WITCHES IN WEST MEMPHIS-George Jared

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Gives a comprehensive insider's view into the West Memphis three case. No author, documentary, filmmaker, or journalist has had more access in this case, Jared recounts his first hand court coverage, interviews with witnesses, research, and other information he gathered in the case. Interviews include one on death row with Damien Eccles, interviews with Jason Baldwin and Jesse Muskelly Junior, and interviews with other suspects, including Terry Hobbs. He's been credited in

numerous documentaries, including Paradise, Loss Three Purgatory. In the New York Time Times bestseller Life After Death, Witches graphically recounts how three boy scouts, Stephen Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, rode their bikes after school on a bright afternoon. Their bodies were found in the wooded area near their homes the next day. The manner of death and the way they were bound ankled the wrist made authorities think

Satanists might have sacrificed the children. No real evidence tied the teens to the crime, but an error ridded riddled confession by miss Kelly was the proof used to seal the verdicts in the case. As time passed, overwhelming scientific evidence was discovered, witnesses changed their statements, new suspects rose

to the surface. The book they were featuring this evening is Witches in West Memphis, The West Memphis three and Another False Confession with my guests, journalist and author George Jarrett. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.

you had this, talk about this incredible access. Let's talk about where you were when this crime occurred. Let's talk about that before we talk about how this case you came back into it, or it came back into your life back in two thousand and eight. So let's talk about how where you were and what you were doing and who you were working for at the time when this case broke.

record like the the news or other things. And I was actually in my dad's shop one day, actually just a couple of years ago, and he still had a bunch of those tapes and we were going through them and I noticed one tape from around like and it was you know, they had dates on him and actually have a copy of the of the news release that the night that the three guys were arrested on the local news in Jonesboro, Arkansas, because we just moved there

and we weren't really familiar with you know, different you know, like times when news would come on and whatnot. So I was a teenager, heard about it a few people around me. You know, everybody was scared, you know at first, you know, because nobody knew who killed these three kids. But then you know, time passed, and I'll be honest with you, I basically forgot about it. I watched the documentary Paradise Lost, probably around nineteen ninety eight or nineteen

ninety nine. I do remember seeing it in a local video store, and from for the most part, I just kind of forgot about it. I was actually at a softball game. And in two thousand and eight, I was working at the Jont girl Son as a journalist and I get a call from one of my bosses and the boss asked me if I could cover a hearing for the West Memphis three and so I said, sure, no problem. I got off the phone. I looked at a buddy that was sit with me, I said, have

you ever heard of West Memphis three? And so he didn't really know either. So I went and started doing a little bit of research, and you know, slowly but surely, it came back to me what the story was. Well, that day I go into court Dennis Reardan, who was Damien Nichols attorney at the time. He he pretty famous guy. You know, he represented Barry Bonds in the Balco steroids case. He's based in San Francisco. He was in court, was

a short hearing, nothing much to it. And the ironic thing for me was I was like the fourth guy on the totem Pole to even cover that one hearing we had we had two cops and courts beat reporters and then their backup well, we had a couple of Capitol murder cases going on at the time, and then we also had one of our reporters got summoned to a to civil court and so so there was no report. I was the fourth gonalist, so I went hadn't covered

it well. In the inner months between that hearing and a series of hearings that began in November of two thousand and eight, we lost a couple of reporters and they naturally win. This West Memphis three came up. Since I'd covered one whole hearing, obviously was the expert in

the office on it now. So I started covering these hearings, and it was really interesting to me because when I came into it, when I walked in the door in November when they had they started a week long session, I didn't go into it thinking that these guys were in fit. I just assumed that the prosecutors and the police had gotten right. You know, most of the time

police and prosecutors do good work. They saw cases and they put the right people in prison, and so when I walked into court that day, I was like, Okay, I was pretty open minded. I would say, actually not open minded, but I was definitely not. It wasn't going to be swayed by. It would take real arguments to sway me. I guess it's the best way to put it. And so as I'm sitting in court, and I mean, and these hearings took forever. They lasted a couple of years.

What they are called, They're called Rule thirty seven hearings. And basically, in these hearings, what was allowed is that the judge allowed just about basically any argument that the defense could make these guys were innocent. He basically said, okay, I'm gonna let you make it now. I don't think it would have mattered what they would have argued. I'm pretty sure Judge Burnette was going to decide, under almost unknow circumstance that they were not going to be He

was going to uphold the convictions no matter what. But it's really interesting because they brought in a slew of high profile experts who testified in the case. And you know, the first thing that people will say is, well, these were defense paid you know witnesses, and that is true in some instances. Some of these guys were paid, but some of them were not, and they all came to the same universal conclusions and what you know, and there's just some you know, like I'm a pretty pragmatic person.

I'm pretty pragmagmatic when it comes to journalism, and there were just some details about the crime that didn't make sense to me from the very beginning, even when I thought they were guilty. And its actually small things. And one of those small things that never made sense to me was within twenty four hours of the murders they

were already interviewing Damien Eckles as a suspect. And the reason that was is alarming to me or as sound as an alarm belt, is because I've covered a lot of capital Burger cases and this is kind of how

it goes. If you know, take a person a, person B. If person A shoots person B and a bunch of people see him do it, then immediately personate the suspect, right Or if person A if there's some overwhelming piece of evidence like his gun is at the crime scene, his wallet, or if person A goes into a police station that confesses then they would be a prime suspect.

So in this case, you didn't have any of those three elements one day after and so and then you know this what happens that what happens if you don't have those elements is you're gonna have to do you know, you're gonna have to do a good detective work. You know you're gonna have to analyze evidence, You're gonna have to wit in review witnesses. So the fact that they had honed in on Eccles so early, it was kind of it was just not only is the word suspicions,

it's just weird. It didn't make any sense to me just from a you know, covering these types of things perspective. So I said in court, they bring in, you know, they start bringing in all these experts. One of the guys they brought in was a guy named doctor Richard Suberin.

Doctor Suberin is the forensic OED on cologist down in Miami Dade County in Florida, and his what made him his claim to fame is that he was the old oncologists who actually helped to identify ted Bundy's victims back in the late nineteen seventies through his bite mark evidence.

And so he came and testified in this case. And he's also a and I hate to use these cliche terms, but he is a world renowned expert in identifying bodies that have been bitten like in water, you know, by aquatic creatures because you know, on Florida have got sharks and alligators and everything else. So he he is a real expert in, you know, dealing with bodies that have

been savaged by animals and water. And so he came in and he spent a day and and he told the jedge he said, look, these boys were not you know, they were not sliced up with a knife. He said, there's no boone piercing injuries to these bodies. And if you ever see the knife that was you that the prosecutor's claim was used in these crimes, it's a it's a the blade is very long, it's like a rambow

style knife. And I've seen the knife. It's been I've seen it in the court before, and there is no way if you had that knife and you are going to savage three kids the way the the way these guys were a legship done, you were going to stab one of them. You're not just going to sit there and scrape them with a little knife, I mean, because that's all they had. They had very superficial wounds like that. And of course Richard Subern's explanation for it was very simple.

