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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zupansky, Good Evening.
Speaker 6: Three eight year old boys vanished from their West Memphis
Speaker 6: neighborhood one sunny afternoon. A day later, their mangled, nude
Speaker 6: bodies are found in a drainage ditch. Police and prosecutors
Speaker 6: believe the killings are related to the occult. Three teens
Speaker 6: are arrested. One month later, Damien Ecckles, Jason Baldwin, and
Speaker 6: Jesse mus Kelly Junior are convicted. Award winning journalist George
Speaker 6: Jared takes readers inside one of the most famous criminal
Speaker 6: cases in US legal history, which is in West Memphis.
Speaker 6: Gives a comprehensive insider's view into the West Memphis three case.
Speaker 6: No author, documentary, filmmaker, or journalist has had more access
Speaker 6: in this case, Jared recounts his first hand court coverage,
Speaker 6: interviews with witnesses, research, and other information he gathered in
Speaker 6: the case. Interviews include one on death row with Damien Eccles,
Speaker 6: interviews with Jason Baldwin and Jesse Muskelly Junior, and interviews
Speaker 6: with other suspects, including Terry Hobbs. He's been credited in
Speaker 6: numerous documentaries, including Paradise, Loss Three Purgatory. In the New
Speaker 6: York Time Times bestseller Life After Death, Witches graphically recounts
Speaker 6: how three boy scouts, Stephen Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and
Speaker 6: Christopher Byers, rode their bikes after school on a bright afternoon.
Speaker 6: Their bodies were found in the wooded area near their
Speaker 6: homes the next day. The manner of death and the
Speaker 6: way they were bound ankled the wrist made authorities think
Speaker 6: Satanists might have sacrificed the children. No real evidence tied
Speaker 6: the teens to the crime, but an error ridded riddled
Speaker 6: confession by miss Kelly was the proof used to seal
Speaker 6: the verdicts in the case. As time passed, overwhelming scientific
Speaker 6: evidence was discovered, witnesses changed their statements, new suspects rose
Speaker 6: to the surface. The book they were featuring this evening
Speaker 6: is Witches in West Memphis, The West Memphis three and
Speaker 6: Another False Confession with my guests, journalist and author George Jarrett.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 6: for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 2: George Jarrett, Dan, thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much for returning back for the first
Speaker 6: program in twenty and eighteen. Welcome back, Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Let's get right into this because, as true murder fans know,
Speaker 6: we've looked at this case again it's warrants, looking at
Speaker 6: it many many times, and I'm glad you're back on
Speaker 6: today to look at this even closer than we have
Speaker 6: in the two previous times that we've examined this case.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about you talk about the entire case because
Speaker 6: you had this, talk about this incredible access. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about where you were when this crime occurred. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about that before we talk about how this case you
Speaker 6: came back into it, or it came back into your
Speaker 6: life back in two thousand and eight. So let's talk
Speaker 6: about how where you were and what you were doing
Speaker 6: and who you were working for at the time when
Speaker 6: this case broke.
Speaker 2: I was actually a teenager when the case broke back
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety three. I had just moved to Tarkansas
Speaker 2: from the West Coast, and I heard about it through
Speaker 2: news reports. It's kind of funny. My parents still have
Speaker 2: a bunch of VHS tapes, you know, people used to
Speaker 2: record like the the news or other things. And I
Speaker 2: was actually in my dad's shop one day, actually just
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, and he still had a
Speaker 2: bunch of those tapes and we were going through them
Speaker 2: and I noticed one tape from around like and it
Speaker 2: was you know, they had dates on him and actually
Speaker 2: have a copy of the of the news release that
Speaker 2: the night that the three guys were arrested on the
Speaker 2: local news in Jonesboro, Arkansas, because we just moved there
Speaker 2: and we weren't really familiar with you know, different you know,
Speaker 2: like times when news would come on and whatnot. So
Speaker 2: I was a teenager, heard about it a few people
Speaker 2: around me. You know, everybody was scared, you know at first,
Speaker 2: you know, because nobody knew who killed these three kids.
Speaker 2: But then you know, time passed, and I'll be honest
Speaker 2: with you, I basically forgot about it. I watched the
Speaker 2: documentary Paradise Lost, probably around nineteen ninety eight or nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. I do remember seeing it in a local
Speaker 2: video store, and from for the most part, I just
Speaker 2: kind of forgot about it. I was actually at a
Speaker 2: softball game. And in two thousand and eight, I was
Speaker 2: working at the Jont girl Son as a journalist and
Speaker 2: I get a call from one of my bosses and
Speaker 2: the boss asked me if I could cover a hearing
Speaker 2: for the West Memphis three and so I said, sure,
Speaker 2: no problem. I got off the phone. I looked at
Speaker 2: a buddy that was sit with me, I said, have
Speaker 2: you ever heard of West Memphis three? And so he
Speaker 2: didn't really know either. So I went and started doing
Speaker 2: a little bit of research, and you know, slowly but surely,
Speaker 2: it came back to me what the story was. Well,
Speaker 2: that day I go into court Dennis Reardan, who was
Speaker 2: Damien Nichols attorney at the time. He he pretty famous guy.
Speaker 2: You know, he represented Barry Bonds in the Balco steroids case.
Speaker 2: He's based in San Francisco. He was in court, was
Speaker 2: a short hearing, nothing much to it. And the ironic
Speaker 2: thing for me was I was like the fourth guy
Speaker 2: on the totem Pole to even cover that one hearing
Speaker 2: we had we had two cops and courts beat reporters
Speaker 2: and then their backup well, we had a couple of
Speaker 2: Capitol murder cases going on at the time, and then
Speaker 2: we also had one of our reporters got summoned to
Speaker 2: a to civil court and so so there was no report.
Speaker 2: I was the fourth gonalist, so I went hadn't covered
Speaker 2: it well. In the inner months between that hearing and
Speaker 2: a series of hearings that began in November of two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, we lost a couple of reporters and
Speaker 2: they naturally win. This West Memphis three came up. Since
Speaker 2: I'd covered one whole hearing, obviously was the expert in
Speaker 2: the office on it now. So I started covering these hearings,
Speaker 2: and it was really interesting to me because when I
Speaker 2: came into it, when I walked in the door in
Speaker 2: November when they had they started a week long session,
Speaker 2: I didn't go into it thinking that these guys were
Speaker 2: in fit. I just assumed that the prosecutors and the
Speaker 2: police had gotten right. You know, most of the time
Speaker 2: police and prosecutors do good work. They saw cases and
Speaker 2: they put the right people in prison, and so when
Speaker 2: I walked into court that day, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I was pretty open minded. I would say, actually not
Speaker 2: open minded, but I was definitely not. It wasn't going
Speaker 2: to be swayed by. It would take real arguments to
Speaker 2: sway me. I guess it's the best way to put it.
Speaker 2: And so as I'm sitting in court, and I mean,
Speaker 2: and these hearings took forever. They lasted a couple of years.
Speaker 2: What they are called, They're called Rule thirty seven hearings.
Speaker 2: And basically, in these hearings, what was allowed is that
Speaker 2: the judge allowed just about basically any argument that the
Speaker 2: defense could make these guys were innocent. He basically said, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you make it now. I don't think
Speaker 2: it would have mattered what they would have argued. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure Judge Burnette was going to decide, under almost
Speaker 2: unknow circumstance that they were not going to be He
Speaker 2: was going to uphold the convictions no matter what. But
Speaker 2: it's really interesting because they brought in a slew of
Speaker 2: high profile experts who testified in the case. And you know,
Speaker 2: the first thing that people will say is, well, these
Speaker 2: were defense paid you know witnesses, and that is true
Speaker 2: in some instances. Some of these guys were paid, but
Speaker 2: some of them were not, and they all came to
Speaker 2: the same universal conclusions and what you know, and there's
Speaker 2: just some you know, like I'm a pretty pragmatic person.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty pragmagmatic when it comes to journalism, and there
Speaker 2: were just some details about the crime that didn't make
Speaker 2: sense to me from the very beginning, even when I
Speaker 2: thought they were guilty. And its actually small things. And
Speaker 2: one of those small things that never made sense to
Speaker 2: me was within twenty four hours of the murders they
Speaker 2: were already interviewing Damien Eckles as a suspect. And the
Speaker 2: reason that was is alarming to me or as sound
Speaker 2: as an alarm belt, is because I've covered a lot
Speaker 2: of capital Burger cases and this is kind of how
Speaker 2: it goes. If you know, take a person a, person B.
Speaker 2: If person A shoots person B and a bunch of
Speaker 2: people see him do it, then immediately personate the suspect,
Speaker 2: right Or if person A if there's some overwhelming piece
Speaker 2: of evidence like his gun is at the crime scene,
Speaker 2: his wallet, or if person A goes into a police
Speaker 2: station that confesses then they would be a prime suspect.
Speaker 2: So in this case, you didn't have any of those
Speaker 2: three elements one day after and so and then you
Speaker 2: know this what happens that what happens if you don't
Speaker 2: have those elements is you're gonna have to do you know,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to do a good detective work. You
Speaker 2: know you're gonna have to analyze evidence, You're gonna have
Speaker 2: to wit in review witnesses. So the fact that they
Speaker 2: had honed in on Eccles so early, it was kind
Speaker 2: of it was just not only is the word suspicions,
Speaker 2: it's just weird. It didn't make any sense to me
Speaker 2: just from a you know, covering these types of things perspective.
Speaker 2: So I said in court, they bring in, you know,
Speaker 2: they start bringing in all these experts. One of the
Speaker 2: guys they brought in was a guy named doctor Richard Suberin.
Speaker 2: Doctor Suberin is the forensic OED on cologist down in
Speaker 2: Miami Dade County in Florida, and his what made him
Speaker 2: his claim to fame is that he was the old
Speaker 2: oncologists who actually helped to identify ted Bundy's victims back
Speaker 2: in the late nineteen seventies through his bite mark evidence.
Speaker 2: And so he came and testified in this case. And
Speaker 2: he's also a and I hate to use these cliche terms,
Speaker 2: but he is a world renowned expert in identifying bodies
Speaker 2: that have been bitten like in water, you know, by
Speaker 2: aquatic creatures because you know, on Florida have got sharks
Speaker 2: and alligators and everything else. So he he is a
Speaker 2: real expert in, you know, dealing with bodies that have
Speaker 2: been savaged by animals and water. And so he came
Speaker 2: in and he spent a day and and he told
Speaker 2: the jedge he said, look, these boys were not you know,
Speaker 2: they were not sliced up with a knife. He said,
Speaker 2: there's no boone piercing injuries to these bodies. And if
Speaker 2: you ever see the knife that was you that the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's claim was used in these crimes, it's a it's
Speaker 2: a the blade is very long, it's like a rambow
Speaker 2: style knife. And I've seen the knife. It's been I've
Speaker 2: seen it in the court before, and there is no
Speaker 2: way if you had that knife and you are going
Speaker 2: to savage three kids the way the the way these
Speaker 2: guys were a legship done, you were going to stab
Speaker 2: one of them. You're not just going to sit there
Speaker 2: and scrape them with a little knife, I mean, because
Speaker 2: that's all they had. They had very superficial wounds like that.
Speaker 2: And of course Richard Subern's explanation for it was very simple.
Speaker 2: These are aquatic creatures clawing at the body that after
Speaker 2: they died post more than he said, there's very little blood.
Speaker 2: And of course they had all the autopsy photos up
Speaker 2: on the screen, and they were going through it, you know,
Speaker 2: very dramatically, and you know, and and even a layman
Speaker 2: like me, I could look at it and go, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: but if I'm a knife wielding killer, I'm going to
Speaker 2: stab the victims, I'm not. I'm not gonna sit there
Speaker 2: and scrape on him and not even really causing the injury.
Speaker 2: So his testimony is very interesting to me. I interviewed
Speaker 2: him later. You know, he told me flat out, he said,
Speaker 2: in forty years of working, you know, or thirty years
Speaker 2: whatever it was working criminal cases, it was one of
Speaker 2: the craziest cases he had ever seen in his career.
