CHAPTER 24
TWO STEPFATHERS
I purposely had not watched either of the Paradise Lost films until after I did my analysis so I would not be influenced in my evaluation. But I did watch them before I went down to Arkansas and knew that Mark Byers had come across as the prime alternative suspect in the second film. The first had laid the groundwork, in which he seemed a wild, Deliverance-type character, ready to blow off someone’s head or pick a fight at the least provocation. But this, I already knew, was an illusion, a caricature.
In fact, by the time I reached the front porch of his trailer in a community in Millington, Tennessee, fourteen miles north of Memphis, I already had some pretty firm ideas about him that didn’t fit in with my profile.
Byers was an extrovert, with no history of personal violence beyond punishing his children with a belt. His lawbreaking had been nonviolent and primarily examples of criminal enterprise: jewelry fraud, drugs and petty theft. He also had some experience as a drug informant. But he was known to be friendly with and well liked by neighborhood children. When you hear this, if there is anything improper in any of the relationships, you generally hear at least an innuendo from someone. There was none of this in the reports about Byers. Also, I had studied the timeline of the night of the murder, and he could be accounted for the entire time.
When he answered his door, I introduced myself amidst the barking of dogs. This guy really is big, I thought. Mark is an intimidating presence. He seemed extremely wary and had clearly had enough of lawmen, even retired lawmen like me. Having seen the HBO film, I also knew he’d be aware of how I was likely to perceive him.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “Who approached you to come here? You’re that former FBI guy. Get off my property!”
As he stood in the door frame, I said, “Mr. Byers, I’m not here to point a finger at you. I don’t consider you a suspect, but I would like to talk to you because it’s my strong belief that the three people in prison did not kill your son Chris.”
“They got the right guys, Goddamn it!” he insisted.
He came out onto the porch, but he didn’t invite me in. In my white dress shirt and dark slacks, I was sweating like crazy in the heat. You could feel the oppressiveness every time you breathed in.
He told me that Damien Echols was the lead killer and that the motive was satanic.
“No, it wasn’t,” I replied. “And I’d like you to give me an opportunity to go through my analysis with you.”
I heard his wife, Jackie, who was standing by the screen door. “Mark, we need to hear what he has to say.”
Mark and Jackie had met in a bookstore in 2001, five years after the death of Melissa, Chris’s mother. Jackie had tripped over her shoelace and fallen. Mark was the only one who came to her aid. They married the next year. Interestingly, she had never heard of him and knew nothing about the case; so before they got engaged, he insisted she watch the two Paradise Lost films to “know what you’re getting into.”
As he stood there looking down skeptically at me, I explained who I was and what kind of work I did in the FBI. Jackie came out on the porch and listened with interest, although she didn’t say anything at first. They were both smoking, which made it seem like there was even less air to breathe.
I took them through what the steps of the crime would have been and why I believed that Satanism or ritual violence did not fit into the scenario. I tried to show them that when you stripped away all of the preconceptions and emotional overlays and looked strictly at the physical and behavioral evidence, you were left with a personal cause homicide situation. And it was one that didn’t even involve a knife—his, Damien’s or anyone else’s. I showed them why Jessie Misskelley Jr.’s confession made no sense and how the police must have known it.
I told him that the killer knew his stepson.
I think I’d been there talking for about a half hour when Mark told me to sit down. That was the first time I thought maybe I was getting through. Before long, they invited me inside. There were several photographs of Christopher. Three friendly dogs circled around me on the soft sofa I sank into.
Almost right away, I could tell that this guy was not the out-of-control hillbilly I’d seen in the two Paradise Lost films. He was introspective and clearly intelligent and well informed. Jackie proved herself to be widely read on criminal justice and the kind of work I did. Her questions were incisive. I had already met many dysfunctional couples down here, but these two—he on his third marriage and she on her second—seemed like a genuine, emotionally strong and committed team. “She has been a big part of the stability in my life,” he commented. “I tell people she is the glue that has kept me stuck together.”
One of the first things I raised was how Mark came across in the films. I asked him why he thought he had come across so negatively.
He didn’t shy away from responding at the time, and confirmed it later for Mark Olshaker and me. “I was trying to take care of Melissa. I was trying to take care of Ryan. I really didn’t have time for myself to mourn and grieve, and I was extremely angry because someone had murdered my son. But I was trying to keep my family together.
“Then in the second film, Melissa had passed away, Ryan was gone. I’d been all by myself. I’d tried to commit suicide once. I’d committed myself twice into rehab just because I couldn’t handle it anymore. I’d had a lot of suicidal thoughts and was deeply depressed.”
