Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three (9 page)

Rather than relying on corporal punishment, George preferred to “talk things out” with his kids, especially Mark, possibly due to some “mellowness” George had acquired with age, but more likely because he knew his son would learn more from the talk than the whipping. “You’d beg him, ‘Please, hit me. Hit me and get it over with,’ and he’d say, ‘No, we’re goin’ to talk this out, and I’m goin’ to make sure you know what you did wrong, and why it was wrong.’” Infrequent whippings notwithstanding, Mark is characteristically sentimental about his childhood. “I was raised in the South, had a great upbringing. I had an exceptional mother and father. My mother devoted her life to her husband and children. My father devoted his life to his wife and children. My brother and sisters are the product of the two most exceptional parents you could have. My daddy was a man with an eighth-grade education, a self-educated, self-made man. He knew how you should live; he knew how you should treat people. He knew how you should be as a person; he was a man’s man.”

If George was reserved and somewhat strict, Auvergne was amiable and outgoing. “She never met a stranger,” Mark says. She would talk to just about anyone and had an easy, forthcoming way that people found charming. Auvergne worked as the cafeteria director for both schools in Marked Tree, as had her mother before her. She had been a Sunday school teacher at the Baptist Church for as long as anyone could remember and was an active member of the Eastern Star (the women’s corollary to the Masons). As with her husband, if you lived in Marked Tree, you had to know Auvergne Byers. The only thing that might betray her sunny disposition was the fierce protectiveness she had for her children. She would be the first one to take after them if they had misbehaved—the Byers code of conduct was rigid—but also the first to stand up for them. A loving mother who truly enjoyed her role in family life, Auvergne was also outspoken and opinionated and could hold her own in any conversation. Paradoxically, perhaps, she put her husband first, the children second, and herself last. From his father Mark learned a particular set of values, represented by a few simple rules for living: When you give your word, keep it. Take care of your family without complaining. Make a few good friends and keep them close; keep your enemies, if you have them, even closer. From his mother and grandmother, he learned how to cook, clean, and take care of himself.

It would seem that Mark Byers was well equipped to enter the world with the confidence and skills to succeed. He had been brought up in a morally upright, small-town environment by the “best parents anyone ever had.” So what happened? How did things go so horribly wrong?

Setting
Out

As a teenager, Mark hung around the co-op with George and gravitated toward the different tools, machines, and welding equipment in the back of the shop. It was George who first mentioned jeweler’s school to Mark, and so it was that Mark applied to and was accepted at Paris Junior College (PJC) in Paris, Texas, where he enrolled in their jewelry technology program. PJC recruiting literature boasts that “since 1943 the program has attracted students from across the US and from around the globe, drawn to the North Texas campus by the institution’s reputation for excellence within the industry, as well as its affordability.” For Mark, PJC was it, the place where he would learn the trade that he was to ply for the next fifteen years. He did well academically, though he did have at least one conduct problem. For the first six months of school, he lived in one of the student dormitories. This particular dorm was also the dorm that housed the basketball, football, and baseball team members; by special permission, the jewelry students were allowed to live there also (which must have been interesting). One night, Mark was coming into the dorm with a “case of Coors and two gallons of wine” and was confronted by the baseball coach. “We got into it, and I smacked him in the nose, and I ended up in the dean’s office.” Mark was booted from the dorm and took up residence at a farmhouse twenty-one miles outside of town, where he lived with three friends. The rest of his tenure at PJC was more sedate, and Mark was able to complete a certificate program in horology (fine jewelry and watch repair, precious metals, and gemstones). The year was 1976.

Cashing in on PJC’s claim of “100 percent job placement,” Mark took a job with Dale’s Professional Jewelers in Shreveport, Louisiana, rather than return to Marked Tree. There he repaired jewelry that was fed into the repair shop by six other stores that Dale’s owned in the Shreveport area. Mark worked for Dale’s for six months, before the job abruptly came to an end. The first of Mark’s serious brushes with the law would signal the end of his tenure at Dale’s, as well as his residence in the state of Louisiana.