Speaker 2: And then another guy that testified was a doctor Michael Bowden,
Speaker 2: And of course doctor Boden was the chief medical examiner
Speaker 2: for the City of York for eleven years. He's you'll
Speaker 2: see him on TV quite a bit. He's a commentator
Speaker 2: when something, you know, I only have a major catasrophe,
Speaker 2: like if an airplane goes down or something, he'll come
Speaker 2: in and talk about you know, forensic pathology, you know,
Speaker 2: all that kind of thing and so. And he's also
Speaker 2: written I think episodes of CSI and things like that.
Speaker 2: So he's he's very well respected, well known, one of
Speaker 2: the most respected forensic pathologists in the world. And he
Speaker 2: probably in more detail. You know, he went in and
Speaker 2: you know, they blew up these autopsy pictures and you know,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of the wounds were triangular in shape,
Speaker 2: and he said, this was very simple because these were
Speaker 2: turtle bites. And of course the prosecutors in this hearing
Speaker 2: just jumped all over and said, you can't prove there
Speaker 2: were any turtles in the creek. So in one instance
Speaker 2: they brought John Mark Byers, you know, one of the stepfathers,
Speaker 2: actually one of the stepfathers who was one who was
Speaker 2: accused of doing you know, killing the boys. At one
Speaker 2: point they brought him to the stand and they only
Speaker 2: asked him, you know, basically one or two questions, You
Speaker 2: know what this place where the bodies were found, what
Speaker 2: was it called, this specific place in robin Hood Hills,
Speaker 2: what was it called? And he said it was called
Speaker 2: Turtle Hill because there was a bunch of turtles that
Speaker 2: congregated right next to that drainage ditch on that hill.
Speaker 2: All the kids called it that. And so it was
Speaker 2: also interesting too because doctor Frank Peretti, who is the
Speaker 2: eighth medical Examiner in Arkansas, he had told paul Ford
Speaker 2: back before the original trial started. And here's the thing
Speaker 2: about Parretti, he actually grow he actually raises terrapins as
Speaker 2: a hobby, so he raises turtles, and he even told
Speaker 2: he told paul Ford. He allegedly told paul Ford that
Speaker 2: he thought that a lot of the woman's on the
Speaker 2: victims at that time, before the first trial even started,
Speaker 2: were caused by turtles. Now, when he took the stand
Speaker 2: during these rule thirty seven hearings, okay, Paul Ford took
Speaker 2: the stand during these rule thirty seven hearings and testified
Speaker 2: to that fact. He said, doctor Peretti did tell me this,
Speaker 2: but they didn't think it was significant at the time.
Speaker 2: And so but then doctor pretty did get on the
Speaker 2: stand and I will, I will clarify this. He denied
Speaker 2: that he ever told Paul Ford this. But as I
Speaker 2: told my editor when I went back to the office,
Speaker 2: I said, here's the problem with the two statements. First,
Speaker 2: Paul Ford is an attorney. If he got on the
Speaker 2: stand and lied about a conversation that he had under oath,
Speaker 2: he could lose his law license. Doctor Freddy can get
Speaker 2: on the stand and lie about it and he loses
Speaker 2: nothing because it's just a conversation to him. So when
Speaker 2: you look at what each of them were risking in
Speaker 2: that circumstance, you know, again, you know, we don't know
Speaker 2: for sure if it happened or not, but obviously I
Speaker 2: would probably tend to think that the person who has
Speaker 2: the most to lose would be the person who's not lying.
Speaker 2: So anyway, so doctor Bowden, he testified Arry and again
Speaker 2: I interviewed him to very nice man, very well respected,
Speaker 2: well educated. He told me, he said, there's no way
Speaker 2: these three guys did this crime the way that prost
Speaker 2: He says, this is simply impossible. He said that knife
Speaker 2: was not used to do any of these things. And
Speaker 2: so then they also brought another guy named doctor Warner Spence,
Speaker 2: and I guess he's kind of like a grandfather of
Speaker 2: forensic pathologist. And he testified to the same pretty much
Speaker 2: the same thing he said to the three boys. He
Speaker 2: thought that all three of them drowned in the creek. He,
Speaker 2: like other forensic pathologists, has no explanation as to why
Speaker 2: Christopher Byers's you know, organs were pale. You know, what
Speaker 2: happened to all the blood. Nobody can ever figure out,
Speaker 2: you know, if this boy blood out where all the
Speaker 2: blood went, because there was no blood recovered from the scene.
Speaker 2: You know, that's also a common misconception that I've run
Speaker 2: across through the years, you know that is that they
Speaker 2: did find blood, but that is not true. They tried,
Speaker 2: they did some luminol testing weeks after the bodies were found.
Speaker 2: They found traces of some chemicals out there, but they
Speaker 2: were never able to find anything that they could bring
Speaker 2: into a court of law. And so, with all this
Speaker 2: scientific evidence piling up, a woman named doctor Janis Ophoven,
Speaker 2: She's based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She a foremost pediatric forensic pathologist.
Speaker 2: Her testimony was really really interesting to me because the
Speaker 2: the the other three testified about the wounds to the
Speaker 2: bodies and that that made sense to me to a
Speaker 2: certain degree, which she testified to really strikes at the
Speaker 2: heart of the case because everybody always talks about jets,
Speaker 2: Miss Kelly Junior giving three and four and five and
Speaker 2: six confessions, and I've heard every one of them. They recorded,
Speaker 2: they played them all in court. And the thing about
Speaker 2: it is the one thing he's consistent about in his confessions.
Speaker 2: He always says that the boys were sodomized. He says
Speaker 2: they were raped. And so to me, that's a big
Speaker 2: detail because like in his first confession, he got a
Speaker 2: bunch of things wrong, and everybody knows that. You know
Speaker 2: the story. You know that he misidentified the time and
Speaker 2: the place, and he misidentified which boys were rich, and
Speaker 2: he couldn't He didn't even tell them that they were
Speaker 2: tied with their own shoelaces. He said they were bound
Speaker 2: with ropes and all this, and we know all these details.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me about doctor Ophoven's testimony is she
Speaker 2: said that these boys were not sexually assaulted. And and
Speaker 2: this is very graphic, but you know, they put up
Speaker 2: three blown up pictures of the boys anuses in the courtroom,
Speaker 2: and she systematically went through and said, look, there's no damage,
Speaker 2: there's no bruising to any of their amuses at all,
Speaker 2: there's no there's no semen present, and none of them
Speaker 2: had an STD. Those are the three tests that you
Speaker 2: use to determine if somebody has been sonomized sexually assaulted,
Speaker 2: and she said, she said it's impossible. She said if
Speaker 2: she said it, because even the proscut room point asked her,
Speaker 2: she said, is it possible to sodomize the child and
Speaker 2: leave no evidence of it? And she said, yes, it's possible,
Speaker 2: she said, but it is, she said, but it would
Speaker 2: be virtually impossible to do it to two or three
Speaker 2: of them. She said, there's no way that could happen.
Speaker 2: She said, if there were multiple partners, multiple victims, she said,
Speaker 2: it's simply impossible, there would be some evidence that had happened.
Speaker 2: And so that right there. And even doctor Peretti, when
Speaker 2: he testified later in the hearing, admitted the same thing.
Speaker 2: He said, while he left the impression with the jurors
Speaker 2: in the original trials that they were sexually assaulted, he
Speaker 2: definitively said during the hearing, without those the presence of
Speaker 2: any of those things, then they then they probably weren't
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted. So that was a big key for me,
Speaker 2: you know, because for his confession to be true and honest.
Speaker 2: You know, confessions are supposed to get clarity to crimes.
Speaker 2: You know, a police officer walks into a room. There's
Speaker 2: a there's a murder victim. Here, there's a lamp, you know,
Speaker 2: knocked over here, the bed is in a certain position,
Speaker 2: you know, and then they're they're trying to put all
Speaker 2: these clues together to figure out exactly what happened and
Speaker 2: when it happened. And usually when somebody comes into confess
Speaker 2: to a murder like that, they say, well, the reason
Speaker 2: the lamp was knocked over was because of this, the
Speaker 2: reason that the bed was in this position was because
Speaker 2: of that. In Jesse's confession, he just he just creates
Speaker 2: a bunch of more questions. I mean, it's almost like
Speaker 2: his first couple of confessions just were kind of like
Speaker 2: they were fitting a square peg and to a round
Speaker 2: hole of what they knew. But then with the advent
Speaker 2: of modern DNA and all this other stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: and also just better forensic pathology, you know, we've we've
Speaker 2: really advanced in the last twenty years, and our interpretations
Speaker 2: and how we interpret evidence and how we analyze it
Speaker 2: and use it in court. So I think that these
Speaker 2: guys are very lucky that they that this happened when
Speaker 2: it did. And you know, and I tell people this
Speaker 2: all the time. You know, I listened to the scientific
Speaker 2: stuff in court. It was very impressive to me. But
Speaker 2: still I still clung. I was like, okay, because I
Speaker 2: literally have covered cases where people have walked Scotfrey, they
Speaker 2: committed the crime, but there wasn't once until of evidence
Speaker 2: that the police and prosecutors could generate to get a conviction.
Speaker 6: And so let me ask a question, George, let me
Speaker 6: let me get a question in here. George, thanks for
Speaker 6: let's ask a question, because or let me ask this question.
Speaker 6: What we have to talk about is if you've gone
Speaker 6: to these this hearing in two thousand and eight and
Speaker 6: all this information comes out. But what you do talk
Speaker 6: about at the very beginning of your book that we've
Speaker 6: completely not spoken about is how this all came to
Speaker 6: be with Jesse Muskelly's confession, and you also talk about
Speaker 6: Victoria Hutchinson and her son Aaron, So all of the
Speaker 6: information that went into first targeting Damian Eccles and Jason Baldwin.
Speaker 6: So what happens is that again, like you say, you're
Speaker 6: just a teenager when this happens. But in this all
Speaker 6: of this other evidence comes out. West Memphis three is
Speaker 6: a phenomena. Once you see the documentaries and the films
Speaker 6: that come out, the case changes. The entire focus of
Speaker 6: the nation looks at this case because they see the
Speaker 6: confession and they see the coverage that was allowed somehow
Speaker 6: this Judge Burnett and authorities, defense attorneys and families allowed thankfully,
Speaker 6: as you say, Damien Eckles said that saved his life.
Speaker 6: That coverage and this phenomena, the support that came afterwards.
Speaker 6: But very interestingly, some of the stuff that you go
Speaker 6: through is exactly how the police you talk about Detective Meeks,
Speaker 6: and you talk about how exactly they did focus on
Speaker 6: Damian Eccles, and how they used this confession in the
Speaker 6: very beginning that it was so weak, this confession, as
Speaker 6: you say, that he had the time wrong and details
Speaker 6: very significant like rope rather than shoelaces, that they had
Speaker 6: to go to the authorities. So as you do tell
Speaker 6: us about how they went to the authorities initially and
Speaker 6: couldn't get an arrest warrant and what they were told
Speaker 6: and what they did and tell us about Voe Victoria
Speaker 6: Hutchinson and her role and her son's role in this
Speaker 6: early in the investigation.
Speaker 2: Well, what happened was is they brought Jesse in on
Speaker 2: June third. They brought him in around ten o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning, and he spent four or five hours with detectives.
Speaker 2: They only recorded, you know, a few minutes of it
Speaker 2: towards the very end. And basically what they did is
Speaker 2: they coerced him into giving a confession. And I used
Speaker 2: the term confession very loosely because if you ever the
Speaker 2: thing that changed for me in this case was when
Speaker 2: I had an attorney asked me if I had ever
Speaker 2: read his confession, the first.
Speaker 6: One, that's right, and I hadn't.
