Episode Transcript
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great. I
2:03
don't want a holy life of
2:05
prayer and contemplation. I want a life of
2:08
strife, lust, striving, seeking, struggling, and debauchery.
2:17
I'm not content to settle for one experience when there
2:19
is a whole lifetime of experiences to be had. I'm
2:24
so hungry for knowledge that I live several
2:26
lives at once to acquire it. A
2:29
Catholic and a Buddhist, a reader and a
2:31
writer, a sinner and a philosopher, a husband
2:33
and a father, a Native American and
2:35
a white man. I no longer
2:38
have any desire to fit into any one category.
2:47
The canvas on the altar was also given to me. Its
2:49
calligraphy translates to, moonbeams pierced to
2:51
the bottom of the pools. Yet
2:54
in the water, not a trace remains. I
2:58
have two definitions for
3:00
the word magic. The first
3:03
is knowing that I can affect change through my
3:05
own will, even behind these bars. The other
3:09
meaning is more experiential, seeing
3:11
beauty for a moment in the midst of
3:14
the mundane. In the movies, it's always the
3:16
other prisoners you have to watch out for. In real
3:18
life, it's the guards and the administration. They
3:24
go out of their way to make your life harder and
3:26
more stressful than it already is, as
3:29
if being on death row were not enough. They
3:32
can send a man to prison for writing bad
3:34
checks and then torment him there until he becomes
3:36
a violent offender. One
3:39
of our, Laurie and mine's, greatest
3:41
inventions was moonwater. Another
3:44
prisoner once discovered me making moonwater and said
3:46
it was so illogical it nearly drove him
3:48
insane. For
3:51
months afterward he was stomping his feet
3:53
in frustration and billow. This shit is
3:55
crazy. It makes no sense. That
3:57
shit is making my head hurt. For
4:00
some reason, the thought of it seemed to hurt his
4:02
mind. Then again, he was
4:04
a little unbalanced to begin with. Moon
4:08
water can be made only once a month, on the
4:10
night of the full moon. After
4:12
the sun goes down, and the moon rides
4:15
high, you fill a container with water, and
4:17
set it on a window ledge, so that the
4:19
moon casts a reflection in it. You
4:22
must leave it there all night, so that it catches
4:24
as much of the moon's light as possible. You
4:27
have to remove it right before morning, so that
4:29
the sun's light never touches it. It
4:32
must then be kept in a dark place. My
4:35
wife and I did this every full moon for years,
4:38
and we would take a single sip of the water
4:40
at the same time each night, while thinking of each
4:42
other. In that moment
4:44
we were united, no matter how far apart we
4:46
might be. You
4:48
take a single sip each night, so that you
4:50
have enough to last the entire month. For
4:54
every way the system attempts to separate us, we
4:56
can't help but seek out new ways to pull
4:58
ourselves together. In the
5:00
end, hatefulness and ignorance always fail in
5:02
the face of intelligence and love. The
5:06
proof is in the moon water. Moon
5:08
beams pierce to the bottom of the pools,
5:10
yet in the water, not a trace remains.
5:13
Not a
5:15
trace remains. Not a trace remains. Not
5:19
a trace remains. Welcome
5:33
to True Crime Garage, wherever you are, whatever
5:35
you are doing. Thanks for listening. I'm Nick,
5:37
your host, and with me, the
5:39
only state-certified death metal summer
5:42
camp counselor, the captain. Rock
5:45
and roll! Hooch-a-coo!
5:48
Oh, I just blew up my vocal cords. It's
5:51
good to see you, and it's good to be
5:54
seen. Yeah, welcome to the after party. We are
5:56
sitting here, staying up late. Garage
5:58
is open. It's starting to cool down
6:00
out. outside, love these summertime nights. Well
6:04
we had to do a part three of this
6:06
because it's just so huge and we, I
6:09
don't even think we're going to cover all
6:11
the details anyways but we're going
6:13
to do our best. This would have to
6:15
be like a 20 parter and I just. Yeah
6:18
Captain if you weren't so long winded we would have been
6:20
able to get through this and to episode.
6:22
I try to keep my mouth shut for these but we
6:24
want to put out another episode, two
6:26
episodes in one week as
6:29
a thank you to all the support
6:31
that we've got in season three and
6:33
the growing of the show being in
6:35
Rolling Stone magazine. Everything that you guys
6:38
do for the show it's beautiful, we appreciate
6:40
it and we're trying to give you back
6:43
as much as you give us. So thank you for
6:45
joining us each week in the garage and thank you
6:47
to our good friends who signed up on
6:50
the mailing list and joined the True Crime
6:52
Garage Army and I want
6:54
to thank Wesley from San Diego,
6:56
California for his donation. Huge donation.
6:59
Providing the beer and bringing the beer to the
7:01
after party, it's very special. He brought the beer
7:03
not just for us but for everybody. He rolled
7:06
in a keg. And if you want to support
7:08
the show just go to truecrimegarage.com, we have old
7:11
episodes, bonus episodes, we
7:13
sell t-shirts and stuff like that so let's just
7:15
get done with the business and let's get right
7:17
into part three, West Memphis. Yes
7:20
this is episode three, I recommend listening to them
7:22
in order but you're welcome to, listen to them
7:24
in any order you see fit. So if you
7:26
want to start with this one, welcome to the
7:29
after party. Where we left
7:31
off, the police had just picked up
7:33
Jesse Miss Kelly Jr. They brought him
7:35
to the police department and they were
7:37
going to interview him. Now they're interested
7:39
in him because he knows of some
7:41
characters that they are interested in, Jason
7:43
Baldwin and Damien Eccles. And this is
7:46
a list that was put together by
7:48
the juvenile officer and he
7:50
basically came up with a list of about
7:52
eight people that he would say that maybe
7:54
would have something to do with these murders.
7:56
And Jesse's interested in talking to the police
7:58
because one, he seems to be a bit
8:00
of a helpful character and two, he
8:03
has recently found out that there is reward
8:05
money and if he knows anything about this
8:07
case he should tell them so that
8:09
he could help him and his family
8:12
get receive that money. It's about
8:14
10 a.m. when they pick
8:16
up Jesse, Miss Kelly and take him to
8:18
the police department. Now this is approximately a
8:20
month after the murders so the
8:22
heat is on for the police and
8:24
they need to solve this thing soon
8:26
because there's panic. There's been three boys
8:28
that started off missing. They were found
8:30
dead. They were found terribly mutilated and
8:33
this crime needs to be solved. Yeah,
8:35
the crime happened on May 5th and
8:38
now he's being interviewed on June the
8:40
3rd. So they have him and
8:42
they're talking to him. They're gonna question him and they
8:44
ask him. One thing that I found
8:46
interesting, Captain, is that they came up with with
8:48
the help of the FBI. They
8:51
came up with a list of questions that they should
8:53
ask people. Now these sometimes this is
8:55
somebody that maybe they just knocked on their
8:57
door or maybe that's somebody that was of
8:59
interest and they brought them to the police
9:02
department but they tried to ask most of
9:04
the people about the same questions and first
9:06
thing they want to know is does
9:09
he know anything about the murders or has he
9:11
heard anything about the murders? Well Jesse
9:13
would explain to them that he knew
9:16
of the murders because he was on his way to
9:18
work and he had heard on the
9:20
news he was going to go do a roofing
9:22
job and he had heard on the news
9:24
that the boys were missing. So
9:26
we can assume that this is May
9:28
6th. This is not May 5th because
9:31
it's being reported in the news. Now
9:33
he says that same day he had come home
9:36
and when he was done with work a friend of
9:38
his had told him that the boys had been found.
9:41
So we do know that this is May 6th because
9:43
they were found in the afternoon that day. Does
9:46
he know anything about Damien Eccles or does he
9:49
know anything about Jason Baldwin? And he says yes
9:51
I know them. I know Jason Baldwin.
9:53
He's a nice guy and we've been friends
9:55
from time to time and I don't
9:58
really know Damien Eccles. I know who he is. is.
10:00
I think he's kind of weird, but
10:02
I know he's a good friend of Jason Baldwin's. And
10:05
after they get talking to him for a while, they
10:07
ask him if he would like to take a polygraph
10:09
test. And he agrees to it.
10:11
He says he would have no problem doing so.
10:14
And of course, they need again to
10:16
get the permission from his father. They
10:19
find his father. His father's at like
10:21
a fast-food restaurant and he signs, he
10:24
says, yeah, sure, no problem. I'll sign the paper. And
10:26
so now they have permission to give him
10:29
the polygraph. They ask him only about six
10:31
or seven questions. I don't have them in
10:33
front of me. But basically, it's simple questions.
10:35
Things like, do you
10:37
know anything about the murders? Have you heard anything
10:39
about the murders? Do you know who killed these
10:42
boys? That's a questionnaire that they had. And
10:45
within those questions, they're going to sprinkle in things
10:47
that may or may not have anything to do
10:49
with the case that they're looking into. And one
10:51
of those questions that they ask him is, have
10:54
you ever done drugs? And
10:56
he basically says, no, to most of these
10:58
questions. He doesn't know who killed these boys.
11:00
He doesn't know much about
11:02
the murder. No, he's never done drugs.
11:05
And they come back to him and they explain to
11:07
him, you are lying. We
11:10
know that you're lying. How do we
11:12
know? This machine that we have, it
11:15
tells us that you're lying. This is a secret machine. It's
11:18
actually hooked up to your brain. And
11:20
your brain is telling us that you're lying.
11:23
Well, this confuses Jesse. And
11:26
he... Let's go back. Jesse's
11:28
a simple-minded guy. Yeah. So for
11:30
the people that want to point
11:32
out that the West Memphis Three
11:34
are innocent, you will hear them
11:36
say that he has an IQ as low as 68 or
11:38
67. For the people
11:41
that want to say that they're guilty, sometimes they
11:43
report that his IQ is as high as 79
11:46
or 80. So it all depends on
11:48
what type of defense you're on. And some people
11:50
like to say, like, he has a handicap. I
11:52
don't like to think of him like that. I
11:55
just think he's very simple. And
11:57
that's the way I'd like to view it. So
12:00
he's confused by being told that he's lying
12:02
and they point out to him, well, we
12:04
know that you've done drugs because we've seen
12:06
you sell them. And he explains to them,
12:08
I've never sold them, but okay, yes, I
12:10
have done drugs. So now
12:12
they're getting him to admit to some things.
12:16
And they start with what we're going
12:18
to call an interrogation. What I'm gonna
12:20
call, they started with questions, they moved
12:22
on to the polygraph. Now they're gonna
12:24
say they're questioning him more, this
12:27
is an interrogation. And
12:29
they believe that he knows something
12:31
of these murders. And he knows
12:33
more than just hearing about it from his friends. So
12:37
he starts to agree
12:40
with some of the things that they're telling him. And
12:42
he's gonna start off by telling them that,
12:45
yes, he was in Robin Hood Hills and
12:47
he had been there before. And
12:49
he got there around 9 a.m. And
12:53
that- Well, he says he woke up at 9 a.m. But
12:56
then he got there about 12. Well,
12:59
the first state portions of the questions, he says
13:01
he was there as early as 9. And
13:04
they will coax him a little bit
13:06
more and that eventually moves to noon.
13:09
Yeah, and online, it's kinda hard
13:11
to find, but there's two recordings.
13:13
One of the first confession, the
13:15
first statement made, and then
13:17
the second one. But you can also find the one
13:20
that happened about a year or so later. So
13:22
if you're interested in those, those are
13:24
available on the internet. Real
13:26
quickly, I'm gonna try to go through his first
13:28
confession. I'm just gonna sum it up real quick.
13:31
And we'll go through some questionable things
13:33
with it. But basically he says that
13:36
he met Jesse and, I'm sorry, that
13:38
Jesse had met Jason and
13:40
Damien at Robin Hood Hills. And
13:42
he had got there in the morning time. And
13:44
he walked. He walked there and the other boys
13:46
had walked there as well. And
13:48
he states that that's when he saw the three
13:50
kids and
13:53
they hollered at him to come into the woods. Damien
13:55
hollered at him. And so
13:57
the kids come in there and he says
13:59
that he saw. Damien hit the one
14:01
boy and brews him up real bad.