This is important because it gets to the heart of the mistakes in the case and an overarching theme throughout this book. If we go on first impressions and appearances, if we apply stereotypes and conventional wisdom, we run the terrible risk of misjudging people. The West Memphis Three were misjudged by the entire legal system, and Mark Byers was later misjudged by the wider court of public opinion. Notwithstanding the self-proclaimed practitioners who pop up on every TV talk show and the clichés that are so easy to parody, behavioral profiling gets below these surface judgments to find the real factors that cause people to do what they do. That was how I was able to get past the cartoon image to the real John Mark Byers.
“I was nervous just being around him,” Byers later recalled of his first encounter with me, “thinking he was profiling me. He said he’d done that a long time ago.”
Once inside, I found it even more difficult to breathe in the close environment, but Mark and Jackie seemed more comfortable now. Describing the crime scene and motivation, I went through my analysis : The murders were not the work of a complete stranger, drifter or sexual pervert; the incident had started out as an attempt to taunt and punish the victims, not as a murder, but the perpetrator had lost control and couldn’t risk being identified; no weapons or implements that could be used to commit the crime were brought to the scene, such as binding rope or cord; while the UNSUB may not have committed murder or any other serious crime before, he had a violent past and, if left unchecked, a violent future; hiding the clothing with sticks and throwing the bicycles in the water showed criminal sophistication beyond the level of a teen; this individual lived in the area and had a psychopathic personality; he could look you straight in the eye and tell you he didn’t do it.
How could one person tie up three kids? Jackie wanted to know.
Because they knew him and either respected or feared his authority, I explained. It was also possible that he may have ordered one boy to bind another. From what I knew of Chris’s personality, he may have stood up to this vicious bully, his defiance causing the situation to get out of hand.
Mark Byers listened thoughtfully. At last, he said, “You’re describing someone like Terry Hobbs.”
He admitted that he had had unanswered questions ever since the trial and that his suspicions about Terry had been strong enough that he decided to try an experiment. “Gitchell had told us that he recovered a briefcase with some pictures in it, a knife, a gun and some drugs. But he didn’t ever produce it. Well, I said to Terry, ‘You remember seeing that picture of Damien on your couch?’
“And he goes, ‘Yeah, I remember seeing it. Pam must have took it.’ And here in our house, he told Jackie and me he’d always suspected Pam was messing around with Damien. So he started adding to this picture story that I totally fabricated.”
Mark also described glancing at Terry during the trial when Michael Carson was testifying about Jason’s supposed confession to him. “You could just see him, like it was almost too good to be true.”
The turning point, I think, was when I told them what David Jacoby had said about Terry having seen the children that evening, while Terry had claimed consistently that he hadn’t seen any of them, including Stevie, the entire day. “That’s when I freaked out. That was a lightbulb moment for me above all others,” Mark Byers later told us.
I asked him if he thought Christopher might have been the one who rebelled against the offender and caused him to lose control. “I do think it’s a strong possibility,” Mark replied. “I have spent many hours wondering exactly what did happen. And as things have unfolded, I still don’t have the answers.”
But he added, “Christopher would be the first to tell him, ‘You’re not my daddy. I don’t have to listen to what you say.’ And if something was wrong, it would be, ‘I’m gonna go tell my daddy!’ He would have been the first to have done that.”
When I left, Mark hugged me. And I have to say, when all is said and done, he is among the participants in the case for whom I have the highest regard and respect. For all his admitted flaws and problems, he was the one who wanted the truth right from the beginning. When presented with as much of that truth as we had to offer, he was the one who showed the integrity and strength of character to accept it, make peace with the young men he had thought guilty and then fight vigorously for their freedom and exoneration. If those on the law enforcement side had had the broadmindedness and courage of John Mark Byers, three innocent young men would not have had to suffer for so long; and justice for his son Chris, Michael and Stevie would not have proven so elusive.
“John Douglas came to visit me,” Mark said later. “He gave me the answers I needed, and my worst fears were confirmed. I didn’t think the state would mess up that badly. I thought they were here to protect and serve. I’ve always been brought up that way.”
Terry agreed to my request to meet with him again, this time in a suite at the Memphis Holiday Inn where I was staying. And this time I was armed with information relative to the real Terry Hobbs. I was forthright and told him I felt better prepared this time. I noticed that Terry was carrying an unopened can of soda. I suggested he sit down, but he preferred to stand. I have seen this before when I’ve interviewed inmates in penitentiaries. Standing can be a technique for asserting a dominant position over the other person.
“You had me good, Terry,” I began. “When I talked to you the other day, I really didn’t know your background. But since then, I’ve had a chance to do some investigation, and find you were really bullshitting me. A lot of the things you told me just aren’t true. You’re a good liar, Terry, but not that good.”