Speaker 2: I had not, and I was like, okay, So I
Speaker 2: went back to my Actually was an attorney's girlfriend who
Speaker 2: came in from Philadelphia to go to one of these
Speaker 2: hearings on their vacation, and so that night I went
Speaker 2: back to my office, I read the confession. I could
Speaker 2: not believe it. I was stunned because all the details
Speaker 2: are wrong. And so when they were able to elicit
Speaker 2: this confession, from SI back on June third, nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: They took it to a magistrate to get warrants to
Speaker 2: arrest at Goles, Baldwin and miss Kelly. The magistrate read
Speaker 2: it over and was like, now we can't. You can't
Speaker 2: arrest anybody because all these details are wrong. Well, they
Speaker 2: bring Jesse back to the police station and they record
Speaker 2: another nine, ten, twelve minutes or whatever, and then he
Speaker 2: cleans up some of those detailed and so then then
Speaker 2: it's enough to where they can go and arrest all
Speaker 2: these three guys. So his confession was so bad to
Speaker 2: begin with, they couldn't even issue arrest warrants. So and
Speaker 2: how Victoria Hutchinson ties into this. Victoria Hutchinson when the
Speaker 2: three boys who died, she had a son named Aaron,
Speaker 2: who was friends with the three and he claimed that
Speaker 2: he had actually watched the murders take place. And so
Speaker 2: the police interviewed him multiple times, and each time he
Speaker 2: told a different story, a fanciful story, but for weeks
Speaker 2: and weeks and weeks, the police were convinced that he
Speaker 2: knew some thing. Well, they just kept talking to him,
Speaker 2: and then eventually they got to the point where they
Speaker 2: realized that he didn't know anything. Well, during this time,
Speaker 2: they were still trying to get Damian Eccles. And so
Speaker 2: what they did is they got Victoria Hutchinson, Aaron's mother.
Speaker 2: They got her to lure him over to her house,
Speaker 2: and they had placed a bugging device in the house.
Speaker 2: And what they told her to do was to put
Speaker 2: books like satanic, you know, like or not satanic, but
Speaker 2: just like a cult related books out and start talking
Speaker 2: to him about it, try to get him to talk
Speaker 2: about this stuff. Well, Vicki told the police that Demian
Speaker 2: came over and she said within ten minutes she could
Speaker 2: tell he had nothing to do with his crime. He
Speaker 2: was just a scared kid. There's no way he had
Speaker 2: anything to do with it. Well, the police told her
Speaker 2: that wasn't good enough. They needed to tie him to
Speaker 2: the occult. And the ironic thing was is that Vicky,
Speaker 2: her son Aaron, a lot of times was babysat by
Speaker 2: Jesse mss Kelley Jr. See And that's another little element
Speaker 2: that a lot of people don't realize is that Jason
Speaker 2: and Damian were friends. They were not friends with Jesse.
Speaker 2: They knew him, they didn't hang out with him. They
Speaker 2: didn't know him. And so that's how Jesse kind of
Speaker 2: creeps into this picture is you know, the police are
Speaker 2: chronstantly picking kids up in this trailer park, trying to
Speaker 2: interview them, trying to get you know, just trying to
Speaker 2: find some lead. So you know, they sweep up Jesse.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing. He was at Victoria Hutchinson's house
Speaker 2: the morning that they went and got him, the day
Speaker 2: he confessed. And the reason that's interesting is is because
Speaker 2: they had that bugging device underneath the house. And Vickie
Speaker 2: Hutchinson told me this to my face. She was if
Speaker 2: they really thought that Jesse was a killer involved in
Speaker 2: these three murders, why would they let him stay in
Speaker 2: my house with my son? Why wouldn't they tell me
Speaker 2: to keep my son away from him? And I said
Speaker 2: that's a good point. And so when when the police
Speaker 2: when they talked to her, they said that about this
Speaker 2: whole meeting with Damien, she said they told her that
Speaker 2: they thought she was lying. And then she goes, we've
Speaker 2: got the audio from that device you guys put in
Speaker 2: my house, So what does it And they said, well,
Speaker 2: it was incomprehensible. We can't hear it, we can't hear anything.
Speaker 2: So they finally tell her, you know, she's facing a
Speaker 2: credit card broad charge, and you know, basically she she
Speaker 2: she claims that she was threatened, and so then she
Speaker 2: had to make up a story about going to a
Speaker 2: satanic spot with Echeles and miss Kelly. And here's the thing,
Speaker 2: I've interviewed her face to face before she told me
Speaker 2: to my face that she lied. She testified at Jesse's
Speaker 2: trial that she had attended this thing. And on the
Speaker 2: juror notebooks afterwards, you know, when jurors were writing down,
Speaker 2: you know, compelling her reasons to convict, one of them
Speaker 2: was her testimony. So to say that she had no
Speaker 2: impact on this case, because I've heard that said too,
Speaker 2: is ludicrous because part of the part of this sensationalism
Speaker 2: about this satanic panic that happened around here was was
Speaker 2: because a testimony like hers, and she directly testified to it.
Speaker 2: And so she totally go.
Speaker 6: Ahead, sorry, where let's what we're forgetting to say though,
Speaker 6: that it's not that she's innocent to this or the
Speaker 6: police are innocent in this, is that this stems from
Speaker 6: his probation officer, Stephen Jones, I believe and his body
Speaker 6: so tell us a little bit about that, because that's
Speaker 6: very interesting where this came from as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his uh uh uh, Jerry Driver and Stephen Jones
Speaker 2: were I don't think it was a probation. I think
Speaker 2: it was like a social worker who had worked with Echols, right,
Speaker 2: he knew of him, and they both knew of him,
Speaker 2: and they were they were convinced that there was a
Speaker 2: an upcropping of Satanic warship among the youth in West
Speaker 2: Memphis during this time. They thought that this was a
Speaker 2: real phenomenon and that they were going to start sacrificing
Speaker 2: you know, they've been sacrificing animals. They thought they're gonna
Speaker 2: start sacrificing children. And of course Damien at you know,
Speaker 2: he he'll admit to you he was very troubled at
Speaker 2: the time when he was you know, he's eighteen years old,
Speaker 2: and you know, he had dropped out of high school
Speaker 2: and he had been you know, he had been diagnosed
Speaker 2: with various you know, mental disorders at the time, and
Speaker 2: so he would meet with these guys and he would
Speaker 2: say things to them like, you know, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have a kid, I'm gonna sacrifice it, you know, And
Speaker 2: of course he told me when he was on death
Speaker 2: row in twenty ten, when I interviewed him, he told
Speaker 2: me he said, uh, he goes, yeah, he goes. I
Speaker 2: was just messing with these guys that they were taking
Speaker 2: me seriously, and I didn't realize that I was too
Speaker 2: stupid to understand what was the gravity of what was
Speaker 2: going on. And so when they find the bodies, you know,
Speaker 2: these two guys are the first. They literally on the
Speaker 2: ditch bank are like, Damien Eckles did this. He is involved,
Speaker 2: trust me, and so that's what led. I believe it was.
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Sutterberry is the first one who went to eccles house,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure about that. The next day and either
Speaker 2: Jerry Driver or Stephen Johnes I believe it with Stephen
Speaker 2: Jones was with him. They went straight to eccheles house,
Speaker 2: took a picture of him wearing a Portland Trailblazers NBA
Speaker 2: basketball team T shirt, and from that point on he
Speaker 2: was a suspect. And it was all based on what
Speaker 2: these guys were telling people, and there was no evidence
Speaker 2: at all that this had even happened. So they honed
Speaker 2: in on him early based on someone's opinion, not any
Speaker 2: facts that they had gleaned from the crime scene.
Speaker 6: You also, maybe you can tell us how this works
Speaker 6: as well, because they take this speculative information from Jones
Speaker 6: and driver, you say, but then they find then it
Speaker 6: seems like they're planting ideas. And you describe how this
Speaker 6: confession actually went down. So if he's asked the question
Speaker 6: and he doesn't know the answer, tell us how what
Speaker 6: this process was. As you found out.
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Speaker 2: Plus, But basically like this. They would ask him a
Speaker 2: question like, let's say, when did you meet encounter the boys,
Speaker 2: and Jesse would say, well, we it was early in
Speaker 2: the morning, eight nine o'clock in the morning, and they'd
Speaker 2: say okay, okay, well they keep going. Well then they
Speaker 2: would go was it eight or was it ten? And
Speaker 2: he'd go yeah, I mean the next answer is like
Speaker 2: yeah or And then they'd say, well, maybe it was
Speaker 2: closer to the nude and he would say sure. And so
Speaker 2: basically what was happening is he was moving. They were
Speaker 2: just moving the dial for Jesse. They were just steering
Speaker 2: him in the right direction. They were leading him. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, if anybody you know who's in this business,
Speaker 2: you know in journalism or in the police detective business.
Speaker 2: I mean, you are you know law enforcement. You know
Speaker 2: that when somebody's giving you a confession, they're going to
Speaker 2: sit you down and they're going to give you details
Speaker 2: that you did not have. It's going to be clear
Speaker 2: because the person who did it knows how it happened.
Speaker 2: They don't have to be confused because they were there.
Speaker 2: And the problem with Jesse is he is very confused
Speaker 2: the whole time. And here's the thing. Jesse was in
Speaker 2: court for a lot of these hearings, and so was
Speaker 2: Jason Baldom, so I got to interact with both of
Speaker 2: them quite a bit. And I'm telling you that when
Speaker 2: you meet Jesse, you are meeting a person of extreme
Speaker 2: low intelligence. And I don't say that to be mean
Speaker 2: or belittled in any way, but he is. He is
Speaker 2: very He hit his whole life when he was in school,
Speaker 2: his entire academic career, what little of it there was.
Speaker 2: He had a history of not being able to comprehend
Speaker 2: things in school. You know, he has a low IQ.
Speaker 2: He's easily manipulated, and it's it's quite obvious. I mean
Speaker 2: he was in court, you know, his defense attorney, Dan Stidham,
Speaker 2: the original defense attorney, told me, you know, several years
Speaker 2: ago that you know, Jesse didn't even realize that he
Speaker 2: was actually is an attorney. He thought that his own attorney,
Speaker 2: his defense attorney, was a cop. He didn't even realize
Speaker 2: the difference between a cop and a defense attorney. And
Speaker 2: so he said it was really hard dealing with him.
Speaker 2: And Dan told me straight up, he said, kid, He said,
Speaker 2: there is no way he was at that crime scene.
Speaker 2: He said he didn't know anything of it. The only
Speaker 2: reason that his confessions got better, you know, over time,
Speaker 2: is because he went through the trial, he got more detailed.
Speaker 2: And he said, Jesse legitimately thought at some point they
Speaker 2: were just going to finally figure out that he had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with it, and they were just going
Speaker 2: to let him go. And then finally he figured out
Speaker 2: that that wasn't going to happen, and that's why he
Speaker 2: didn't testify at the Eckles Baldwin trial. And I'll give
Speaker 2: you another interesting little nugget that's not talked about a lot.
Speaker 2: Vicki Hutchinson. She didn't testify at the Eckles Baldwin trial either,
Speaker 2: because she was hopped up on drugs and the Roskaters
Speaker 2: at the time deemed that she would be a liability
Speaker 2: if she were, you know, brought into court, and so
Speaker 2: so they put her on a hope. She told me
Speaker 2: that they put her in a hotel in Memphis and
Speaker 2: told her just to stay away. Why would you have
Speaker 2: it if you had a legitimate witness who could say
Speaker 2: that Damien Echeles was at a Satanic spot in Tural, Arkansas.
Speaker 2: How in the world does that person not make it
Speaker 2: to the stand.
Speaker 6: You also have them taking that information and their initial
Speaker 6: theory that there was this Satanic ritual and you get
Speaker 6: that from again, you discredit this expert as he has
Speaker 6: been discredited. His name is Griffin, So tell us a
Speaker 6: little about his non background and then what exactly he
Speaker 6: does say. And then what I was going to get
Speaker 6: you to say is that how does this information and
Speaker 6: their theory about Satanism and this expert witness, Griffin that information,
Speaker 6: how does that tie in do you think with the
Speaker 6: first especially version and the second version of the confession
Speaker 6: in terms of those elements where miss Kelly is talking about,
Speaker 6: you know, the emasculating, the one of the boys and
Speaker 6: the stuff like that. Tell us how you think that
Speaker 6: that information and that speculation is incorporated into those confessions.
Speaker 2: Well, Dale Griffiths, I mean he is. I mean he's
Speaker 2: a fraud. I mean, there's no weather way to say it.