14:04
He says that Jason starts to attack one of
14:07
the other boys and
14:09
then at this point the police are already
14:12
they're concerned about this potential
14:14
confession that they're getting because they know
14:16
that the police they know that the
14:18
kids were at school that day. There
14:21
was no way for them to have been there at 9
14:23
a.m. or yeah or even
14:26
if you go with the 12 o'clock they're not going to
14:28
be out of school by that point and
14:30
then Jesse then says well the boys
14:32
skip school. Yeah well he starts off
14:34
by saying that he didn't go to school. Right. Well
14:36
I didn't go to school and they go well yeah
14:39
but the boys were in school and he goes no
14:41
they skip school. Right. And so they're
14:45
walking him further down the road and
14:47
further down on this confession and
14:50
he starts to get a little more
14:52
elaborate with what he sees and
14:54
he starts to say
14:56
you know they want to know if there
14:58
was anything sexual going on and
15:01
he explains that Damien and Jason
15:03
started screwing them and stuff I
15:05
believe is pretty much what he
15:08
says. Yeah and then basically
15:10
what he's saying is that they were trying to
15:12
and then well he said well
15:14
what do you mean by that? He said well
15:16
that they pulled off their pants so he was
15:18
just assuming that they were
15:21
going to try to screw the boys and
15:23
then he goes well what makes you so
15:25
sure that that is what Damien
15:27
was going to do and he's like well Damien had his
15:29
pants on button. And at some
15:31
point it's a little unclear to me if it's if
15:33
it it wasn't during the
15:35
interrogation but there's multiple interrogations and
15:38
there's different parts that are recorded
15:40
of the confession. Right. But
15:42
some things that may have scared
15:44
Jesse into opening up or to
15:47
creating a story to tell them
15:50
the police use some tactics here. They
15:53
had Gitchill, Gary Gitchill the
15:55
lead investigator. He had drawn
15:57
a circle and he put three dots
15:59
inside of the circle and he put X's
16:01
all around the circle and he told Jesse
16:03
he said you see the circle those
16:06
three dots inside well that's you
16:08
Jason and Damien those
16:10
X's all around the circle those
16:13
are police now do you
16:15
want to be inside that circle or do you want
16:17
to be outside of that circle right and he
16:19
says well I want to be outside of the circle and
16:23
Gitchill would go on to show him
16:25
a picture of one of the dead
16:27
boys yeah now later Jesse would say
16:29
that this shocked him that he had saw a
16:31
picture of the face of one of the dead
16:34
boys and he could see that he was all
16:36
beat up and he was all bruised up and
16:39
he probably had never seen a picture
16:41
of a dead person let alone a
16:43
dead child before hopefully he never did
16:45
well this shocks him well if it
16:48
couldn't shock him any more than this
16:50
shortly afterwards Gitchill
16:53
would play a audio tape for
16:55
Jesse Miss Kelly and
16:58
what it is is it's a child's
17:00
voice and he says one sentence the
17:03
boy on the recording says
17:06
nobody knows what happened but me
17:10
this terrifies Jesse he doesn't
17:12
know what to think of the picture he
17:14
doesn't know what to think of the recording
17:16
he doesn't know who's in the recording or
17:18
why it that was
17:20
said well he's going
17:22
on and on into this confession and it's a
17:25
lot of back and forth you people
17:27
have seen this bits of this confession
17:29
in the movies in the documentaries you
17:31
can find some of it online those
17:33
documentaries are paradise lost or west of
17:35
Memphis and I don't know that we're
17:38
gonna go into every bit of it because we'd be
17:40
here for now we have another
17:42
after party after this one I mean look
17:44
if you're really interested in this case start
17:46
with the paradise lost it's not going to
17:48
give you a bunch of information I mean
17:50
start with our start with our podcast obviously
17:52
I'm actually pretty proud of what we've done
17:54
so far with the first two parts with
17:57
the facts that were put in now and But
18:00
check out those documentaries in the west of Memphis
18:02
and then you were telling me if you're really
18:04
into this case You want to check out devil's
18:06
not yeah, the devil's not was a
18:09
book that came out I believe it was
18:11
definitely after the first paradise lost movie and
18:13
I believe before the second one I actually
18:15
think that the second
18:17
one the second paradise lost that
18:19
starts to implicate Maybe John Mark
18:21
Byers as having been the perpetrator
18:23
of this crime The devil's
18:26
not hints around that quite a bit
18:28
Anybody that's read that knows what I'm talking
18:31
about and maybe paradise lost got that idea
18:33
from the book and then they recently made
18:35
a movie called
18:37
devil's not and I heard that
18:39
they changed the Screenplay a
18:41
little bit because they wanted to have
18:43
it match with the new evidence that
18:45
has come out But
18:48
anyways There's this confession and
18:50
it's very questionable Now
18:52
to me the first statement given sounds
18:57
It sounds like my gut is
18:59
telling me that he's telling the truth But
19:02
they're they're also leading him
19:05
and then all the information that you know
19:07
We you just gave beforehand that just makes
19:09
you question. Why is this kid confessing at
19:11
all? well, and when you say the first
19:14
statement what you're referring to is there's multiple
19:17
recordings of the confessions right
19:19
and You're talking about
19:22
the first confession that's recorded in
19:24
its entirety sounds what you
19:26
said what it sounds it sounds Legitimate
19:28
to me like my gut is
19:30
telling me that he's that he's
19:33
telling the truth. That's my thought
19:35
but Nothing
19:37
else makes sense to me Okay
19:39
well the as far as the confessions go
19:41
and I've listened to them in their entirety
19:44
and I and I know
19:46
you have as well and I will say
19:48
let's just go through some things that are
19:50
of question Okay now these might be things
19:52
that point towards his guilt or
19:54
things that might point towards him being innocent or
19:56
that the police are Leading or what have you
19:59
The first thing? The. Obvious thing that
20:01
stands out most people's mind as the
20:03
times by the time doesn't make any
20:05
sense. Well the. The
20:08
prosecution's ah timeline through out
20:10
the confessions that were taken
20:13
on this deck. The.
20:15
Times Jesse will change times. eight times.
20:17
He will give eight different times of
20:19
day for when he first met up
20:21
with Damian and and Jace right in.
20:23
The investigators are always leaving him later
20:25
in the day. they're trying to get
20:28
away from that nine o'clock for trying
20:30
to get away from that noone. The
20:32
investigators know that the boys were last
20:34
seen around six or six thirty Pm.
20:36
So they need they need Damien, Jason,
20:38
and Jesse to have met up with
20:40
those boys at that time Or later.
20:42
right? Not at Noon. So as we
20:44
said, Jesse starts. Off saying nine and
20:46
the nine becomes noon. And
20:48
then noon becomes after after after work.
20:51
It was after work was about five
20:53
o'clock. While. Jesse did you have your
20:55
watch with you that day Now while than
20:57
you might not know what time of was
20:59
us you said it was five or six.
21:01
Now we're up to six and then later
21:03
become seven or eight. Now was it like
21:05
or was a dark and then get all
21:07
says Well that sums it up because just
21:09
he says well it was It was getting
21:11
dark when we we have reported in the
21:13
first episodes that the moon that the the
21:16
sun went down moon came up about seven
21:18
forty one that day. It's like my favorite
21:20
line or one of my favorite lines in
21:22
the movie. From perks of being a wallflower.
21:24
The main character asks dad for fifty
21:26
dollar bill. The dad says twenty dollars
21:29
for you need Ten dollars for. Like
21:32
they did the same thing Tom has
21:34
like with it for five. Was.
21:36
It. Okay, So five? okay was
21:38
it dark and then we just keep
21:40
pushing a backs was real kick. This
21:43
is how we got to seven or eight pm.
21:45
As. Far as yes, the cancer. Once. They
21:47
got to five o'clock. At
21:50
some point the investigator says now earlier
21:52
you had told me it was more
21:54
like seven or eight. And.
21:57
There. Is no part on any of
21:59
those. Keeps now maybe this was a
22:01
discussion that was off. Off. The
22:04
tape. Off. The Record: But.
22:06
There was no discussion that was being recorded where
22:08
he just he had said earlier that it was
22:10
seven or eight. Now he's leading him up to
22:13
seven or eight and exactly what you said at
22:15
the police. Ask him and was seven or eight
22:17
And Jesse's responses not seven is not A he
22:19
says get was seven or eight. Right
22:21
man. You pick. And not only that,
22:24
you could pick either one and you'd still
22:26
be considered guilty. There is no
22:28
right answer unless you're the police. So.
22:31
We have the times they the times
22:33
are confusing. The times are are a
22:36
problem for the police department. And.
22:38
There a problem for it for Jesse's confession.
22:41
The other part is when they start talking
22:43
about the boys being tied up. Now.
22:46
The Police wanna know. You
22:49
know how how are these boys tied up.
22:51
With. Jesse says they were tied with rope. And.
22:54
That he at no point does he ever
22:56
indicate that he understands that the hands were
22:58
tied to the ankles. Remember we said that
23:00
the right hand was tied to the right
23:03
ankle and so on. And
23:05
he says that their hands were tied
23:07
with rope. What color rope it was
23:09
Brown wrote pisa onset said that's what
23:11
killer robots and on this is a
23:13
problem says we know that there were
23:15
tied up the shoelaces. Yeah and they
23:17
weren't tied with their hands behind their
23:20
backs. So again, it's it's this. Weird.
23:22
Thing words lights out. Okay so
23:25
keep got an alley that Jesse
23:27
explains that does the they couldn't
23:29
have been tied hand to to
23:31
ankle because. They. They have
23:33
were trying to run. The one boy had taken
23:36
off running. So. The can't run
23:38
when you're tied hand ankle and he's the one
23:40
that we the boys. So.
23:43
At some point the police have to have
23:45
him stop the confession in. he's going to
23:47
have to go through it again because they
23:49
weren't obviously tied with rope. We gotta get
23:51
that right to on a fixed Some things.
23:54
So. There's some other problems.
23:57
okay so what one thing that does
23:59
just he had said was that Jason
24:01
and Damien had started screwing them and
24:03
stuff, meaning the victims. Okay,
24:06
well, here's
24:09
the problem with that. We know how
24:11
the boys were tied. If
24:13
they were going to be sodomizing
24:16
the boys, it's probably
24:18
close to impossible with how they were
24:20
tied without getting into
24:22
specifics. He
24:25
does talk about oral sex. He asked if
24:27
anybody was having oral sex and he does
24:29
say that Damien and Jason were having sticking
24:32
their things in their mouths of
24:34
two of the boys. He
24:38
said that they were holding them by the ears. Now
24:41
that is a problem
24:43
for Jesse because there
24:45
are injuries to some of the
24:48
boys, if not all of them, that
24:50
would indicate an act like that occurring.
24:52
Well, yeah, if you go
24:54
against science, yes. The
24:57
police want to know did Jason, well, first of
24:59
all, they want to know did Jesse rape
25:02
any of the boys? And he says, no, I didn't do any of
25:04
that. One thing
25:06
you'll notice in these confessions is that
25:08
Jesse is constantly, he will tell a portion
25:11
of the story and then he'll say, and
25:13
then that's when I left. And
25:15
then later they'll get him to tell more of a
25:17
story. And then he go, always refers back to the,
25:20
and then that's when I left. And
25:22
then he'll tell a little bit more. And then that's when I
25:24
left. He's constantly trying to get
25:27
himself out of that or this is the
25:29
end of the story. Now
25:31
they want to know if any
25:34
of the, here's some problems
25:36
that they have with Jesse's story. When
25:38
they're talking about the rape of the boys. Now
25:41
you will hear more than one
25:43
time, Jesse will say that Damien
25:45
raped Myers and both of them raped
25:47
branches. Okay. So
25:50
now he's starting to get the names of the victims wrong.
25:53
He's referring to, no,
25:55
he's referring to buyer. I don't
25:57
know if he's referring to more or buyers, but he says.
26:00
which is kind of a smashing of the two. And
26:03
then he talks about both of them
26:05
raping branches. But
26:10
here's a problem for Jesse. At some point he doesn't
26:15
realize this, but I
26:17
think he's trying to confirm their
26:19
story or put validity to his
26:21
story. He says at some
26:23
point that the more boy got
26:25
away and started to run and
26:28
that Jesse went and caught him and
26:30
brought him back. Well now
26:32
he's just implicated himself and he's
26:34
gone from having witnessed a rape
26:37
and murder to now being involved
26:39
in the actual killing.
26:41
Well one, he's not doing anything to stop
26:44
these attacks happening, but then when the one
26:46
boy goes to get away, if it
26:49
wasn't for him bringing him back, then
26:51
that boy would have lived. Exactly.
26:54
Based on Jesse's story. And not only
26:56
that, maybe whatever was going on would
26:58
have stopped because somebody got away. Anyway,
27:02
he's now implicated himself.
27:05
The police want to know if Jason
27:07
or Damien went down on any of
27:09
the boys. Now why
27:11
do they want to know this? Well we
27:13
went through some of the autopsy and we're
27:15
not going to go through it in its
27:17
entirety because it's just too much to take.
27:20
You can find it if you really want to read it, but
27:23
one thing that I will point out for you
27:25
is that there were abrasions, there
27:27
were damages to Stevie
27:30
Branch's penis. He had
27:32
had some bruising on it and they
27:34
wanted to know if somebody had gone down on
27:36
any of the boys because this was something they
27:38
would have expected. Something had to
27:41
have happened for him for those bruises
27:43
to occur. Yeah, I mean those bruises
27:45
would also be with any
27:47
sexual abuse. Okay,
27:50
so let's talk about something that he had said
27:52
early in the get-go. He said
27:54
I'd seen Damien hit
27:56
this one boy and bruise him up real bad.
28:00
Okay, well I do believe, I
28:03
do believe that this crime took a certain
28:05
amount of time to occur. The
28:07
way that the things that were done to
28:09
these boys and the way that they
28:11
were left in the woods, I believe
28:13
that it would have taken a certain amount of time for
28:15
this to occur. What I
28:18
find strange is here, and I'm obviously no
28:20
doctor, Captain, I'm just hanging out in the
28:22
garage with you. Oh, you're not a doctor.
28:24
But it's made that he bruised
28:26
him up real bad. You usually
28:28
don't punch somebody or hit somebody and they
28:30
bruise instantly. I don't know
28:32
Jesse's definition of bruise, but my definition
28:35
of bruise is usually something you see
28:37
well after the fact. Yeah,
28:39
but I don't know. I think if you
28:41
hit somebody, I mean, they're gonna
28:44
get splotchy, you know, red splotches
28:46
and stuff. The other thing,
28:48
they wanted to know who had a knife. Jesse, did
28:50
you have a knife? No. Nope. Who
28:52
had a knife? Did Damien have a knife? Nope. Jason
28:55
had a knife. Yes, he did. Several
28:58
knives. Not there, but
29:00
he has several knives. He has several knives,
29:03
but what knife did he have with them
29:05
at the crime scene? It's a pull-out lock
29:07
blade. So it's the kind of blade that
29:09
you, when you pull it out, that it'll
29:12
lock into place. Well, Jesse's asked, you
29:14
know, to describe the knife. And yes, he
29:16
says it's a lock blade. And he
29:19
says it's about six inches. It's
29:21
a blade that's about six inches. And
29:23
what kind of blade is it? Well,
29:25
the problem with this is, he
29:28
says it's a regular blade. Now
29:30
again, I don't know Jesse's definition of
29:33
bruising. I don't know his definition of
29:35
a regular blade. But when
29:37
I hear somebody say regular blade, I'm thinking of
29:39
a flat, single-edged lock
29:42
knife. The problem
29:44
with that is they firmly believe
29:47
that the injuries that
29:49
were suffered by Christopher Byers, when
29:54
they cut off the scrotum, they
29:56
believed that it was a serrated knife
30:00
that wound. It would have
30:02
removed that portion of the body. He
30:05
never describes a serrated knife. The
30:21
evidence keeps pouring in. At this point
30:23
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30:25
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Mint Mobile for details. They
34:06
probe on. They want to know were any
34:08
of the boys dead when you
34:10
left? Remember he keeps saying that he left.
34:13
Now the first couple of times, no,
34:15
all the boys were still alive when
34:18
he left. Eventually they get him to
34:20
the point where he says that, yes,
34:22
the buyer's boy, they have three pictures. They
34:24
have a picture of each boy out on the
34:26
table. A lot of times he
34:28
doesn't refer to the boys by names. He'll just
34:31
point at one of the pictures and say, that
34:33
boy. Right. And he points at a picture and
34:35
he says, that boy, he was dead.
34:37
They killed him before I left. Well, the investigators
34:40
might have got tired of him saying the wrong
34:42
names. I said, I might have
34:44
just been like, you just need to point from
34:46
now on because you calling them Myers and stuff
34:48
doesn't work for what we
34:50
need you for. Well, and you know what's
34:53
interesting to me was at one point early
34:55
in the confession, he calls,
34:57
he refers to the buyer's boy
34:59
as more, which the
35:01
strange thing about that was the
35:03
police and the medical examiner early
35:06
in the investigation had confused those
35:08
two boys as well. I always
35:10
found that strange. It doesn't mean anything, but I
35:12
always found it odd that two of the boys
35:14
were confused by multiple people. Anyway,
35:17
he says that, yes, the buyer's boy was killed
35:19
before he had left and they asked how he
35:21
was killed. Well, he, they choked him. They
35:24
choked him with his hands and then they choked
35:26
him with a stick. A little stick. Yeah. And
35:28
then they threw him into the water and
35:31
he, I believe he says that
35:33
he saw him still twitching or his feet still
35:35
kicking. Yeah. One of them was kicking. Once he
35:38
was thrown into the water and he's referring to
35:40
the buyer's boy. There's a couple of problems
35:42
with it. Well, we don't really know who he's referring to.
