Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (51 page)

358. Circuit judge Ralph Wilson.

359. Deputy prosecutor Stewart Lambert.

360. Arkansas State Police officer Brant Tosh testified at the hearing in which Byers’s probation was revoked. But when he later checked on the disposition of those cases he was surprised. Looking them up on the computer, he said, “This is not the typical disposition.” Tosh reported that Byers had been sentenced to sixty months for the residential burglary and sixty months for theft of property, plus twelve months on the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Together, the sentences totaled 132 months, or eleven years—three years more than the eight years he was ultimately ordered to serve in prison. Prosecutor Brent Davis, citing pending appeals in the West Memphis murder case, declined to be interviewed for this book.

361. For most of his incarceration, Byers was held at the Delta Regional Unit, in Dermott, Arkansas.

362. Byers spoke about his first marriage but made no mention of his conviction for having threatened his first wife’s life. He said that after jewelry school, he’d risen quickly through the ranks of Gordon Jewelers, until 1981, when the chain’s management wanted him to move to Houston “to be a home-office supervisor over 168 stores.” He claimed his wife didn’t want to move to Houston, “and so being the good, Southern Baptist family man that I was raised up to be, I chose my family and resigned.” Byers said he’d “felt used” after that marriage failed, but insisted that he had “never hit a woman.” To the contrary, he insisted, “It takes a very small man to strike a woman.”

363. He said he’d described the dream in the presence of the filmmakers after Melissa had mentioned that she’d been raped. “She used that rape as part of her reason for why she did drugs,” he said. “I was telling her the story about the dream to help her see that that didn’t make sense. I told her, ‘If this had happened to me, like I had dreamed, would that give me an excuse to do drugs?’ But the filmmakers, they edited where I said this was a story. They left out that it was a dream.”

364. Byers quickly added, however, that he’s “never had a bad temper” and that he was, in fact, “a very mild-mannered person.” Nevertheless, he said, he’d taken a course in anger management in prison. He said that while some inmates were required to take the course, he had volunteered.

365. Author interview, November 2001.

366. Melissa’s parents were Dorris and Kilburn “Dee” DeFir.

367. “When they moved up there,” Dee DeFir said, “we paid for gas to heat the house and so Ryan could have hot water. They didn’t have a telephone, so I had a phone put in and the bill sent to me, just so Melissa and Ryan could call us. I paid the telephone bill and the gas bill. We brought groceries up there to them at least once a month.”

368. “Mark might have had something to do with it,” Dorris DeFir said. Her husband agreed, “We don’t want nothing to do with him.” Yet they express no interest—and see little point—in any future legal inquiry. “If he killed her and got away with it,” they say, “he’ll pay for it in the long run.”

369. Rick Murray was now living in Tennessee. In his letter to the Web site, which was posted in May 2000, he wrote: “I know the people who are close to this thing, and I know that people were mad about it, and they were wanting it to be solved quick. It got to the point where they weren’t thinking about the truth, they were only listening to what the police and the reporters were telling them.” He continued, “There was no evidence to convict the three who are in prison and everybody knows this. They just don’t want to see it this way because it’s easier to believe that the police got the right people.” In a subsequent interview, Murray said he had never signed papers to allow Byers to adopt Christopher and that Byers’s claims that the adoption had taken place were false. Murray is entitled to see Arkansas records pertaining to the reported adoption, if they exist, but as of this writing, he had not pursued that option. If his statement is correct, and Christopher never was adopted, his burial under the name of Byers would constitute an early and significant legal error.

370. Information about Byers’s location while on parole was not part of the public record. However, sources reported that after his release from prison, he was granted permission to move to eastern Tennessee.

371. In fact, the documentary opened with scenes from the video footage shot by the police during the recovery of the three victims’ bodies. Hobbs had signed a release and accepted payment for her participation in the film, but she claimed in her lawsuit that she’d been extremely upset at the time and not competent to enter into a contract.