Speaker 2: How this guy was ever, you know, sworn in as
Speaker 2: an expert witness, it is beyond unconscionable. I mean, this
Speaker 2: guy has no credentials at all. He got his he
Speaker 2: was a police officer in Ohio and he decided that
Speaker 2: he was going to become an expert expert on the occult.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I can't remember if it was twenty
Speaker 2: twenty or Dateline or some actually pretty respectable news program
Speaker 2: decided to put him on as an expert at one
Speaker 2: point because they were they just they couldn't find one
Speaker 2: around the country. I think it was in the late eighties,
Speaker 2: because there were none. Nobody was an expert in the
Speaker 2: occult or Satanism or practices of Satanism because there was
Speaker 2: no need to be, you know, from a law enforcement perspective.
Speaker 2: But then in the late eighties, like we talked about before,
Speaker 2: that Satanic panic started setting in. You know, kids started
Speaker 2: you know, reading Stephen King and dressing like goths and
Speaker 2: listening to Metallica, which all that stuff pretty normal today,
Speaker 2: but but back then he was like, oh man, what's
Speaker 2: going on with our views? You know. And so this guy, somehow,
Speaker 2: because he was on one show or two shows, kind
Speaker 2: of became an expert. The backstory is that he actually
Speaker 2: does he called himself doctor Dale Griffith, but he actually
Speaker 2: got his you know, diploma from a diploma mill in California,
Speaker 2: I meaning he just sent the money and they sent
Speaker 2: him a diploma. So he took no classes. He hasn't
Speaker 2: he has no expertise in this area. And so he
Speaker 2: basically got on the stand and then he you know,
Speaker 2: he was just testifying to all sorts of just crazy facts,
Speaker 2: you know, about the day, you know, May fifth having
Speaker 2: certain rep or meaning or preference for Satan worshippers, and
Speaker 2: that the number three, the three victims and the three killers.
Speaker 2: You know, that there was all this was all symbiotic,
Speaker 2: you know. And he also talked about drinking, you know,
Speaker 2: like the blood of a you know, a young child,
Speaker 2: you know, and and and then the sacrifice you know,
Speaker 2: because you know, Christopher Byers was as you know, emasculated
Speaker 2: during all this. Interesting in going back to the forensic
Speaker 2: pathology part of that though, there is one interesting note
Speaker 2: about the emasculation that I found interesting. He Okay, if
Speaker 2: you were going to there's if somebody was going to
Speaker 2: cut that part of his body off with a knife,
Speaker 2: you would expect there to be a bone piercing wound
Speaker 2: somewhere in that. In that in the growing area, there
Speaker 2: is notice. So the theory that you know that this
Speaker 2: was paid, that the the emasculation occurred post mortem by
Speaker 2: a turtle or another aquadic creature makes a lot more
Speaker 2: sense just from a scientific standpoint. So, but anyway, back
Speaker 2: to Dale Griffiths. He uh, he made all these wild
Speaker 2: claims on the sand and I mean, I can't even
Speaker 2: believe a responsible juror would have taken this guy seriously.
Speaker 2: I mean, but they did. And I this is the
Speaker 2: funny thing, Dan, it's now, it's not after the fact.
Speaker 2: You know, this was the motive. You know that they created,
Speaker 2: you know, opening and closing arguments. They bring this clown
Speaker 2: on on to the stand to testify. Okay, so they
Speaker 2: make all of this argument that this is a satanic killing.
Speaker 2: Now when you talk to him, Oh no, that was
Speaker 2: that wasn't the motive, that's what they say. Now, Oh no,
Speaker 2: that wasn't the motive. That was just one possible motive.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting here going, you guys have based your entire
Speaker 2: case on this on this fool and a bunch of
Speaker 2: things that he said, because of course, you know, since
Speaker 2: since then, he's written all sorts of conspiracy theories about
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, all sorts of stuff. That's just it's
Speaker 2: just he's just a white job. So anyway, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that that's pretty much how that went went down. And again,
Speaker 2: Victoria Hutchinson, if she was such a if she could
Speaker 2: provide a critical link, you know, right after Griff's test defies,
Speaker 2: you would put her on the stand and say, okay,
Speaker 2: well he just said that has all the hallmarks of
Speaker 2: a satanic killing. Now tell us about you attending this
Speaker 2: spot with eccols and didn't happen because she didn't attend one.
Speaker 2: Because it was all why.
Speaker 6: When you talk about DNA advances in the mid two
Speaker 6: thousand and by two thousand and eight, again, what do
Speaker 6: the officials say, the prosecutors say, the Attorney general say
Speaker 6: about DNA advances and the tests, and you talk about
Speaker 6: hairs found, two hairs found, and who it points to?
Speaker 6: Two different people? And I'll talk I'll ask you about
Speaker 6: what you make of hou anyway, we'll talk about these
Speaker 6: two people and the hairs that are associated with them.
Speaker 6: Tell us about the DNA advances and what it says
Speaker 6: to the courts if anything.
Speaker 2: Well, like you said, in the mid two thousands, you know,
Speaker 2: DNA testing got a whole lot better. And it was
Speaker 2: you know, I always tell people there there's the there's
Speaker 2: the moment when I was greatly suspicious to these guys
Speaker 2: didn't do it. But then I was driving home one
Speaker 2: night it was raining really hard, and there was a
Speaker 2: moment I was almost definitively sure. And it's because of
Speaker 2: this around the country, there are not just the less
Speaker 2: of the three are not unique. There are lots of
Speaker 2: cases that there were. People are in prison, but you know,
Speaker 2: people on the outside think that they might be innocent
Speaker 2: of the crime, and some of them are. And so
Speaker 2: an interesting phenomenon happened started happening in the mid two thousands.
Speaker 2: This DNA testing got a whole lot better. Well, if
Speaker 2: you're innocent, you obviously want more, you know, you want
Speaker 2: more DNA testing, right, sure, I mean that's past to everything,
Speaker 2: and so that's the But let's say But here's the
Speaker 2: other side of the coin. Let's say people presume you're
Speaker 2: guilty or innocent, but you did do it. Guess what
Speaker 2: you don't want. You don't want people testing d today. Right,
Speaker 2: So an interesting phenomenon started around the country when this happened.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a whole bunch of people who want
Speaker 2: it and a whole bunch of people who didn't. Now, the
Speaker 2: interesting thing about the West Memphis three case is when
Speaker 2: they started doing this find mitochondrial DNA testing on some
Speaker 2: of these hairs and other biological specimens that were found
Speaker 2: in the crime scene. You know, we think about these
Speaker 2: three guys as a unit, but they're really not. Legally
Speaker 2: there three separate people, they have three separate defense teams.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing what drove the West Memphis three
Speaker 2: is people all thought these these three guys were innocent
Speaker 2: of this crime. But if I'm an attorney, now, when
Speaker 2: they go to submit the paperwork to get these DNA
Speaker 2: has done, you got to remember one thing. If Jesse,
Speaker 2: let's say, let's just say in acting, maybe Jesse did
Speaker 2: have something to do with the murders. Maybe he was there.
Speaker 2: Maybe echles in Baldimo were not Maybe he was there
Speaker 2: and took part in it. So an attorney had to
Speaker 2: sit Echos in Baldoo down and say, look, if we
Speaker 2: agreed that this testing and and Jesse, Jesse's confessed to
Speaker 2: this crime, is it possible his DNA was there. Maybe.
Speaker 2: I mean most people would think not. But I have
Speaker 2: to think that an attorney would have taken those guys
Speaker 2: into a room someone and said, look, if we do this,
Speaker 2: you know you're gonna have to be dead. Sure the
Speaker 2: other two weren't there, because it won't matter from a
Speaker 2: legal standpoint if they find their DNA at the crime scene.
Speaker 2: But from a public perception standpoint, if like Jesse's DNA
Speaker 2: is found there, they're going to think that all three
Speaker 2: of you were there. You see what you see what
Speaker 2: I'm getting at Dan? Yeah, and and and so for me,
Speaker 2: when I was driving home one night when they all
Speaker 2: three unilaterally didn't care, said test test, test, test tests,
Speaker 2: you know, that was all they said. Test everything. So
Speaker 2: then I thought, okay, you know you because you're you're
Speaker 2: jumping even further than just yourself because and so when
Speaker 2: I heard that, I was like, okay, yeah, these guys,
Speaker 2: it's more likely theirs. And they tested every biological spes's
Speaker 2: when I was collected at the crime scene, and none
Speaker 2: of them tested positive for the three men who were
Speaker 2: in prison for those crimes now and a hair that
Speaker 2: are in a ligature that bound Michael Moore. They found
Speaker 2: a hair and they tested the hair and the hair
Speaker 2: actually it was very fit the DNA profile for Terry Hobbs,
Speaker 2: who was Stevie Branch's stepdad at the time. And that
Speaker 2: was interesting. It's not condemning, obviously, because you know, secondary
Speaker 2: air transfer happens. You know, those kids were in out
Speaker 2: of each other's houses. It's very possible that he just
Speaker 2: picked up a hair. What made it more interesting though,
Speaker 2: was next to the tree stump where the bodies were dumped,
Speaker 2: they found another hair and it belonged to a guy
Speaker 2: named David Jacoby. Jacoby is hobbes alibi witness, and Jacoby
Speaker 2: swears up and down he was not with Terry Hobbs
Speaker 2: when the murders occurred. So to have a stepfather's hair
Speaker 2: and his alibi when DNA bolt at the crime scene,
Speaker 2: that's a very I mean, you know, if I'm a police,
Speaker 2: if I'm a detective, and I'm you know, because when
Speaker 2: a kid disappears, it's almost eptiat Statistics will tell you
Speaker 2: it is a parent that has done something to the kid,
Speaker 2: a parent or stepparent. And so the three the natural
Speaker 2: suspects in the case should have been from the beginning
Speaker 2: of parents just because of statistics. And Terry Hobbs was
Speaker 2: never even interviewed during the original investigation, which is mind
Speaker 2: blowing to me. Yeah, and he not only was he
Speaker 2: not he was not interviewed. He was the custodial parent
Speaker 2: of Stevie Branch. When the boy disappeared, his wife was
Speaker 2: at work. And so right there, I mean, I just
Speaker 2: I don't understand. Why don't the policies to bring him
Speaker 2: in and say, okay, well give us, just give us
Speaker 2: an outline what happened that afternoon, you know where we
Speaker 2: got that where you're doing. And so none of that happened.
Speaker 2: And Pam Hobbs told me to faith and she didn't
Speaker 2: find out her son was missing that night until nine
Speaker 2: thirty when he came to pick her up. He walked
Speaker 2: past her, went to a payphone and called reported and missing.
Speaker 2: She goes out to the car, not knowing all this,
Speaker 2: and sees her daughter Amanda, and she says Amanda, where's
Speaker 2: your brother? And she goes, oh, he's missing, mama, and
Speaker 2: so so she had no idea up until nine thirty
Speaker 2: that night. Well, the other two kids had been reported
Speaker 2: missing hours earlier, and Dana Moore and John Mark Byers
Speaker 2: and their families and friends were out in the neighborhood
Speaker 2: looking for them, you know, around eight a' thirty that night.
Speaker 2: So it's very suspicious, you know, And I've told people this.
Speaker 2: You know, there's been a lot of people have cast
Speaker 2: an eye towards Terry hobstin that he had something to
Speaker 2: do with these murders. It would still be difficult to
Speaker 2: convict him in a corpl law, however, they're still you
Speaker 2: would still have to have more evidence, but you can
Speaker 2: make a way better case against him than you could
Speaker 2: the West Memphis three. For sure.
Speaker 6: You talk about some of the things that Hobbs has said,
Speaker 6: and he has tried to say that he was with
Speaker 6: John Buyers at a certain time. Tell us about this
Speaker 6: and what Buyer says, what Hobbs says about that.
Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting is that that Terry Hobbs was never
Speaker 2: on anybody's radar till two thousand and seven, when the
Speaker 2: DNA came out. Well, Natalie Mains, the lead singer from
Speaker 2: the Dixie Chicks. She was she's a big West Memphistry supporter.