35:44
Yeah, we do because he says that one right there and
35:46
Kitchill says you're talking about the buyer's boy. I know, but
35:48
what I'm saying is for, for most
35:50
of the, uh, interrogation, he's
35:53
switching them up. So, okay.
35:55
But for this instance, he's talking about, he's,
35:58
he's pointing to Christopher buyer. Now,
36:00
the reason why this is important
36:03
is because out of the
36:05
three victims, when you refer to the
36:07
autopsy report, there was a lot
36:09
of damage done to all three of these
36:12
boys. There was more damage done to Christopher
36:14
Byers than anybody else. But
36:16
one of the few body parts that
36:18
was not damaged on Christopher Byers was
36:20
his neck. There was no indication of
36:23
having been choked, strangled, or choked with
36:25
a stick on his neck. And
36:28
furthermore, he didn't drown. He was the
36:30
only boy out of the three that
36:32
didn't have water in his lungs. So
36:34
we would assume that he had died before he
36:37
put in the water. He was dead before he
36:39
was put in the water. But according to Jesse,
36:41
he's kicking. He was kicking. He
36:44
was still kicking. Exactly. He would have
36:46
been alive and he probably would have inhaled some water at
36:48
that point. According to
36:50
the autopsy report, Christopher Byers died from
36:52
multiple injuries and had bled out. Which
36:56
makes me really feel bad about my
36:58
gut instincts when I think
37:00
about what my gut was telling me when
37:02
I first heard the first
37:04
interview with him. Now some things
37:06
that don't work out well for Jesse, in
37:09
my opinion, is he's asked how did they
37:11
keep the boys quiet. And he says, well,
37:13
they held their hands over their mouths. And
37:16
then at some point he says that they
37:18
stuffed their shirts into their mouths. Well
37:21
this is interesting to me because it's not
37:23
something that I've heard anywhere else. And
37:26
it wasn't a question that they were
37:28
specifically asking him, did you put a
37:30
shirt in their mouth? There
37:33
were other points in this confession where
37:35
he's being led, clearly being led. But
37:38
once in a while he's offering up
37:40
information without having been led to this
37:42
answer. And this is one of the- Do we have any
37:44
proof that they had shirts on their, it
37:47
could be something he saw in a movie. No,
37:49
you're exactly right. But what I'm getting at is
37:52
the people that point out over and over again
37:54
that the West Memphis Three are innocent, they will
37:56
constantly say that, oh, he was being led on
37:58
every single question. He was. No, some
38:00
of the stuff he was coming up with on his
38:02
own whether he had seen it or whether he was
38:04
making it up at That point now
38:07
the other problem that I have with this confession
38:09
that doesn't look good for Jesse is
38:11
that he does Admit that only one of
38:13
the boys Had
38:16
their penis removed. Yeah that
38:18
was castrate This is also a month
38:20
afterwards and how many rumors are happening
38:22
in that town The reason why I
38:24
have a problem with that is as
38:26
we reported in in our first episode
38:30
What was reported in the newspaper
38:32
the day after the boys were
38:34
found doesn't matter what's reported I
38:36
understand but what I'm saying is
38:38
the the what's reported in that
38:40
newspaper is what starts off everybody's
38:42
general Understanding of what the police
38:44
found and that understanding is that
38:47
all three boys were sexually mutilated
38:49
That's what was stated in the newspaper. That doesn't
38:51
mean that they didn't hear other rumors a
38:54
month later But what I'm getting at is
38:56
that's one of the things that you need
38:59
to look at That's one of the things
39:01
that the police were holding close to themselves
39:03
They they were they were ashamed that that
39:05
information had gotten out But they knew that
39:08
that when they find the
39:10
right person the right person would know that
39:12
only one of them Was I
39:14
mean, there's yeah one's castrate, but what
39:16
there is abuse to that one of
39:18
the kids genitals But
39:21
keep in mind four hours earlier
39:23
Jesse, Miss Kelly knew nothing about
39:25
this crime so for him
39:27
to come up with with something like this and
39:31
He spot-on he goes
39:33
straight from knowing nothing to knowing something
39:35
that maybe you know He doesn't mean
39:37
he doesn't know anything. He just answered
39:39
that he didn't know any he didn't
39:41
know anything at the time That
39:44
doesn't mean he doesn't know something. I understand
39:46
the answer that I get that what I'm
39:48
getting at Is that this is a problem
39:50
for Jesse, Miss Kelly wouldn't you agree that
39:53
he knows he knows he's reporting a
39:55
fact that is He's
39:58
Reporting something to the police? that is fact. Did.
40:00
The general public may not have known as
40:02
fact. After. This confessed. is
40:05
there anything else you want to touch on
40:07
and the a person can now? Okay so
40:09
after the confession, The. Other
40:11
boys are promptly arrested.
40:15
And. Now charges are being filed against
40:17
all three of them. And
40:19
we're not going to go through all the details
40:21
of the arrest and how this all went down,
40:24
but you can imagine what's going on and and
40:26
most of you out there have seen the Paradise
40:28
Lost movies or the West of Memphis movies as
40:30
and This doesn't go down like you know, Normal
40:33
situations, they're not giving people the
40:35
right call home right away. Ah,
40:38
Jason Baldwin's parents. I'm unaware that for
40:40
a while. Ah, So it's
40:42
kind of gone down a little funny. They.
40:45
Were arrested at night and according
40:47
to Arkansas law. They're. Not
40:49
really supposed to issue a warrant
40:51
for rest for a nighttime. Process.
40:55
And. That has to that has to
40:57
have special circumstances and know sip circumstances
41:00
would be that you you would think
41:02
that the the perpetrators would flee that
41:04
you would think that they would try
41:07
to destroy evidence. Or. That they
41:09
could conspire together to to
41:11
form a story or. You.
41:14
Know create a story of innocence and
41:16
the on things as gives them enough
41:18
reason to arrest them at night. Know
41:20
in our reason why is this was
41:22
a month later? If you're worried about
41:24
evidence being destroyed, well, it's been a
41:27
month. If you're worried about them coming
41:29
up with the Gaza rather is yeah
41:31
within that last month. If you're Damien
41:33
Echols in your Jason Baldwin, your buddy
41:35
that was with you. Ah he's
41:37
not been put into question the on think
41:40
it would get around town on you know
41:42
they they got ah Jessie Misskelley in there
41:44
and the question in i'm. And.
41:46
if you if you heard that and and
41:48
you are involved in this one of the
41:50
give you some time to start gonna read
41:53
a stuff one of the boys was a
41:55
minor ah the other the other eighteen year
41:57
old the adult never had a driver's license
41:59
right The dates involved when it was 16. Yeah.
42:02
Jesse and Miss Kelly was 17. Right, but there's not
42:04
probable cause to believe that the two of them have
42:06
the ability to flee. And
42:09
furthermore, any general
42:12
intelligence would tell you that they've already
42:14
had the opportunity to destroy evidence and
42:16
they've already had the opportunity to conspire
42:18
to come up with a good story.
42:21
Well, I get that. But also, if
42:24
these boys were involved, they
42:26
brutally murdered three kids. So
42:29
the public's at risk. I'm not saying that
42:31
it shouldn't have happened. I'm just saying
42:33
that it's not normal. It's abnormal for
42:36
them to issue a warrant for arrest
42:38
for an evening for the
42:40
nighttime. I agree with that. I'm just saying that
42:42
if I'm the cops and I
42:45
find out through a confession or whatever that somebody
42:47
murdered kids, I'm going to go pick them up
42:49
as quick as I can. Yeah. You
42:52
have to get a judge out of bed or
42:54
away from dinner that night to come in and
42:56
issue the warrant and then you go
42:58
and you apprehend the
43:00
one child and then the
43:02
man. The
43:05
other thing here is one thing
43:07
we should point out that goes
43:09
against this, this is bad for the
43:11
police. They did
43:13
spend about 12 hours that day with
43:15
Jesse, Ms. Kelly. Only
43:18
41 minutes of that time ended up on
43:20
tape or being recorded. Yeah, that's not good.
43:22
That's not good for the police. The
43:25
bad thing for the people that believe that the
43:27
West Memphis 3 are innocent would be
43:30
a lot of people point out, well, they
43:32
interrogated him for 12 hours. Well,
43:34
that's not really the case. They picked him up
43:36
at 10 a.m. and by 2 p.m., he was
43:39
spitting out a confession. I
43:42
don't really love the tactics of showing
43:44
the picture of the dead boy. Maybe
43:46
that's general procedure. I don't know. But
43:48
the strange voice of the boy saying, I'm
43:50
the only one that knows what happened seems
43:54
... questionable things. Seems odd to me.
43:57
They're definitely fishing. the
44:00
boys they've got them arrested the West
44:02
Memphis three Damien Eccles Jason Baldwin Jesse
44:04
Miss Kelly now they've got to try
44:06
these guys right so it's decided
44:08
that they're all going to be tried as
44:10
adults and they're going to have two separate
44:12
trials which is complete bullshit for Jason Baldwin
44:15
being 16 yeah yeah I've
44:17
always thought actually that probably Jesse
44:19
and Jason could have been charged
44:22
as as youths yeah well
44:24
Jesse definitely just mentally yes
44:26
I mean anybody that would have taken some
44:29
time or if they would have evaluated him
44:31
further I mean that would be the
44:33
logical thing to do what they decide to do they're
44:35
going to try Jesse Miss
44:37
Kelly by himself because
44:39
there's a certain law and I don't
44:41
know which it is but unless he's
44:43
willing to implicate the other two that
44:45
he's confessing about then he has to
44:47
be tried separately so first
44:50
of all they have Jesse's trial
44:52
okay now and this is covered
44:54
in Paradise Lost One yeah they
44:56
do they spend a lot of
44:59
time covering his case and
45:01
and you can see him it's strange you
45:03
know you see him he doesn't ever really
45:05
look at the jury he doesn't look at
45:07
the well his lawyers tell him to keep
45:09
his head down so he just looks down
45:11
at the ground the whole time and they
45:14
later on they wanted to get a public
45:16
opinion on his his you know what
45:18
they thought of how he carried himself in court
45:20
you know because going into this he was looked
45:22
at as kind of a local badass as somebody
45:24
as a as a boy that liked to get
45:26
him fights because he wants to be a wrestler
45:28
yeah he was kind of a tough kid and
45:31
a lot of people were shocked when he showed
45:33
up to court and he's like you said he's
45:35
only like five foot tall and they see this
45:37
very small kind of meek looking person five
45:39
one or something like that yeah and
45:41
and and he gets there and he
45:44
spends the entire trial staring at his
45:46
shoes he doesn't
45:48
look up at anybody as you said the lawyer
45:50
told him to do that public opinion was was
45:52
kind of uh on the fence about that they
45:55
while some of the people thought that it
45:57
made it look like he was scared and
45:59
intimidated which made him
46:01
look almost innocent. Other
46:04
people thought that it made him
46:06
look disinterested or you
46:08
know kind of kind of disassociated with
46:11
what was going on. I believe Jesse
46:13
was scared though. I
46:15
think he definitely was scared 100%. I mean he's
46:17
locked away he just wants to go home to
46:19
be with his family. There's a lot
46:22
of talk about how like he had a lot of issues
46:25
separation anxiety from his mother when he was
46:27
younger. So can you imagine what's going
46:29
through his head now he's in jail with with no
46:31
family. Yeah and there's some
46:33
problems going on too outside of the
46:36
court. His defense attorney,
46:38
Stedham, is is
46:40
having problems with Jesse when he's trying
46:42
to put together the case. Why? Because
46:44
Jesse is when
46:47
his when Jesse's father is around
46:49
Jesse's innocent. He pleads that he's
46:51
innocent. When his
46:53
father leaves he's telling his attorney
46:55
that he's guilty and he continues
46:57
to confess to his attorney. What
47:01
ends up occurring we're gonna make this shorter
47:03
than it than it should be but what
47:05
ends up occurring is that the attorney figures
47:07
out that Jesse
47:09
doesn't understand that the defense attorney works for
47:12
Jesse. Right that he's trying to help him
47:14
out. Exactly. He figures out that Jesse thinks
47:16
that the attorney's just another detective that he's
47:18
a cop and so he's treating him. In
47:20
all fairness he kind of looks like a
47:23
cop. I mean he had the beard and
47:25
the... Exactly
47:27
he looked he looks similar to most of
47:29
the detectives that Jesse probably spoke with. At
47:31
some point and I think you had told
47:33
me that it was through Jesse's father that
47:35
Jesse's father pointed out to to Junior that
47:38
this guy works for you that he's on
47:40
your side we're all on your side here
47:42
and you need to tell the truth. Yeah
47:45
well I think this well there was a
47:47
bunch of stuff going back and forth but
47:49
even his mom you know was trying to
47:51
tell him like look these people are here
47:53
to help you. Jesse
47:56
ends up being convicted And
47:58
he's convicted And he's sentenced.... To life
48:00
in prison plus forty years. And.
48:04
So after you dad that asleep in
48:06
prison for years. He sets in
48:08
and then I figured out forty years from
48:10
now, but that the reason for that has
48:12
to be that's that's my cellmate. Do you
48:15
know the reason for that sentence? Know
48:17
so he received one, he received
48:20
the life off the one murder
48:22
and then. Twenty for each
48:24
of, yeah, because one of the boys
48:26
he said he caught and brought back
48:28
in that was Michael Moore. So he
48:31
received oh, a life sentence for the
48:33
death of Michael Moore. Plus Twenty years
48:35
for Stevie Branch, Plus Twenty years for
48:37
Christopher Buyers. Out January
48:39
of Nineteen Ninety Four. There.
48:42
Is a nice that is presented
48:44
to the. Police. Person
48:48
it, It's mailed to the
48:50
police. I. Believe the expects to
48:52
them. So. What
48:54
knife as as this is the nice that
48:57
John Mark Buyers gave to some of the
48:59
plaza yours has passed for. Nice. Yeah there's
49:01
a loss and knives in this case. And
49:03
actually I think that when we went through
49:06
the evidence that was submitted throughout the time
49:08
of this investigation was like what eighteen or
49:10
nineteen knives were Sit submitted his evidence at
49:12
some point or looked at sent to the
49:15
crime lab for analysis and one of those
49:17
knives was a knife that was given to
49:19
the people that were recording and videotaping the
49:21
one of the Paradise lost. Our one cameraman.
49:24
Yes! and it was around Christmas time in
49:26
Jean Marc buyers and given had gifted demo.
49:28
nice. And at some point the
49:31
person that receive than I thought that it
49:33
looked to have been used to maybe there
49:35
was something on it in this item could
49:37
be blood? Well they decide the good people
49:40
on H B O decided they should turn
49:42
the knife into the police departments. The police
49:44
department that in turn gives it to the
49:46
crime labs and they are able to determine.
