Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three (14 page)

Thanksgiving 1993 was the first major holiday following Christopher’s murder, and the family didn’t quite know how they were going to approach it. It was Mark’s sister in Little Rock, the same sister who had taken Mark in after his drug overdose in 1977, who insisted that the family come to her house for the holiday. Mark was relieved, but Melissa had one condition: the stress would be too much for her to face straight, she said. Although she had not used in almost a year, she drove into Memphis and scored several Dilaudids to take to Little Rock. The dinner, partly because of Melissa’s highly drugged state, was a disaster. When Christmas came around, the couple didn’t even bother to put up a tree.

The
Misskelley
Trial

On January 26, 1994, the trial of Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. officially began in Corning, Arkansas. Dan Stidham, Misskelley’s attorney, and the defense attorneys for Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin had won change of venue motions for their clients because of the extensive publicity the case was receiving. Misskelley’s trial had been moved 110 miles north of West Memphis, but there probably wasn’t a locale in the state where a jury who had heard nothing about the case could be impaneled. The leaks to the press had been rampant, including the most damaging evidence against Misskelley, the thirty-four-minute taped confession. Judge Pal Rainey’s order sealing the affidavits that had been filed was not enough to halt the leeching of information to the press. The court, however, decided that between the change of venue, the voir dire process, and the judge’s instructions to the jury, a fair trial would be possible. High-profile cases were tried all the time in America, and trial judge David Burnett declared that his courtroom would be one of order and the rule of law, though many would come to question the latter.

After a number of pretrial hearings to determine his mental capacity and the validity of his confession, as well as to make the determination that he could face a death sentence if convicted, Misskelley was finally going to stand trial for the murders, nearly eight months after his arrest. The media attention took on a new sense of urgency, and the assaults on anyone who had anything to do with the case resumed. The families of the victims were already emotionally fragile, and it was all they could do to hold each other up as they sat in the courtroom day after day.
⁶⁷

The trial was supposed to begin on Monday, January 24. Two weeks prior to the planned start of the trial, however, Inspector Gary Gitchell received a Federal Express package from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The package contained a folding Kershaw hunting knife. It was smooth and sharp at the very tip and serrated the rest of the way down. Nine inches long unfolded, with a pistol-type grip on the bottom edge of the handle, it also came with a nifty Velcro case so that it could be worn on a belt. The knife had one other very interesting feature: it had blood on it—human blood, in fact, blood that was consistent with Christopher Byers’s blood and, curiously, Mark Byers’s blood as well.
⁶⁸
It was also consistent with about 9 percent of the population, or an estimated 24 million other people in America.
⁶⁹
Not exactly a smoking gun, but obviously a major concern to the police and the district attorney. In a case with so little physical evidence, the emergence of the knife was potential dynamite for both the defense and the prosecution.

The knife had been given to HBO cameraman Doug Cooper one night while the crew was having dinner at the Byers home around Christmas time, during the filming of
Paradise
Lost
.
⁷⁰
Mark had become friendly with Cooper and at one point noticed that Cooper was carrying a pocket knife, a “dinky little thing, dull and sorta useless.” Cooper said he used the knife to cut cables and such in his camera work, so Mark showed him the Kershaw. Cooper liked it, so Mark gave it to him. It had been a birthday present from Melissa, and Mark had never liked it much. The serrated edge made cutting meat difficult, and it was impossible to keep sharp, so he wasn’t able to use it for hunting. When Cooper, along with Berlinger and Sinofsky, noticed that there were traces of what appeared to be blood down in the hinged portion where the blade folded up into the handle, they sent it to Gary Gitchell. Gitchell received the knife on January 9 and immediately sent it to Genetic Design, a DNA forensics lab in North Carolina, for testing. The police received the results on January 26, the first day of the Misskelley trial. Mark was not present for that first day; he was at the Clay County sheriff’s office being interviewed by Gitchell and Detective Bryn Ridge. The thoroughness of the interview was vital. Once the knife was made available to the defense, Mark would be subjected to questioning where it mattered most: on the witness stand.

At 9:45 a.m. on January 26, at the Clay County sheriff’s office, Gitchell began his questioning of Mark Byers.

Gitchell
: What kind of knives do you have?

Byers
: Uh, it’s uh, Case double-edge, and it’s a hunting knife; it’s got a narrow blade about a one-half-inch wide on it. My brother bought it for me when I was eight years old, for my birthday.

Gitchell
: Okay.

Byers
: I had one other knife—it’s called a Kershaw; you know, it’s got like a serrated edge, like a Ginsu.

Gitchell
: Right.

Byers
: And, uh, one of the men on the film crew from New York City—I think his name is Coop [HBO cameraman Doug Cooper], the one that had the camera—I don’t know if he’s here or not, but one day when he was here, we were talking about knives, and he was real friendly to me, and as a Christmas gift I gave it to him. You know, that’s all there was to it. If you ever want to see it or anything, he’s in possession of it. I gave it to him as a Christmas gift.

