Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three (5 page)

Jason

At sixteen years old, Charles Jason Baldwin was a pretty unremarkable kid in most ways. He was of average intelligence, though he had an aptitude for art and did well in that subject in school. Even though Jason had the ability to accomplish his schoolwork, he lacked motivation. He would do what he had to do to get by, but no more. One of his teachers would describe him as an indifferent student, unwilling to put forth the effort to raise his grades above the “D” that was his norm.

Born to Larry and Angela Gail Baldwin on April 11, 1977, Jason’s early life was hectic and unstable. The family bounced around from house to house in the Memphis area, and Larry left the home for good when Jason was quite small. Gail’s second husband, Terry Grinnell, was the man around the house while Jason was growing up, though in reality, Terry wasn’t “around the house” all that much. Jason was often left alone to care for his younger brother, Matt.

Like many kids his age left to their own devices, he gravitated toward rock music and video games to occupy his time. Jason didn’t care too much for his stepfather, but Jason and Matt, along with their half-brother Terry Jr., got along fairly well. All things considered, Jason got into relatively little trouble. He was known around the Lakeshore trailer park as a polite boy, and his mother counted on him to do many of the chores around the house while she worked nights. Jason was once arrested for vandalism, after he and some friends were caught smashing a number of car windows at a vintage auto shop. This incident earned him probation and an order of restitution. There was also an arrest for shoplifting, a conviction that was expunged after a twelve-month diversion of judgment, but until Jason’s arrest in June 1993, he wasn’t regarded as much of a troublemaker.

Jason had been friends with Damien since the two were in junior high school, during their skateboarding phase. Despite living in the same trailer park—Lakeshore Estates—Damien and Jason hadn’t realized they were neighbors until Jason rode by one day on his bicycle. They began hanging out daily, listening to music, playing video games, and chasing girls. Jason’s younger brother Matt would often come with Jason. Matt was something of an entrepreneur in the trailer park, his specialty being the purveying of pornography culled from abandoned hobo hovels. He had an acerbic wit and fit right in with his brother and Damien. The boys had a good time together, Damien likening the friendship to a scene from
Stand
by
Me
. Were it not for that friendship with Damien Echols, Jason would not have had a bull’s-eye on his back.

Jessie

Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. was another misfit teenager hanging around West Memphis. The son of a poverty-stricken, hard-drinking auto mechanic, Jessie Misskelley Sr., “Little Jessie” knew several “mothers” during his formative years. He was born on July 10, 1975. His mother and Big Jessie never married, and she took off to California when Jesse was very young, leaving Jesse’s father to raise him alone. By the time Jessie was four years old, Jessie Sr. had married a woman named Shelbia, and it was she who would later claim that Jessie suffered from chronic separation anxiety, throwing fits whenever she was out of his sight. When Big Jessie and Shelbia divorced, and Lee Rush entered the picture, she became mother number three.
¹⁹
According to Jessie’s friend Dennis Carter, Jessie didn’t like Rush at all, saying she “stayed drunk all the time.” Once, Jessie had walked into the trailer and found her “passed out on the couch wearing nothing but her panties.”
²⁰
Both Shelbia and Lee Rush appeared in the film
Paradise
Lost
. Shelbia was steadfast in her belief in Jessie’s innocence; Lee Rush seemed ready to throw him to the wolves.

Little Jessie’s unstable childhood was exacerbated by a mental handicap. He was borderline retarded, having been variously tested with an IQ of between 67 and 72.
²¹
In his early years his handicap manifested itself in rage. In the fourth grade Jessie stabbed a classmate in the mouth with a pencil. He was an uncontrollable child who often took his frustration out on inanimate objects such as windows, as well as on other children. At age eleven he attacked a girl with a brick, knocking her to the ground. By the time he reached his teens, Jessie Misskelley could be considered downright mean when provoked. At five feet one inches tall, Jessie was decidedly small. This, combined with his explosive temper, gave him a reputation as a tough character, a little guy with something to prove. “I was fighting all the time,” Misskelley said in a 2001 prison interview.
²²
He was described by his teachers as belligerent and prone to outbursts, both verbal and physical. Psychological help had been recommended several times for Jessie, but the family finances would not allow it. He was a boy in desperate need of help, and the societal failure to treat him for his behavioral problems was quite literally a crime.

Jessie met Damien Echols through Jason Baldwin. “One day I knocked on Jason’s door,” Damien said, “and his mother answered. Before I even asked, Jason’s mom said ‘He’s at Jessie Misskelley’s,’ and I thought,
Who
is
Jessie
Misskelley
?” He claimed that this was their first meeting and that he “never did see Jessie much.” He and Jason would run into Jessie here and there and hang out. Damien found Jessie to be an affable simpleton. “His antics could be amusing, worth a chuckle . . . he was very much like a child. He was harmless.”

The
Investigation
Part
2

Despite the local scuttlebutt about devil worship and cults, the animal carcasses that were allegedly found around town, and strange gatherings reported at Robin Hood and the abandoned cotton gin known as “Stonehenge,” West Memphis was totally unprepared for the tragedy of May 5, 1993. No one could have predicted it, except perhaps for Jerry Driver and his fellow juvenile officer Steve Jones, whose obsession with Echols was later referred to by defense attorneys and supporters as “Damien Echols tunnel vision.” Once Echols appeared on the investigators’ radar, supporters claimed, other viable suspects were ignored, and the investigation focused solely on Damien. This is not an entirely accurate assessment because the West Memphis police had been tracking down numerous leads, and they did have other suspects.