49:50
This. is quite strange they're able to
49:52
determine that the blood there is
49:54
blood on the nice and that
49:56
the blood matches that of christopher
49:58
buyers This is a problem
50:00
because it's found in the possession of John Mark Biers
50:04
They would go on to ask John Mark Biers
50:06
about this knife and how he had received it
50:08
and what he had done with the knife And
50:10
would there be any reason why well it matches,
50:12
but it doesn't match like exactly, right? Right,
50:18
but for the purpose of their questioning it
50:20
matches Christopher Biers So
50:23
they're going to interrogate and in
50:25
every view John Mark Biers about the knife They
50:28
want to know why that the boy's blood would
50:30
be on the knife. He doesn't know
50:32
he doesn't know that there's no reason why There
50:34
should be any blood at all. They don't bluntly
50:36
ask him about Christopher Biers He
50:39
goes on to say that maybe he was using it to
50:41
cut deer meat or maybe he'd used it to cut himself
50:44
Well using it to cut himself on
50:46
accident while he was cutting the deer meat
50:49
might have saved him a bit Because they
50:51
would later find out and later determined that
50:53
the blood that was on that knife also
50:55
matched his Now while
50:58
this is curious because they're
51:00
not they're not father and son Biologically,
51:04
we know Exactly reported that
51:06
way exactly but but they had started
51:08
seeing her when she's pregnant So and
51:11
they have so they end up having
51:13
similar similar blood now We should
51:15
be we should point out here
51:17
that you're exactly right captain that all that
51:19
they did is what what is referred to
51:21
as an Alpha test on that which which
51:23
really breaks it down They didn't have much
51:26
DNA testing at the time and all that
51:28
does is break it down and say that
51:30
you can eliminate This person or that person
51:32
you can't eliminate These
51:34
other people and so I'm
51:36
sure that it probably matches more than just John
51:39
Mark and Christopher Biers But this
51:41
was something that they were looking into during
51:45
the course of putting together the
51:47
case against Damien and Jason
51:51
and this is interesting too because there was another
51:53
knife that was found before that and That
51:56
was the knife that was found in the
51:58
water in the pond or lake behind Jason
52:01
Baldwin's trailer. Now
52:03
this was not a lock knife was it captain?
52:06
No, it's called a survival knife.
52:08
Yeah. Though the blade doesn't bend, it
52:10
just handles and blade. Yeah, it
52:12
looks like Rambo's knife, right? Yeah. Like a,
52:14
and this, this would be like a seven
52:16
or eight inch blade. This is a big
52:18
blade. The problem with a
52:21
few of these things too is one,
52:23
one with the six inch blade that
52:25
is discussed in Jesse and Miss Kelly's
52:27
confession and this big giant Rambo knife
52:29
that's found in the water behind Jason
52:31
Baldwin's trailer. These are giant knives.
52:33
These are big knives. Okay. The
52:36
injuries that were miniature swords, the
52:38
injuries that were sustained by these
52:40
boys, some of the, some of
52:42
what could be looked at as
52:44
potential stab wounds. None
52:46
of them, none of them penetrated the boys
52:48
more than two inches. So
52:50
that's a bit of an issue. You've got
52:53
all these big giant knives that we're testing. Now, it's
52:55
not to say that you couldn't just pick
52:57
at somebody or
52:59
lightly go at it, but it's
53:01
improbable in my mind. Before
53:03
we can get to the trial of Damien and
53:05
Jason, there is another confession
53:08
by Jesse. After he's convicted and
53:10
he's driven by the deputies to
53:12
the prison, he will offer another
53:14
confession to these deputies. I think
53:16
at this point he just likes
53:19
the attention. The deputies would go on to
53:21
report what he says to them and I'm
53:23
not going to go through the whole confession,
53:26
but there are some changes to his story.
53:28
He says that he met up with Damien
53:30
and Jason after he got off work and
53:34
that things went down a little bit different, that
53:36
they were hanging out in the woods, in the
53:38
water. They had seen the boys. Damien called the
53:40
boys over and Jesse and
53:42
Jason were hiding and after Damien grabbed
53:44
one of the boys, the boys started
53:47
attacking Damien and that's when Jesse and
53:49
Jason started beating the boys with sticks.
53:52
Most of his confession after that would be
53:54
about the same. He would tell the deputies,
53:56
this again though we got to point out
53:58
is according to the deputies He
54:01
would tell the deputies that he lied to
54:04
the police in his original confession about the
54:06
times Because he wanted to see
54:08
if he could trick the police and he also
54:10
lied about the rope and he knew that it
54:12
was Shoelaces that had tied the
54:14
ball. This was recorded. I mean
54:17
So we can go back and listen
54:19
to it This this confession was
54:22
given on the ride from the courthouse
54:24
to the prison, right? But then there
54:26
was another confession that they recorded when
54:28
they were trying to make the deal
54:31
Yes, that that would be a
54:33
third confession that was given to
54:35
the prosecuting attorneys as well as
54:37
his defense attorney Jesse
54:39
would let her later state that he
54:41
only gave this confession to the deputies
54:44
that were driving him to prison because
54:46
That they promised him that they would
54:48
drive his girlfriend to see him in
54:50
prison if he told them what really
54:52
had happened And they had also told
54:54
him that if he didn't if
54:56
he didn't confess and he didn't testify against
54:59
Those other boys that what's going
55:02
to happen is while he's locked away in prison
55:04
that Damien and Jason was going to get to
55:06
his girlfriend so
55:08
regardless he offers up this confession to
55:10
the deputies and We
55:13
don't know if it actually happened or if the deputies made
55:15
it up But as the captain had
55:17
pointed out there was another confession that was given
55:19
to The prosecutors as
55:21
well as the defense attorney and during
55:23
that confession There is one thing that
55:25
comes to light that we haven't heard
55:27
so far is that he explains that
55:29
he had been drinking that day Yeah,
55:31
and he was drinking whiskey a couple
55:33
things come up. What is he's
55:36
drinking whiskey boys are drinking beer
55:38
and That he
55:40
also mentions now instead of just running
55:42
and catching the kid that he actually
55:46
Actually takes part in attacking the kid Yeah He's
55:48
beat he's helping to beat up some of the
55:50
boys and he's even holding some of the boys
55:52
while they're being hit by the by Damien
55:55
and Jason and he would
55:57
also say that back to the whiskey though. He He
56:00
would tell them that he was
56:02
drinking Evan Williams, I believe was the name
56:04
of the brand of whiskey. Now,
56:07
I'm just going to stop you right
56:09
here because if you can find this
56:12
recording, this is very hard to listen to.
56:14
Back to the whiskey that Jesse was
56:17
drinking. He says he was drinking that day.
56:19
He says the brand of whiskey was Evan
56:21
Williams. And now Vicki,
56:23
remember Vicki Hutchinson, she would go on
56:25
to say that she had gave that
56:27
bottle to Jesse because he had helped
56:29
her with something to pay him back.
56:32
And he says that after he left
56:34
the scene of the crime, that he
56:37
was walking home and that he had
56:39
thrown the bottle at an
56:41
overpass or near an overpass and had
56:43
broken this on the side of the
56:46
overpass there. And
56:49
Stetum, his defense attorney, refused
56:51
to believe that Jesse was
56:53
guilty. And the
56:55
prosecutors and the investigators were trying to
56:57
convince the defense attorney that he was
57:00
in fact guilty. And so
57:02
what they did was they went with Stetum to
57:05
go find this broken bottle. And
57:07
they were able to recover at that
57:10
very overpass that Jesse had mentioned. They
57:12
were able to recover the neck of
57:14
an Evan Williams whiskey bottle. That
57:17
is weird. The big problem with that
57:19
is remember we had said earlier that
57:22
that interstate is one of the most
57:24
traveled freeways in the United States and
57:26
they find this bottleneck
57:30
about a year after
57:32
the crime had taken place, a year after the
57:34
time that he said he had thrown it. Now,
57:37
Evan Williams is not a terribly uncommon bottle
57:39
of whiskey. I mean, it's well known and
57:42
it's probably better known in that area.
57:44
You should try to drink more whiskey on the
57:46
show. That
57:48
would be fun. We'd have a lot of fun
57:50
on those episodes. Well, we've got to talk about
57:52
the second trial. And the big thing that comes
57:55
out in the second trial just beforehand, I believe
57:57
the day before. Jesse
58:00
says I'm not going to testify against
58:03
Damien and Jason right now the
58:05
there we got to be clear
58:07
here because Jesse was offered a deal He
58:10
was going to be offered a reduced sentence of
58:12
40 years, right? So they're gonna get away a
58:15
life in prison plus 40 years
58:18
just down to 40 years So
58:20
and he was only and if you
58:23
look at Paradise Lost the prosecution states
58:25
to the family if
58:27
he doesn't testify We don't have
58:29
a case That's what they say And
58:32
a lot of people would point out look well Let's
58:34
think real quick because I believe Jesse would have been
58:36
18 by this time So he would have
58:39
been 58 if after he served 40 years
58:41
He would probably get out and be alive or he
58:43
could you know after good
58:46
behavior or whatever might get even more reduced
58:48
after that Point but regardless he doesn't take
58:50
the deal a lot of people would point
58:52
out that this points towards their innocence And
58:55
I would point out that no, this is
58:57
probably just a tactic of legality
59:00
That his his defense attorney is going to
59:02
tell that him this is what I would
59:04
tell my client look for you
59:07
to be guilty Oh, if
59:09
if they have nothing on Damien
59:11
or Jason other than your confession
59:13
Then they can't convict those two
59:15
guys and as soon as those
59:17
two guys get off then guess what? We're
59:20
putting into the appeal process your case And
59:22
if you go and testify against them it's
59:25
going to make it much harder for us
59:27
to appeal your case later, right? So
59:29
he's not really he's not really
59:32
To me it doesn't present innocence
59:34
by not testifying against this guy But I
59:37
will go further to say that it also
59:39
does not present that he's guilty either, right?
59:42
Let's talk about the evidence that they
59:44
do have right captain Let's we don't
59:46
we no longer have this confession and
59:48
this is what they base the whole
59:50
arrest off of When
59:52
they went and picked up Damien and Jason,
59:55
so we have no confession now. So
59:57
what evidence do we have? Well, let's point at Damien
59:59
first Okay, so there are
1:00:02
some people that say that
1:00:04
they had heard or overheard him saying
1:00:06
that he was involved in the case.
1:00:09
He would come out many many years later and
1:00:11
kind of explain this and one
1:00:13
thing I want to point out I think he's kind
1:00:16
of spot-on with his explanation of this and
1:00:18
I'll tell you a while afterwards but the
1:00:20
general story is is that he was at
1:00:23
a softball game. He was seen at a
1:00:25
softball game and he had made reference that
1:00:27
he had either knew what had happened to
1:00:29
the boys or he had been involved in
1:00:31
killing the boys. Right. And
1:00:33
the reason that he says that this came
1:00:36
about was when he went to the softball
1:00:38
game people started kind of pointing at him
1:00:40
and looking at him and he could hear
1:00:42
them talking about oh there he is. That's
1:00:44
the guy that that's the weirdo that killed
1:00:46
those kids. That's the he's a Satanist and
1:00:48
he's gotten a call and he and his
1:00:51
a call his call killed those boys. Right,
1:00:53
but Jason Baldwin kind of talks about this
1:00:55
that you know even though that
1:00:57
Damien was different and most people saw him
1:00:59
as different that it was kind of became
1:01:02
a joke like Damien liked to
1:01:04
pack his lunch so which
1:01:07
is not a weird thing he just didn't
1:01:09
like school lunch so then all the boys
1:01:11
or girls would say oh what you got
1:01:13
in your lunch a cat and
1:01:16
then Damien would just go yeah you just go
1:01:18
along with it but it wasn't like he was
1:01:20
being mean or rude or they were even being
1:01:22
that rude it was just kind of a joke
1:01:24
like this guy's just a little different but we
1:01:26
seem to like him. Well he liked being strange
1:01:28
and he liked poking fun at people and
1:01:31
if you thought one thing of him he was happy
1:01:33
to let you think that and
1:01:35
why why do I believe his explanation this
1:01:37
goes back to that Polaroid picture that was
1:01:39
taken of him that police were going around
1:01:41
and they were showing this to people and
1:01:44
asking if they knew if he was in
1:01:46
a cult or if he was a Satanist
1:01:48
or if he was involved in the murder
1:01:50
of Right you showed that enough people now
1:01:52
you're like a celebrity in your small little
1:01:55
town. People
1:02:00
know nothing about this crime. And at some
1:02:02
point they start talking amongst themselves, well, he
1:02:04
must be involved because the police showed me
1:02:06
a picture and said his name. So
1:02:09
I absolutely believe that the people, the softball
1:02:11
game said that about him. And I bet
1:02:13
you he retaliated with something that he probably
1:02:15
shouldn't have said. They gave
1:02:17
him just enough rope and he hung himself. Well,
1:02:21
so what other evidence do we
1:02:23
have regarding Damien? Well, there was
1:02:25
the knife that was found in
1:02:27
the Lakeshore trailer park pond
1:02:30
or lake. Yeah, but that knife was thrown
1:02:33
there a year before the murders
1:02:35
even took place. That's what
1:02:37
they would end up figuring out, but they would still
1:02:39
present this as potential evidence in the case. Now,
1:02:42
again, I don't believe, there's no
1:02:45
reason to believe that that knife was
1:02:47
involved in this case. And
1:02:49
furthermore, according to Jesse, Ms.
1:02:51
Kelly's, every single one of his confessions, the
1:02:53
knife was Jason's. It belonged to Jason. Jason
1:02:56
brought the knife. Jason was the one that
1:02:58
used the knife most of the time during
1:03:00
the murders. However, nobody at
1:03:02
no point had ever said that that
1:03:05
knife that Jesse described did not match
1:03:07
the one that was found in the
1:03:09
water. Now, what
1:03:11
did it match? It matched a knife. It
1:03:14
matched Rambo's knife. And it also matched
1:03:16
a knife that several people had pointed
1:03:18
out that Damien was known to have
1:03:21
possessed or carried at one point. Based
1:03:24
on Jesse's confession, Damien didn't
1:03:26
use a knife. But again, it doesn't matter if
1:03:28
I have a Rambo knife or not, because that's
1:03:30
not the knife that was used in the confession.
1:03:32
And it was probably not the knife that was
1:03:34
used in the crime at all. They
1:03:37
do a lot of hearsay stuff. I mean, when they
1:03:39
have him read these quotes from
1:03:41
one of his journals or one of his
1:03:43
folders, and he's quoting,
1:03:45
like he's writing down quotes from
1:03:47
William Shakespeare and Metallica. And
1:03:50
what's so wrong about that? Like
1:03:52
what? That's not evidence of anything. I
1:03:54
wrote down plenty of Metallica quotes when
1:03:56
I was in high school. so
1:04:00
is their lyrics. But anyways, the
1:04:02
point is that, you
1:04:04
know, that's something that, you know,
1:04:07
Damien seems like a guy that's constantly
1:04:09
searching for knowledge. So I think
1:04:12
it started way back then, even though he was
1:04:14
a shitty student. But they
1:04:16
use that against him in this trial,
1:04:18
but it's not evidence. It's just speculation
1:04:21
or hearsay. There was
1:04:23
eyewitness testimony against Damien.