After six months at Dale’s, Mark had decided that he needed a trip home to visit with his family. At the airport, as he passed through the metal detector in the departure area, the alarm sounded. After he removed some change, a watch, his belt, and some other metallic items, the device continued to sound off. A handheld wand pinpointed the problem area as the left inside pocket of his suit jacket. Mark removed a ball point pen. No dice. When he was asked to empty the contents of the pocket, he removed a plastic bag containing several cigarette papers, enough marijuana to roll about three joints, and one tiny metal roach clip.

Possession in Louisiana was a felony at the time, punishable by anywhere from five to ninety-nine years in prison. The police proposed a deal. If Mark would work with them on making larger narcotics arrests, they would hold his arrest paperwork—and the evidence against him—in abeyance, and Mark could continue to work at Dale’s; his employer would not have to know. If his work produced results, the charges would disappear. The alternative to this offer was a trip to the Louisiana State Prison (more commonly known as Angola), which is to say there was no alternative at all. Over the following weeks Mark made a few half-hearted attempts to arrange a bust for the narcs, but nothing panned out. As part of his deal with the police, he had to make weekly, in-person reports on anything he was working on. During one of these visits, Mark was left alone, and in one spur-of-the-moment decision, he snatched the arrest paperwork and the small quantity of pot that made up the evidence against him and hightailed it out of the police station. He had the entire case against him stashed down the front of his pants. His elation was temporary. Within hours, Mark was startled by a knock on the door at his apartment. He found himself face-to-face with two very pissed-off Shreveport detectives. Mark admitted to nothing, prompting the detectives to bounce him around the room a little before taking him back to the station. Once there, he was assured that the full force of Louisiana law would be brought to bear against him if he insisted on reneging on their deal. He was jailed and given time to think about it.

After being locked up for three days, Mark hooked up with a lawyer who was visiting his cellmate, and the lawyer agreed to check out the charges against him. The attorney arranged a meeting with Mark and the arresting officers to evaluate the case against his new client. When the officers went to the filing cabinet to retrieve the file, they found out what Mark already knew: there was nothing there. After politely declining to press charges against the Shreveport Police Department for false arrest—a suggestion made by his attorney—Mark made a swift departure as the detectives warned him to leave the state forever, something he didn’t have to be told twice. He quickly packed his belongings and bolted back to Arkansas. He had taken an enormous chance by rolling the dice with the Shreveport police for huge stakes—hard time at Angola—and had come out unscathed. This type of luck with the law would continue for a good many years before grinding to a halt in 1999, the year his marker was finally called in.

All
the
Way
to
Memphis

But before his world collapsed in the eight years between 1991 and 1999, Mark returned to Arkansas from Louisiana to look for a new job. He found work in Memphis as a manufacturing jeweler, doing repairs and design work. Shortly after returning to the Memphis, Tennessee area, he met a man named Ray Sellers, a realtor from Jonesboro who had money to invest and who saw talent and ambition in the nineteen-year-old from Marked Tree. Sellers agreed to fund him, and Mark suggested that they open a jewelry store. Thus Mark started his first business, Byers and Sellers Custom Jewelers, in Spanish Mall, on Caraway Road in Jonesboro. It was a successful venture, with Mark making custom jewelry and doing repairs for the local shops that had no repair department of their own.