Speaker 2: She donated money to their cause. Well, she had a
Speaker 2: rally at the Capitol steps in Little Rock, and during
Speaker 2: that rally she said that you know, hey, you know
Speaker 2: the police and prosecutors need to go after the real
Speaker 2: West Mempistry killer, Terry Wayne Hobbs. Well, Terry Hobbs decided
Speaker 2: he was going to suit her in federal court. Well,
Speaker 2: that was the worst mistake he's ever made. And he
Speaker 2: told me this. He told me this because what that
Speaker 2: did is it opened him up to discovery where they
Speaker 2: could bring them in and say okay, because here's the thing.
Speaker 2: The first tenant of any lawsuit is you have to prove.
Speaker 2: You have to prove that she's lying, that she's making
Speaker 2: a false statement. Well then you know what then, so
Speaker 2: it opened him up. Well, the problem is that you
Speaker 2: can go on YouTube and look at some of the interviews.
Speaker 2: He forgets details about what happened. And I've heard people
Speaker 2: make so many excuses. I'm sitting here, going your step
Speaker 2: son get on the afternoon he gets murdered. You're gonna
Speaker 2: remember every single detail what happened on afternoon for the
Speaker 2: rest of your life. Okay, that's just that's just that's
Speaker 2: just common, you know. Send And so you can get
Speaker 2: on there and look at these competing stories that he's told.
Speaker 2: And so the long and the short of it is,
Speaker 2: during this process they interviewed John Mark Byers because Terry
Speaker 2: claimed that he was with John Mark Byers and Dana Moore. Well,
Speaker 2: John B. Barres, this is an alarm bell for him.
Speaker 2: He's like, hey man, he goes, no, and I've interviewed
Speaker 2: John about this. There is no he was not with me.
Speaker 2: He was not with us. We did not see Terry Hobbs.
Speaker 2: He says, I did not even know Terry Hobbs that night.
Speaker 2: I met Terry Hobbs later on and then they kind
Speaker 2: of became friends for a little while. And so that
Speaker 2: was the first one. He and he he's kind of
Speaker 2: worn appidatenthing he was not with me that night, and
Speaker 2: Terry was very adamant with John. They talked about it.
Speaker 2: He said, no, don't you remember I was with you?
Speaker 2: And he goes, no, you weren't. And so so that
Speaker 2: was an alarming Well then then John Barrs had a
Speaker 2: really bizarre conversation with him. They just started talking about like,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, like maybe the person who killed
Speaker 2: the three kids was like like a druggy, you know,
Speaker 2: drugged out of their mind and he just went in
Speaker 2: and and it was an accident, didn't mean to do it.
Speaker 2: And you know, John was telling Terry the story. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: he goes, that's exactly right. He said, that person wouldn't
Speaker 2: be a monster. It'd be like, you know, being a
Speaker 2: drunk driver. You just had you know, you didn't get
Speaker 2: drunk and needed to kill three people. It just happened.
Speaker 2: And so when John was going through this story with
Speaker 2: him and Terry's like that he told me he said,
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe he was saying this stuff. He's like,
Speaker 2: how could this person not be a monster? What are
Speaker 2: you talking about? So at that point, then, of course
Speaker 2: John Mark Myers very publicly turned on Terry and said, look,
Speaker 2: this guy obviously had something to do with my son's
Speaker 2: murder and his son's murder, because there's no way, you know,
Speaker 2: he would keep trying to convince all of us that
Speaker 2: he was with us looking for them when he was not,
Speaker 2: and he would never you know, tell a story where
Speaker 2: you know the guy that did it must it was
Speaker 2: kind of like a drunk driver, not a monster, you know.
Speaker 2: So that all that all came out of that lawsuit.
Speaker 2: And it's also ironic too because at the end of
Speaker 2: the lawsuit, the federal judge in the case actually ordered
Speaker 2: Terry Hobbs to pay Natalie Mayne's twenty thousand dollars to
Speaker 2: cover her legal fees, so in which Terry Hobbs didn't,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, but that wasn't even the point
Speaker 2: of the exercise anyway. And Natalie Mayns has told me
Speaker 2: that they were thrilled whenever, uh, when Hobbs decided to
Speaker 2: do this, because it opened him up. They could finally
Speaker 2: interview him and they could get these competing stories about
Speaker 2: where he was at, what he was doing, who he
Speaker 2: was interacting with. Because that's the thing is Terry Hobbs
Speaker 2: tells one story on this side, and everybody else tells
Speaker 2: us a different story over here.
Speaker 6: You talk about two that that out of the three victims,
Speaker 6: it's very interesting that his step son was the one
Speaker 6: that was more well, you could tell us he was
Speaker 6: more assaulted and there was a belt buckle maybe tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about what you conclude or what
Speaker 6: you you speculate about this one.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing about it. And I saw a
Speaker 2: lot of these autopsy pictures and they were gruesome, to
Speaker 2: say the least. The one thing I noticed. And this
Speaker 2: was even before I had, you know, gone through all,
Speaker 2: you know, the process of thinking these guys were or
Speaker 2: guilty or innofit. But you know, I'm sitting in the
Speaker 2: courtroom and they and they're showing all these autopsy pictures
Speaker 2: of the three victims. When they started showing Stevie's, he
Speaker 2: was just he was more damaged like this. He had
Speaker 2: this wound to his face. It was it was like
Speaker 2: a gash. And to me, as I'm looking at as
Speaker 2: I was looking at it, I was thinking, that's exactly
Speaker 2: what a belt buckle would look like if it went
Speaker 2: across somebody's face. And this had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: thinking that Terry Hobbes did it or Echoes did it
Speaker 2: or whoever. I was just looking at the picture, going
Speaker 2: that wound was caused by a belt buckle. You can
Speaker 2: just you can just see it on his face, and
Speaker 2: you know, and he was really badly beaten. And you know,
Speaker 2: like Michael Moore had some you know, he had a
Speaker 2: major contusion to the head up I'm using the right
Speaker 2: medical term there, And basically, you know, the way it
Speaker 2: was described in court was this kid was just knocked
Speaker 2: out and then thrown in the ditch and then he
Speaker 2: drowned because he was unconscious and so he wasn't he
Speaker 2: We had a few superficial scrapes and wounds, like probably
Speaker 2: from being drug through the woods to the creek, you know,
Speaker 2: something like that. And then Christopher Byers had defensive wounds
Speaker 2: to his hands according to the autopsy reports. So he
Speaker 2: fought back, and so to me, I was sitting here going, Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, I've covered a lot of crimes. There's always
Speaker 2: a motive and a crime and the cold, the fulcrum
Speaker 2: of motivation. In this crime with Stevie Branch, he was
Speaker 2: the one beating the most. He was the one that
Speaker 2: was attacked the most. So that's when you know, you
Speaker 2: start looking at the things you know in his orbit.
Speaker 2: You know, he's got a stepdad, you know, a violent
Speaker 2: stepdad who has a winky criminal history, you know, and
Speaker 2: actually has a history of beating and tormenting that kid.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've heard that from Pam Hobbs's sister. I've
Speaker 2: heard that from Pam Hobbs herself. She said, she told
Speaker 2: me one time it was literally like he hated him
Speaker 2: when you know, speaking about Terry with Stevie, and she
Speaker 2: said he would never call him like she would never
Speaker 2: call him by his name. He would just call him
Speaker 2: the boy or the step son, and so it was
Speaker 2: almost like an attempt to be humanize and you know,
Speaker 2: and so anyway, I thought it was, you know, pretty interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, looking at those those pictures and trying to
Speaker 2: determine the motivation of the person who is doing it,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty obvious. The problem is is that the
Speaker 2: emasculation of Christopher Buyers. That's when everybody turned their heads.
Speaker 2: You know, that everybody went to him because it must
Speaker 2: have been something with him. But then when you come
Speaker 2: to the reasonable conclusion that it probably happened as a
Speaker 2: result of turtle predation or animal predation post mortem, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's very common, you know, I you know, people
Speaker 2: will try to refute that. And I'm sitting here going
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not much of a hunter, but I've
Speaker 2: been out in the woods before you come across the
Speaker 2: dead animal. What's the first thing that you'll see missing,
Speaker 2: it's genuineness, you know, because other animals, that's the first
Speaker 2: thing to go for, especially dogs, canines. So and there
Speaker 2: were you know, wild codies in that area too, I mean,
Speaker 2: very possible a while Cody decided to chew on him
Speaker 2: for a while, and I hate the same things about that.
Speaker 2: But but that's just the facts of the case. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that if you look at the autopsy photos,
Speaker 2: for sure, Stevie burriansh definitely the most most viciously attacked
Speaker 2: in the three.
Speaker 6: Didn't you say, don't don't you write about someone involved
Speaker 6: in this case he is a Judge Burnett actually raising Turtless.
Speaker 6: It was doctor Freddie himself. Yeah, yes, yes, I just
Speaker 6: wanted to mention that I forgot to mention at that time.
Speaker 6: You add that, but you don't make any other statements
Speaker 6: that Parretti, who was adamant about his position despite the
Speaker 6: other three expert testimony, expert witness testifying it. There was
Speaker 6: this animal predation and there was proof of that, and
Speaker 6: then there certainly was no proof of sexual assault. You
Speaker 6: also talk about I want you to mention what that
Speaker 6: Pretti was raising turtles in that Do you infer that
Speaker 6: he should have known better. But also there was this
Speaker 6: intimation or more than that about forced oral sex. So
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about that and how they
Speaker 6: came to that conclusion and how it was refuted.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's actually pretty interesting, I guess to start with, yes,
Speaker 2: doctor Peretti raised his harapins or he claimed to raise
Speaker 2: trapins when he testified in court. And like I said earlier,
Speaker 2: he is alleged to have told Paul Ford, Jason Baldwin's
Speaker 2: original defense attorney, even before the original trials, that he
Speaker 2: thought some of the wounds or could or were definitely
Speaker 2: turtle predation marks. I mean, and he was very he
Speaker 2: said the same thing to Paul Ford.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 2: This is what's interesting, Dan, is because like witnesses come
Speaker 2: into a court, they testify, they go out so and
Speaker 2: they never hear what other witnesses testified. Well, Paul Ford
Speaker 2: came in in two thousand and eight and says, yes,
Speaker 2: doctor Peretti told me back in nineteen ninety three that
Speaker 2: these there were a lot of triangular wounds on the body,
Speaker 2: and these triangular wounds were probably caused by turtles predating
Speaker 2: on the bodies. So then he goes out well, then
Speaker 2: a year later, you know, doctor Spitz, doctor Boden, doctor
Speaker 2: Suberin take the stand and they say the exact same
Speaker 2: thing that Paul Ford said. Doctor Frank Peretti told him
Speaker 2: almost fifteen years before that. So it's interesting to me
Speaker 2: because I'm sitting there. You know, they weren't in the
Speaker 2: courtroom to hear it. It's not like they can just
Speaker 2: be coordinating all this stuff up. So and like I said,
Speaker 2: and Paul Ford has no motivation to do that because
Speaker 2: he can lose his law licenes over something like that,
Speaker 2: so he wouldn't lie about it. And you know, as
Speaker 2: far as uh, doctor Peretti, he he talks a lot
Speaker 2: about raising these turtles and how much he liked doing it,
Speaker 2: so he should he should have known. Now, the second
Speaker 2: part of your question is very interesting because in the
Speaker 2: original trials, doctor Peretti never definitively said the boys are
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted because obviously the three tenants that we talked
Speaker 2: about previously where I met, but he left the impression
Speaker 2: on the jersey they could have been by making some
Speaker 2: statements similar to what like you said. There was a
Speaker 2: bruise to one of the boy's ears, and he made
Speaker 2: the statement in court that that could be a sign
Speaker 2: a forced fallatio. And the problem is is there has
Speaker 2: never been a documented circus instance where a bruise to
Speaker 2: an ear like that and where the bruise was, and
Speaker 2: how it was, how the manner of the bruise, but
Speaker 2: that would lead that was because of the forced fallatio circumstance.