1:04:26
Somebody had seen Damien near the scene
1:04:28
of the crime on May 5th. Now
1:04:30
who was that? That was his girlfriend. That
1:04:33
was her aunt that had seen him. The
1:04:36
problem with this eyewitness testimony was
1:04:38
that she never says that she
1:04:40
sees Damien with Jason or with
1:04:42
Jesse. She sees
1:04:44
Damien with her niece, Domini.
1:04:48
Well, that's a little strange
1:04:50
because at no point in Jesse, Miss
1:04:52
Kelly's confession is Domini ever present. So
1:04:55
is this evidence or is this just something that
1:04:57
might point to him being innocent,
1:05:00
of mistaken identity? I believe that
1:05:02
the aunt would be able to
1:05:04
easily identify the two kids, you
1:05:07
know, Domini and
1:05:10
Damien. But did she
1:05:12
just get the wrong day? You know, did
1:05:14
she? Yeah, it could have been any day. What
1:05:18
was Damien's alibi
1:05:21
for that night? There
1:05:24
was a bunch of different versions, but I think the
1:05:26
one that they settle on is that
1:05:28
he was talking to some girls on the phone. Yeah,
1:05:31
there's a few things to back up
1:05:34
his alibi for that evening. He was
1:05:36
with Jason and they had gone to
1:05:38
Jason's uncle's house to cut the grass.
1:05:40
Yeah. Well, this is confirmed by Jason.
1:05:43
It's also confirmed by Jason's uncle. Now,
1:05:46
this would have taken place well before the
1:05:48
boys had disappeared, though, because Damien had said
1:05:50
that at some point, either his father or
1:05:52
his mother had come and picked them up
1:05:54
and taken him home. On the
1:05:57
way home, they stopped and they completed several
1:05:59
errands before... they got home. He says
1:06:01
that he believes that he was picked up
1:06:03
probably about 5.30 from Jason's uncle's
1:06:06
house. Now, one
1:06:08
thing that kind of goes along with his
1:06:10
story though is remember they're running errands. Well,
1:06:12
one of the errands is Damien
1:06:15
had been to several mental hospitals and
1:06:18
he was being treated for depression. So
1:06:20
he had a prescription that needed to be picked up. Now,
1:06:25
we can't say with certainty that Damien was
1:06:28
the person that picked up that prescription, however,
1:06:30
the pharmacy did provide proof
1:06:32
that that prescription was picked
1:06:35
up that evening. That's close
1:06:37
enough. And Damien had said
1:06:39
that they had stopped on the way home to pick
1:06:42
up this prescription. This was one of the errands that
1:06:44
they were running and this also goes with
1:06:48
his mother's story and his father's
1:06:50
story as well. Yeah, it
1:06:52
also kind of goes with Jason's story
1:06:54
as well too. Yep, and you're exactly
1:06:57
right. Once Damien got home, he said
1:06:59
he spent the evening at home on
1:07:01
the phone with two girls from Memphis,
1:07:04
Tennessee. Playa, playa. Well, and the girls
1:07:06
from Memphis, Tennessee would say, yes, we
1:07:08
spoke to Damien that evening. What's
1:07:11
another thing against Damien? Well, there were some
1:07:13
fibers that were found at the crime scene.
1:07:15
There was a red fiber and there was
1:07:18
a green fiber. Now, police would
1:07:20
be able to, they remember they searched
1:07:22
all of the suspect's homes and trailers.
1:07:25
And during the search, they were able
1:07:27
to come up with fiber that matched
1:07:29
the green fiber that was found at
1:07:31
the crime scene. They found this fiber
1:07:33
in Damien's trailer. Right. However, there is
1:07:35
a side note there. It
1:07:38
was, I don't know what the fiber
1:07:40
was from. They don't specifically list what
1:07:42
the fiber was from. However, it was
1:07:45
mentioned that this would not be an
1:07:47
article of clothing that would have been
1:07:49
worn by Damien. That this had
1:07:51
come from some kind of green shirt. What
1:07:54
I'm getting at is it may not have been a man's
1:07:56
shirt. It may not have been a shirt that would have
1:07:58
fit him at the time. time he
1:08:00
was waiting on a child to be born, maybe it
1:08:02
was a piece of child's clothing. So
1:08:05
for whatever reason, they don't specifically say
1:08:08
where that fiber came from. Now they
1:08:10
do say the fiber matched, however, the
1:08:13
defense would point out that you
1:08:15
could walk into any Walmart and
1:08:17
find a green fiber that would
1:08:19
match that fiber that was found.
1:08:21
Yeah, or possible you could walk into
1:08:23
any of the victim's homes and probably find
1:08:25
a fiber that would match that. Well,
1:08:28
that leads us to the red fiber, right? So
1:08:31
there was a red fiber that was found and
1:08:33
this, when they searched
1:08:35
Jason Baldwin's trailer, they
1:08:37
found a red fiber that matched that fiber.
1:08:40
Again, this was from an article of
1:08:43
clothing that would probably not have been
1:08:45
worn by Jason Baldwin. Do you
1:08:47
know what they found that red fiber from? It
1:08:50
was a red woman's bathrobe, it was
1:08:52
his mother's bathrobe. So unless he wore
1:08:55
his mom's bathrobe down to- Oh, I mean,
1:08:57
it could transfer. Right,
1:09:00
right. These things can transfer. You're
1:09:02
exactly right, Captain. However, I mean,
1:09:04
it's not super likely.
1:09:06
And again, this red fiber was,
1:09:08
again, another fiber that you could
1:09:10
find anything in Walmart or- Yeah,
1:09:13
or go to the three victim's homes and try to find that same
1:09:15
fiber. See, I'd have
1:09:17
more weight on that if they could tell me,
1:09:19
oh yeah, we went to the victim's houses and
1:09:22
we couldn't find a match to this. The
1:09:25
thing about Jason Baldwin is other
1:09:27
than Jesse, Ms. Kelly's confession
1:09:30
and that red fiber, they
1:09:33
had nothing linking Jason Baldwin to this crime.
1:09:36
Right, and that's why they tried them together.
1:09:38
They tried them together and the thing is-
1:09:40
Guilt by association. If you would have tried
1:09:43
Jason Baldwin by himself without that confession, I
1:09:45
don't know how you would get a guilty
1:09:47
verdict. I don't know how you'd get a
1:09:50
guilty verdict. No. I
1:09:52
don't know how they got a guilty verdict
1:09:54
anyways other than what came out
1:09:56
later. Do you want to talk about that? Of
1:09:58
course, but real quick. They are
1:10:00
both convicted. They are both found
1:10:03
guilty and Damien Eccles receives the
1:10:05
death penalty and Jason Baldwin receives
1:10:08
life imprisonment. After the trial,
1:10:10
the movies start to come out. We have
1:10:12
documentaries coming out. We talked about the Paradise
1:10:14
Lost movies. We talked about the West
1:10:17
of Memphis documentary. There's these books
1:10:19
coming out. Well, but after the
1:10:21
Paradise Lost documentaries come out. It
1:10:24
kind of it goes from a witch hunt to
1:10:26
hey, maybe these guys are
1:10:29
not guilty of this crime and a
1:10:31
bunch of celebrities start getting involved. People
1:10:33
like Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder,
1:10:36
the Dixie Chicks and they start raising
1:10:38
money for their defense. Now
1:10:40
it's reported and here's what I
1:10:42
hate about this report. Ten to
1:10:44
twenty million. That's a
1:10:46
big difference to me. So either way, it
1:10:48
was a lot of money that was raised.
1:10:50
Am I crazy or does Eddie Vedder keep
1:10:52
popping up in all of our like every
1:10:54
other case we cover, he's he's. Eventually, Eddie
1:10:57
will be on our show. I mean, he's
1:10:59
in the Brian Shaper case and now he's
1:11:01
in this one. Yeah. He's maybe just a
1:11:03
true crime fan. Eddie, thanks for
1:11:05
listening. Thanks for listening. Yeah, I believe
1:11:07
Marilyn Manson was involved too. And you
1:11:09
also had who was the black flag?
1:11:12
I don't know if Henry
1:11:14
Rollins. I don't know if
1:11:16
Marilyn Manson was involved. I think there was
1:11:18
some pictures and stuff taken afterwards once they
1:11:21
got out and then people started saying how
1:11:23
much he was involved. I don't know how
1:11:25
much he was involved. Well, Damien Eccles said
1:11:27
that he was that Manson was a supporter
1:11:30
financially as well as emotionally and whatever. I
1:11:32
didn't hear that. But but the reason being
1:11:34
was that, you know, most people that he
1:11:36
said that I agree with him. Well, in
1:11:39
the public eye, Marilyn Manson is not a
1:11:41
welcomed figure amongst most
1:11:44
people, especially the religious groups. Yeah, I
1:11:46
like him though. And welcome in the garage.
1:11:48
Yeah. But the thing is, Damien Eccles is
1:11:50
trying to prove that he's not a Satanist
1:11:52
because he was basic. He was basically proven
1:11:55
guilty because it was speculated that he was
1:11:58
into Satan and that he was. Maryland,
1:12:00
Maryland, thanks for the donation, but uh,
1:12:02
I can't talk about that. And so
1:12:04
befriending somebody like Marilyn Manson and bringing
1:12:06
him to the forefront, then it looks
1:12:08
a little like maybe you are Satanist,
1:12:10
not saying that Marilyn Manson is, but
1:12:12
it was agreed upon and I think
1:12:14
it might have even been Marilyn Manson's
1:12:16
idea was that how about I support
1:12:18
you from behind the scenes because me
1:12:20
being involved might look bad for you.
1:12:23
Yeah, yeah, totally makes a lot of sense. So these
1:12:25
guys get involved. Natalie Maines was
1:12:27
involved. I said Dixie Chicks. Did you? Um,
1:12:30
I included all of them. It might've just been her, but
1:12:33
so I get involved in this money is being raised and what
1:12:35
they're trying to do and this is good
1:12:37
because they're looking for evidence to point to the
1:12:39
fact that they're innocent. They're also
1:12:41
looking for, you know, little
1:12:44
loopholes in the system. They're
1:12:47
looking for everything, but they're
1:12:49
also hiring investigators to start
1:12:51
questioning people now in paradise
1:12:53
loss. Like we said, they go after
1:12:55
buyers and then if you watch west
1:12:58
of Memphis, they go after Hobbs. The
1:13:00
problem with both of these individuals
1:13:03
is there's not a lot of evidence
1:13:05
that links either one of these two.
1:13:08
There's a ton of speculation.
1:13:10
There's a ton of character.
1:13:12
I don't want to call it
1:13:14
character assassination because I think some of these
1:13:17
people are just weird people, but it's stuff
1:13:19
that attacks their character just like they did
1:13:21
with Damien, which is not
1:13:23
real evidence. You're
1:13:25
exactly right. Exactly what
1:13:28
they did to Damien and Jason and Jesse. I
1:13:31
mean, other than the confession of Jesse, but what
1:13:34
happened to Jason and Damien, I'm sorry,
1:13:36
is exactly what happened to Mark Byers
1:13:38
and then Terry Hobbs. And
1:13:41
first of all, what did they have against
1:13:43
Mark Byers? Okay. They point
1:13:45
out that he has times of
1:13:47
the evening that he's unaccounted for. Well,
1:13:50
he talked to the police officer so much
1:13:52
that night. I mean, he was around
1:13:54
police officers a lot. He had a lot of
1:13:56
communication with police officers. He's asking
1:13:58
police officers. What should I do?
1:14:00
Because I don't know what to do in this
1:14:02
point. Not only is he around
1:14:05
police officers, but we just went through his
1:14:07
timeline. There's not enough time for him to
1:14:09
have committed this crime and to hide the
1:14:11
bodies the way that they were hid. He
1:14:14
was around other people almost that entire evening.
1:14:16
Yeah, he might have had 10 minutes here
1:14:19
or five minutes there by himself, but that's
1:14:21
not the amount of time that it would
1:14:23
have taken to conceal these bodies. Now, they
1:14:25
go after him because of a few different
1:14:27
things. Well, there's a bite mark on Stevie
1:14:29
Branch's face. They think it might
1:14:31
be a bite mark. It originally came out as
1:14:33
a belt, like buckle
1:14:35
mark. They thought it was a belt buckle
1:14:37
mark. When I read the
1:14:39
autopsy and from the testimony of the
1:14:42
medical examiner's office in both of the
1:14:44
trials, there was more than just
1:14:46
that. There was not only a
1:14:48
belt mark on one of the kids or what
1:14:50
could have been a belt mark on one of
1:14:52
the kids, but there was also definitely a bite
1:14:55
or could be a bite on Stevie Branch's
1:14:57
face, but they actually believed that there was
1:15:00
more than one bite on his face. There
1:15:02
was always this one bite that was talked
1:15:04
about. There was believed that there was multiple
1:15:06
attacks to the face and several of them
1:15:09
looked like they could have been bites. That's
1:15:11
crazy. Now, one thing that made him, buyers
1:15:14
look guilty, was he had had his teeth
1:15:16
removed or he had lost his teeth. They're
1:15:19
uncertain about how he lost his teeth or
1:15:21
why he didn't have teeth or whatever. People
1:15:23
claim that because he replaced his teeth that
1:15:26
that was to hide his guilt. Well,
1:15:28
then also the bite mark, there is a bunch
1:15:30
of stuff online. Terry
1:15:33
Hobbs has partials. He had partials at
1:15:35
the time. Partials
1:15:37
are where they make dentures, but they
1:15:39
connect to other teeth. If
1:15:41
you look at the imprint, it
1:15:44
matches Hobbs. Now
1:15:46
I've looked at them, it looks pretty
1:15:48
convincing. The other problem is, is
1:15:50
we have to bring into the snapping turtle thing.
1:15:53
There was marks on the
1:15:55
ears, nose, mouth, possibly face,
1:15:58
and those might be considered consistent with
1:16:01
post-mortem bites by the
1:16:03
snapping turtles. Now, I should point out
1:16:05
here though that I don't think that regardless if this
1:16:07
was injuries that were
1:16:09
post-mortem by snapping turtles or if
1:16:11
they were bite
1:16:13
marks or damage done to the face or
1:16:16
bodies of the boys while they were still
1:16:18
alive, I don't really think that snapping
1:16:21
turtles being involved points to anybody
1:16:23
being innocent. No, no, no. The
1:16:26
only thing that it might point to
1:16:28
is the damage that was
1:16:31
done to Christopher Byers where
1:16:33
they had said that the
1:16:35
removement of the castration
1:16:38
would be something that would be
1:16:41
done in a satanic ritual. So
1:16:44
that would be the only thing that might
1:16:46
link to somebody being innocent. People
1:16:49
also want to point out that Mark Byers had
1:16:52
moments where he was violent before the
1:16:55
boys were killed. He had an instance
1:16:57
where he had attacked his first wife
1:17:00
and that was on police record. She
1:17:03
said that he had threatened to kill her
1:17:05
and that he was attacking her with a
1:17:07
stun gun with like a zapper and that
1:17:10
was of police record. Interesting
1:17:12
choice of weapons. Yeah, and
1:17:14
that he had been violent
1:17:16
after the war. I'll take the knife, I'll take the
1:17:18
stun gun. Well, no, and then
1:17:21
his wife dies a mysterious death. Yeah,
1:17:23
and he says that she died in
1:17:25
bed with him and people have always
1:17:27
wondered about that as well. I
1:17:31
don't find anything there. I don't see anything there.