These are aquatic creatures clawing at the body that after they died post more than he said, there's very little blood. And of course they had all the autopsy photos up on the screen, and they were going through it, you know, very dramatically, and you know, and and even a layman like me, I could look at it and go, okay, yeah, but if I'm a knife wielding killer, I'm going to stab the victims, I'm not. I'm not gonna sit there and scrape on him and not even really causing the injury.

So his testimony is very interesting to me. I interviewed him later. You know, he told me flat out, he said, in forty years of working, you know, or thirty years whatever it was working criminal cases, it was one of the craziest cases he had ever seen in his career. And then another guy that testified was a doctor Michael Bowden, And of course doctor Boden was the chief medical examiner for the City of York for eleven years. He's you'll

see him on TV quite a bit. He's a commentator when something, you know, I only have a major catasrophe, like if an airplane goes down or something, he'll come in and talk about you know, forensic pathology, you know, all that kind of thing and so. And he's also written I think episodes of CSI and things like that. So he's he's very well respected, well known, one of the most respected forensic pathologists in the world. And he

probably in more detail. You know, he went in and you know, they blew up these autopsy pictures and you know, there was a lot of the wounds were triangular in shape, and he said, this was very simple because these were turtle bites. And of course the prosecutors in this hearing just jumped all over and said, you can't prove there were any turtles in the creek. So in one instance they brought John Mark Byers, you know, one of the stepfathers, actually one of the stepfathers who was one who was

accused of doing you know, killing the boys. At one point they brought him to the stand and they only asked him, you know, basically one or two questions, You know what this place where the bodies were found, what was it called, this specific place in robin Hood Hills, what was it called? And he said it was called Turtle Hill because there was a bunch of turtles that congregated right next to that drainage ditch on that hill.

All the kids called it that. And so it was also interesting too because doctor Frank Peretti, who is the eighth medical Examiner in Arkansas, he had told paul Ford back before the original trial started. And here's the thing about Parretti, he actually grow he actually raises terrapins as a hobby, so he raises turtles, and he even told he told paul Ford. He allegedly told paul Ford that he thought that a lot of the woman's on the victims at that time, before the first trial even started,

were caused by turtles. Now, when he took the stand during these rule thirty seven hearings, okay, Paul Ford took the stand during these rule thirty seven hearings and testified to that fact. He said, doctor Peretti did tell me this, but they didn't think it was significant at the time. And so but then doctor pretty did get on the stand and I will, I will clarify this. He denied that he ever told Paul Ford this. But as I told my editor when I went back to the office,

I said, here's the problem with the two statements. First, Paul Ford is an attorney. If he got on the stand and lied about a conversation that he had under oath, he could lose his law license. Doctor Freddy can get on the stand and lie about it and he loses

nothing because it's just a conversation to him. So when you look at what each of them were risking in that circumstance, you know, again, you know, we don't know for sure if it happened or not, but obviously I would probably tend to think that the person who has the most to lose would be the person who's not lying. So anyway, so doctor Bowden, he testified Arry and again I interviewed him to very nice man, very well respected,

well educated. He told me, he said, there's no way these three guys did this crime the way that prost He says, this is simply impossible. He said that knife was not used to do any of these things. And so then they also brought another guy named doctor Warner Spence, and I guess he's kind of like a grandfather of forensic pathologist. And he testified to the same pretty much the same thing he said to the three boys. He

thought that all three of them drowned in the creek. He, like other forensic pathologists, has no explanation as to why Christopher Byers's you know, organs were pale. You know, what happened to all the blood. Nobody can ever figure out, you know, if this boy blood out where all the blood went, because there was no blood recovered from the scene. You know, that's also a common misconception that I've run across through the years, you know that is that they

did find blood, but that is not true. They tried, they did some luminol testing weeks after the bodies were found. They found traces of some chemicals out there, but they were never able to find anything that they could bring into a court of law. And so, with all this scientific evidence piling up, a woman named doctor Janis Ophoven, She's based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She a foremost pediatric forensic pathologist.

Her testimony was really really interesting to me because the the the other three testified about the wounds to the bodies and that that made sense to me to a certain degree, which she testified to really strikes at the heart of the case because everybody always talks about jets, Miss Kelly Junior giving three and four and five and six confessions, and I've heard every one of them. They recorded,

they played them all in court. And the thing about it is the one thing he's consistent about in his confessions. He always says that the boys were sodomized. He says they were raped. And so to me, that's a big detail because like in his first confession, he got a bunch of things wrong, and everybody knows that. You know the story. You know that he misidentified the time and the place, and he misidentified which boys were rich, and he couldn't He didn't even tell them that they were

tied with their own shoelaces. He said they were bound with ropes and all this, and we know all these details. What's interesting to me about doctor Ophoven's testimony is she

said that these boys were not sexually assaulted. And and this is very graphic, but you know, they put up three blown up pictures of the boys anuses in the courtroom, and she systematically went through and said, look, there's no damage, there's no bruising to any of their amuses at all, there's no there's no semen present, and none of them had an STD. Those are the three tests that you use to determine if somebody has been sonomized sexually assaulted,

and she said, she said it's impossible. She said if she said it, because even the proscut room point asked her, she said, is it possible to sodomize the child and leave no evidence of it? And she said, yes, it's possible, she said, but it is, she said, but it would be virtually impossible to do it to two or three of them. She said, there's no way that could happen.

She said, if there were multiple partners, multiple victims, she said, it's simply impossible, there would be some evidence that had happened. And so that right there. And even doctor Peretti, when he testified later in the hearing, admitted the same thing. He said, while he left the impression with the jurors in the original trials that they were sexually assaulted, he definitively said during the hearing, without those the presence of any of those things, then they then they probably weren't

sexually assaulted. So that was a big key for me, you know, because for his confession to be true and honest. You know, confessions are supposed to get clarity to crimes. You know, a police officer walks into a room. There's a there's a murder victim. Here, there's a lamp, you know, knocked over here, the bed is in a certain position, you know, and then they're they're trying to put all these clues together to figure out exactly what happened and

when it happened. And usually when somebody comes into confess to a murder like that, they say, well, the reason the lamp was knocked over was because of this, the reason that the bed was in this position was because of that. In Jesse's confession, he just he just creates a bunch of more questions. I mean, it's almost like his first couple of confessions just were kind of like they were fitting a square peg and to a round

hole of what they knew. But then with the advent of modern DNA and all this other stuff, you know, and also just better forensic pathology, you know, we've we've really advanced in the last twenty years, and our interpretations and how we interpret evidence and how we analyze it and use it in court. So I think that these guys are very lucky that they that this happened when it did. And you know, and I tell people this all the time. You know, I listened to the scientific

stuff in court. It was very impressive to me. But still I still clung. I was like, okay, because I literally have covered cases where people have walked Scotfrey, they committed the crime, but there wasn't once until of evidence that the police and prosecutors could generate to get a conviction.

all this information comes out. But what you do talk about at the very beginning of your book that we've completely not spoken about is how this all came to be with Jesse Muskelly's confession, and you also talk about Victoria Hutchinson and her son Aaron, So all of the information that went into first targeting Damian Eccles and Jason Baldwin. So what happens is that again, like you say, you're just a teenager when this happens. But in this all

of this other evidence comes out. West Memphis three is a phenomena. Once you see the documentaries and the films that come out, the case changes. The entire focus of the nation looks at this case because they see the confession and they see the coverage that was allowed somehow this Judge Burnett and authorities, defense attorneys and families allowed thankfully, as you say, Damien Eckles said that saved his life. That coverage and this phenomena, the support that came afterwards.

