to get me this stuff. I need this stuff right now. Right. And I feel like Gitchell was doing that. You know, he's talking to the press, he's like, oh, the investigation, we're it's going great. We're making strides, right? But just think, for 21 days at least, this is when he sent the letter. It's not when he got the information. This is when he sent the letter. They are operating. The police are canvassing the neighborhood. They're conducting investigations, they're talking to witnesses, they are checking alibis. They're doing all these things in the dark with no information, Right? And it's just. It blows your mind. But this is unusual. I'm not saying it's not. This is highly unusual. But it also is a window into what can be happening in an investigation that you're not aware of. So he goes on. Were the kids sodomized? If so, what are the findings? Any tears, bruising, etc. Which obviously. What kind of crime is this? Is it sexually motivated? Is it ritualistic? Is it a rage killing? These are all things he wants to know. Any blood found on clothing? The kids? Whose blood? Pretty good question.

[Alice]

Remember the Jeffrey McDonald case? The pattern of the bloods told us which order people were killed in. Tells you if you were wearing clothes at the time, it could tell you so much about what happened to these boys.

[Brett]

The next question, can you provide a wound diagram and explain injuries the boys received? Yes. Can you do that? Because you never did. Never. This doesn't exist as far as I know. Right? We talked about this with the autopsy. Like each individual wound, how it happened, when it happened is so critical and yet it never seems like this was resolved. There was never a detailed step by step, wound by wound explanation of exactly how the boys were murdered. Then he keeps going. Was the stick we sent used as a weapon on the children? The stick appeared to have been carved on or possibly done by animal. Can the lab address this? Which. This is interesting because Getchul is saying, hey, we have this evidence. Could an animal have been involved? This is a question that haunts us to this day. Right now he's talking about a stick, but nevertheless, like he's thinking the right way about this. We have all this evidence in a forest. What caused it? One boy had bruising which appeared to be where he was struck with something, possibly the stick on his leg. These are. I mean, it makes so much sense that he wants to know this information, but he's not getting it. This next question is one that also has haunted this case for a long time. Remember when the police talked to Damien and what was one of the things Damien said? It was very strange. He said that someone had urinated in the mouths of the boys. Very strange. Thing to say. He'd heard that, right? And it's like, what does that mean? Right? Well, the next question, Dr. Paredy mentioned finding urine in the stomach of two boys and requested from us water samples. What has been determined in regards to the urine? Can the urine, if that is what it is, be used to eliminate any suspects or develop any. So you can imagine if you're Gitchell, you've got this report that this random crazy guy in town that everybody thinks is a devil worshipper said someone urinated in the boy's mouths. And on the phone, Dr. Peretti has told him, oh, yeah, it seems like there's urine in two of the boys stomachs. And Gitchell's like, okay, well, we need to confirm that, right? But here we are 21 days later, and it has not been confirmed. And frankly, this is a question that people still debate. I think at the end of the day, they determined there was no urine, but I'm not entirely sure of that.

[Alice]

But one thing to know here, Dr. Peretti wasn't talking to Damien. And we don't know which order this happened in, but at least in the way the letter is phrased, it didn't say. Remember when I asked you to look for urine and you mentioned there was urine? It Sounds like independently, Dr. Peretti is raising the fact of urine without knowing the fact that there is this interview with some kid talking about urinating the boy's mouth. Now, it's possible that there was some talking about the urine, but if these are two independent things, that's very interesting. And at least the way it's phrased, it sounds like it's stemming from Dr. Peretti bringing it up in the first instance because he's asking for additional samples to test what he thinks he sees.

[Brett]

So then he asked a question which I think is very important. Were the boys forced to perform oral sex on the offenders? Remember, the boys had injuries to the ears and to their mouths that were consistent with forced oral sex. Please explain findings. Now, eventually, Pareti will say that the bruising on the ears and the wounds to the mouth were consistent with forced oral sex. But this is something Gitchell is already thinking about.