He didn’t react, except to grasp the soda can a little tighter.
“You have a violent history,” I continued. He looked at me as if I were just mentioning an incidental detail, like the color of his hair.
I employed a technique I’ve often used in the past. I call it, “This Is Your Life,” taking him through key events I had learned about.
“You minimized it before, but I know your father beat the hell out of you, and you beat the hell out of Stevie.” I had learned that he used to whip Stevie viciously with a belt, making him hold his hands up in the air away from his body. Others in the family had described the welts these punishments left. “You’ve been manipulative, lying. . . .”
Everything I mentioned led to a “big deal” shrug or a “So what?” When I mentioned the altercation with his brother-in-law, Terry calmly explained that Jackie Jr. was choking him, and the only way to make him let up was to threaten him with the gun.
I pointed out that shortly after the murders, he and Pam had gone to stay at Pam’s family’s home in Blytheville, Arkansas; and shortly after that, Terry left Pam there and went to stay in Hardy, Arkansas, about 120 miles away. This meant that he was never questioned or examined by the police. Again, “So what?” Remaining in West Memphis was just too much for him, he said.
He didn’t flinch when I brought up the accusations that he had molested his daughter, Amanda. Normally, when you confront a man with a serious or outrageous charge that isn’t true, he’ll go ballistic. Terry didn’t admit the charges, but he didn’t bother denying them. The only thing I noted was that he was holding the can increasingly rigidly, as if it might be used as a weapon. He kept pacing.
Then I brought up an incident with his neighbor that had taken place twenty-five years ago, long before the murders. And that was when he finally became visibly agitated, as if he were shocked I found out about it.
In 1982, Terry and his first wife, Angela, and their child were living in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was in his midtwenties at the time. Several times, his next-door neighbor Mildred French said she saw Terry outside staring at her through the window. One time, she heard a baby crying and what sounded like the child or Angela being beaten. She went over and rang the bell. Terry opened the door and asked contemptuously what she wanted. Mildred, who was about thirty years older than he, said that if he ever touched his wife or baby again, she would call the police.
Several months later, on December 8, 1982, she was stepping out of the shower after cleaning up from some yard work when she said Terry grabbed her from behind and then put his hands on her breast. She screamed and repeatedly yelled for him to get out. Finally, when he realized the window was partially open and she could be heard from outside, he ran out. Mildred stated that she was afraid he would beat, rape or kill her. She was certain she had locked the front door.
In 2009, Terry Hobbs filed a civil suit against the Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines, who had been a major advocate for the innocence of the West Memphis Three. Terry’s action claimed she had defamed him at a concert by suggesting he might have been the killer of the three boys. As part of that suit, Mildred French detailed the events of Terry’s intrusion in a sworn deposition:
That night, after I told my landlord about the attack, my landlord set up a meeting in which both Hobbs and I sat down face to face in front of the landlord. Terry’s father-in-law was also there. I said to Terry, “Tell them what you did to me.” Terry said, “I didn’t do nothing.” After I articulated what Hobbs had done to me, Terry looked me square in the eye and said calmly, “It never happened.” He was cool and collected as he told me it never happened. If you had not known for certain Terry was lying, you would not have been able to tell by his demeanor that he was lying. I was sickened and frightened by Terry’s ability to deny his horrific and perverted actions and seem calm in doing so. I looked at Terry and told him, “You are a liar and you are sick.” Terry looked back at me with cold, dead eyes and said, “Yeah, I’m sick.”
The landlord evicted the Hobbses, and Terry was charged with assault and criminal trespass. The case was dismissed in exchange for his agreement to go to counseling.
We went round a little more; me bringing up incidents and him either denying or shrugging them off. After a little while, he declared, “I’ve had enough of this shit,” and walked out, still carrying the unopened soda can. He had not sat down the entire time.
It was neither my job nor my role to say whether I thought Terry Hobbs was involved with the murder of his own stepson, as well as Chris Byers and Michael Moore. I had been brought in to analyze the case from a behavioral perspective and offer an opinion on what type of individual or individuals had committed the crime. Knowing of Todd Moore’s background and alibi, and having looked into and interviewed Mark Byers, I knew they could be eliminated from the suspect list and were, in fact, genuinely grieving parents and victims. Having done my analysis and having scrutinized and spoken to Terry Hobbs, what I could now say was that had I been advising WMPD on the case initially, I would have put him on the front burner of the investigation.
When I returned home, I received an extremely gratifying email from Fran and Peter that read in part: “You have single-handedly done more to humanize this case and advance the cause of Damien’s innocence than anyone we know.”
I just hoped we were moving closer to seeing justice done.