But very interestingly, some of the stuff that you go through is exactly how the police you talk about Detective Meeks, and you talk about how exactly they did focus on Damian Eccles, and how they used this confession in the very beginning that it was so weak, this confession, as you say, that he had the time wrong and details very significant like rope rather than shoelaces, that they had

to go to the authorities. So as you do tell us about how they went to the authorities initially and couldn't get an arrest warrant and what they were told and what they did and tell us about Voe Victoria Hutchinson and her role and her son's role in this early in the investigation.

they coerced him into giving a confession. And I used the term confession very loosely because if you ever the thing that changed for me in this case was when I had an attorney asked me if I had ever read his confession, the first.

arrest at Goles, Baldwin and miss Kelly. The magistrate read it over and was like, now we can't. You can't arrest anybody because all these details are wrong. Well, they bring Jesse back to the police station and they record another nine, ten, twelve minutes or whatever, and then he cleans up some of those detailed and so then then it's enough to where they can go and arrest all these three guys. So his confession was so bad to begin with, they couldn't even issue arrest warrants. So and

how Victoria Hutchinson ties into this. Victoria Hutchinson when the three boys who died, she had a son named Aaron, who was friends with the three and he claimed that he had actually watched the murders take place. And so the police interviewed him multiple times, and each time he told a different story, a fanciful story, but for weeks and weeks and weeks, the police were convinced that he knew some thing. Well, they just kept talking to him, and then eventually they got to the point where they

realized that he didn't know anything. Well, during this time, they were still trying to get Damian Eccles. And so what they did is they got Victoria Hutchinson, Aaron's mother. They got her to lure him over to her house, and they had placed a bugging device in the house. And what they told her to do was to put books like satanic, you know, like or not satanic, but just like a cult related books out and start talking to him about it, try to get him to talk

about this stuff. Well, Vicki told the police that Demian came over and she said within ten minutes she could tell he had nothing to do with his crime. He was just a scared kid. There's no way he had anything to do with it. Well, the police told her that wasn't good enough. They needed to tie him to

the occult. And the ironic thing was is that Vicky, her son Aaron, a lot of times was babysat by Jesse mss Kelley Jr. See And that's another little element that a lot of people don't realize is that Jason and Damian were friends. They were not friends with Jesse. They knew him, they didn't hang out with him. They

didn't know him. And so that's how Jesse kind of creeps into this picture is you know, the police are chronstantly picking kids up in this trailer park, trying to interview them, trying to get you know, just trying to find some lead. So you know, they sweep up Jesse. And here's the thing. He was at Victoria Hutchinson's house the morning that they went and got him, the day he confessed. And the reason that's interesting is is because they had that bugging device underneath the house. And Vickie

Hutchinson told me this to my face. She was if they really thought that Jesse was a killer involved in these three murders, why would they let him stay in my house with my son? Why wouldn't they tell me to keep my son away from him? And I said that's a good point. And so when when the police when they talked to her, they said that about this whole meeting with Damien, she said they told her that

they thought she was lying. And then she goes, we've got the audio from that device you guys put in my house, So what does it And they said, well, it was incomprehensible. We can't hear it, we can't hear anything. So they finally tell her, you know, she's facing a credit card broad charge, and you know, basically she she she claims that she was threatened, and so then she had to make up a story about going to a

satanic spot with Echeles and miss Kelly. And here's the thing, I've interviewed her face to face before she told me to my face that she lied. She testified at Jesse's trial that she had attended this thing. And on the juror notebooks afterwards, you know, when jurors were writing down, you know, compelling her reasons to convict, one of them

was her testimony. So to say that she had no impact on this case, because I've heard that said too, is ludicrous because part of the part of this sensationalism about this satanic panic that happened around here was was because a testimony like hers, and she directly testified to it. And so she totally go.

start sacrificing children. And of course Damien at you know, he he'll admit to you he was very troubled at the time when he was you know, he's eighteen years old, and you know, he had dropped out of high school and he had been you know, he had been diagnosed with various you know, mental disorders at the time, and so he would meet with these guys and he would say things to them like, you know, yeah, I'm gonna have a kid, I'm gonna sacrifice it, you know, And

of course he told me when he was on death row in twenty ten, when I interviewed him, he told me he said, uh, he goes, yeah, he goes. I was just messing with these guys that they were taking me seriously, and I didn't realize that I was too stupid to understand what was the gravity of what was going on. And so when they find the bodies, you know, these two guys are the first. They literally on the ditch bank are like, Damien Eckles did this. He is involved,

trust me, and so that's what led. I believe it was. Lieutenant Sutterberry is the first one who went to eccles house, I'm pretty sure about that. The next day and either Jerry Driver or Stephen Johnes I believe it with Stephen Jones was with him. They went straight to eccheles house, took a picture of him wearing a Portland Trailblazers NBA basketball team T shirt, and from that point on he was a suspect. And it was all based on what these guys were telling people, and there was no evidence

at all that this had even happened. So they honed in on him early based on someone's opinion, not any facts that they had gleaned from the crime scene.

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basically what was happening is he was moving. They were just moving the dial for Jesse. They were just steering him in the right direction. They were leading him. And again, you know, if anybody you know who's in this business, you know in journalism or in the police detective business. I mean, you are you know law enforcement. You know that when somebody's giving you a confession, they're going to sit you down and they're going to give you details

that you did not have. It's going to be clear because the person who did it knows how it happened. They don't have to be confused because they were there. And the problem with Jesse is he is very confused the whole time. And here's the thing. Jesse was in court for a lot of these hearings, and so was Jason Baldom, so I got to interact with both of them quite a bit. And I'm telling you that when you meet Jesse, you are meeting a person of extreme low intelligence. And I don't say that to be mean

or belittled in any way, but he is. He is very He hit his whole life when he was in school, his entire academic career, what little of it there was. He had a history of not being able to comprehend things in school. You know, he has a low IQ. He's easily manipulated, and it's it's quite obvious. I mean he was in court, you know, his defense attorney, Dan Stidham, the original defense attorney, told me, you know, several years ago that you know, Jesse didn't even realize that he

was actually is an attorney. He thought that his own attorney, his defense attorney, was a cop. He didn't even realize the difference between a cop and a defense attorney. And so he said it was really hard dealing with him. And Dan told me straight up, he said, kid, He said, there is no way he was at that crime scene. He said he didn't know anything of it. The only reason that his confessions got better, you know, over time, is because he went through the trial, he got more detailed.

