~Introduction~

The story that follows is - and I say this with a certain degree of understatement - extraordinary. The grisly murders of three eight-year-old boys in a small town in middle America should have been enough in and of themselves to rank among the most gruesome and horrifying in recent memory. Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore disappeared from their West Memphis, Arkansas homes on the evening of May 5, 1993, after being seen together headed for the woods where they often played; Robin Hood Hills, to the locals. After an all-night search, the children were found early the next afternoon in a shallow drainage ditch that fed into the main bayou. Each boy had been beaten, badly cut, stripped naked, and bound wrists-to-ankles with his own - or his friend’s - shoelaces. Their clothes were jammed down into the muddy creek bottom with sticks that stood like crude grave markers just under the water’s surface. The autopsies concluded that Stevie and Michael were alive when they were tossed into the creek. Christopher, who was also emasculated during the attack, was most likely dead prior to being submerged. To the police officers and detectives of the West Memphis Police Department, it was a scene of incomprehensible horror.

The case became even more bizarre when three local teens, who had no known connection to the victims, were arrested within a month of the murders. After several hours of questioning, police had extracted a very confused, disjointed confession from a mentally challenged 17-year-old, Jessie Lloyd Misskelley, Jr., who claimed that he and two of his friends had committed the murders. Within hours of the confession, police raided the residences of Damien Wayne Echols, 18, and Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, before taking them into custody. The three boys, with an affinity for black clothes, heavy metal music, and - said the prosecution - an interest in the occult, were each charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Ten months later, in two sensationalistic trials, they were convicted of the murders of the three Weaver Elementary School students. The alleged motive of the crime: Satanic Ritual Murder. The prosecution asserted that the three teens were involved in occult rituals including animal sacrifice, blood drinking, and sexual deviancy, and suggested that the crime was driven by the most extreme of Satanic rites, human sacrifice. The prosecution sold the jury on their theory of motive using the testimony of bogus occult "expert" Dale Griffis, the holder of a mail order degree from a fraudulent diploma mill. Despite a total lack of physical evidence against the three, and only the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, the juries somehow agreed with the state. Misskelley and Baldwin drew life sentences, while Echols was sent to death row. The local press sensationalized the motives and served as a conduit for pretrial publicity, going so far as to publish the very shaky confession of Misskelley, poisoning the jury pool beyond any damage control that admonishments from the bench could provide. Though a fair trial was all but impossible, the state had no choice but to proceed. The people of Arkansas, only knowing what they heard from the media, were satisfied with the verdicts and sentences, and the families of the victims were sent home to grieve, along with the families of the convicted, who couldn’t fathom what had just happened to their sons.

Any peace that existed was short lived. The convictions of Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley ignited a controversy that would eventually draw hundreds - perhaps thousands - to its ranks. The murders themselves, unspeakable though they were, would be overshadowed several years later by the ultimate in post-conviction publicity - a feature-length documentary film on the trials of the young men who would become known as the West Memphis Three. Virtually unnoticed during the trials, blending in with the local media, were two New York film producers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who were filming the entire trial. They had gained unprecedented access to the families of both the victims and the defendants, and the legal and investigative teams of the boys on trial. They were granted exclusive jailhouse interviews and inside access to defense strategy sessions. The result of their efforts was the documentary Paradise Lost, which premiered on Home Box Office in June of 1996. An enormous viewing audience was exposed to the powerfully seductive journalistic style of Berlinger and Sinofsky, and thousands of people, including hoards of hopelessly idealistic youths, were indoctrinated into what would soon become a bona fide movement. The film, along with its March, 2000 followup, Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, was a not-so-subtle condemnation of the police, prosecutors, state witnesses, and the trial judge, and compellingly asserted that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdicts. Both films - the second more boldly than the first - made another assertion, one that would be held up like a bronze snake in the desert, giving the fledgling movement what it needed most: an alternate suspect. Enter John Mark Byers.

Today supporters of the West Memphis Three do not universally believe that Mark Byers is actually guilty of any wrongdoing in connection with the murder of his son, but it was not always that way. Over the years since the release of the HBO films, Mark endured all manner of accusations. Rather than directly charge him with complicity in the murders, supporters have frequently sought cover under the assertion that Mark was not sufficiently investigated before being cleared as a suspect. As new believers join the movement, particularly as the film is released in more foreign countries, the accusations begin anew after they catch a glimpse of Mark blasting pumpkins and burning mock graves on screen. This claim - that Mark was not fully investigated during the period between the murders and the verdicts - is fully explored at various places in this book, as is Mark’s most recent change in status among supporters due to startling new developments in the case. These developments, leading to the filing of what could be Damien Echols’s final appeal, are covered in detail in this account of a case that just won’t go away.

This book seeks to answer troubling questions about Mark Byers, questions that have never had a proper forum.