[Alice]

I'm sorry, but the please explain findings part is just like. Like, I can feel the rage of Gitchell. Like, it's like, come on, do your job. Must I remind you that we are looking at three boys who are horrifically murdered and potentially sodomized and forced to do the unthinkable before they met their tragic end. Please explain I truly feel his frustration coming through this. By the way, this is a very professionally written letter. But I'm just telling you, if I got a letter like this from, like, someone who's working on a case with me, I can feel the anger because. Because he's feeling that he cannot do what he needs to do because he's not getting the information that he needs to get that only the Arkansas Crime Lab can send him. So he goes on. By the way, we're through 10 questions. It keeps going. So question 11. Lisa Trace has been very helpful. Could I get a description of fibers found? Color and what areas should we look for for similar fibers? So it sounds like he's been calling up to the lab and trying to find anyone to help. That's how he knows Peretti is out. That's why he talked to this Lisa Trace. And he's like, look, look, go talk to Lisa because Lisa's been helpful. Tell me about the fibers. They could tell me a story. Again, forensic evidence. Then he says, which boys have similar fibers on them and description of them. Lisa has given me some information on this, indicating they have the information. Why won't you give it to us? Sure, maybe it's in draft form. But I need to continue this investigation. I can't wait until you've written this, like, incredible opus on it. I want to know what you have now. You can revise later, but help me with this investigation. We have a killer or maybe killers on the loose. 13, any residue found under nails of boys? Yeah, makes total sense. That's, like, one of the first things you usually get back from a crime lab because you might have DNA, and.

[Brett]

This was in the early days of DNA. I mean, get you on top of it asking this question.

[Alice]

Also, residue, it may be DNA. If it's mud, it says something. It means that they were moving while still on water. If it's dry tree bark, that says something as to where the crime scene may have been. Because right now we know where they were found, but it's not completely clear where the crime scene is yet. So residue could actually tell you a lot. Or if it's residue that's nowhere found in the forest, maybe they were killed somewhere else and then brought here. I mean, this is just. You can see he's thinking about it in the right way. Again, I want to say that this insight into his investigation is very enlightening, at least for me. 14, is there anything which would indicate a black male involvement? Does that sound like tunnel vision to you? Damien's not black. But he's thinking about other people who have sighted black men in the forest. Or he's thinking about maybe Mr. Bojangles. You don't ask that question if you're only focused on trying to pin it on a white kid who might be a Satan worshiper. So I think this question, even though it's what number 14 on this list of questions, he is not tunnel visioned so far. He is trying to go down every potential lead to make sure they find the right person or people.

[Brett]

You can believe propaganda in this case if you want to. You can believe what the devil's not says, what Damien Nichols tells you. You can believe what Paradise Lost says, but it's not true. Gary Gitchell was in charge of this investigation. And even if there were police officers who believed that Damien Nichols was involved, Gary Gitchell was looking at other suspects from the beginning. Now, he eventually settled on Damien for reasons that will become evident. But it is simply not the case that from the beginning they were trying to frame Damien Echols for this case. This is three weeks after the boys were found. That is something to remember.

[Alice]

In addition to this being a horrific crime, we have an entire community on edge because there is a mad killer or killers on the loose who could strike, strike again. That's the other side of this. Why there's such immense pressure to solve this. Because what if this person is a serial killer and they strike again while the lab is just sitting on clothing, sitting on all this information they have, There might actually be an active killer. Well, we know that there was an active killer still on the loose who could easily strike again. Question 15, reference to injuries of kids, defensive wounds. How severe were the kids dragged Again? He's trying to figure out where the crime scene is. What happened? What was the order of events here? 16. Can you tell us which kid was killed first? Anything you think to give us would be greatly appreciated. We need information from the crime lab desperately. Today is the third week the boys were missed by parents. Tomorrow, May 27, 1993 will be the actual third week week. We feel like we have not gotten sufficient information from the crime lab. We realize you have other cases coming in and must go to court on other matters. However, this case has received national recognition and without the crime lab's information, our hands are tied. The efforts of everyone at the crime lab is greatly appreciated. The officers investigating this matter and myself need this information. We feel as though we are walking blindfolded through this case at this moment. Please answer the above questions as soon as possible. And fax it to my attention. Gives his number. Thanks, Gary Kitchell.

