Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three (13 page)

During the period that Mark and Melissa had Byers Jewelry open, Christopher often was with them in the store after school. Mark recalls one afternoon near Christmas time when Christopher was five years old. Mark was negotiating the sale of a ring with a particularly demanding customer. “She was the kind of customer who wanted something for nothing.” When they finally agreed on a price, Mark went into the back of the store to size the ring. Leaning over to Melissa, he whispered, “Ya know, I really stuck it to that old bitch!” It was maybe not the nicest thing to say, but he’d said it privately to his wife, or so he thought. Looking from the back of the store a few moments later, Mark was horrified to see Christopher, who’d been standing between Mark and Melissa while Mark was sizing the ring, now addressing the customer. “My daddy says, you old bitch, he stuck it to you!” Mark lost the sale.

Friends of the family called Christopher “The Worm” because of his constant fidgeting. So pervasive was this nickname that Mark made Christopher a 14k gold ring with an embossed worm on it, a ring he was allowed to wear only on special occasions. Christopher was able to release some of his energy in the family pool, however, and did so whenever time and weather allowed. “During the summer, you couldn’t keep him out of the pool,” Andy Taylor recalls. Christopher shared a bedroom with his thirteen-year-old half-brother Ryan Clark, and though five years and different fathers separated the two boys, they were fairly close. All things considered, Christopher was a happy little boy with good friends and a good life.

The question of how Christopher’s life might have been affected by Melissa’s drug use—and Mark’s, for that matter—invariably arises, and to this there is no definitive answer. There was surely at least an adequate amount of love and attentiveness toward Christopher in the home. Mark and Melissa took him to the doctor to have his behavioral problems addressed, and they had regular conferences with the school to monitor his progress. Christmases and birthdays were enthusiastically celebrated. There were pets in the family to hug, toys to play with, and books to read. Still, Melissa was an addict, and her children were exposed to the realities of her drug use, though it was arguably Ryan who would have been affected more than Christopher. Christopher’s acting out in school consisted largely of being disruptive, talking, and not paying attention during class, and it was these things that most often brought Mark and Melissa to school for conferences.

According to Ryan, the only really “weird” thing that he recalled Christopher doing was defecating behind Weaver Elementary with a few of his friends one day, after which they started throwing the feces. Though this was important enough to be noted by Christopher’s physician, Dr. Eastmead, Ryan claims it was an isolated incident. When Christopher did get into trouble, more often than not, it was when he was with Michael Moore. According to Stevie Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, Michael was a “natural leader,” whereas Stevie could sometimes be shy. Christopher was more the adventurous type. One day, for example, Michael and Christopher slipped into Weaver Elementary after school one day after discovering an unlocked door. What the boys were doing in the school is uncertain, but they were taken into custody and were sitting in the backseat of a squad car when their parents came for them—handcuffed, no less.
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The Moores lived at 1398 East Barton, across Fourteenth Street from the Byerses (the street name sounds impressive, but in reality it’s a neighborhood lane barely wide enough for two cars to pass). Eight-year-old Michael and ten-year-old Dawn lived with their parents, Todd and Dana. Todd and Dana were also friends with Mark and Melissa, often attending the barbeques and parties that the Byerses held at their pool home. Being such close neighbors virtually assured that the boys would become friends, and they spent most afternoons after school together, riding bikes, skateboarding, and exploring their surroundings. This included trips to the area surrounding Ten Mile Bayou known as Robin Hood Hills, even though both sets of parents had forbidden their boys to play there. It wasn’t far—only a few minutes by bike from their houses, just at the end of McAuley Drive, behind the Mayfair Apartments—but there was often enough water in the bayou for an eight-year-old to drown in and enough tree cover to allow the older kids and transients to do what those types of people do when no one can see them. The woods’ close proximity to Interstate 40 also made it a magnet for hobos and other undesirables, and it was directly opposite the Mayfair Apartments, which was known to house unsavory types such as paroled drug and sex offenders. The boys’ parents were adamant about the rule against playing in Robin Hood. Sometimes the boys minded their parents. Sometimes they didn’t.

Mark Byers says he had “never laid eyes on” Steve Branch’s mother and stepfather, Terry and Pam Hobbs, before May 5, 1993.
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Stevie had been around the Byers house often enough, and Christopher had spent time at Stevie’s as well, but Christopher had always maintained to his parents that Stevie lived somewhere down East Barton, close to home. In reality, the Hobbses lived at 1601 South McAuley Drive, nearly half a mile away. Christopher knew his parents wouldn’t let him go that far alone, so he had “misled” them about where his friend lived. It wasn’t until the night of Christopher’s disappearance that Mark learned where Terry and Pam Hobbs actually lived.
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Regardless, the boys spent an enormous amount of time together, along with Michael Moore, so it was not unusual to see the three boys roaming through the neighborhood, doing the things that eight-year-old boys do.
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But May 5, 1993, was different. Somewhere between 5:30 and 6:15 p.m., Christopher left his house without telling his parents where he was going and hooked up with Michael and Stevie. The three boys never came home.
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Real
Monsters

The period between the murders on May 5, 1993, and the beginning of the trials in late January 1994 was one of surreal anguish for the victims’ families. How could any parents know what to do and how to behave after the sudden and violent death of their child? Along with the total loss they felt without Christopher in their lives, Mark and Melissa had to confront the incomprehensible fact that three local teenagers, boys from their own community, were allegedly responsible for the murders. The viciousness and apparent frenzy of the killings was simply too much for the families to take in. They were obviously in a deep state of shock, as were Todd and Dana Moore. In the film
Paradise
Lost,
Dana Moore asked “Was he conscious or unconscious?” “Did he watch the other two being . . . cut?” Her husband Todd wondered aloud whether Michael might have been calling out for his father and how long he had been left on the ditch bank to die. “They were really being killed by real monsters.”