Speaker 2: And so doctor Peretti back in I want to say
Speaker 2: it was two thousand and seven, maybe he actually met
Speaker 2: with some of these forensic pathologists that testified and some
Speaker 2: other ones that were consulting on the case. They all
Speaker 2: met and they went over all their findings and he
Speaker 2: readily hit it. He you know, you know, he that
Speaker 2: he wasn't sure where he got that determination, because that
Speaker 2: was one thing that the friends of pathologists the others
Speaker 2: that they were very very keen about, was this you know,
Speaker 2: forced fallatio thing in this this bruise, because they never
Speaker 2: heard of anything like that. And doctor and doctor Ophovin
Speaker 2: on the stand said that Freddy told them during this
Speaker 2: meeting that he would get back to them. He would
Speaker 2: come out, he would give them, he would show them
Speaker 2: exactly where he came up with all this stuff, and
Speaker 2: he would get back to them well, she said, and
Speaker 2: this was two years after the fact when she was
Speaker 2: on the stand. She said that that never happened. He
Speaker 2: never came back and told them where he found this.
Speaker 2: And and she said, it's not even a matter of
Speaker 2: like like for like the court, because you know, forends
Speaker 2: of cathologists are scientists, and they're genuinely interested in other
Speaker 2: pathology done performed by others, and so it's kind of
Speaker 2: one of those things. They were just interested in it and
Speaker 2: if it really was a thing they wanted to know
Speaker 2: about it. Well, he never was able to prove where
Speaker 2: he got it. He never said where he got this
Speaker 2: information from. So once again, Kim, you know left, you know,
Speaker 2: there's that one bruise, you know, that must be that
Speaker 2: must mean that these boys were forced to do something
Speaker 2: they didn't want to do. And but once again not
Speaker 2: validated in any type of science.
Speaker 6: The authorities maintain their position that these that they got
Speaker 6: the guys, whether they have DNA or not. And so
Speaker 6: obviously they're not going to regard any new information, or
Speaker 6: they wouldn't consider it new information when it's considered when
Speaker 6: it's regarding Terry Hobbs or anyone else. Tell us how
Speaker 6: they what that necessitates this Alard plea is is a
Speaker 6: guilty plea? Tell us about this alared plea and a
Speaker 6: little bit about again what I thought was very interesting
Speaker 6: when you talk about Jesse ms Ellie in the first
Speaker 6: after for this trial of Eccles in Baldwin, he would
Speaker 6: not testify. He would not testify. So we'd created a
Speaker 6: problem a little bit for them prosecutorily at that trial.
Speaker 6: But you say that also that that Baldwin was not
Speaker 6: as interested as Eccles with this offered fleet. So tell
Speaker 6: us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And during the first trials they were pretty convinced
Speaker 2: that that Jesse would have to testify to get a
Speaker 2: conviction of Eckles in Baldwin. You can when you're watching
Speaker 2: Paradise Lost, the first one, you know, you know, the
Speaker 2: prosecutors tell tell families other victims without him fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty shot. Of course, they lucked out because somehow, some
Speaker 2: way that confession was brought into the jury room after
Speaker 2: the after the the trial portion was over and they
Speaker 2: were in the you know, when they were considering the
Speaker 2: case in the jury room. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of allegations of Jerama's conducts and that it was actually
Speaker 2: brought into the jury room, so they got the benefit
Speaker 2: of the prosecution. He got the benefit of the confession
Speaker 2: without the deficit of having to uh uh fight it,
Speaker 2: fighted it on the stand. Because here's the thing. The
Speaker 2: reason that Jetsey didn't testify is because at this point
Speaker 2: he was totally recanting, recanting his confession. He said that
Speaker 2: they was coerced by police and that he would not
Speaker 2: take the stand, and it got to a point where
Speaker 2: he was so erratic. Anyway, a lot of people have
Speaker 2: told me that the prosecutors wouldn't have put him on
Speaker 2: the stand because of the simple thing. They would see
Speaker 2: how erratic he was, and they would know that this
Speaker 2: whole thing was a sham, and so they kept him
Speaker 2: off the stand. But they were able to get the
Speaker 2: benefit of it because it was brought into the juror room. So, yes,
Speaker 2: Jesse didn't testify. Uh And here's the other thing people
Speaker 2: don't realize a lot of Jason Baldmore was offered a
Speaker 2: sweet heart deal if he would testify against peop in
Speaker 2: the same trial. He was offered i think seven or
Speaker 2: eight years if he would just testify, and then he
Speaker 2: would be out of prison, and he flatly told them no.
Speaker 2: And the reason he said he told them no was
Speaker 2: because he didn't do it. He knew Damien had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with it. He said, you guys are just
Speaker 2: trying to railroad it, and we're gonna have our day
Speaker 2: in court. So anyway, so when the Alfred plea comes down,
Speaker 2: Patrick Banker and the attorney the Arkansas Attorney General at
Speaker 2: the time, Dustin McDaniel, their their college or their law
Speaker 2: school buddies, and Banker was working with, you know, the
Speaker 2: West Members three defense teams and you know, uh, Dustin
Speaker 2: mc daniels getting ready to run for governor and you know,
Speaker 2: and there was this West Members three case has just
Speaker 2: been hanging over the state for a long time. It's
Speaker 2: just it's been a blight, you know. And so they
Speaker 2: met and they started talking about an Alfred plea. And
Speaker 2: this is like a no contest plea where a defendant
Speaker 2: walks into court and says, hey, I'm I'm minister of
Speaker 2: this crime and it is possible to stay and have
Speaker 2: enough evidence to convict me of it if, you know,
Speaker 2: if they if they decided to. So they give the
Speaker 2: Alford plea on August or August nineteenth, twenty eleven. Well
Speaker 2: before that, Baldwin wasn't going to take it. He said
Speaker 2: he would spend another year or two in prison. He
Speaker 2: didn't care and fight fight in court. Because see here,
Speaker 2: this is what was going to happen. And this is
Speaker 2: the reason why Benka and Dustin McDaniel got together. They
Speaker 2: got together with the prosecutor Scott Ellenson. This is why
Speaker 2: they hammered this deal out, because that there was going
Speaker 2: to be a new judge in the case, Judge David Laser,
Speaker 2: that same year, twenty eleven, in December, they were going
Speaker 2: to have an evidentiary hearing where all this stuff was
Speaker 2: going to be considered. He was going to order a
Speaker 2: new trial. There is no doubt about it. And even
Speaker 2: the prosecutors admitted to all of this, and they were
Speaker 2: going to be exonerated, and then they were going to
Speaker 2: turn around and sue the state of Arkansas for millions
Speaker 2: of dollars. And so this was just a saving face
Speaker 2: moved by everybody involved. They wanted to stopped them from
Speaker 2: being able to sue the state they wanted to and
Speaker 2: here and the other problem was one they were exonerated
Speaker 2: in court, then they would have to reopen the investigation
Speaker 2: of the case and actually find out who actually did this.
Speaker 2: So they didn't want to go through all that rigor
Speaker 2: of war. They decided it's time to put a stamp
Speaker 2: on this. Let's get this thing over with, so they
Speaker 2: made the deal. Of course, Echoles and and miss Kelly
Speaker 2: were on board from the board. Go Jason took him
Speaker 2: about a week or two, he's like, or several days
Speaker 2: at least. He said, you know, I just don't want
Speaker 2: to do this. I'm going to fight. But then one
Speaker 2: of his attorneys told him, he said, look, your friend
Speaker 2: is on death row. They could start executing at that point.
Speaker 2: They hadn't execute anybody in six years, but they could
Speaker 2: start executing people again, and he would be in the
Speaker 2: line to be executed. So you need to make a
Speaker 2: decision to help save his life. And so and that's
Speaker 2: exactly what happened. You know, Jason agreed to the deal,
Speaker 2: and then they and then those guys they walked free.
Speaker 6: You talk about the support to raise money for this
Speaker 6: and the people involved, and you talk about people like
Speaker 6: Johnny Depp and Eddie Vedder and then the secret person,
Speaker 6: the bigger supporter that you find out later is Peter
Speaker 6: Jackson from Lord of the Rings Fame. You were at
Speaker 6: this support rally, and you did have, like we mentioned,
Speaker 6: the incredible access you had. You spoke to everyone you
Speaker 6: met at that time. Lori eCos as well. Tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about your experience speaking to everybody involved
Speaker 6: and how things had sort of Yeah, just tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about that and what your treatment was
Speaker 6: by some of the people that are involved, at least
Speaker 6: in the support of West Memphis.
Speaker 2: Three that was usually treated me pretty well. I you know,
Speaker 2: one thing I always did is I always kind of
Speaker 2: I kept a little bit of separation, you know, like
Speaker 2: you know Vedder would come into town, you know, the
Speaker 2: lead singer for Pearl Jam, those Paradise Lost documentary filmmakers,
Speaker 2: you know, Joe and Bruce, they would come into town.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: Then of course they were a little different because they're
Speaker 2: kind of more like me, you know, we're trying to
Speaker 2: get a story out. You know. Johnny Depp, you know,
Speaker 2: I've run into him a couple of times. Nice guy,
Speaker 2: I mean, but I always I always try to keep
Speaker 2: that like a professional line. Even with Laurie. I like
Speaker 2: her personally, you know, but you know, I always try
Speaker 2: to keep it straight, you know, I wrote a couple
Speaker 2: of stories that she didn't like. I mean, she told
Speaker 2: me flat out she didn't like them, and you and
Speaker 2: I was fine with that, you know, because that's that's
Speaker 2: what you do as a journalists. You know, you don't
Speaker 2: if you're if everybody's had and you've probably done your
Speaker 2: job the right way.
Speaker 6: And what what didn't she like? What did what didn't
Speaker 6: you like?
Speaker 2: Just some things that she didn't care for. And this
Speaker 2: was several years ago. Some of the like the phraseology
Speaker 2: I would use, like every now and then I would
Speaker 2: use the word child killers and you know, and and
Speaker 2: you know, and I get it, I mean, and I
Speaker 2: understand why that would upset somebody, especially if you think
Speaker 2: they're not. But the problem is that even at that time,
Speaker 2: this was before they were released, you know, you can
Speaker 2: you have to use you know, at that time, they
Speaker 2: were convicted of a crime, and no matter my own
Speaker 2: personal belief in it, I still had to be a
Speaker 2: journalist and write about it. And and that's the other
Speaker 2: thing I always love when people say, you know, journalists
Speaker 2: can true journalist is never biased and blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: and I'm said, they're going you there's not biased journalists
Speaker 2: it's not a bias to seek the truth and when
Speaker 2: you find it, to accept it, and that, you know,
Speaker 2: any good journalists should do that. I mean, I shouldn't
Speaker 2: hire you or whoever else should not think just because uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we we find like a truth contrary to
Speaker 2: what we believe, we should change our minds and we
Speaker 2: you know, there are there are two sides to every story.
Speaker 2: But you know, sometimes one story one side is right,
Speaker 2: on the other side wrong, you know, And so anyway, uh,
Speaker 2: that's way I kind of approached it. And but I
Speaker 2: mean I saw Lori and Damien and Johnny Depp in
Speaker 2: April in Little Rock. I actually ran into him quite literally.
Speaker 2: They had a rally to stop the eight executions that
Speaker 2: were going to happen in Arkansas, and the two of
Speaker 2: them came down for the rally for the three of them,
Speaker 2: and they were just I was literally at the Capitol steps.
Speaker 2: There was media everywhere, at least a thousand protesters out there,
Speaker 2: and I look over next to some steps and there
Speaker 2: the three of them are just standing there with a
Speaker 2: couple of bodyguards. Nobody doing talking to them in any way.
Speaker 2: So I just walked right over there, shook hands with them. Laurie,
Speaker 2: gave me a hug, asked them how they were doing.
Speaker 2: And then of course the media throngs come running over
Speaker 2: as soon as they saw me there, and then of
Speaker 2: course went right in reporter mode. You know, I was
Speaker 2: standing right next to the Damian and I started interviewing them,
Speaker 2: you know, and getting all this thoughts about being back
Speaker 2: in Arkansas and all this other stuffs and so. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I you know, there was a lot of famous people
Speaker 2: connected to this. You know, Amy Berg did the West
Speaker 2: of Memphis documentary. I met with her, kind of gave
Speaker 2: her to the downlaw in the whole case. She came,
Speaker 2: she came to Jonesboro one Saturday. And but yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I keep it straight up. I tell people all the time,
Speaker 2: you know. You know, I've I've asked questions to presidents
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So it's no, I don't get
Speaker 2: the stars of eyes when I see somebody like that.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 6: You talk about your conversations with Jason Baldwin and Damian Eckles,
Speaker 6: And first we'll talk about the conversations you had with
Speaker 6: Jason Baldwin, which particularly interesting that you people just assume
Speaker 6: that the treatment in jail was brutal. But I've never
Speaker 6: heard any details of the treatment of the West Memphis
Speaker 6: three in prison. You talk, you spoke with Jason Baldwin.