[Brett]

Yeah. And you want to know why we're on episode 13 and people are still debating this case? This is why. Because I don't know what happened or how this went wrong. There's that, there's that show called the first 48. And the whole point is that most murders are solved if they're going to be solved in the first 48 hours. Because after that you lose so much information every day. You're losing evidence every day. Witnesses, memories are growing stale, people are leaving the area, people are dying. I mean, even at this early stage, right? And they're three weeks in and as Gary Gitchell says, they are blindfolded. And if you want to know, you know, why was it. And eventually we're going to get to Jesse Misskeli's confession. We want you to have all the information before we get to it. That's why we're holding it towards the end. You want to know why when Jesse Misskelley comes in and confesses this crime, everybody jumps on it. I do think they were desperate to solve this case. They wanted to solve this case. They had these three boys who were murdered. As Alice said, there's a murderer on the loose and they are getting nothing in the way of support. So somebody comes in and says, okay, fine, I did it and here's what happened. And my friends were involved. I bet Gary Gitchell was on his knees thanking Jesus that that had happened because based on the support he was getting, he wasn't gonna discover who did this through good investigative techniques. Right? That's not what it felt like. This case had already gone sideways. And it had gone sideways because for whatever reason, in my opinion, and look, we've talked about this before, there were things the police could have done, should have done with their investigation to tie this up more tightly. But remember, everything they're doing is, as Gary Gitchell says, like walking around in the dark.

[Alice]

And just to give a little bit of our experience and working on like an emergent situation, like a child's been kidnapped or bullets have been fired, there's been a robbery. There's indication that there's gonna. This person is going to continue to do what they're doing. They've taken a hostage, something like that. I am on the phone with the lab and I'm getting real time information. It could be completely revised later. But I'm on the phone and I'm like, drop everything, run this bul. Tell me where it came from tell me if this gun is where you have it. Pull this security tape right now. Like, the phone is off the hook. And I'm not talking about a triple homicide.

[Brett]

When you had a kidnapping case. I mean, you're on the phone with cast and they're running the cell phone non stop and they're tracking it in real time.

[Alice]

I'm watching the cell phone pings happen in real life, and they're like, they're doing it to the best of their knowledge. And then ultimately when we go to court and, you know, indict the case and all those things, and we have the official records come in from whatever, that's great. And things may get fine tuned at that point, but I am quite literally on the phone with agents in real time. And they are like, okay, I just talked to this person. They're not writing the report. They're just telling me what they heard. Because all we care about is that specific instance right there. Because it's emergent and every second counts. That's why three weeks is shocking for this. You would think that he'd be on the phone nonstop with, with the crime lab, with Peretti. Everything he found, he'd be like, hey, I found urine. Hey, this is what I found under his skin. Did you know that he had some, like, purple fiber? There's no purple fibers. Purple fibers under his nails. They were in the woods where the purple fibers come from. I mean, you'd be going back and forth and trying to solve this together. So the fact that he has to write a pen, a letter that is addressed formally with the address at the top and then his fax number at the bottom, the formality of it shows the incredible frustration because when I'm talking to the agents, there's no formality. I'm not. Hello, officer. Five, four, three, two, one. This is, you know, prosecutor Alice coming from this office. No, they know exactly who I am because I'm on speed dial for that case until we figure out what's going on. And so the formality of this letter, the fact this letter had to even be written tells you a lot about how hampered their investigation was. That was really not Gitchell's fault at this point.