And he said, Jesse legitimately thought at some point they were just going to finally figure out that he had nothing to do with it, and they were just going to let him go. And then finally he figured out that that wasn't going to happen, and that's why he didn't testify at the Eckles Baldwin trial. And I'll give you another interesting little nugget that's not talked about a lot.

Vicki Hutchinson. She didn't testify at the Eckles Baldwin trial either, because she was hopped up on drugs and the Roskaters at the time deemed that she would be a liability if she were, you know, brought into court, and so so they put her on a hope. She told me that they put her in a hotel in Memphis and told her just to stay away. Why would you have it if you had a legitimate witness who could say that Damien Echeles was at a Satanic spot in Tural, Arkansas.

How in the world does that person not make it to the stand.

does say. And then what I was going to get you to say is that how does this information and their theory about Satanism and this expert witness, Griffin that information, how does that tie in do you think with the first especially version and the second version of the confession in terms of those elements where miss Kelly is talking about, you know, the emasculating, the one of the boys and

the stuff like that. Tell us how you think that that information and that speculation is incorporated into those confessions.

For some reason, I can't remember if it was twenty twenty or Dateline or some actually pretty respectable news program decided to put him on as an expert at one point because they were they just they couldn't find one around the country. I think it was in the late eighties, because there were none. Nobody was an expert in the occult or Satanism or practices of Satanism because there was no need to be, you know, from a law enforcement perspective.

But then in the late eighties, like we talked about before, that Satanic panic started setting in. You know, kids started you know, reading Stephen King and dressing like goths and listening to Metallica, which all that stuff pretty normal today, but but back then he was like, oh man, what's going on with our views? You know. And so this guy, somehow, because he was on one show or two shows, kind

of became an expert. The backstory is that he actually does he called himself doctor Dale Griffith, but he actually got his you know, diploma from a diploma mill in California, I meaning he just sent the money and they sent him a diploma. So he took no classes. He hasn't

he has no expertise in this area. And so he basically got on the stand and then he you know, he was just testifying to all sorts of just crazy facts, you know, about the day, you know, May fifth having certain rep or meaning or preference for Satan worshippers, and that the number three, the three victims and the three killers. You know, that there was all this was all symbiotic,

you know. And he also talked about drinking, you know, like the blood of a you know, a young child, you know, and and and then the sacrifice you know, because you know, Christopher Byers was as you know, emasculated during all this. Interesting in going back to the forensic pathology part of that though, there is one interesting note

about the emasculation that I found interesting. He Okay, if you were going to there's if somebody was going to cut that part of his body off with a knife, you would expect there to be a bone piercing wound somewhere in that. In that in the growing area, there is notice. So the theory that you know that this was paid, that the the emasculation occurred post mortem by a turtle or another aquadic creature makes a lot more sense just from a scientific standpoint. So, but anyway, back

to Dale Griffiths. He uh, he made all these wild claims on the sand and I mean, I can't even believe a responsible juror would have taken this guy seriously. I mean, but they did. And I this is the funny thing, Dan, it's now, it's not after the fact. You know, this was the motive. You know that they created, you know, opening and closing arguments. They bring this clown on on to the stand to testify. Okay, so they make all of this argument that this is a satanic killing.

Now when you talk to him, Oh no, that was that wasn't the motive, that's what they say. Now, Oh no, that wasn't the motive. That was just one possible motive. I'm sitting here going, you guys have based your entire case on this on this fool and a bunch of things that he said, because of course, you know, since since then, he's written all sorts of conspiracy theories about nine to eleven, all sorts of stuff. That's just it's just he's just a white job. So anyway, but yeah,

that that's pretty much how that went went down. And again, Victoria Hutchinson, if she was such a if she could provide a critical link, you know, right after Griff's test defies, you would put her on the stand and say, okay, well he just said that has all the hallmarks of a satanic killing. Now tell us about you attending this spot with eccols and didn't happen because she didn't attend one. Because it was all why.

Tell us about the DNA advances and what it says to the courts if anything.

cases that there were. People are in prison, but you know, people on the outside think that they might be innocent of the crime, and some of them are. And so an interesting phenomenon happened started happening in the mid two thousands. This DNA testing got a whole lot better. Well, if you're innocent, you obviously want more, you know, you want more DNA testing, right, sure, I mean that's past to everything, and so that's the But let's say But here's the

other side of the coin. Let's say people presume you're guilty or innocent, but you did do it. Guess what you don't want. You don't want people testing d today. Right, So an interesting phenomenon started around the country when this happened. You know, there's a whole bunch of people who want

it and a whole bunch of people who didn't. Now, the interesting thing about the West Memphis three case is when they started doing this find mitochondrial DNA testing on some of these hairs and other biological specimens that were found in the crime scene. You know, we think about these three guys as a unit, but they're really not. Legally there three separate people, they have three separate defense teams.

And here's the thing what drove the West Memphis three is people all thought these these three guys were innocent of this crime. But if I'm an attorney, now, when they go to submit the paperwork to get these DNA has done, you got to remember one thing. If Jesse, let's say, let's just say in acting, maybe Jesse did have something to do with the murders. Maybe he was there. Maybe echles in Baldimo were not Maybe he was there

and took part in it. So an attorney had to sit Echos in Baldoo down and say, look, if we agreed that this testing and and Jesse, Jesse's confessed to this crime, is it possible his DNA was there. Maybe. I mean most people would think not. But I have to think that an attorney would have taken those guys into a room someone and said, look, if we do this,

you know you're gonna have to be dead. Sure the other two weren't there, because it won't matter from a legal standpoint if they find their DNA at the crime scene. But from a public perception standpoint, if like Jesse's DNA is found there, they're going to think that all three of you were there. You see what you see what I'm getting at Dan? Yeah, and and and so for me, when I was driving home one night when they all three unilaterally didn't care, said test test, test, test tests,

you know, that was all they said. Test everything. So then I thought, okay, you know you because you're you're jumping even further than just yourself because and so when I heard that, I was like, okay, yeah, these guys, it's more likely theirs. And they tested every biological spes's when I was collected at the crime scene, and none of them tested positive for the three men who were in prison for those crimes now and a hair that

are in a ligature that bound Michael Moore. They found a hair and they tested the hair and the hair actually it was very fit the DNA profile for Terry Hobbs, who was Stevie Branch's stepdad at the time. And that was interesting. It's not condemning, obviously, because you know, secondary air transfer happens. You know, those kids were in out of each other's houses. It's very possible that he just

picked up a hair. What made it more interesting though, was next to the tree stump where the bodies were dumped, they found another hair and it belonged to a guy named David Jacoby. Jacoby is hobbes alibi witness, and Jacoby swears up and down he was not with Terry Hobbs