There was the black man who had appeared in a Bojangles chicken restaurant near the Blue Beacon Truck Wash on the night of the murders. He was mud-caked and apparently bloody and had one arm in a cast. He spent nearly an hour in the Bojangles ladies room before a female patron reported him to the manager, Marty King. King contacted the West Memphis police around 8:40 p.m. on May 5, and Officer Regina Meek responded to the call. Meek was part of the search effort for the missing eight-year-olds, and upon learning that the man had already left the restaurant, she told King that someone would be contacting him soon; she never got out of her patrol car. Someone did finally come to investigate at Bojangles—the next night, May 6—but by then the restroom had been cleaned, and all that was left was a pair of sunglasses found in the toilet and some tiny speckles of what appeared to be blood on the wall. Detective Bryn Ridge collected—and subsequently lost—some scrapings off the wall, and there the investigation ceased. “Mr. Bojangles” was never seen again.

But was Bojangles ever a viable suspect? The police didn’t think so. The scene of the murders had been meticulously cleaned, if indeed that was even the primary crime scene; at that point no one was sure. Despite what must have been a great deal of blood loss, only traces were discovered under luminol testing. Upon his arrival at the restaurant, Mr. Bojangles was covered in mud and blood. He was disoriented and couldn’t even choose the correct restroom. Could this man have single-handedly subdued, murdered, bound, and disposed of three little boys, leaving hardly a trace? Eliminating Bojangles from the list of suspects was a relatively simple matter of means: he had none. But does this mean that he wasn’t a
witness?
This disturbing possibility will haunt the case, in all probability, forever. If Bojangles did see something, he didn’t want anybody to know about it in 1993, and it isn’t hard to imagine why. Would a poor black man in the South come out of the woods covered in mud and blood, flag down police, and tell them that he had just witnessed the murders of three little white boys?

The authorities’ second suspect, other than Echols, was none other than John Mark Byers. The parents are normally the first people to be investigated and eliminated as suspects when a child is killed, yet Byers was not interviewed until May 19, two weeks after the murders. Although he was quickly cleared of suspicion by the police, this two-week period would be the subject of considerable suspicion for some who felt that Byers should have been higher on the list of suspects. There were several reasons for this. Byers had admitted to giving Christopher a “whipping” during what turned out to be the last time he would see the boy alive. Some felt that this spanking was the result of a rage that then drove Byers to kill his son and two others. This viewpoint was largely held by the “Free the West Memphis Three” camp, a support group for the killers that didn’t exist until after the release of
Paradise
Lost
, some three years after the murders. They accused police of inadequately investigating Mark Byers, but a careful look at the investigation shows that Byers received much more scrutiny than either the Hobbses or the Moores. Not only did Mark give a thirty-four-page statement to police on May 19, but Terry Hobbs made no statement at all. Todd Moore’s comments were summarized in one line contained in a police interview summary report, though he was asked to produce receipts for gas purchased during his truck driving job. Mark was also the only parent whose profile was requested from the FBI. Further, of all the parents, apparently only Mark Byers’s criminal background was investigated.

When police interviewed Pam Hobbs five days after the murders, a note was made at the bottom of the interview notes: “Mr. Hobbs was not at home at this time.”
²³
Apparently, police felt no need to get Terry’s timeline for the day of the murders, something that would come back on the WMPD in ways they could not have foreseen.

Further investigation into Byers’s record would show that he had a history of violence. In 1987 he had been arrested and convicted for “terroristic threatening” following an incident involving his first wife, Sandra Sloane. An argument had erupted between the two early one morning when Mark arrived to pick up his children for a scheduled, court-approved visit. According to Mark, it was Sandra who first got violent—she spit in his face—and Byers responded by pouncing on her and threatening to use a stun gun to subdue her. The gun was never used, but Byers was sentenced to probation for the incident. In 1991 his record was expunged per an agreement made during sentencing.
²⁴

Byers had also had a conflict with Michael Moore’s parents, Todd and Dana Moore. The Moores lived at 1380 East Barton, directly across the street from the Byers family, and at one time had been frequent guests at the barbeques that Mark and Melissa hosted at their pool home. Byers had stopped inviting them over after deciding that they didn’t “fit in” with the other guests. After this, according to Mark, the Moores had called the police four times with complaints about noise and parking. Both families today say that their problems were minor and that no real animosity ever existed between them.

More interesting to many, however, was the work Mark Byers had done as an undercover informant, first in Memphis, and later on in West Memphis. Byers served the drug task forces in both cities by helping to set up sting operations for the police, two of which resulted in arrests and convictions. Police were interested in a possible retribution angle to the killings; had one of those convicted as a result of a Byers sting operation sought revenge though Christopher?

The police were able to easily eliminate Byers as a suspect, however. Besides having a very verifiable alibi—he had spent the night searching for Christopher with his family and friends and was never alone for any length of time—none of the suspicions police might have had stood up to scrutiny. Despite rare horror tales to the contrary, does a father spank his boy and then murder and mutilate him and two of his friends a few hours later? The minor friction between Mark and the Moores was an obviously insufficient motive. As for retribution by someone Mark had set up for the West Memphis Drug Task Force, it is within the realm of possibility that someone sentenced to five years’ probation at the hands of the Byerses might have sough revenge. But the idea of someone getting even by brutally murdering three eight-year-olds fails the smell test, and if the police ever considered it a possibility, it was quickly ruled out.

Improbabilities notwithstanding, during the May 19 interview with Mark, Detective Bryn Ridge got right down to business.

Ridge
: I may have information. This information suggests strongly that you have something to do with the disappearance of the boys and ultimately of the murder. What is your response to that?

Byers
: My first response is that I can’t fathom where you would get that . . . and it makes me so mad that I kind of got to hold myself here in this chair.