Perhaps most importantly, this book takes a close look at the years following the filming of Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, leading up to Mark’s imprisonment in May, 1999, a period during which his mental state disintegrated to the point where he was, by his own admission, "just waiting to die." In the search for answers, we will explore not only Mark’s life and exploits, but also the worlds of print and motion picture media, and how those media were manipulated by both sides of the issue.

Supporter prejudice against Mark Byers has traditionally ebbed and flowed with the prevailing state of the case. Recent evidence relating to DNA test results, for which a motion was filed back in July of 2002, and which implicates another parent in the crime, is the fruit of a movement that now has enough financial horsepower to hire the experts that, had they been available to the indigent defendants in 1994, might have altered the outcome of the criminal trials. Dr. Michael Baden, former Chief Forensic Pathologist for New York City, and consultant for the defense in the O.J. Simpson and Phil Specter trials, was retained by the Echols defense team, along with renowned medical examiner Dr. Vincent Dimaio. The defense was also able to retain former FBI profiler John Douglas, of Mindhunter fame, to backtrack over evidence that may have been overlooked - or ignored - by the West Memphis Police Department and the Arkansas State Prosecutor’s office, and create a true offender profile. Does the new evidence point toward another suspect, and away from Mark Byers? Supporters have often claimed that Mark’s timeline for the night of the murders is not airtight. They also point to the famous "John Mark Byers knife" turned into police by the HBO crew who filmed Paradise Lost, and which contained traces of human blood matching both Mark and Christopher, as giving credibility to the claim that Byers was dismissed too quickly as a suspect. If the three convicted men are ever retried, how would this bode for Mark Byers?

Accomplices Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr., are serving life sentences, their fates tied inexorably to that of Echols. Because of the hope that the three will be granted new trials, and the desire to find an alternate suspect, accusatory implications continue to be directed toward Mark Byers. For example, in May 2006, an art show opened in San Francisco for the benefit of the WM3 defense fund (the fund being run by Echols’s wife, architect Lorri Davis), and featured for sale, among other "art", a wall-sized painting with crude representations of the three murdered children. On the lower portion of the painting is the unmistakable image of Mark Byers wearing his signature striped shirt a la Revelations: Paradise Lost 2. He is shown with dripping blood ringing his mouth, apparently meant to correlate with the inset image of victim Steve Branch depicting the "bite mark" wound on his forehead. Not exactly subtle imagery. It isn’t hard to imagine Mark’s reaction to seeing that image plastered all over the internet, and knowing that it was sold to raise money for the people he was sure were guilty of killing his son. Although the Free the West Memphis Three movement’s founders have repeatedly denied ever accusing Mark of any complicity in the murders, it is evident that many of the movement’s members are not as reluctant to point the finger, even in the presence of recent evidence making the assertion totally without merit. Their often reckless disregard for any collateral damage caused by their activism, especially when coming from higher profile supporters with access to mass media, has been a source of great pain and embarrassment for Mark’s family, whom he often feels he has let down. With all that said, this book will endeavor to treat the subject of the Free the West Memphis Three movement in as fair and balanced a way as possible. Emotions have run high over the years, and thus the task will be difficult, but to sidestep it would be unfair to the reader, and would leave a gaping hole in the story.

The Mark Byers that is revealed in these pages began evolving long before May of 1993, back in the tiny rural town of Marked Tree, Arkansas. Raised by honest, hard working, God-fearing, patriotic parents, Mark grew up in a simple world, a world of hunting and fishing, knowing your neighbors, going to church, and living the small town life that typifies much of middle America. His progression from these earthbound roots to a world of legal troubles, undercover police work, personal tragedy, and ultimate imprisonment is the essence of this book, set against the cataclysmic events of May 5, 1993 and the ensuing drama. The case has been the object of so much public scrutiny, that it is essential, given the controversy that still surrounds him, that the lingering questions about Mark Byers be given proper attention; somewhere between blind justification, and contemptuous vilification, lies the middle ground of truth. This book is a glimpse beneath the image of the P.T. Barnum-style, fustian showman that has been characterized by his public persona, revealing a man who is far less menacing, and far more vulnerable than the man who appeared in Paradise Lost, shooting pumpkins in effigy with a black-powder .44 magnum.

Mark has long been an easy target for those who wanted to exploit him - especially given his complicity - and was especially so during the years immediately following the tragedy that catapulted him into the public eye. By his own admission, he was self-destructing, his life literally unraveling, trying to kill the pain with pills, booze and bravado, and was truly ripe for the plucking. When the New York filmmakers rolled into town, they discovered that the ever-quotable Mark Byers was a big draw on the screen, and featured him prominently in their two feature-length documentaries. Even today, print journalists, TV reporters, and bloggers contact Mark for interviews, though he grants them sparingly. If we want to get past the sound bites and see beyond the superficial, we need to illuminate what have been the darkest corners of his life.

For that, we need Mark Byers.

continue