Also during this time, Mark reunited with some old friends and rekindled his love of music. He began singing with a rock band, Home Grown, playing gin mills and honky-tonks in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. It was during this venture that Mark had his second brush with the law, for the same crime: possession of marijuana. The band was playing a gig at a bar called Winks in Paragould, Arkansas. In between sets, Mark and a friend, Kevin, along with the girls they were seeing at the time, headed out to Mark’s car to get high. Almost immediately after lighting the joint, they were spotted by a conveniently patrolling police officer. As Mark rolled down the car window, a cloud of marijuana smoke wafted up at the officer, and the four were removed from the car. A pat-down of the group yielded nothing, but when the police searched the car, they found one half-ounce of pot that Kevin had stuffed in the glove box. Mark, as the owner of the vehicle, was arrested and charged with possession. Bail was set at $187, which Mark did not have, so he did the next best thing. Using his one phone call, he called Winks and informed the employees that the lead singer of the band had just been arrested for possession of marijuana. The hat was passed around the bar, $187 was raised, and Mark was bailed out, returning to the bar in time to finish the next set. He was eventually convicted and fined $187. This was the first criminal charge—a misdemeanor—that appeared on Mark’s record.
⁴³

Although the jewelry store in Jonesboro had been doing well, the business nonetheless had to close in late December 1976. Mark’s girlfriend was—inconveniently, to say the least—the daughter of a narcotics officer assigned to the drug task force covering northeast Arkansas. One day the girl’s father approached Mark and told him that some of his officers had bought pot from Mark and members of the band and that Mark was going to be arrested. Mark listened in disbelief as he was told that since the detective’s daughter was smitten with him, he would be allowed to simply get out of town and leave the girl alone for good. Although Mark’s attachment to the girl was limited, he had little choice but to close the store and return once again to Marked Tree and his parents.

Descent

Mark’s return home signaled the first major failure of his young life. In the two years since leaving Marked Tree for college, he had been arrested twice for marijuana possession, driven from two homes (Shreveport and Jonesboro), forced to close his business, and forbidden to see his girlfriend ever again. His response was to sink into depression and step up his drug usage. These events set something of a pattern for Mark, given that in the future he would often use his own misfortunes or those of others to justify his drug abuse.

Whatever the specific events leading up to the situation were, the fact is that one day Mark began taking what he thought was THC—the active ingredient in marijuana—but which turned out to be PCP, or horse tranquilizer; added some amphetamines to the mix; and didn’t stop taking pills until he fell into unconsciousness.
⁴⁴
The paramedics arrived at his home, stabilized him, and determined that he did not require hospitalization. He recovered quickly, but his parents were frightened. They had never experienced anything like this before and were unsure of what the next step should be. After some very scary nights, during which his parents kept close watch on him, George and Auvergne called a family conference to discuss what to do about Mark. This was a family matter, and no one would have considered involving outsiders. Eventually, Mark’s sister in Jackson, Mississippi, offered a solution: “Send him to us, and we’ll try to help him.” Her husband was a Baptist preacher, and the family agreed that this environment would be the best one for Mark to assess his life and straighten himself out. Starting over for Mark meant first renewing his relationship with God. Having been raised as a Southern Baptist, he felt that he had strayed from his religion’s teachings to the extent that he no longer had any control over his life. He needed to take a hard look, he said, at his life, the things he had done, and the people he had hurt, especially his parents. He grabbed a pen and pad from an airport store, and on the flight to Jackson, he started writing. “I just started talking to God,” he says today. “I asked Him to change my life, to help me be a better person.”

Mark was met at the airport by his brother-in-law, the preacher, who was shocked at what he saw. Mark was gaunt, eyes dark and sunken, and he carried himself like a man who was holding on for dear life. He felt, in his words, “like a piece of shit.” He had let down his parents, whom he loved dearly. His business was gone, his girlfriend was gone, and he had overdosed on illegal drugs. It was devastating to have hurt his family so, but it was the hurt that he had done to himself that would prove the hardest to atone for. His brother-in-law spent time with him, providing the counsel and guidance that Mark needed desperately, getting him involved in the church. In 1977, Mark was baptized into the Baptist faith.
⁴⁵
He began his new life refreshed and was eventually ready to take his first tenuous steps back into the world. He soon found work managing a jewelry store with Ford Jewelers in Jackson, doing custom jewelry creation and jewelry repair. He was generally enjoying his work and feeling better than he had in a long time. It was during this time that he dated and eventually married Sandra Summerall.