More important than how the knife came into Cooper’s possession, however, is the question of what significance, if any, this discovery had. For Dan Stidham it was the culmination of months of frustration that all three defense teams were experiencing during the discovery phase (the period prior to trial during which defense attorneys are able to examine all the evidence the state has against their clients). In a meeting held in the chambers of Judge David Burnett on the day before the scheduled start of the Misskelley trial, Stidham complained that he had insufficient time to evaluate the significance of the knife, or to decide how or even if he would use it at trial. Although he referred to the knife having “some sort of exculpatory information” was he actually considering using this information to accuse Mark Byers, on the stand, of committing the murders of his son and two other little boys? Why would any defense attorney want to take that kind of chance with a jury? How well would accusing the parents of one of the victims go over? Stidham already had Misskelley’s taped confession to deal with, and the knife would be superfluous unless he was able to neutralize that evidence. The Kershaw was never introduced at the Misskelley trial, and Mark Byers did not testify.

Most of the testimony at the Misskelley trial consisted of defense attempts to establish alibi witnesses for Jessie’s whereabouts. The prosecution was able to nullify the testimony of these witnesses on cross-examination, and even with the lack of physical evidence, they were able to obtain a conviction. Misskelley’s own words during his confession to police on June 3, 1993, sealed his fate.

Ridge
: What did he [Echols] hit him [Christopher Byers] with?

Jessie
: He hit him with his fist and bruised him all up real bad, and then Jason turned around and hit Steve Branch.

Ridge
: Okay.

Jessie
: And started doing the same thing. Then the other one took off—Michael Moore took off running—so I chased him and grabbed him and hold him, until they got there, and then I left.

Using the imagery evoked by the confession, prosecutor Brent Davis drilled home the significance of Misskelley’s statement in his summation to the jury:

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll never know [if Michael Moore’s escape would have caused Echols and Baldwin to abandon the attack and flee] because Jessie Misskelley Jr. didn’t let Michael Moore get away. He chased him down like an animal and brought him back, and as a result of his action, Michael Moore’s dead, Stevie Branch is dead, Chris Byers is dead. And there’s no getting around it.

The taped portion of the confession—two segments totaling forty-six minutes—was played in open court in the presence of the jury. Misskelley would confess again, post-conviction, and against the strongest possible objection from attorneys Dan Stidham and Greg Crow.
⁷¹
Misskelley must have been considering making a deal for a reduction in his sentence in exchange for his testimony against Echols and Baldwin. Much later, it was rumored that the state was prepared to offer Jessie fifty years in exchange for his testimony against Echols and Baldwin, but it will never be known for certain, since no deal was ever made. On February 4, 1994, Misskelley was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Michael Moore and to twenty years each for the second-degree murders of Steve Branch and Christopher Byers. All sentences were to run consecutively.

One
Down,
Two
to
Go—the
Echols/Baldwin
Trial

With the Misskelley trial behind them, Mark and Melissa were preparing themselves to relive, yet again, the events of May 5, 1993, at the Echols/Baldwin trial, which began on February 28, 1994, three weeks after the Misskelley verdict. Something that attorneys for both defendants were interested in exploiting was the issue of the Kershaw knife. Mark’s statement to Gary Gitchell and Bryn Ridge on January 26 was convoluted and difficult to follow. He had stated that he had no idea how blood came to be on the knife, yet at the Echols/Baldwin trial, under direct examination by Val Price, he said he had cut his thumb while using the knife to trim venison. The decision to put Mark Byers on the stand was a difficult one for the defense to make. In one of their “strategy sessions” shown in
Paradise
Lost
, they make the call. “Obviously, we thought long and hard about mentioning a father as a possible suspect,” Val Price said. Ron Lax added, “You know, we had suspicions even before the knife showed up.” What was the best way to get that information to the jury? Price, co-counsel Scott Davidson, and Lax all agreed: put Byers on the stand.

That there was a communication problem between the investigators and Mark, as well as between Mark and Price, was obvious, and this caused more confusion than it cleared up when Price questioned Mark about the knife on the witness stand. Val Price, a stocky man with a bulldog-like face, tried to appear as if he was in control of his witness, but Mark proved very difficult to pin down. Price’s bluster and feigned disgust with Byers and the responses he gave did little to help. Price plowed ahead into territory that Dan Stidham, Greg Crow (attorney for Misskelley), and Paul Ford and Robin Wadley (attorneys for Baldwin) had avoided. The chief question among the defense had been, “How do we handle Mark Byers?” Recklessly, Price waded in.

Price
: Alright, do you remember giving the answer [to Inspector Gitchell], “I think Coop. No, that knife had not been used at all; it has just been kept up—put in my dresser—and I didn’t use it, and the reason why was because of the serrated edges.” Do you recall giving that answer to Inspector Gitchell on the 26th [of January]?

Byers
: No, sir, I don’t recall giving him that exact answer. I’m sure his question wouldn’t have been asked exactly like your question was.

Price was trying to get Mark to testify that he had contradicted himself during the interview with Gitchell and Ridge, but that interview was almost a month in the past. Mark was also heavily medicated during the trials—as were other family members, friends, and witnesses (notably Vicki Hutcheson)—which further affected his memory, as well as his ability to articulate his thoughts. Getting him to commit to an answer was next to impossible, and Price’s frustration was mounting.

Price
: Okay. Alright, do you remember Gitchell asking you, “Ryan did not cut himself with the Kershaw?” And do you remember answering that question, “Correct, no one’s been cut with the Kershaw”? Do you recall giving that response to Inspector Gitchell?