when the murders occurred. So to have a stepfather's hair and his alibi when DNA bolt at the crime scene, that's a very I mean, you know, if I'm a police, if I'm a detective, and I'm you know, because when a kid disappears, it's almost eptiat Statistics will tell you it is a parent that has done something to the kid, a parent or stepparent. And so the three the natural suspects in the case should have been from the beginning

of parents just because of statistics. And Terry Hobbs was never even interviewed during the original investigation, which is mind blowing to me. Yeah, and he not only was he not he was not interviewed. He was the custodial parent of Stevie Branch. When the boy disappeared, his wife was at work. And so right there, I mean, I just I don't understand. Why don't the policies to bring him in and say, okay, well give us, just give us an outline what happened that afternoon, you know where we

got that where you're doing. And so none of that happened. And Pam Hobbs told me to faith and she didn't find out her son was missing that night until nine thirty when he came to pick her up. He walked past her, went to a payphone and called reported and missing. She goes out to the car, not knowing all this, and sees her daughter Amanda, and she says Amanda, where's your brother? And she goes, oh, he's missing, mama, and so so she had no idea up until nine thirty

that night. Well, the other two kids had been reported missing hours earlier, and Dana Moore and John Mark Byers and their families and friends were out in the neighborhood looking for them, you know, around eight a' thirty that night. So it's very suspicious, you know, And I've told people this. You know, there's been a lot of people have cast an eye towards Terry hobstin that he had something to

do with these murders. It would still be difficult to convict him in a corpl law, however, they're still you would still have to have more evidence, but you can make a way better case against him than you could the West Memphis three. For sure.

West Mempistry killer, Terry Wayne Hobbs. Well, Terry Hobbs decided he was going to suit her in federal court. Well, that was the worst mistake he's ever made. And he told me this. He told me this because what that did is it opened him up to discovery where they could bring them in and say okay, because here's the thing. The first tenant of any lawsuit is you have to prove. You have to prove that she's lying, that she's making a false statement. Well then you know what then, so

it opened him up. Well, the problem is that you can go on YouTube and look at some of the interviews. He forgets details about what happened. And I've heard people make so many excuses. I'm sitting here, going your step son get on the afternoon he gets murdered. You're gonna remember every single detail what happened on afternoon for the rest of your life. Okay, that's just that's just that's

just common, you know. Send And so you can get on there and look at these competing stories that he's told. And so the long and the short of it is, during this process they interviewed John Mark Byers because Terry claimed that he was with John Mark Byers and Dana Moore. Well, John B. Barres, this is an alarm bell for him. He's like, hey man, he goes, no, and I've interviewed John about this. There is no he was not with me. He was not with us. We did not see Terry Hobbs.

He says, I did not even know Terry Hobbs that night. I met Terry Hobbs later on and then they kind of became friends for a little while. And so that was the first one. He and he he's kind of worn appidatenthing he was not with me that night, and Terry was very adamant with John. They talked about it. He said, no, don't you remember I was with you? And he goes, no, you weren't. And so so that was an alarming Well then then John Barrs had a

really bizarre conversation with him. They just started talking about like, you know, you know, like maybe the person who killed the three kids was like like a druggy, you know, drugged out of their mind and he just went in and and it was an accident, didn't mean to do it. And you know, John was telling Terry the story. He goes, yeah, he goes, that's exactly right. He said, that person wouldn't be a monster. It'd be like, you know, being a drunk driver. You just had you know, you didn't get

drunk and needed to kill three people. It just happened. And so when John was going through this story with him and Terry's like that he told me he said, I couldn't believe he was saying this stuff. He's like, how could this person not be a monster? What are

you talking about? So at that point, then, of course John Mark Myers very publicly turned on Terry and said, look, this guy obviously had something to do with my son's murder and his son's murder, because there's no way, you know, he would keep trying to convince all of us that he was with us looking for them when he was not, and he would never you know, tell a story where you know the guy that did it must it was kind of like a drunk driver, not a monster, you know.

So that all that all came out of that lawsuit. And it's also ironic too because at the end of the lawsuit, the federal judge in the case actually ordered Terry Hobbs to pay Natalie Mayne's twenty thousand dollars to cover her legal fees, so in which Terry Hobbs didn't, I mean, you know, but that wasn't even the point of the exercise anyway. And Natalie Mayns has told me that they were thrilled whenever, uh, when Hobbs decided to

do this, because it opened him up. They could finally interview him and they could get these competing stories about where he was at, what he was doing, who he was interacting with. Because that's the thing is Terry Hobbs tells one story on this side, and everybody else tells us a different story over here.

this wound to his face. It was it was like a gash. And to me, as I'm looking at as I was looking at it, I was thinking, that's exactly what a belt buckle would look like if it went across somebody's face. And this had nothing to do with thinking that Terry Hobbes did it or Echoes did it or whoever. I was just looking at the picture, going that wound was caused by a belt buckle. You can just you can just see it on his face, and

you know, and he was really badly beaten. And you know, like Michael Moore had some you know, he had a major contusion to the head up I'm using the right medical term there, And basically, you know, the way it was described in court was this kid was just knocked out and then thrown in the ditch and then he drowned because he was unconscious and so he wasn't he We had a few superficial scrapes and wounds, like probably from being drug through the woods to the creek, you know,

something like that. And then Christopher Byers had defensive wounds to his hands according to the autopsy reports. So he fought back, and so to me, I was sitting here going, Okay, you know, I've covered a lot of crimes. There's always a motive and a crime and the cold, the fulcrum of motivation. In this crime with Stevie Branch, he was the one beating the most. He was the one that was attacked the most. So that's when you know, you start looking at the things you know in his orbit.

You know, he's got a stepdad, you know, a violent stepdad who has a winky criminal history, you know, and actually has a history of beating and tormenting that kid. I mean, I've heard that from Pam Hobbs's sister. I've heard that from Pam Hobbs herself. She said, she told me one time it was literally like he hated him when you know, speaking about Terry with Stevie, and she said he would never call him like she would never

call him by his name. He would just call him the boy or the step son, and so it was almost like an attempt to be humanize and you know, and so anyway, I thought it was, you know, pretty interesting, you know, looking at those those pictures and trying to determine the motivation of the person who is doing it, and it's pretty obvious. The problem is is that the emasculation of Christopher Buyers. That's when everybody turned their heads. You know, that everybody went to him because it must

have been something with him. But then when you come to the reasonable conclusion that it probably happened as a result of turtle predation or animal predation post mortem, you know, and that's very common, you know, I you know, people will try to refute that. And I'm sitting here going you know, I'm not much of a hunter, but I've been out in the woods before you come across the

dead animal. What's the first thing that you'll see missing, it's genuineness, you know, because other animals, that's the first thing to go for, especially dogs, canines. So and there were you know, wild codies in that area too, I mean, very possible a while Cody decided to chew on him for a while, and I hate the same things about that.