Speaker 6: He told he told you some frightening things. Tell us
Speaker 6: what he said to you about his treatment in jail,
Speaker 6: how it began, and how it changed as perception changed
Speaker 6: to both their guilt, but still what he endured in prison.
Speaker 2: Well, when he first got there, I mean like when
Speaker 2: he walked in the door first day, he said, he
Speaker 2: started hearing the cat calls. And you know, I can
Speaker 2: tell you this and everybody listening to this, a lot
Speaker 2: of things here about prison, they are absolutely true. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of sexual slavery that goes on there,
Speaker 2: and and he he he told me that he was
Speaker 2: not going to submit to sexual slavery. He just wasn't
Speaker 2: gonna do it. And so he fought back, and he
Speaker 2: got beat up so bad many times he said he
Speaker 2: thought he was gonna die, I mean broken bones. But
Speaker 2: he would not, he would not yield to their demands
Speaker 2: in prison, and eventually it got to the point. And
Speaker 2: Jason's not a big guy, you know, he's he's he's spinned.
Speaker 2: He's small. But Bill counts is a pretty tough guy,
Speaker 2: and it got to for where they respected him. You know,
Speaker 2: they weren't going to keep messing with him because they
Speaker 2: knew he was gonna fight every time, and so they
Speaker 2: started respecting him. And then as the details of the
Speaker 2: case became more known, then they realized that he was
Speaker 2: an innocent guy and there and most of those guys
Speaker 2: are not innocent. So it was very shocking to them
Speaker 2: to see a guy, you know, you know, work as
Speaker 2: hard as he did. He took college classes, ended up
Speaker 2: getting his ged in there, you know, even when he
Speaker 2: got out, he had he had a lot of college credits.
Speaker 2: It he's going on and went to school. In fact,
Speaker 2: I don't know for sure if he's still on this path,
Speaker 2: but he told me at one point he wanted to
Speaker 2: become a lawyer and so anyway, so they gave him
Speaker 2: a lot of respect for him. Damien, he started a
Speaker 2: lot of controversy when I argued him when he was
Speaker 2: on death row in twenty ten. He had written me
Speaker 2: a letter and invited me to come down and interview him.
Speaker 2: So I decided to do it. And while we were
Speaker 2: in the middle of our conversation, he told me that
Speaker 2: he thought that being a being like a prison guard
Speaker 2: job was like a magnet for homosexuals. That's his exact
Speaker 2: quote to me. And I said, what do you mean,
Speaker 2: he goes because these guys all they'll just take me
Speaker 2: to a room and they'll just rape me. And he goes,
Speaker 2: I don't even fight back. And I was like really,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, I was like, wow, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, this is pretty incendiary stuff. And so before
Speaker 2: I wrote the story, I called his attorneys. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: he told me this stuff, and I'm even talking. I
Speaker 2: believe I even talked to Glory about it, and they
Speaker 2: didn't really want him to go into all that, but
Speaker 2: he did, and I I wrote a story about it,
Speaker 2: and I guess it caused a lot of trouble down
Speaker 2: there at the prison and all sorts of stuff. So
Speaker 2: but yeah, he told me he said he wouldn't even
Speaker 2: fight back, you know, they would just take him into
Speaker 2: a room and do torch room and do all sorts
Speaker 2: of stuff to him. So, yeah, prison is a brutal place.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't recommend anybody going.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was. It was pretty shocking to hear that
Speaker 6: these guards where he said, were worse than the inmates,
Speaker 6: and he was gang raped by inmates as well, So
Speaker 6: beatings and gang raps and and just a horrible time
Speaker 6: that he had. You also talk about that he spoke
Speaker 6: to you about his early life and and it was
Speaker 6: a profound moment in court was his mother showed up
Speaker 6: in court in a wheelchair and but didn't leave with
Speaker 6: him at the end of it. Tell us what he
Speaker 6: said about his his background and the shame tell us
Speaker 6: about that.
Speaker 2: You know, he grew up in the impoverised you know
Speaker 2: Arkansas Delta. I mean, if you've never been at if
Speaker 2: you've never been in the Delta, it's one of the
Speaker 2: poorest places in the United States of America. I mean,
Speaker 2: Arkansas is a really funny and interesting state. You know,
Speaker 2: you've got Northwest Arkansas, which is probably one of the
Speaker 2: richest places in the world. You know, it's like the Walmart,
Speaker 2: all the heirs to the Walmart fortune, you know, Dillard's, Tyson,
Speaker 2: you know, Foods, all these mega companies that it always
Speaker 2: surprises me that a small state like Arkansas just keeps producing.
Speaker 2: So you've got all that in the northwest sector with
Speaker 2: then in the you know, Eastern Arkansas, You've got you know,
Speaker 2: just abject poverty and around the Mississippi River, and he
Speaker 2: vividly described that in his autobiotray that he wrote about
Speaker 2: it Life after Death. He grew up poor, He grew
Speaker 2: up in trailer parks. He didn't know a lot of
Speaker 2: timesery he was going to eat. His mom dated many
Speaker 2: many different men and some very odd and bizarre circumstances,
Speaker 2: and he hated his stepdad, which ironically enough, Jack Eckles,
Speaker 2: but he ended up taking his last name, and because
Speaker 2: actually his original his original name is actually Michael Hutchinson.
Speaker 2: But but anyway, Yeah, he grew up in poverty and
Speaker 2: the only thing that he could do. The reason why,
Speaker 2: you know, where the long French code it acted, he
Speaker 2: acted you know bizarrely at school. He did it for
Speaker 2: attention and he told me that and it was you know,
Speaker 2: and he he did it for attention. He also did
Speaker 2: it so people wouldn't tick on him, so they'd leave
Speaker 2: him alone. And so he that that's why he said
Speaker 2: some bizarre things and thought some bizarre thoughts at the time.
Speaker 2: So that's where he grew up. You know, West Memphis
Speaker 2: is crime riddled. It's you drive through there, the you know,
Speaker 2: the average meeting income there is probably twenty five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars below the national average. It's very there's a very
Speaker 2: high amount of transient population that goes through there. You
Speaker 2: know I forty and I fifty five. You know I
Speaker 2: fifty five connects Canada. Basically, the Mexico comes all the
Speaker 2: way through the United States. It meets at West Memphis
Speaker 2: with I forty, which connects to the west coast to
Speaker 2: the East coast, you know, through the southern route. So
Speaker 2: a lot of goods get moved through there, a lot
Speaker 2: of drugs, a lot of violence, with a lot of crime,
Speaker 2: a lot of poor people, and he grew up in
Speaker 2: the middle of all.
Speaker 6: You do have some conclusions, and I won't get into
Speaker 6: all of them. I get save that for people to
Speaker 6: read for themselves. But tell us what you felt about
Speaker 6: the crime itself. Who we didn't mention, and that's people
Speaker 6: are aware of the mysterious black men at the du
Speaker 6: Django's restaurant. Who tell us more about that person of
Speaker 6: interest in what you think his importance is to this case,
Speaker 6: and give us a little bit of what you thought
Speaker 6: happened and who might have done it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's so mind blowing to me that
Speaker 2: you can have an officer Regina Meeks. She gets the
Speaker 2: call to night the boys disappear. John Mark Byers and
Speaker 2: Dana Moore report their sons misting to her. Within minutes
Speaker 2: of getting this, well within an hour getting this report,
Speaker 2: she is called to the Bojanles restaurant, which is in
Speaker 2: the vicinity. In that restaurant, a couple some witnesses saw
Speaker 2: a black man stumble into the women's restroom. He defecates
Speaker 2: on the floor. He's covered in blood. He takes an
Speaker 2: industrial toilet paper roll and just presses it up to
Speaker 2: the wound and it leaves all the way to the
Speaker 2: center core of this huge toilet roll. He's jamming things
Speaker 2: into a toilet, trying to flush them down, and people
Speaker 2: see him doing this, and so they tell the manager.
Speaker 2: The manager calls the police. She comes to the bo
Speaker 2: Jingles restaurant and takes a report through the drive through.
Speaker 2: She doesn't even bother go in the bathroom. Well, they
Speaker 2: go in and clean up this whole mess. Now, this
Speaker 2: restaurant is located about a half a mile from where
Speaker 2: the bodies are dumps. And if you were if you
Speaker 2: were if you were coming in, if you were coming
Speaker 2: out of robin Hood Hills that you were headed in
Speaker 2: that direction, or if you were headed excuse me, there's
Speaker 2: a I'm trying to think of a good way to
Speaker 2: describe it. It's not a trail, but it's kind of
Speaker 2: like a the top of it, it's like a ridge.
Speaker 2: There's a ridge that you could walk along to get
Speaker 2: out of Robino Hills that would lead you directly into
Speaker 2: the parking lot of the Bojangles restaurant. So it would
Speaker 2: be a very reasonable route to take if you were there.
Speaker 2: And so she doesn't collect any evidence. They clean up
Speaker 2: the bathroom. Well. The next day, Brian Ridge, one of
Speaker 2: the officers who was working in the West Dempster three
Speaker 2: K and also testified at the Roll thirty seven hearings,
Speaker 2: he goes in there and they do find some blunt
Speaker 2: on a wall and they collect and they put it
Speaker 2: in a bag. He loses it. Now, why all this
Speaker 2: is important is because of this, they found a hair
Speaker 2: at the crime scene that belongs to a black man
Speaker 2: that could never identify who this man's hair was. If
Speaker 2: they had the blood flake that was found on the wall,
Speaker 2: they could DNA test the two and then they would
Speaker 2: know if that person was at the crime scene or not.
Speaker 2: And if they were at the crime scene, then they
Speaker 2: would probably have played some role in the three boys
Speaker 2: being murdered, right, But because they lost evidence, we'll never know.
Speaker 6: So what do you speculate this black man's role in this?
Speaker 6: Is though, I mean, of all the information that this
Speaker 6: seems to be just an unknown puzzle, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unknown, and I mean anything, I would say
Speaker 2: the speculative, but of my mind, I you know, I
Speaker 2: know how these things work. At some point, if something
Speaker 2: happened to those three kids, the black guy probably you know,
Speaker 2: there there have been there were reports of gunshots in
Speaker 2: the in the woods that night in that descendity near
Speaker 2: the Mayfield apartments, which are not far from robin Hood Hills.
Speaker 2: I mean like, but it actually abudded there, It abutted
Speaker 2: the woods there, And so in my mind, if I'm
Speaker 2: just to play this out logically, the black guy was
Speaker 2: probably a helper trying to help dump the bodies. And
Speaker 2: you know, in first rule of assassination, you always get
Speaker 2: rid of the assassins, right, and this guy had helped
Speaker 2: them and help dump these bodies, and so soon as
Speaker 2: they were dumped, and whoever he was helping just turn
Speaker 2: around shot him, you know, to keep him quiet. And
Speaker 2: what's it going to do? Can he go to the
Speaker 2: police now, I mean, he just helped dump all these
Speaker 2: three bodies in a creek, and I you know, and
Speaker 2: I don't hate, I hate to use you know, the
Speaker 2: racial component of it too, But you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three in the South, black man, you know,
Speaker 2: white kids die. I mean, you know, if someone was
Speaker 2: involved in that, you know, they're not going to be lenient.
Speaker 2: So he's not going to the police for any reason.
Speaker 2: So I just can't believe that these two things can
Speaker 2: happen so close to each other and they're not be
Speaker 2: a relationship, especially when you find a black hair at
Speaker 2: the crime scene. And it's also I've been told, I
Speaker 2: don't know if this is a fact. I've been told
Speaker 2: that it was actually the best biological specimen that they
Speaker 2: found at.