[Brett]

Well, guys, we have talked about a lot of things in this episode. It's been a thick episode. I hope you guys have gotten a lot of information out of it. I. I think in episode 14, we'll finish the general outline maybe next time. And then we'll get to dive into things like alibis and criminal histories and confessions. And I know you guys are excited about that, interested to hear what you think about this case, what you think about the knots, what you think about this problem that Getchul is running into, all of that. Still want to hear what you guys think about the autopsies, cause of death, animal predation, all of that. These are heavy topics. But when you have three 8 year old boys who are murdered, that's what you can expect. Let us know what you're thinking. Shoot us an email prosecutors pod gmail.com@ ProsecutorsPod for all your social media. Join us on the gallery to discuss this case. It's been going hot and heavy. We've only had to ban a few people. It's not been too bad so far, but that's probably because the Karen Reed case is ongoing. As we discuss this, once that one closes up, hopefully forever or in preparation for trial number three, we can move on to the West Memphis three in full. If you want to watch us record these episodes or if you want to hear them early and ad free and join us on Patreon for as little as $3 a month or as much as you would like to give, you can have all the benefits of a Patreon subscription. Alright, Alice, well, before we sign off for today, do you have anything else you want to add?

[Alice]

I think timelines are really important and I also think it's really important when we're looking at this to put ourselves in the shoes of being three weeks out from the case as opposed to being able to look back 20, 20. These investigations, as we have noted many times, they're not scripted. They are run by human beings who are not omniscient. And you are walking through it until you reach a dead end. You don't know the path you're going down is a dead end. You don't know which paths are the worthy ones. Investigators. Investigators are human beings who have to work on instinct and experience. And it's easy to look back and say these are all the places where you went wrong. But if you put yourself quite literally in that time period, walking along the investigators, a lot of their actions begin to make a lot more sense. Doesn't mean you don't criticize them because we never want to repeat mistakes. But I think a lot of the criticism comes from looking backwards and thinking that there was a roadmap to follow. There was no roadmap. There's never a roadmap. When you have a horrific crime like this, you can investigate a hundred triple murders. Not a single one of them will Be the same as the last. These are incredibly complex, incredibly difficult. Not to mention the emotional toll on the investigators who are running these investigations. And it doesn't excuse away any missteps. But I think it helps give a full picture of context of where questions are coming from and why certain investigative statement steps are taken or not taken rightfully or wrongfully.

[Brett]

And it's a really good point. We talk about this a lot. We're not excusing the mistakes. But I think one thing people are far too quick to jump to is corruption. And there's that old saying, you know, don't mistake malice for incompetence. And that is so true. You don't have to be incompetent to make mistakes. You can be under immense pressure. You can have the deaths of three boys on your consciousness, conscience. You can have limited resources. You can be working from west Memphis and having to deal with a state crime lab because you don't have your own crime lab because you're a tiny little town who never deals with anything like this. That's what you're seeing here. And that's going to generate mistakes. And it's important, it's important to identify those mistakes. But it's so easy to fall into the demonization thing. Oh, they didn't care. They didn't care about these boys. They just wanted statistics or whatever. That's not true. They wanted to solve this case and if you think they got it wrong, they probably wanted to solve it with too much passion and emotion and they made mistakes that led to a wrongful conviction. Or maybe you think they got the right guys. We're going to keep talking about that as we go forward. We have a lot more to discuss and we will do that next week. But until then, I'm Brett.

[Alice]

And I'm Alice.

[Brett]

And we are the prospect.

[Alice]

That's not gonna help just a little bit. Were you exhausted yesterday? I was like, yeah, man, my shoulder hurts. Yes. Up here. Like if you were sitting at a computer.

[Brett]

I think I was holding. Yeah, exactly.

[Alice]

Yeah. Like I had, I, I came back and I was like, oh my goodness. It's like because we didn't move. But also I was like physically so tired. Cuz it was kind of like doing a five hour hearing.

[Brett]

It was. We may have done documentary yesterday.

[Alice]

Sam.

[Brett]

Just quietly bragging about.

[Alice]

Yes, you have to brag about it now because we'll all forget about it by the time it comes out.

[Brett]

It'll come out and we won't be in it at all.

[Alice]

I know, I know.

[Brett]

Oops.

[Alice]

Sam.

[Brett]

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