But but that's just the facts of the case. So yeah, I think that if you look at the autopsy photos, for sure, Stevie burriansh definitely the most most viciously attacked in the three.

then there certainly was no proof of sexual assault. You also talk about I want you to mention what that Pretti was raising turtles in that Do you infer that he should have known better. But also there was this intimation or more than that about forced oral sex. So tell us a little bit about that and how they came to that conclusion and how it was refuted.

on the bodies. So then he goes out well, then a year later, you know, doctor Spitz, doctor Boden, doctor Suberin take the stand and they say the exact same thing that Paul Ford said. Doctor Frank Peretti told him almost fifteen years before that. So it's interesting to me because I'm sitting there. You know, they weren't in the courtroom to hear it. It's not like they can just

be coordinating all this stuff up. So and like I said, and Paul Ford has no motivation to do that because he can lose his law licenes over something like that, so he wouldn't lie about it. And you know, as far as uh, doctor Peretti, he he talks a lot about raising these turtles and how much he liked doing it,

so he should he should have known. Now, the second part of your question is very interesting because in the original trials, doctor Peretti never definitively said the boys are sexually assaulted because obviously the three tenants that we talked about previously where I met, but he left the impression on the jersey they could have been by making some

statements similar to what like you said. There was a bruise to one of the boy's ears, and he made the statement in court that that could be a sign a forced fallatio. And the problem is is there has never been a documented circus instance where a bruise to an ear like that and where the bruise was, and how it was, how the manner of the bruise, but that would lead that was because of the forced fallatio circumstance.

And so doctor Peretti back in I want to say it was two thousand and seven, maybe he actually met with some of these forensic pathologists that testified and some other ones that were consulting on the case. They all met and they went over all their findings and he

readily hit it. He you know, you know, he that he wasn't sure where he got that determination, because that was one thing that the friends of pathologists the others that they were very very keen about, was this you know, forced fallatio thing in this this bruise, because they never heard of anything like that. And doctor and doctor Ophovin on the stand said that Freddy told them during this

meeting that he would get back to them. He would come out, he would give them, he would show them exactly where he came up with all this stuff, and he would get back to them well, she said, and this was two years after the fact when she was on the stand. She said that that never happened. He never came back and told them where he found this.

And and she said, it's not even a matter of like like for like the court, because you know, forends of cathologists are scientists, and they're genuinely interested in other pathology done performed by others, and so it's kind of one of those things. They were just interested in it and if it really was a thing they wanted to know about it. Well, he never was able to prove where he got it. He never said where he got this

information from. So once again, Kim, you know left, you know, there's that one bruise, you know, that must be that must mean that these boys were forced to do something they didn't want to do. And but once again not validated in any type of science.

guilty plea? Tell us about this alared plea and a little bit about again what I thought was very interesting when you talk about Jesse ms Ellie in the first after for this trial of Eccles in Baldwin, he would not testify. He would not testify. So we'd created a problem a little bit for them prosecutorily at that trial. But you say that also that that Baldwin was not as interested as Eccles with this offered fleet. So tell us about that.

fifty shot. Of course, they lucked out because somehow, some way that confession was brought into the jury room after the after the the trial portion was over and they were in the you know, when they were considering the case in the jury room. You know, there's a lot of allegations of Jerama's conducts and that it was actually brought into the jury room, so they got the benefit of the prosecution. He got the benefit of the confession without the deficit of having to uh uh fight it,

fighted it on the stand. Because here's the thing. The reason that Jetsey didn't testify is because at this point he was totally recanting, recanting his confession. He said that they was coerced by police and that he would not take the stand, and it got to a point where he was so erratic. Anyway, a lot of people have told me that the prosecutors wouldn't have put him on

the stand because of the simple thing. They would see how erratic he was, and they would know that this whole thing was a sham, and so they kept him off the stand. But they were able to get the benefit of it because it was brought into the juror room. So, yes, Jesse didn't testify. Uh And here's the other thing people don't realize a lot of Jason Baldmore was offered a sweet heart deal if he would testify against peop in

the same trial. He was offered i think seven or eight years if he would just testify, and then he would be out of prison, and he flatly told them no. And the reason he said he told them no was because he didn't do it. He knew Damien had nothing to do with it. He said, you guys are just trying to railroad it, and we're gonna have our day

in court. So anyway, so when the Alfred plea comes down, Patrick Banker and the attorney the Arkansas Attorney General at the time, Dustin McDaniel, their their college or their law school buddies, and Banker was working with, you know, the West Members three defense teams and you know, uh, Dustin mc daniels getting ready to run for governor and you know, and there was this West Members three case has just been hanging over the state for a long time. It's

just it's been a blight, you know. And so they met and they started talking about an Alfred plea. And this is like a no contest plea where a defendant walks into court and says, hey, I'm I'm minister of this crime and it is possible to stay and have enough evidence to convict me of it if, you know, if they if they decided to. So they give the Alford plea on August or August nineteenth, twenty eleven. Well before that, Baldwin wasn't going to take it. He said

he would spend another year or two in prison. He didn't care and fight fight in court. Because see here, this is what was going to happen. And this is the reason why Benka and Dustin McDaniel got together. They got together with the prosecutor Scott Ellenson. This is why they hammered this deal out, because that there was going to be a new judge in the case, Judge David Laser, that same year, twenty eleven, in December, they were going to have an evidentiary hearing where all this stuff was

going to be considered. He was going to order a new trial. There is no doubt about it. And even the prosecutors admitted to all of this, and they were going to be exonerated, and then they were going to turn around and sue the state of Arkansas for millions of dollars. And so this was just a saving face

moved by everybody involved. They wanted to stopped them from being able to sue the state they wanted to and here and the other problem was one they were exonerated in court, then they would have to reopen the investigation of the case and actually find out who actually did this. So they didn't want to go through all that rigor of war. They decided it's time to put a stamp on this. Let's get this thing over with, so they made the deal. Of course, Echoles and and miss Kelly

were on board from the board. Go Jason took him about a week or two, he's like, or several days at least. He said, you know, I just don't want to do this. I'm going to fight. But then one of his attorneys told him, he said, look, your friend is on death row. They could start executing at that point. They hadn't execute anybody in six years, but they could start executing people again, and he would be in the line to be executed. So you need to make a

decision to help save his life. And so and that's exactly what happened. You know, Jason agreed to the deal, and then they and then those guys they walked free.

met at that time. Lori eCos as well. Tell us a little bit about your experience speaking to everybody involved and how things had sort of Yeah, just tell us a little bit about that and what your treatment was by some of the people that are involved, at least in the support of West Memphis.

of stories that she didn't like. I mean, she told me flat out she didn't like them, and you and I was fine with that, you know, because that's that's what you do as a journalists. You know, you don't if you're if everybody's had and you've probably done your job the right way.

they're not. But the problem is that even at that time, this was before they were released, you know, you can you have to use you know, at that time, they were convicted of a crime, and no matter my own personal belief in it, I still had to be a

journalist and write about it. And and that's the other thing I always love when people say, you know, journalists can true journalist is never biased and blah blah blah, and I'm said, they're going you there's not biased journalists it's not a bias to seek the truth and when you find it, to accept it, and that, you know,

any good journalists should do that. I mean, I shouldn't hire you or whoever else should not think just because uh, you know, we we find like a truth contrary to what we believe, we should change our minds and we you know, there are there are two sides to every story. But you know, sometimes one story one side is right, on the other side wrong, you know, And so anyway, uh, that's way I kind of approached it. And but I mean I saw Lori and Damien and Johnny Depp in

April in Little Rock. I actually ran into him quite literally. They had a rally to stop the eight executions that were going to happen in Arkansas, and the two of them came down for the rally for the three of them, and they were just I was literally at the Capitol steps. There was media everywhere, at least a thousand protesters out there, and I look over next to some steps and there the three of them are just standing there with a couple of bodyguards. Nobody doing talking to them in any way.