1:17:34
If there was something there, the police would have, I think,
1:17:36
would have dove into that a little more. And
1:17:39
I don't think that if you
1:17:41
review his history and Melissa Byers'
1:17:43
history, they're not the most healthy
1:17:45
people. And what I mean
1:17:48
by that is at one point, Melissa had
1:17:50
been using heroin or some kind of
1:17:54
strong drug And they
1:17:56
were both known to be on and off of
1:17:59
pills and maybe cocaine. from time to time. So.
1:18:02
They had a had a history
1:18:04
of living hard. Let's say,
1:18:07
and so it doesn't surprise me that
1:18:09
she didn't live to be super old
1:18:11
timey. There's definitely some weird stuff with
1:18:14
buyers, but nothing that really points Tom's.
1:18:17
Directly. Know, because here's the thing.
1:18:19
I don't care if somebody was, You know
1:18:21
it's it's not a good thing to ever
1:18:23
be violent, but I don't care if somebody
1:18:25
has a record of being violent in the
1:18:27
past or in the future. Is it all
1:18:29
that matters is, was he violent that day?
1:18:31
Was he violent? Was he homicidal? That.
1:18:33
Day And a problem that I have
1:18:35
with that is yes, he's a strange
1:18:38
birdman. There's no arguing that and it
1:18:40
is a weird. Does he? Did he
1:18:42
fail a polygraph test? Yes. Did he
1:18:44
pass a polygraph test? Yes. Did submit
1:18:46
everything that they asked him to smith?
1:18:49
Yes, he submitted blood and hair fingerprints,
1:18:51
they didn't find anything of his ever
1:18:53
at the crime scene, And furthermore, we
1:18:55
just went through a timeline and episode
1:18:57
tubes that does not allow a window
1:19:00
but window of time to do any.
1:19:02
All and then it's. Also a he
1:19:04
said he has be homicidal that day
1:19:06
and so then he would have to
1:19:09
talk to police officers multiple times. And.
1:19:12
To. Cover up that. He. Spoke
1:19:14
to the police more than anybody else
1:19:16
during the search for these boys and
1:19:18
not only did he not only did
1:19:20
he was he the first call police,
1:19:22
he had spoken to several police officers
1:19:24
when he was out searching for his
1:19:27
voice and nellie that he came home
1:19:29
and eleven or twelve o'clock at night
1:19:31
and called the sheriff's department in complain
1:19:33
that they weren't doing everything that they
1:19:35
could do to find his son and
1:19:37
the other bright enough for guilty of
1:19:39
a young. Want to go? Hey cops
1:19:41
cops, We need more cops. And furthermore.
1:19:43
See was he was when they said that
1:19:46
they were going to investigate the families, people
1:19:48
that knew the boys, people that didn't know
1:19:50
the boys and either a gang or and
1:19:52
or called. The. the one person
1:19:54
out of all the families that they investigated
1:19:56
and talk to more than anybody else was
1:19:59
john mark bottles He spoke to them
1:20:02
often, willingly and often. He likes
1:20:04
to talk. Okay, so
1:20:06
what about the people that may or may
1:20:08
not have known the boys? Well this would
1:20:10
be some of the miscellaneous people that the
1:20:13
police had spoken to. Miss the Bojangles. Yeah,
1:20:16
so we got the problem with the Bojangles
1:20:18
restaurant. So yeah,
1:20:20
real quickly the guy goes into the women's
1:20:22
restroom, he's bloody, he's muddy, he
1:20:24
leaves some evidence behind, they collect
1:20:27
it, and then they
1:20:29
lose the evidence. They conveniently lose
1:20:31
the evidence. And nothing's known about
1:20:33
this guy. And unfortunately before the
1:20:36
police, before Regina Meeks can arrive,
1:20:39
this person has already wandered off
1:20:41
according to the manager. I think
1:20:43
there's something there because there's something
1:20:46
about the timing of that. She
1:20:49
arrives about 8.30 to go
1:20:51
talk to the restaurant manager.
1:20:53
Which is a strange time for me because I don't
1:20:56
know, the boys are last seen about 6.00, 6.30. It's
1:21:00
starting to get dark around that time.
1:21:02
It's a window of about two hours.
1:21:05
Yeah, and nobody knows who this person
1:21:07
is, he's not identified. And there was
1:21:09
an African American hair found at the
1:21:11
scene. Yes there was, and that has
1:21:14
never been fully explained. But
1:21:16
so it's very interesting,
1:21:19
interesting, but it's
1:21:21
just a big question mark. And
1:21:24
then again, we talked about the vans.
1:21:26
There were multiple sightings of these strange
1:21:28
vans. One black van was
1:21:30
found parked on an abandoned property that was
1:21:33
near the woods, and that was spotted that
1:21:35
night. That was actually spotted by John Mark
1:21:37
Byers and several other people that had reported
1:21:39
it to police. There was also the strange
1:21:42
white man that was driving the white van.
1:21:46
The white man in the white van. Some reported a
1:21:48
young man in a white van, some reported an old
1:21:50
man in a white van. And we got a black
1:21:52
man in a black van. Well, there was
1:21:54
reported a black man in a white van with a
1:21:58
Illinois license plate. Okay. Get
1:22:02
it together. Okay, but all at
1:22:04
the end of the day, it's a big question mark and we
1:22:06
wish we knew more about Mr. Bojangles.
1:22:09
Yeah. There were also the boys,
1:22:11
the teenage boys that reported seeing coming
1:22:13
out of Robin Hood Hills by Dawn
1:22:15
Moore, the sister of Michael Moore. And
1:22:17
that would be the one white
1:22:20
male and two black males. Yeah.
1:22:23
And we don't know that that means anything. And
1:22:26
who knows what time that was. The girl
1:22:28
is, she's about 10 years old. She's not
1:22:30
able to give an accurate time. Well, and
1:22:32
it could not be an accurate statement. It
1:22:34
could have been three white boys or
1:22:36
it could be three black boys were not that
1:22:38
fair. So that's this
1:22:40
big question mark there. But then there
1:22:43
was two gentlemen that left west of Memphis
1:22:45
like 10 days after the murders take
1:22:48
place and then those boys
1:22:50
head out to California. So they
1:22:52
track those boys down. Yeah.
1:22:55
The story with those guys, about
1:22:58
four days after the bodies were
1:23:00
found, Chris Morgan and Brian Holland,
1:23:02
they were known in the area.
1:23:04
They had prior drug offenses. They
1:23:06
were kind of on the police
1:23:09
spotlight, let's say. They
1:23:11
were aware of these characters and these
1:23:13
guys had taken off and
1:23:15
they had gone for California. And
1:23:18
they arrested them in California on May 17th,
1:23:20
1993. This
1:23:24
is an ocean side. Now they
1:23:26
picked them up because they're concerned about
1:23:29
why would they, what they're going to
1:23:31
refer to as flee the area shortly
1:23:33
after the murders. Well they
1:23:35
took off about, as we said, four days
1:23:37
after the bodies were found. They picked up
1:23:39
on the 17th and they're
1:23:41
given polygraph exams. Now they
1:23:43
are asked similar questions that we
1:23:46
mentioned. Which they don't have to take
1:23:48
these tests, but they do because they're
1:23:50
cooperating and they're doing
1:23:52
that, what's
1:23:55
it called? The survey. The
1:23:57
FBI survey. And it's like we had said.
1:23:59
The FBI worked with the West Memphis police,
1:24:02
came up with this questionnaire. They're giving them
1:24:04
similar questions that they gave to Jesse, Ms.
1:24:06
Kelly in his confession. And
1:24:09
they come back and they say, well, you're lying.
1:24:12
And we- We've seen this before. Right.
1:24:14
We're going to interrogate you further. Well, at some
1:24:17
point during the interrogation, one
1:24:20
of the boys, and I say boys because
1:24:22
these are pretty young men. I mean, they're
1:24:25
like 18, 19 years old. And
1:24:28
one of them had said that he might
1:24:30
have known one or several of the murdered
1:24:32
boys because he had previously driven in a
1:24:35
ice cream truck and he had a route
1:24:37
in the neighborhood. Right. So he- That
1:24:40
makes sense. Yeah. He said
1:24:42
that he may have known one or all of
1:24:44
them. And after- Or at least seen them. Yeah.
1:24:47
And after being talked to for a while, they held them there
1:24:49
for quite some time and questioned them for quite some time. Right.
1:24:52
One of them had a drug and
1:24:54
alcohol problem. And
1:24:56
he had said that at times he
1:24:59
would even experience blackouts and memory lapses
1:25:01
and he couldn't account
1:25:03
for some of his time. At
1:25:07
some point, this interview becomes very
1:25:10
heated. And at some
1:25:12
point he starts, he stands up on the
1:25:14
chair and he's yelling at the officers. And
1:25:16
his exact statement is this. Do
1:25:20
you want me to lie? Do you want me to lie?
1:25:22
You want me to say that I fucking killed those boys? Okay,
1:25:25
maybe I killed him. He says something
1:25:27
to that. That's not verbatim. Right, right.
1:25:30
But he's yelling at- That's not a confession. Right.
1:25:33
He's yelling at these officers. And to
1:25:35
be honest with you, if I've read
1:25:37
his whole statement, I
1:25:40
wouldn't say that I would do the exact
1:25:43
thing, but I would probably do something very
1:25:45
similar. Because I've always wondered
1:25:47
when you see these people being interrogated and they
1:25:49
know they're innocent and yet
1:25:51
these people just poking at them and poking at
1:25:53
them and poking at them. I'm
1:25:55
not saying that I would stand up and say, yeah,
1:25:57
I killed them. What I'm saying is I could see
1:25:59
myself getting- Angry and yelling back and
1:26:01
getting verbal and getting hostile with these
1:26:03
officers. Well, this actually happened to me
1:26:06
in eighth grade So here's
1:26:08
the story this girl Somebody
1:26:11
throws a full pop can
1:26:13
Unopen at this little
1:26:16
girl and it hits her in
1:26:18
the head and they said I did it so
1:26:20
they pulled me down to the plea or not
1:26:23
to the police to the principal's office and He's
1:26:26
going to town on me, right? He's going
1:26:28
he's saying you did this, you know,
1:26:30
you did this polygraph to you and waterboard you and
1:26:32
everything Yeah, and I'm saying I didn't do this. I
1:26:34
didn't do this. I couldn't figure out
1:26:36
how I knew I mean one I knew I
1:26:38
didn't throw the can but but I knew for
1:26:40
a fact that I I didn't do this And
1:26:43
then halfway through him yelling at me.
1:26:45
I realized I wasn't even on
1:26:47
the bus that day I Missed
1:26:50
the bus and my father had to take me
1:26:52
to school. So now I'm screaming I wasn't even
1:26:54
on the bus and he's going. Yes you are
1:26:56
and I end up Standing
1:26:59
up throwing that my chair and then
1:27:01
slamming this door on my way out
1:27:03
and it broke the door And
1:27:06
then I got in trouble for that. I got
1:27:08
suspended Like in school
1:27:10
suspension, but it's bullshit anyways You're you're falsely accusing me
1:27:12
of something and I proved that I wasn't even on
1:27:14
the bus So I shouldn't got in trouble in the
1:27:16
first place and that proves my point I've always thought
1:27:19
that at some point I wouldn't be able to take
1:27:21
it anymore and I would just kind of start Yeah,
1:27:23
I lost my shit. Yeah, if you're
1:27:25
ever pulled in anywhere You
1:27:28
should just always ask for an attorney always ask
1:27:30
for an attorney. Well, they wouldn't let me I
1:27:32
I was after Not
1:27:34
you I'm talking about these guys in
1:27:36
California. So here's the real story This
1:27:38
is the story that we get told right?
1:27:40
But what what we're not told and what
1:27:42
what you will find one should dive into
1:27:44
this particular part of the case Is
1:27:47
that these two guys didn't just get
1:27:49
up and leave they received a ride
1:27:51
from friends of theirs They rode out
1:27:53
there with several friends of theirs that
1:27:55
it was traveling elsewhere and dropped them
1:27:57
off along the way They
1:27:59
didn't have any intention of living out the
1:28:01
rest of their lives in California or on
1:28:03
the run. They plan to be
1:28:06
in California for a few weeks or maybe
1:28:08
a month and they wanted to return back
1:28:10
to Memphis area. Right, so it seems like,
1:28:12
hey, we're going out that way if you
1:28:14
want to visit your sister which that's who
1:28:16
they're visiting, one of the guys' sisters. But
1:28:19
hey, we're going out that way. You want to hitch a ride? And
1:28:21
not only that, they willingly
1:28:23
submitted blood and urine samples as
1:28:26
well as fingerprints and they
1:28:28
went along with the polygraph. They went along
1:28:31
with the interview. They went along with the
1:28:33
questioning. Just like Damien Echols and Jason
1:28:35
Baldwin. The only thing here is that when
1:28:37
they submitted this evidence to what could be
1:28:40
evidence to West Memphis police. They'll tell me
1:28:42
they lost it. They didn't lose it. No,
1:28:44
they didn't lose it. They just, there seems
1:28:46
to be no, they didn't do anything with
1:28:49
it. Alright, so they didn't test it. Good
1:28:52
job. There's plenty of other miscellaneous people
1:28:54
too that are involved in this case
1:28:57
but it's also like we said, it's
1:28:59
just minutia. It's just small little incidences
1:29:01
of people that had done things in
1:29:03
the past. The question, you get about
1:29:05
a paragraph worth of notes of an
1:29:08
interview that was conducted by police. Some
1:29:10
of them submitted blood, urine,
1:29:13
fingerprints. Some of
1:29:16
them submitted to polygraph test. None
1:29:18
of that seems to have gone anywhere. So
1:29:20
now we have, what, we're
1:29:22
left with Terry Hobbs. He's a big question.
1:29:24
Well we're left with Terry Hobbs and the
1:29:26
West Memphis three. That's what we're down to.
1:29:29
So what are the problems with Terry Hobbs?
1:29:31
This comes about when? 2007-ish? Yeah.
1:29:35
This comes about before the Alfred plea.
1:29:37
Well yeah, because they go
1:29:39
after buyers first and then, but they
1:29:41
start doing tests and like I said,
1:29:43
the money that was raised, they
1:29:46
have investigators on the ground. And I think
1:29:48
that's where it starts coming from. They
1:29:50
finally are able to test DNA
1:29:52
on this hair sample. This
1:29:55
hair sample is found in one of
1:29:57
the shoelaces that is binding Michael Moore.