372. She claimed that the availability of the photos on the site had caused her great emotional distress. This time she prevailed. As a result of her complaint, eBay announced that it would modify its policy and no longer allow the sale of morgue and crime scene photos. Rob Chestnut, an attorney for eBay, pointed out, however, that the issue was not a simple one. “The people who monitor our site really focus on the illegal items,” he said, “and there is nothing illegal about crime scene photos.” Reported by the Associated Press, September 25, 2000.

373. When word of the exchange was passed to members of the Arkansas media, a reporter called the governor’s office to clarify the matter but the aide would not return her calls. Prosecutor Brent Davis would not comment either, saying that the matter should be decided in the courts. “I regret my involvement that led to the documentary,” he said. “In hindsight, I think it was poor judgment and I don’t think I’m going to make the same mistake twice.” The supporter who wrote to the governor’s office asking that he “look into this case and see if there is something you may be able to do,” was Johnny Bratton Jr., of Cabot, Arkansas. The governor’s aide who responded on March 23, 2000, was Teena L. Watkins.

374. Web site cofounder Kathy Bakken signed up for the course taught by Brent E. Turvey, a self-employed criminal profiler based in San Leandro, California. Turvey lists among his credentials a master’s degree in forensic science from the University of New Haven, located in West Haven, Connecticut. He was a partner in Knowledge Solutions LLC, a company that specialized in criminal profiling.

375. In November 2001, Turvey wrote a similar analysis of information from Arkansas State Police files about the death of Melissa Byers. That “equivocal death analysis” concluded, “This examiner’s review of the autopsy report would suggest that this death was not likely consistent with natural causes, given the victim’s history, and given that no natural causes were found. It would also suggest that this death was not likely consistent with suicide, given the nature of the needle marks, abrasions and contusion that could suggest the involvement of a second individual. It would also suggest that this death was not likely consistent with accidental causes.”

376. “Personally, we felt they were innocent and that they deserved a new trial because there were so many questions,” Berlinger said, “but we weren’t making an advocacy film. To me, it was clearly a film about injustice, and it showed the trial to be a mockery, but we weren’t trying to shove that down peoples’ throats. The majority of people saw it the way we saw it. But to my surprise and dismay, that 20 percent confused our desire to present a full portrait and our lack of narration with the idea that the film was saying, ‘Those fucking kids got what they deserved.’” Berlinger said that members of that latter group cited clips of Damien in the courtroom as evidence of his guilt. “Damien was a young, narcissistic kid, and his behavior was apparently part of the reason people thought he must be guilty. We felt we had to include scenes like the one of him combing his hair in the courtroom, and talking about being remembered as ‘the West Memphis bogeyman,’ because those are what make a full portrait. They said, ‘This is what Damien was like when he was put on trial. This is what he was like on the stand, being questioned about Aleister Crowley.’ It’s not there to say he’s guilty, but to say that somebody with this kind of personality and this kind of intelligence in this part of the world, in this kind of case can be found guilty for being this way.”

377. A headline in the
Wall Street Journal
noted: “Documentary Raises Questions About Teens’ Guilt but Strays Into Support-Group Babble.” But most critics seemed most taken up by the extensive footage of Byers. One wrote that Byers’s numerous orations left the impression “of a very bad actor imitating grief.” Others called him “strange” and “obsessed.” Another wrote that Byers seemed “to be playacting, as if dramatizing his psychic turmoil will make it more real to the public (and to him).” Still another reflected, “He’s starring in his own horror movie, and not only does he understand this fact, he seems to thrive on it.” Howard Rosenberg, of the
Los Angeles Times,
took a more cautious view. In a review published in March 2000, Rosenberg noted that Byers was paid an “honorarium” for participating in
Revelations
—a fact that the writer said made him, in effect, “a paid performer” and tainted the film’s credibility.

378. Matt Zoller Seitz, March 12, 2000.

379. From an article headlined “Sequel Rekindles Doubts in Triple Murder Case” by Cathy Frye and Kenneth Heard, February 20, 2000.

380. “So one day,” Berlinger recalled, “I was sitting in my underwear after a very long day and I flipped on the television. It was January 2000, and Roger Ebert was doing his annual show at the end of the year, where he sat down with Bill Clinton, and Clinton was saying that his top pick of the year was
The Hurricane
[Norman Jewison’s 1999 film starring Denzel Washington about the controversial murder conviction of prizefighter Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter]. Clinton was saying all these things about what a great film it was, and I was flabbergasted. I kept thinking, ‘Hey, fella, you should see a film about what’s gone on in your own state.’”