So I just walked right over there, shook hands with them. Laurie, gave me a hug, asked them how they were doing. And then of course the media throngs come running over as soon as they saw me there, and then of course went right in reporter mode. You know, I was standing right next to the Damian and I started interviewing them, you know, and getting all this thoughts about being back in Arkansas and all this other stuffs and so. But yeah, I you know, there was a lot of famous people

connected to this. You know, Amy Berg did the West of Memphis documentary. I met with her, kind of gave her to the downlaw in the whole case. She came, she came to Jonesboro one Saturday. And but yeah, no, I keep it straight up. I tell people all the time, you know. You know, I've I've asked questions to presidents and stuff like that. So it's no, I don't get the stars of eyes when I see somebody like that. I guess.

He told he told you some frightening things. Tell us what he said to you about his treatment in jail, how it began, and how it changed as perception changed to both their guilt, but still what he endured in prison.

thought he was gonna die, I mean broken bones. But he would not, he would not yield to their demands in prison, and eventually it got to the point. And Jason's not a big guy, you know, he's he's he's spinned. He's small. But Bill counts is a pretty tough guy, and it got to for where they respected him. You know, they weren't going to keep messing with him because they knew he was gonna fight every time, and so they

started respecting him. And then as the details of the case became more known, then they realized that he was an innocent guy and there and most of those guys are not innocent. So it was very shocking to them to see a guy, you know, you know, work as hard as he did. He took college classes, ended up getting his ged in there, you know, even when he got out, he had he had a lot of college credits.

It he's going on and went to school. In fact, I don't know for sure if he's still on this path, but he told me at one point he wanted to become a lawyer and so anyway, so they gave him a lot of respect for him. Damien, he started a lot of controversy when I argued him when he was on death row in twenty ten. He had written me a letter and invited me to come down and interview him.

So I decided to do it. And while we were in the middle of our conversation, he told me that he thought that being a being like a prison guard job was like a magnet for homosexuals. That's his exact quote to me. And I said, what do you mean, he goes because these guys all they'll just take me to a room and they'll just rape me. And he goes, I don't even fight back. And I was like really, and so, you know, I was like, wow, I mean, you know, this is pretty incendiary stuff. And so before

I wrote the story, I called his attorneys. I'm like, hey, he told me this stuff, and I'm even talking. I believe I even talked to Glory about it, and they didn't really want him to go into all that, but he did, and I I wrote a story about it, and I guess it caused a lot of trouble down there at the prison and all sorts of stuff. So but yeah, he told me he said he wouldn't even fight back, you know, they would just take him into a room and do torch room and do all sorts

of stuff to him. So, yeah, prison is a brutal place. I mean, I don't recommend anybody going.

richest places in the world. You know, it's like the Walmart, all the heirs to the Walmart fortune, you know, Dillard's, Tyson, you know, Foods, all these mega companies that it always surprises me that a small state like Arkansas just keeps producing. So you've got all that in the northwest sector with then in the you know, Eastern Arkansas, You've got you know, just abject poverty and around the Mississippi River, and he vividly described that in his autobiotray that he wrote about

it Life after Death. He grew up poor, He grew up in trailer parks. He didn't know a lot of timesery he was going to eat. His mom dated many many different men and some very odd and bizarre circumstances, and he hated his stepdad, which ironically enough, Jack Eckles, but he ended up taking his last name, and because actually his original his original name is actually Michael Hutchinson. But but anyway, Yeah, he grew up in poverty and

the only thing that he could do. The reason why, you know, where the long French code it acted, he acted you know bizarrely at school. He did it for attention and he told me that and it was you know, and he he did it for attention. He also did it so people wouldn't tick on him, so they'd leave him alone. And so he that that's why he said some bizarre things and thought some bizarre thoughts at the time. So that's where he grew up. You know, West Memphis

is crime riddled. It's you drive through there, the you know, the average meeting income there is probably twenty five thousand dollars below the national average. It's very there's a very high amount of transient population that goes through there. You know I forty and I fifty five. You know I fifty five connects Canada. Basically, the Mexico comes all the way through the United States. It meets at West Memphis with I forty, which connects to the west coast to

the East coast, you know, through the southern route. So a lot of goods get moved through there, a lot of drugs, a lot of violence, with a lot of crime, a lot of poor people, and he grew up in the middle of all.

on the floor. He's covered in blood. He takes an industrial toilet paper roll and just presses it up to the wound and it leaves all the way to the center core of this huge toilet roll. He's jamming things into a toilet, trying to flush them down, and people see him doing this, and so they tell the manager. The manager calls the police. She comes to the bo Jingles restaurant and takes a report through the drive through. She doesn't even bother go in the bathroom. Well, they

go in and clean up this whole mess. Now, this restaurant is located about a half a mile from where the bodies are dumps. And if you were if you were if you were coming in, if you were coming out of robin Hood Hills that you were headed in that direction, or if you were headed excuse me, there's a I'm trying to think of a good way to describe it. It's not a trail, but it's kind of like a the top of it, it's like a ridge.

There's a ridge that you could walk along to get out of Robino Hills that would lead you directly into the parking lot of the Bojangles restaurant. So it would be a very reasonable route to take if you were there. And so she doesn't collect any evidence. They clean up

the bathroom. Well. The next day, Brian Ridge, one of the officers who was working in the West Dempster three K and also testified at the Roll thirty seven hearings, he goes in there and they do find some blunt on a wall and they collect and they put it in a bag. He loses it. Now, why all this is important is because of this, they found a hair at the crime scene that belongs to a black man

that could never identify who this man's hair was. If they had the blood flake that was found on the wall, they could DNA test the two and then they would know if that person was at the crime scene or not. And if they were at the crime scene, then they would probably have played some role in the three boys being murdered, right, But because they lost evidence, we'll never know.