The grief that the community felt was beyond measure. Out of a school of 335 students, only 44 were in second grade. Everyone knew the boys personally, and students and faculty alike were devastated. One guidance counselor, Lila S. Lovely, said, “The children were crying and I was crying, and I just told ’em, ‘Y’all go ahead and cry.’”
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Their classmates decorated the boys’ desks with little “memorials,” drawings made with crayons and construction paper, paper chains, and Valentine’s hearts. The children expressed their emotions, which ranged from sadness and fear to anger, to the grief counselors who had been sent to the school. “We’re going to make the counseling available for as many days as needed,” said Gary Adams, the assistant superintendent for elementary schools in West Memphis. Within a few weeks of the murders, the local Cub Scouts were planning the erection of a memorial “reading grove” in the school yard near the Weaver Elementary School library.

Christopher’s funeral took place at the Ingram Boulevard Baptist Church exactly one week after his murder.
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The service was conducted by Mark’s brother-in-law, Pastor Sonny Simpson. The police video surveillance cameras caught images of all those attending, as is standard procedure in homicide cases. Mark could be seen literally holding Melissa up as they made their way into the church. The media were lined up on the street like piranha, waiting for an attention-grabbing video clip for the evening news. It was the same at the other boys’ funerals. Todd Moore said, “The reporters would be watching, and if someone came out and they looked okay, they’d ignore them, but if they were crying, the cameras would rush them. It was disgusting.”

Although they were trying to deal privately with their loss, the Byerses experienced a full-on media onslaught. Everywhere they went, they were confronted with cameras and microphones and reporters whose need for a quote outweighed any privacy concerns they might have had for the victims’ families. Relatives and friends helped where they could, sitting with the couple and bringing meals for example, but the media was relentless, and it was impossible to escape their presence. This was becoming a national story, and the attention paid to Mark Byers in particular initially repelled him. Ultimately, however, he held it in a kind of perverse embrace until it threatened to swallow him whole, and it was this dance with the media, among other things, that would sully his reputation for the foreseeable future—perhaps permanently.

If Mark became enamored with the publicity, he had plenty of help, most of it coming from two young filmmakers from New York, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Already minor celebrities in the world of documentary filmmaking, largely because of the success of their film
Brother’s
Keeper
, the pair were savvy in their craft and well prepared to enter the world of the West Memphis Three. Upon hearing about the bizarre murder case in Arkansas, with its satanic overtones and themes of “devil worship,” the New York filmmakers descended on West Memphis. Armed with a budget from HBO—one that would grow considerably over the coming year, though never approaching “feature film” proportions—Berlinger and Sinofsky were granted an unprecedented level of access to the courtroom proceedings. They also had access to a grieving and cash-strapped John Mark Byers, and they leveraged this advantage to the hilt. Berlinger and Sinofsky sensed early on that once Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were taken out of the equation, Mark Byers was going to be their star draw.

Mark and Melissa were living in almost total seclusion at the East Barton Street house when Berlinger and Sinofsky first contacted them sometime in late June or early July 1993, just a few months after the murders. The filmmakers pulled up in front of the Byerses’ house and sat there for a moment. Suddenly, they heard a low, menacing growl from behind their ears. “What’re you doin’ here? What do y’all want?” When they turned to look, they saw a couple of scary-looking dudes—John Mark Byers and Andy Taylor—standing outside the car. A local reporter who had led the filmmakers to the Byers residence hurriedly assured Mark that Sinofsky and Berlinger were “alright.”
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The filmmakers informed Mark that they would be doing a documentary on the trial and that they wanted his permission to film him. They promised to pay a total of $7,500 for Mark and Melissa’s appearances in the film. The Hobbses and the Moores had been given similar “honoraria” for their participation, as had the families of the West Memphis Three.
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Mark thought that this would be an opportunity to vent his rage at the tragedy that had befallen his family, but there was also a practical concern: the Byerses were broke. Since the murders, Mark had effectively closed his shop out in the backyard, so there was no money coming into the house, aside from his paltry disability check. The money from HBO wouldn’t be much, but it might keep them from losing their home. Mark ended up overplaying his hand in the film, but it would be three years later before the world would get their first glimpse of John Mark Byers in full performance mode.

Getaway

With the funeral and the initial police investigation behind them, Mark and Melissa scraped together what little money they had and took Ryan for a short vacation to the Gulf Coast during the summer of 1994. With all that had happened since May 5, everyone was emotionally drained, and Mark felt it would do everybody good to get away for a while. The family drove to the Gulfport-Biloxi area in Mississippi and hit the beaches. Ryan was thirteen at the time, and the sun and surf seemed to be just what he needed. They hoped that he might be able to forget the world that had fallen apart around him, if only for a short time. Mark and Melissa felt hollow and empty inside; they were just going through the motions. Even in this setting, seemingly so far removed from the madness still going on in West Memphis, Mark could not escape notice by the public. During a day trip to Ship Island, a barrier island boasting the finest beaches on the Mississippi Gulf coast, for example, Mark was lazing on an inflatable raft, letting the breeze and surf push him around while being warmed by the summer sun. A tourist floated up next to him—he turned out to be an attorney from St. Louis—and said, “Hey, aren’t you that fella from
America’s
Most
Wanted
?” There was simply no place to hide.

After spending a few days on the Mississippi coast, the family drove east to Pensacola, Florida, and spent several days there. They did more of the same, sunning, floating, trying to forget. Soon, however, the money ran out, and they needed to return to West Memphis. It hadn’t been much, but Mark and Melissa felt that any small respite from the hellish existence they faced back in Arkansas was worth a try.