381. Bland’s piece appeared in an issue of the
Rocket,
one of many publications catering to Seattle’s vibrant music scene.

382. Also featured were the Clash’s Joe Strummer with the Long Beach Dub All-stars, the John Doe Thing, L7, Murder City Devils, Tony Scalzo of Fastball, Nashville Pussy, former Breeders singer Kelley Deal, Rocket from the Crypt, Mark Lanegan, Zeke and Killing Joke—who had reunited specifically for the cause. Portions of Jello Biafra’s performance “The Murder of Mumia Abu Jamal,” were also used on the CD. In interviews that accompanied the CD’s release, the Supersuckers’ lead singer, Eddie Spaghetti, explained, “I guess the thing that touches me about those guys is the fact that it could be any one of us.” Doe said, “The world is unfair, damn it, and we’re here to keep it a little more fair in any small way we can” (
Arkansas Times,
April 21, 2000). Earle, who’d spent a year in prison himself on a drug charge, said his opposition was to the death penalty, period. Bland told a reporter for the
Willamette Week
(October 10, 2000), “The best we can do in this situation is just make sure that the authorities in Arkansas don’t get away with anything, that whatever happens is publicized, that people know about it.” He added, “Tom Waits said something about this case. He said, ‘The worst two things you can be in our justice system are poor and different, and these guys were both.’”

383. The notes were written by Burk Sauls, who warned that a CD such as this could, in some jurisdictions, send a person possessing it “on a horrible descent through the criminal justice system, and eventually into a lifetime in a maximum security prison.” Sauls wrote that the inmates for whom it was made “liked the kind of music that’s on this CD. They wrote poetry and read Stephen King and Shakespeare and wore black concert T-shirts. That was enough for the judge and jury.” The notes referred listeners to the www.wm3.org Web site, and to the Justice Project’s Campaign Against Wrongful Executions at TheJusticeProject.org.

384. From an article titled “Death Penalty Ignites a Musical Coalition,” by Ann Powers, in the
New York Times,
June 27, 2001.

385. A letter to Todd and Dana Moore from Bruce Carlock, owner of Music City Record Distributors, and Scott “Perk” Perkins, vice president of retail, was posted on the MidSouthJustice.com Web site. In the letter the chain’s owner explained, “After speaking with the mother of one of the murdered victims and the chief investigating officer in the case, we have made the decision to support the victims’ families by not carrying this release. The case has gone through multiple reviews and appeals, all the way up to the Arkansas Supreme Court, and the judgment of each appeal confirmed the guilt of the accused.”

386. Robert Christgau’s review in the
Village Voice
was published in November 8, 2000.

387. One of the Supersuckers’ own CDs was titled
The Evil Powers of Rock and Roll.

388. The reviewer for the
Village Voice
understood the phenomenon. “These three unjustly convicted outcasts may have identified with big shots like Megadeth on their black T-shirts,” Christgau wrote, “but in fact they were scuzzballs like Zeke. As young bands turn into old road warriors like L7 and Rocket From the Crypt, they meet many fellow scuzzballs along the way, and this piece of outreach puts that connection into musical practice.”

389. Dotty Oliver’s article “Hurricane in Arkansas” appeared in the March 21, 2001. issue of the
Little Rock Free Press.

390. Similarly, Martin assured readers that the documentaries had “omitted much of the less sensational yet damning evidence.” But again, he said nothing about what that “damning evidence” was.

391. Author interview, April 2001.

392. “There’s been a lot of suggestion about the murders happening somewhere else,” Fogleman said. “And we seriously considered that. But [since] they were last seen in that general area about six o’clock the night before, what you would have to conclude, if they were killed somewhere else, is that they were abducted in that general area, taken somewhere else and murdered, and then taken back to the place—where people would have been searching—to dispose of the bodies. Criminals aren’t smart, but I think they’re smarter than that.”