I mean like, but it actually abudded there, It abutted the woods there, And so in my mind, if I'm just to play this out logically, the black guy was probably a helper trying to help dump the bodies. And you know, in first rule of assassination, you always get rid of the assassins, right, and this guy had helped them and help dump these bodies, and so soon as they were dumped, and whoever he was helping just turn around shot him, you know, to keep him quiet. And

what's it going to do? Can he go to the police now, I mean, he just helped dump all these three bodies in a creek, and I you know, and I don't hate, I hate to use you know, the racial component of it too, But you're talking about, you know, nineteen ninety three in the South, black man, you know, white kids die. I mean, you know, if someone was involved in that, you know, they're not going to be lenient. So he's not going to the police for any reason.

So I just can't believe that these two things can happen so close to each other and they're not be a relationship, especially when you find a black hair at the crime scene. And it's also I've been told, I don't know if this is a fact. I've been told that it was actually the best biological specimen that they found at.

he takes Pam to work. When he comes back from that, he goes over to Jacoby's house and they start playing riffs to the song pretty Woman. And he said he was there till about six and then he leaves and Jacoby has confirmed this. What's interesting to me is I think, if I had to bet money, I don't think Jacoby was with him. When I don't think Jacoby took part in the crime. I think that when they talk about

secondary hair transfer, that other hair was secondary hair transfer. Remember, Terry was playing guitar with him just a few minutes before the boys disappeared, so that hair could have definitely been a result of that. Now Jacoby swears up and down he did not he was not with Terry Hobbs. He signed sworn Affi David saying he wasn't with him. He refutes all that. So and I tell people, you know, I definitely think Terry Hobbs is a big time suspect in this case. For sure. I said, you know, could

you say definitively he did it. I can't because I wasn't there, and there's still not I would have to see a prosecutor put this all together and see what it looked like in a court room. And I go, okay, yeah, that that probably makes sense. But definitely a lot more. I mean a lot of evidence. I mean, he fits the profile of the kind of person who could do this. I mean the FBI. FBI profiler has said that you know, he claimed he wasn't he didn't see the three boys

that day. Three women who were on their way to church at six thirty that night came forward and tested by it didn't testify, but gave sworn Affi Davids in two thousand and nine that they saw him that night motioning the three boys up to the house, or at least one of them, and the three boys went up to the house. And so you know, this is what you're going to have to do. Is Terry Hobbs telling the truth about this? Or are those three women who are on their way to church? Why would they lie?

I mean, that's the question. What's the motivation? Did David Kobe a tea line? Where is Terry Hobbs line? Is John Mark Barr is lying? Or is Terry hobbline is you know all these different competing statements that in made, and that's just that doesn't include the DNA, that doesn't include the the possible alleged abuses against the kid. This is just you know, when you're telling two and three and four and five different stories and everybody else is saying, no, that's wrong, you got a problem.

is is suspicious. Why was he not question? That's what I was trying to tie in with this prosecutor that says it's epiphany and everything is fitting the way he has theorized. How come this? Does anybody answer that question? Why was he never questioned? And why is he now not a credible suspect? Whatsoever?

I mean, for many obvious reasons. Now, as far as him never being questioned originally, no one can answer that because all John Mark Byers was was interviewed. Todd Moore, Michael Moore's dad, was interviewed, and he wasn't even he was verified, not even in the state of Arkansas when the murders happened, he was at a state He's a truck driver, and so all these people were interviewed, but

Hobbs was not. And this only came about because he tried to sue Natalie made and so you know, all, you know, all his competing stories about where he was at and what he was doing, and he's given several and you know, and I've you know, I've talked with Terry, you know, several times, you know, and he you know, he constantly you know, there for a while, he was definitely worried, you know, that they were going to, like he told me one time that his daughter, Amanda, he

was definitely worried that because she was talking to some of the film crews and Amy Bird from Western Memphis, and they wanted to put her under hypnosis. And he told me he was definitely afraid that she was going to conjure some they were going to conjure some memory into her head that she had, you know, witnessed him beating her son, beating her her brother to death, and his friends, and so he was scared to death of that. And I was like, well, we'll see what happens, you know.

I mean, I don't know what to say to him when he was saying this, so but anyway, yeah, I mean, you know, and I mean if I was a prosecutor, I mean, I don't understand why you wouldn't at least or if you're a detective, you know, why why wouldn't you put this all together and then ask for a prosecutor file in charge. I mean, there's there's more than enough here. You know.

and who was there when this whole thing happened. What happened was to let your listeners know what happened was is the month after the official arrests, they still hadn't found the knife. They had this theory that these boys were hacked up with the knife, and so they were looking for a knife. They were trying to find a weapon. They knew they needed one. Juries like to see murder weapons, you know, they want to see what you used to

kill somebody with. I mean, I was in court one time and a guy had used like a candle holder or I'm sorry across that the woman he killed, her family had donated to a church and he beat her to death, so that he was a transient and that cross. I'll never forget singing court. It just sat there. So having the knife is a big deal. You know, they want the knife. So John Fogelman's prosecutor, he has a

tiphany one day. He decides that they need to go and they need to look behind Jason Baldomtow's there was an industrial lake. He said, I'll bet the knife is there. So they go out there, they look, and within thirty minutes they find a knife. And it's that rainbow style knife that was seen in court. And the suspicious thing about it was And I talked to a reporter who was there, a reporter who, by the way, believes these guys are or at least at the time when the

story was told to me, believed they were guilty. The reporter told me that it was kind of weird because it was almost like they were told where to stand when the divers came out of the water so they could get the best picture of the knife. And and here's the other part of that, that's just weird. Prosecutors prosecute cases. Police and detectives investigate cases. Okay, it's very odd for a prosecutor to interject himself in the investigation

phase of the case like that. It's just a peculiar circumstance. It should in the police like if he thought that, you know, he could have called the police chief. But it was just a weird, Like what, okay, why didn't the police chief say, hey, we need to go check that lake out behind his behind the trailerhouse for evidence. So it was just really weird.

me he didn't believe in false confessions. Two years to today, a seventeen year old mentally indigen guy named Christopher sal confessed to the murder of an eleven year old girl named Jessica Williams, who disappeared in twenty thirteen in the town called Gosnel, which is about an hour's drive from

West Memshis. They found her body in a drainage ditch the day after she disappeared, and within twenty four hours her neighbor confessed to her murder, even got a detail or two of it right, and he sat in jail for eight months waiting for his trial. The only problem was that he didn't kill her. And what saved him was they found one sperm cell on her body. One they DNA tested it, and he didn't belong to him.

And so I include that as the last chapter of the book, just because you know, everybody believes in you know, anybody who believes our guilty, believe Jesse that he didn't falsely confess well in the same judicial district, same prosecutor, fifty miles from where this whole thing happened, the same exact thing happened two years later, almost to the day. It's almost unbelievable. And so I included that chapter in there just so people understand that this does happen, happens

all the time, happens everywhere. And you can check me out author George Jared on Facebook. I've got Instagram. Just messaged me on there and I'll whatever way you want to communicate with me, I'm more than happy to do it.