1:30:00
tying the hand to the ankle. Now
1:30:03
this is, it comes back and it
1:30:05
does not, what does it do?
1:30:07
It does eliminate Damien Eccles, it
1:30:10
doesn't match Jesse Miss Kelly, and
1:30:13
it doesn't match Jason Baldwin. However,
1:30:16
it is not inconsistent with that of
1:30:19
the hair of Terry Hobbs, meaning it
1:30:21
could be his hair. But it's not
1:30:23
an exact match. No. And there's different
1:30:26
matches as far as DNA goes. So
1:30:28
it's just, it's not an exact
1:30:30
match, it's just in the ballpark. And
1:30:32
let's talk about this for a second.
1:30:35
We have, what are the percentages? They
1:30:37
come out and they say it's one
1:30:39
and a half percent of the population
1:30:41
would match this hair. Mm-hmm. Something like
1:30:43
that. Okay, so the population at, in
1:30:46
West Memphis at the time of 1993 is roughly between 25,000 and
1:30:52
30,000 people. So that means that that
1:30:54
hair and just the people that live in
1:30:56
that area would match Terry Hobbs plus
1:30:58
249 to 299 other people. Right. It's still,
1:31:04
I mean, it's suspicious though.
1:31:06
But then you talked about
1:31:08
transfer. I mean one of the
1:31:11
boys that was a victim was
1:31:13
his stepson. And then these boys were
1:31:15
known to play in his house. So
1:31:18
again, that's something
1:31:20
that can be transferred. We're talking about one
1:31:22
hair. Well, and that's also going
1:31:24
under the assumption that Michael Moore was tied
1:31:27
up by his own shoelaces. One
1:31:29
thing that we're not able to figure out
1:31:31
when we look at the evidence is what
1:31:33
boy was tied up with what boy's shoelaces.
1:31:35
It just because, just because they
1:31:37
were each tied up with shoelaces doesn't mean
1:31:39
that they were tied up with their own.
1:31:42
You're talking about there, there's a chance that
1:31:44
that shoelace binding Michael Moore could have been
1:31:46
Stevie branch's shoelace. Well, and that would make
1:31:48
a lot of sense why there's a hair
1:31:50
of his stepdad on his
1:31:52
shoe. Now there's another problem though with
1:31:55
Terry Hobbs. His friend David
1:31:57
Jacoby, they find a hair of
1:32:00
his on a tree at
1:32:02
the crime scene. Well I remember with the
1:32:04
timeline they both claimed that they were in
1:32:06
those woods on the fifth looking for the
1:32:09
boys. Exactly. Not only do they both claim
1:32:11
it but you also have John Mark Byers
1:32:13
who's very convinced that the two of them
1:32:15
are probably guilty. He also says... He's convinced
1:32:18
now though. Yeah. But he was also convinced
1:32:20
that the West Memphis Three were guilty at
1:32:22
the beginning. And he does
1:32:24
say in his statement to police at
1:32:27
the time, this is a statement given
1:32:29
in 1993, that he had saw Terry
1:32:31
Hobbs multiple times in the woods when
1:32:34
he was searching, Terry Hobbs was searching
1:32:36
as well, and that he
1:32:38
couldn't remember for certain but he
1:32:40
might have had his friend with him. Right.
1:32:42
This is the same friend that would be
1:32:44
talking to them underneath the streetlight. So
1:32:47
there is some explanation why
1:32:50
those hairs or fibers would have been found
1:32:52
there. Yeah. Then a lot of
1:32:54
the other stuff if you watch West
1:32:56
of Memphis it's just a
1:32:58
lot of stuff that dives into his
1:33:00
character. And it seems like
1:33:03
there's some shady stuff going on there. The
1:33:05
problem is the source is coming from.
1:33:07
It's coming from Pam Hobbs which is
1:33:09
now his ex-wife. And
1:33:12
they were together for almost 10 years
1:33:14
before she started making these claims. Yeah.
1:33:17
At no point in 1993
1:33:19
when she talks to police does she ever
1:33:21
say that Terry Hobbs is guilty of anything
1:33:23
or suspects in something? Or says so much
1:33:25
bad about him and it's not till years
1:33:28
and years and years later and now mentioned
1:33:31
that I feel bad
1:33:33
for Pam Hobbs because she seems like
1:33:35
somebody and she has the right to you don't
1:33:37
have to get over this tragedy but she
1:33:39
seems like somebody that it is
1:33:42
going to be permanently scarred haunted
1:33:44
this event that happened on
1:33:46
May 5th changed
1:33:48
everything and I don't think for the better.
1:33:51
Yeah it's definitely ruined her life and you
1:33:53
know she's tried to go on but you
1:33:55
can tell when she talks that
1:33:57
it it's with her every day she carries
1:33:59
a around with her and you
1:34:01
have to. She's
1:34:04
carrying the burden more than a lot of
1:34:07
people would and I totally
1:34:09
understand that because nobody could be in that.
1:34:12
It's just impossible to put myself
1:34:14
in her situation. It's nothing I've
1:34:16
ever experienced and I can't
1:34:18
believe that it's something that you get over. I
1:34:20
guess that at some point it's something that maybe
1:34:22
you have to just accept. But
1:34:25
it just seems like the accusations that she's
1:34:27
coming out about Terry Hobbs
1:34:29
are so far after the fact
1:34:32
that it's just hard to believe. Then
1:34:36
there's talk in like West of
1:34:38
Memphis, again in character stuff. Well
1:34:41
he shot one of her brothers.
1:34:43
Yeah. Yeah. That
1:34:46
doesn't look good, right? No, there's a lot
1:34:48
of stuff that doesn't look good. Well if
1:34:50
we're going to bring that up though, we
1:34:52
should probably tell a bit of the story
1:34:54
of maybe why he shot the brother, right?
1:34:56
Well there's an altercation between him and Pam
1:34:58
and then she again the
1:35:01
day on the 5th calls
1:35:03
her family and her, like we said,
1:35:06
Terry Hobbs is looking and Pam Hobbs'
1:35:08
dad is looking so she calls
1:35:10
after this altercation and the
1:35:12
dad and the brother come out and the
1:35:15
brothers were known to kind of harass
1:35:17
some of the female.
1:35:21
Well not the females, but what happened is
1:35:23
Pam comes from a big family. She's
1:35:26
got a couple sisters, she's got a couple
1:35:28
brothers and apparently throughout the times growing up
1:35:30
in adulthood that some of the sisters
1:35:33
had had problems with boyfriends or
1:35:36
husbands. And when those problems
1:35:38
came up, sometimes dad was notified and
1:35:40
sometimes dad showed up with the sons
1:35:42
who were willing and able to confront
1:35:45
and maybe attack the boyfriend
1:35:48
or husband of the
1:35:50
sister. Yeah. Of any of
1:35:52
the sisters. So and now this is what happened
1:35:54
with Terry Hobbs and Pam Hobbs. There's an altercation.
1:35:57
According to him, she got physical first and then
1:35:59
he got physical. physical back and
1:36:01
the other way it's not right on both ends
1:36:03
nobody should get physical with anybody but a phone
1:36:06
calls made to dad and then the brother comes
1:36:08
out and Terry I don't know how
1:36:10
exactly it went down at that point but I'm
1:36:12
but he kind of greets him with a shotgun
1:36:14
or not a shotgun but a pistol or something
1:36:16
well yeah and he claims that he was attacked
1:36:18
and then he was defending himself now here's what
1:36:20
we do know is that
1:36:22
there's Pam side and then there's Terry
1:36:25
outside and somewhere in the middle is
1:36:27
the truth and that's all we know so
1:36:30
there's just a lot of hearsay there's a
1:36:32
lot of speculation all you have
1:36:34
is this fiber not a fiber
1:36:36
but a hair sample his
1:36:38
timeline doesn't you know
1:36:41
there are some spots in his timeline
1:36:43
there's a little weird and here's the
1:36:45
problem though with his timeline you
1:36:47
know Pam gives a statement back in
1:36:49
May of 93 hmm Terry
1:36:52
Hobbs gives no statement that's not through any
1:36:54
fault of his own that's through the fault
1:36:56
of the West Memphis police they never interview
1:36:59
him they came by the house they interviewed
1:37:01
Pam and Terry wasn't there that day so
1:37:03
they never bothered to get back around to
1:37:05
interviewing Terry now furthermore when they interview Pam
1:37:08
it's a short interview there's basically a
1:37:11
couple sentences to describe what she says
1:37:13
that that she was doing and her
1:37:15
husband were doing that day and they
1:37:18
just take it as fact and they
1:37:20
left it at that now so these
1:37:22
reports were not coming out there's not
1:37:24
good reports coming out there's
1:37:26
not a good solid interview of Pam
1:37:29
Hobbs or Terry Hobbs until 2007 and
1:37:31
this carries on to David Jacoby as
1:37:33
well he's not interviewed until 2007 yeah
1:37:35
and then they're re-interviewed for the West
1:37:38
West of Memphis documentary and then because
1:37:41
of this documentary the police go back
1:37:43
and interview Terry Hobbs and you can
1:37:45
watch that whole it's not an
1:37:47
interrogation it's definitely a
1:37:50
casual interview I wouldn't
1:37:52
call it interrogation you
1:37:54
can watch all that online I
1:37:56
think there's definitely some stuff that seems
1:37:58
fishy at the end of the day,
1:38:01
where's the evidence? This
1:38:04
hair that matches so many other people and
1:38:06
as far as transferring goes,
1:38:08
it makes a lot of sense. So
1:38:11
again, another person where there's just
1:38:13
not enough pointing at him. And
1:38:16
then the stuff that are pointing at, the things that
1:38:18
they do point at him, look where it's coming from.
1:38:21
What about the knife? Here's another knife that's
1:38:23
brought into this case. Yeah, the... The
1:38:26
pocket knife. Yeah. The
1:38:28
Stevie branch was Boy Scout. Yeah. And
1:38:31
so he had this little pocket knife. And
1:38:34
so Pam Hobbs claims that he would have
1:38:36
had that pocket knife on him that
1:38:39
day. So then the
1:38:41
boys are found and later
1:38:43
on, like a year or so later, she
1:38:45
finds the knife and
1:38:48
Terry Hobbs is like nightstand. And
1:38:51
yeah, she says that Stevie would not
1:38:53
have gone anywhere without that knife. Here's
1:38:56
a couple things about that. First of all, he
1:38:58
came home from school and he left almost immediately
1:39:00
to go out and play after coming home from
1:39:02
school. So chances are they didn't take the knife
1:39:04
to school. Everybody knows you shouldn't carry a knife
1:39:06
to school. Doesn't stop some boys, but I'm guessing
1:39:08
he probably didn't have it with him and he
1:39:11
wasn't at home long enough to think about grabbing
1:39:13
it. Again, then
1:39:15
Terry Hobbs' story is that he was messing around
1:39:17
with the knife and he just thought my boy
1:39:19
doesn't need to have this knife. He's messing around
1:39:21
with it. He's not being responsible with it. And
1:39:23
Terry Hobbs is not saying I took the knife
1:39:25
from him on May 5th. He's saying I took
1:39:27
it to him prior to May 5th. And
1:39:30
that's something, again, he's a
1:39:32
stepfather. So he's disciplining some,
1:39:35
you know, I was a stepfather before,
1:39:37
so I've had the same situation. One
1:39:40
of my boys was messing around with the knife and
1:39:42
I had to say to him, hey, can
1:39:44
you not
1:39:46
do that? That's not responsible. This
1:39:49
is not a toy. And I had to take it away.
1:39:52
And I put it into a little box. And
1:39:54
then one day my wife sees,
1:39:57
you know, my ex-wife sees the
1:39:59
knife. and says,
1:40:01
what's this? I had to explain
1:40:04
the situation. And it's
1:40:06
the same situation as
1:40:08
Terry Hobbs. Another thing that I want
1:40:10
to bring up is how the police
1:40:13
acted shortly after finding the bodies. Remember
1:40:15
in episode one we had said that
1:40:17
all of the items, all of the
1:40:19
clothing that was reported to be on
1:40:22
the persons of the missing boys all
1:40:25
of it was recovered with the exception of
1:40:27
a single sock and two
1:40:29
pair of underwear. So
1:40:32
that's all that was missing. Now
1:40:34
later, this was days after
1:40:36
the bodies were found, police went to
1:40:39
the families and they had said, could
1:40:41
there have been anything else with these
1:40:43
boys that we didn't find? Could there
1:40:45
be anything that you could think of? Would any
1:40:47
of them have had a pocket knife? And
1:40:50
they specifically say pocket knife. Would any of
1:40:52
them have had a billfold? Would any of
1:40:54
them have a pin on their hat or
1:40:56
a pin on their shirt? The reason why
1:40:58
they're asking about these things is because they
1:41:01
want to know if they pick somebody up
1:41:03
or they're searching somebody's home and they come
1:41:05
across one of these items, they've found
1:41:07
their person. No
1:41:09
items. They're at one point,
1:41:13
the Byers family says that Christopher
1:41:15
may have carried a billfold with
1:41:17
him. At one point, I
1:41:20
believe the Moore family says that Michael may have
1:41:22
had a pin on his shirt or he may
1:41:24
have had a pocket knife. The boy's self stuff,
1:41:26
yeah. Exactly. So there's a few things that are
1:41:29
brought up that they may have had. None
1:41:31
of the parents are able to say
1:41:34
with certainty that any other items that
1:41:36
weren't already located were on
1:41:38
any of those boys. Pam Hobbs never mentions
1:41:40
this pocket knife. Yeah, it's something that seems
1:41:43
like it's always after that fact. You know,
1:41:45
it's after the fact and now let's point
1:41:47
the finger. And so yeah,
1:41:49
is Hobbs a little fishy? Yes,
1:41:52
a little fishy. And with the bite marks,
1:41:54
I'm telling you, if you look up the
1:41:56
bite marks and the partial he had, it
1:41:58
just looks... I mean, it looks
1:42:00
like a zach match. It's not
1:42:03
enough for me to say that he's guilty. Look,
1:42:05
keep looking into him. Maybe
1:42:07
you'll find something, maybe you'll get a confession
1:42:09
one day. I don't know. But
1:42:12
there's not enough for me to point
1:42:14
to him saying, hey, this guy's guilty. That
1:42:17
leaves us with the West Memphis Three. Now
1:42:19
we have, we all know that they took an Alfred
1:42:21
plea. What is that? That means
1:42:23
that they are going to say
1:42:26
that they're guilty. Well, no, no,
1:42:29
they're going to claim their innocence, but
1:42:31
they're pleading guilty. Yes, and
1:42:33
so the judge accepts their plea. This
1:42:36
was in 2011, and
1:42:39
immediately after accepting their plea, he sentenced all three
1:42:41
of them to 18 years and 78 days. Right,
1:42:45
the time served. So the
1:42:48
reason why this came about was because
1:42:50
of all this new evidence that they're
1:42:52
uncovering, the DNA, and
1:42:55
then we have the guy on the jury.