Speaker 6: The same What do you think about Hobbes as and
Speaker 6: the idea that he had someone else to help him,
Speaker 6: And of course the obvious inference is this Jacoby, But
Speaker 6: this Jacoby claims doesn't help Hobbes at all, because he's
Speaker 6: one of the persons that says, listen, I had to
Speaker 6: intervene and stop this guy from beating little Stevie at
Speaker 6: one time. So tell us what you think about Hobbes
Speaker 6: and Jacoby.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, and this is for anybody who
Speaker 2: wants to talk about secondary air transfer. I think it's
Speaker 2: very interesting. Terry Hobbs the day of the murders, he
Speaker 2: claims that he did not see Stevie at all that day.
Speaker 2: He says, I didn't see it. He says that at
Speaker 2: around five point thirty, So he came home from work
Speaker 2: around three point thirty four. At that point, Steve was
Speaker 2: already on the neighborhood playing with his friends. Well, then
Speaker 2: he takes Pam to work. When he comes back from that,
Speaker 2: he goes over to Jacoby's house and they start playing
Speaker 2: riffs to the song pretty Woman. And he said he
Speaker 2: was there till about six and then he leaves and
Speaker 2: Jacoby has confirmed this. What's interesting to me is I think,
Speaker 2: if I had to bet money, I don't think Jacoby
Speaker 2: was with him. When I don't think Jacoby took part
Speaker 2: in the crime. I think that when they talk about
Speaker 2: secondary hair transfer, that other hair was secondary hair transfer. Remember,
Speaker 2: Terry was playing guitar with him just a few minutes
Speaker 2: before the boys disappeared, so that hair could have definitely
Speaker 2: been a result of that. Now Jacoby swears up and
Speaker 2: down he did not he was not with Terry Hobbs.
Speaker 2: He signed sworn Affi David saying he wasn't with him.
Speaker 2: He refutes all that. So and I tell people, you know,
Speaker 2: I definitely think Terry Hobbs is a big time suspect
Speaker 2: in this case. For sure. I said, you know, could
Speaker 2: you say definitively he did it. I can't because I
Speaker 2: wasn't there, and there's still not I would have to
Speaker 2: see a prosecutor put this all together and see what
Speaker 2: it looked like in a court room. And I go, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that that probably makes sense. But definitely a lot more.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of evidence. I mean, he fits
Speaker 2: the profile of the kind of person who could do this.
Speaker 2: I mean the FBI. FBI profiler has said that you know,
Speaker 2: he claimed he wasn't he didn't see the three boys
Speaker 2: that day. Three women who were on their way to
Speaker 2: church at six thirty that night came forward and tested
Speaker 2: by it didn't testify, but gave sworn Affi Davids in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine that they saw him that night
Speaker 2: motioning the three boys up to the house, or at
Speaker 2: least one of them, and the three boys went up
Speaker 2: to the house. And so you know, this is what
Speaker 2: you're going to have to do. Is Terry Hobbs telling
Speaker 2: the truth about this? Or are those three women who
Speaker 2: are on their way to church? Why would they lie?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the question. What's the motivation? Did David
Speaker 2: Kobe a tea line? Where is Terry Hobbs line? Is
Speaker 2: John Mark Barr is lying? Or is Terry hobbline is
Speaker 2: you know all these different competing statements that in made,
Speaker 2: and that's just that doesn't include the DNA, that doesn't
Speaker 2: include the the possible alleged abuses against the kid. This
Speaker 2: is just you know, when you're telling two and three
Speaker 2: and four and five different stories and everybody else is saying, no,
Speaker 2: that's wrong, you got a problem.
Speaker 6: You also you got to put in the mix here,
Speaker 6: like the prosecutor that to conveniently find has, like you say,
Speaker 6: has an epiphany and then goes and looks behind Baldwin's
Speaker 6: home into lake and then within minutes with a with
Speaker 6: a camera crew right there to record everything, uh, finds
Speaker 6: this weapon. But you also have Uh, you have the
Speaker 6: idea that that, like you say, Hobbes doesn't have an
Speaker 6: alibi for a certain amount of time, and his behavior
Speaker 6: is is suspicious. Why was he not question? That's what
Speaker 6: I was trying to tie in with this prosecutor that
Speaker 6: says it's epiphany and everything is fitting the way he
Speaker 6: has theorized. How come this? Does anybody answer that question?
Speaker 6: Why was he never questioned? And why is he now
Speaker 6: not a credible suspect? Whatsoever?
Speaker 2: The reason he's not a credible suspect now? And I've
Speaker 2: asked this question many times and this is the same
Speaker 2: answer I get each time. He they have three convictions
Speaker 2: in this case, and they you know, they're not going
Speaker 2: to waste any more time or resources on a case
Speaker 2: until they get some new evidence. And so to the
Speaker 2: officials in Arkansas, this case is closed. It's over. They
Speaker 2: just want to forget about it, which is a shame,
Speaker 2: I mean, for many obvious reasons. Now, as far as
Speaker 2: him never being questioned originally, no one can answer that
Speaker 2: because all John Mark Byers was was interviewed. Todd Moore,
Speaker 2: Michael Moore's dad, was interviewed, and he wasn't even he
Speaker 2: was verified, not even in the state of Arkansas when
Speaker 2: the murders happened, he was at a state He's a
Speaker 2: truck driver, and so all these people were interviewed, but
Speaker 2: Hobbs was not. And this only came about because he
Speaker 2: tried to sue Natalie made and so you know, all,
Speaker 2: you know, all his competing stories about where he was
Speaker 2: at and what he was doing, and he's given several
Speaker 2: and you know, and I've you know, I've talked with Terry,
Speaker 2: you know, several times, you know, and he you know,
Speaker 2: he constantly you know, there for a while, he was
Speaker 2: definitely worried, you know, that they were going to, like
Speaker 2: he told me one time that his daughter, Amanda, he
Speaker 2: was definitely worried that because she was talking to some
Speaker 2: of the film crews and Amy Bird from Western Memphis,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to put her under hypnosis. And he
Speaker 2: told me he was definitely afraid that she was going
Speaker 2: to conjure some they were going to conjure some memory
Speaker 2: into her head that she had, you know, witnessed him
Speaker 2: beating her son, beating her her brother to death, and
Speaker 2: his friends, and so he was scared to death of that.
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, we'll see what happens, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know what to say to him
Speaker 2: when he was saying this, so but anyway, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, and I mean if I was a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't understand why you wouldn't at least
Speaker 2: or if you're a detective, you know, why why wouldn't
Speaker 2: you put this all together and then ask for a
Speaker 2: prosecutor file in charge. I mean, there's there's more than
Speaker 2: enough here. You know.
Speaker 6: What's amazing is what you just told me sounds very
Speaker 6: similar to when he has a story that it seems
Speaker 6: very incriminating, and this one where he says, listen, I'm
Speaker 6: very worried about my daughter being under hypnosis and then
Speaker 6: coming up conjuring up an image of me beating the
Speaker 6: kids to death. I mean, it sounds almost the same.
Speaker 6: It sounds eerily incriminating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it sounds a lot like when he
Speaker 2: was telling John Martin Byers the story about them not
Speaker 2: being the person who did it, not being a monster,
Speaker 2: you know exactly. I mean, it's it's kind of this
Speaker 2: similar kind of you know, brain pattern and the other
Speaker 2: and the other thing that you asked about the knife
Speaker 2: behind Jason Baldom's Lake or the lake behind Jason Bowen's house.
Speaker 2: That is okay. I talked to her reporter one time
Speaker 2: and who was there when this whole thing happened. What
Speaker 2: happened was to let your listeners know what happened was
Speaker 2: is the month after the official arrests, they still hadn't
Speaker 2: found the knife. They had this theory that these boys
Speaker 2: were hacked up with the knife, and so they were
Speaker 2: looking for a knife. They were trying to find a weapon.
Speaker 2: They knew they needed one. Juries like to see murder weapons,
Speaker 2: you know, they want to see what you used to
Speaker 2: kill somebody with. I mean, I was in court one
Speaker 2: time and a guy had used like a candle holder
Speaker 2: or I'm sorry across that the woman he killed, her
Speaker 2: family had donated to a church and he beat her
Speaker 2: to death, so that he was a transient and that cross.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget singing court. It just sat there. So
Speaker 2: having the knife is a big deal. You know, they
Speaker 2: want the knife. So John Fogelman's prosecutor, he has a
Speaker 2: tiphany one day. He decides that they need to go
Speaker 2: and they need to look behind Jason Baldomtow's there was
Speaker 2: an industrial lake. He said, I'll bet the knife is there.
Speaker 2: So they go out there, they look, and within thirty
Speaker 2: minutes they find a knife. And it's that rainbow style
Speaker 2: knife that was seen in court. And the suspicious thing
Speaker 2: about it was And I talked to a reporter who
Speaker 2: was there, a reporter who, by the way, believes these
Speaker 2: guys are or at least at the time when the
Speaker 2: story was told to me, believed they were guilty. The
Speaker 2: reporter told me that it was kind of weird because
Speaker 2: it was almost like they were told where to stand
Speaker 2: when the divers came out of the water so they
Speaker 2: could get the best picture of the knife. And and
Speaker 2: here's the other part of that, that's just weird. Prosecutors
Speaker 2: prosecute cases. Police and detectives investigate cases. Okay, it's very
Speaker 2: odd for a prosecutor to interject himself in the investigation
Speaker 2: phase of the case like that. It's just a peculiar circumstance.
Speaker 2: It should in the police like if he thought that,
Speaker 2: you know, he could have called the police chief. But
Speaker 2: it was just a weird, Like what, okay, why didn't
Speaker 2: the police chief say, hey, we need to go check
Speaker 2: that lake out behind his behind the trailerhouse for evidence.
Speaker 2: So it was just really weird.
Speaker 6: Yeah, certainly, certainly convenient. I want to thank you George
Speaker 6: for coming on and talking about which is in West Memphis,
Speaker 6: the West Memphis three and another false confession that's been
Speaker 6: very enjoyable. Thank you very much, George. For those that
Speaker 6: might want to look at other work, or do you
Speaker 6: have a Facebook page, website, tell us about that.
Speaker 2: I do. Just go I'm on Amazon. You can go
Speaker 2: to Boards and Noble. I'm snag one of my books. Also,
Speaker 2: I'd also like to just plug this in there too.
Speaker 2: The last chapter of the book is about another false
Speaker 2: confession case that happened almost two years to the day
Speaker 2: after these three guys were released from prison. It's in
Speaker 2: the same judicial district because the prostitutor in case told
Speaker 2: me he didn't believe in false confessions. Two years to today,
Speaker 2: a seventeen year old mentally indigen guy named Christopher sal
Speaker 2: confessed to the murder of an eleven year old girl
Speaker 2: named Jessica Williams, who disappeared in twenty thirteen in the
Speaker 2: town called Gosnel, which is about an hour's drive from
Speaker 2: West Memshis. They found her body in a drainage ditch
Speaker 2: the day after she disappeared, and within twenty four hours
Speaker 2: her neighbor confessed to her murder, even got a detail
Speaker 2: or two of it right, and he sat in jail
Speaker 2: for eight months waiting for his trial. The only problem
Speaker 2: was that he didn't kill her. And what saved him
Speaker 2: was they found one sperm cell on her body. One
Speaker 2: they DNA tested it, and he didn't belong to him.
Speaker 2: And so I include that as the last chapter of
Speaker 2: the book, just because you know, everybody believes in you know,
Speaker 2: anybody who believes our guilty, believe Jesse that he didn't
Speaker 2: falsely confess well in the same judicial district, same prosecutor,
Speaker 2: fifty miles from where this whole thing happened, the same
Speaker 2: exact thing happened two years later, almost to the day.
Speaker 2: It's almost unbelievable. And so I included that chapter in
Speaker 2: there just so people understand that this does happen, happens
Speaker 2: all the time, happens everywhere. And you can check me
Speaker 2: out author George Jared on Facebook. I've got Instagram. Just
Speaker 2: messaged me on there and I'll whatever way you want
Speaker 2: to communicate with me, I'm more than happy to do it.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much, George Jared for speaking about
Speaker 6: witches in West Memphis. Hope to speak to you again soon.
Speaker 2: Good Night, Thanks, Thanks Dan, good night,