1:42:57
You want to talk about that real quick? Yeah,
1:42:59
so the jury foreman, he was in charge
1:43:01
of the jury. He's going to
1:43:03
lead all their little meetings that they have. The
1:43:06
problem that they have is they're able to
1:43:08
figure out by reviewing the notes that were
1:43:10
taken by the jurors that at
1:43:12
some point somebody had brought up the
1:43:15
confession that Jesse Miss Kelly had given. Right.
1:43:18
If you remember us saying the confession was
1:43:20
not allowed to try Jason or Damien.
1:43:23
It was not allowed to be brought
1:43:25
forth into the court. It was not
1:43:27
allowed to be discussed, and you could
1:43:29
not use that confession to weigh their
1:43:32
guilt or innocence. Right, so when people
1:43:34
saw these documentaries, which are not complete,
1:43:36
it's not a bunch of facts, a
1:43:39
lot of these documentaries are entertainment
1:43:41
based, but when
1:43:44
you see this and you go, oh,
1:43:46
how the hell did they find them
1:43:48
guilty? There's not enough evidence. Well, when
1:43:51
somebody's saying there was a confession saying
1:43:53
that these three boys did it, well,
1:43:56
that's probably why they were found guilty. So
1:43:58
are they guilty? There are people coming
1:44:00
out and saying, you know what? They got
1:44:03
off. They got off pretty good. Well,
1:44:05
here's what's interesting is when they're first
1:44:07
arrested, burn them, hang them, and then
1:44:09
all of a sudden they're victims, free
1:44:11
them, free them. People go back and
1:44:13
forth and then they get out. Now
1:44:15
everybody wants to pay. Now they're guilty
1:44:18
again. And there's people like William Ramsey.
1:44:20
Uh, he did a documentary called
1:44:23
Abomination. He talks a lot about the
1:44:25
cult stuff. Again, a lot of
1:44:27
stuff he's bringing up is a lot
1:44:29
of hearsay and speculation. Here's one of
1:44:31
the things, and this is very freaky,
1:44:34
but talks about Damien Echols having
1:44:36
a spirit number. His spirit number
1:44:38
being five. What month did
1:44:40
these happen in May, which is the
1:44:42
fifth month. What day the fifth month
1:44:44
on a full moon when
1:44:46
he's at the softball field. And he's
1:44:48
talking about murders. He says, I
1:44:50
killed these three boys. I'm going to kill two
1:44:53
more, which would mean five. So
1:44:55
if you go with this whole spirit number or whatever, yeah,
1:44:58
it's a little freaky, but I don't know how
1:45:00
much it adds up. It's, it's
1:45:02
just, again, a lot of speculation
1:45:05
and Damien Echols seems to like
1:45:07
to play, uh, I don't
1:45:10
want to say devil's advocate. He kind of likes
1:45:12
to play into people. He likes to poke the
1:45:14
bear is what he likes to do. But, but
1:45:16
can, but you, as you had
1:45:18
said, or we're trying to say, I believe,
1:45:20
is that that whole spirit number, that whole
1:45:22
spirit number thing is no different than convicting
1:45:24
somebody because they have long hair or wear
1:45:27
black clothes. Right. Or you listen to Metallica.
1:45:29
So therefore you're a murderer. That's
1:45:31
not how it works. Is there anything, so do
1:45:33
you think the West Memphis three are guilty? I
1:45:36
don't think they are. I mean,
1:45:39
I can't say that a hundred percent because
1:45:41
his first statement. Just
1:45:44
feels real, but everything
1:45:46
that Jason Baldwin says feels real
1:45:48
to me. So maybe my gut
1:45:50
is just wrong completely. And
1:45:53
Baldwin has always claimed innocence. And
1:45:55
furthermore, not only that when, when
1:45:57
the prosecution didn't believe that the
1:45:59
trial. the second trial that of Damien
1:46:01
and Jason, when they didn't believe it
1:46:03
was going their way and when they
1:46:05
lost the confession of Jesse, Ms. Kelly,
1:46:07
they went to Jason Baldwin and offered
1:46:10
him a bargain. They
1:46:12
were going to bargain and barter with him and
1:46:14
they were willing to get him a 40 year
1:46:17
sentence if he would testify against Damien Eccles.
1:46:20
Well, and he also didn't want to take
1:46:22
the Alfred plea because he knew that once
1:46:24
they took the plea that the state would
1:46:26
then stop their investigation. Now
1:46:29
what I think my gut was telling me is
1:46:32
that people fed Jesse,
1:46:35
Ms. Kelly a little bit and he's simple.
1:46:38
So I think he believes some of
1:46:40
it and that's why it came
1:46:42
off as authentic. But I don't,
1:46:45
I just don't think that there's not enough for me
1:46:47
to say that they're guilty. There's
1:46:49
not enough for me to say they're 100% innocent
1:46:52
either, but they
1:46:54
weren't be, they wouldn't be the first people that
1:46:56
I want to dive much into. And I do.
1:46:59
So those are my thoughts. I think Jesse's simple
1:47:02
and I believe a lot
1:47:04
what Jason Baldwin says as far as Damien
1:47:06
Eccles. I think he says some weird stuff and pokes
1:47:08
to bear like you were saying. I'm
1:47:11
in your camp, man. I believe
1:47:13
that there are, there's a couple things that
1:47:15
point towards their guilt and there's a lot
1:47:17
of things that point to their innocence. I
1:47:19
can't, can't say that they're innocent. Can't say
1:47:21
that they're guilty. What I can say is
1:47:23
I have a really hard time believing that
1:47:26
there was enough to try anybody here. I,
1:47:29
maybe you could try Jesse, Ms.
1:47:31
Kelly, but once that confession
1:47:33
was thrown out, there was no evidence in
1:47:35
my opinion against Damien or Jason. And
1:47:37
furthermore, I believe that Jason should have
1:47:40
been tried separately. I believe he was
1:47:42
only convicted because he was tried with
1:47:44
Damien and Damien was convicted
1:47:47
on his bad name and his bad reputation.
1:47:50
Yeah, and he was also convicted on, you
1:47:52
know, searching for answers and when
1:47:55
somebody is thirsty for knowledge, this is
1:47:57
not something that we should be afraid
1:47:59
of. This is something that especially
1:48:01
in an 18 year old boy, he's becoming a
1:48:03
young man by searching for
1:48:05
answers and by searching for knowledge is how
1:48:08
you're going to get there. And there's a
1:48:10
million people that search for answers, but they
1:48:12
weren't in some small-minded,
1:48:14
closed-minded town to get crucified for
1:48:16
such. And I've always thought that
1:48:18
Jason and Jesse should have been
1:48:20
tried as children. I understand that
1:48:22
this is a heinous crime and
1:48:24
a horrible crime, but as far
1:48:26
as the judicial systems as I'm
1:48:29
concerned, I'm not
1:48:31
weighing the crime here. What I'm weighing
1:48:33
is the people that are on trial
1:48:36
and the evidence against them. And
1:48:39
there wasn't much. There wasn't really anything
1:48:41
at all. And I guess
1:48:43
I would err on the side of caution that we're making
1:48:45
a big mistake here and we would
1:48:47
be better off to try them as
1:48:50
juveniles than adults. They were both juveniles
1:48:52
and I mean, Jason
1:48:54
was 16 and Ms. Kelly might
1:48:56
not be dealing with a full deck. Yeah.
1:48:59
And I hope their effort doesn't stop. I know
1:49:01
that they're out. I know that they're free. I
1:49:04
don't know if their names cleared completely because
1:49:07
if they took that odd plea deal, I
1:49:11
know that the public
1:49:14
opinion with them kind of goes
1:49:16
back and forth, guilty, innocent. And
1:49:18
it always seems to be this
1:49:20
ever-changing thing. These guys
1:49:22
have the power. I'm not saying
1:49:24
that they need to or should or have to
1:49:27
spend any more time. They spent 18 years
1:49:29
in prison for something they probably didn't
1:49:31
do, but they have the
1:49:34
power to keep getting resources and
1:49:36
saying, it's not enough that we're
1:49:38
out of jail. We
1:49:41
need answers on this case and it's
1:49:43
only going to come from pressure. But
1:49:46
that requires the state to try somebody for
1:49:48
this case. And the problem with that is
1:49:51
they already have three people that are on
1:49:53
the books guilty and have been convicted of...
1:49:56
No, I understand that. But what I'm saying
1:49:58
is right now, you... You got
1:50:00
little sprinkles of evidence towards Hobbes.
1:50:02
You got a little sprinkle of evidence
1:50:04
towards Byers. You have a little bit
1:50:07
of sprinkle of evidence towards Mr. Bojangles.
1:50:09
Little bit from West Memphis 3. That's
1:50:12
not enough. We need more. We
1:50:15
need something that makes us
1:50:17
go, oh, that's something we
1:50:20
can't dispute. I'll go on
1:50:22
record here and I believe John Mark Byers
1:50:24
got absolutely railroaded in this whole thing. I
1:50:26
believe that, yes, he's a strange dude. But
1:50:28
there are some sprinkles of evidence. There are
1:50:30
some tidbits, yes. There are some morsels. And
1:50:34
it's strange and it's a
1:50:37
strange case. However, again,
1:50:39
I'm going to keep going back to the timeline of
1:50:41
that night and that morning. There was just no time
1:50:43
for him to do it. Whether
1:50:45
you think he's capable or not, there was no time
1:50:47
for him to do any of this. And
1:50:50
I will go back to that every single
1:50:52
time. I think he got absolutely railroaded. I
1:50:54
think if the people that put together Paradise
1:50:56
Lost 2 and if the author
1:50:58
that put together The Devil's Not, now I want
1:51:00
to go on record here. The Devil's Not is
1:51:02
a fantastic book. If you like this case, you
1:51:05
should definitely read this book. That's your recommended reading.
1:51:07
That's my recommended reading. However, I
1:51:09
think that those two things railroaded Byers.
1:51:11
And I think that if that author
1:51:14
and the producers of that film would
1:51:16
have spent enough time looking at his
1:51:18
whereabouts that evening and what he was doing
1:51:20
that night, they would never have made him a suspect.
1:51:22
Right. He even considered it. How
1:51:25
much time did that waste? How
1:51:27
much time did people look into this guy when
1:51:29
they could have been looking into somebody else? Anyways.
1:51:32
Terry Hobbs is the more likely suspect
1:51:34
because there are some times in his
1:51:36
timeline that would present some
1:51:38
holes. There's a little bit of holes. There's not big holes
1:51:40
though. I would be expecting to see big gaps. We
1:51:43
have that hair and that... Man,
1:51:46
I mean, again, I think that's
1:51:48
a transfer thing. That's what I believe. Not
1:51:50
only that, it matches 1.1% of the people
1:51:53
in the area and everybody in the world.
1:51:57
You're talking about what, a football field or
1:51:59
two football fields? fields away from one of
1:52:01
the most traveled freeways in
1:52:03
America? Who's to say
1:52:05
that somebody didn't stop off at the blue
1:52:07
beacon and see these kids and do something
1:52:09
terrible? Who's to say that there wasn't a
1:52:12
pedophile or some monster in the neighborhood that
1:52:14
did something to these boys? And
1:52:16
the African American hair is still
1:52:18
not explained and that was found
1:52:20
damn near on one of the bodies.
1:52:23
It was found in the sheet wrapping
1:52:25
the buyer's boy. This
1:52:28
case reminds me of OJ. I mean, yeah,
1:52:30
we did three parts of that but it reminds me
1:52:33
of OJ because it's so huge and there's so much
1:52:35
to dive into and there's so much out there. Some
1:52:38
just bullshit but there's a lot, tons
1:52:40
of facts on this that you can
1:52:42
find actual facts and the actual evidence
1:52:45
on this case. But
1:52:48
I feel like I had a stronger
1:52:50
opinion before we started this
1:52:52
case. And now at the end of it, I'm
1:52:55
just not super certain either
1:52:57
way other than there's
1:52:59
not much evidence to point towards anybody.
1:53:02
I can't point to anything that would
1:53:04
point to somebody but what I can
1:53:06
point to is I believe that had
1:53:08
they taken this investigation and done it
1:53:10
properly, there was no reason to assume
1:53:13
that a gang or a cult
1:53:15
or Satanist were involved in this crime. There
1:53:17
was nothing that showed that at the scene
1:53:20
to believe that. Well, I mean, other
1:53:22
than the fact that there's three victims
1:53:24
and so if it's one murderer, they
1:53:27
have to control three victims. Exactly. I
1:53:30
get that but what I'm getting at is
1:53:32
it doesn't mean that you're sworn into some
1:53:34
gang or some cult or your Satanist that
1:53:36
have to carry this out. It just means
1:53:38
that you got three or two screwed up
1:53:40
individuals that are homicidal maniacs that
1:53:42
we've got to find. Or one that's very
1:53:45
clever. So in my opinion, there was no
1:53:47
reason for the investigation to take that route.
1:53:49
And first of all, if they would have
1:53:51
spent the proper amount of time
1:53:53
and taken the proper amount of notes and
1:53:55
conducted the right interviews and collected the right
1:53:57
amount of evidence from all of the family.
1:54:00
members of the victims, if they would
1:54:02
have spent time on that, then I
1:54:04
really believe that we would have never
1:54:06
discussed John Mark Byers, we would have
1:54:08
never discussed Terry Hobbs because I believe
1:54:11
that those people along with
1:54:13
the other family members would have been cleared
1:54:15
in the get go from this thing. And
1:54:17
we wouldn't have to sit around and argue
1:54:19
about this. Right, or speculate because we don't
1:54:21
know. There's just holes in their timeline, but
1:54:24
there's also just holes in the investigation. And
1:54:26
I don't know that this means that somebody
1:54:28
that didn't know the boys committed the crime.
1:54:30
What I'm getting at is I don't believe the
1:54:32
West Memphis Three did it. I don't believe that
1:54:35
any of the family members did it. I
1:54:37
think that this is somebody that is either
1:54:39
unknown to the police or somebody that they
1:54:42
had interviewed at some point in their investigation.
1:54:44
Yeah, and you told me
1:54:46
about a week ago, which made me so mad
1:54:48
that you don't know if this will ever be
1:54:50
solved. I actually
1:54:52
believe that it will never be solved. Right, right.
1:54:55
And the only reason being is because of that Alfred plea. I
1:54:57
believe that the state of Arkansas has no motivation
1:55:00
to solve this case. This is off
1:55:02
their books as far as they're concerned.
1:55:04
All right, so we had to end it on a big bang.
1:55:07
Want to thank everybody for a
1:55:10
great season two and
1:55:12
onward and upward to season three. Yeah,
1:55:15
things are going to be big and great
1:55:17
and fantastic in season three. Can't wait. And
1:55:20
thanks for the support. We're glad that we could put out
1:55:23
two episodes this week. Yes, we are.
1:55:25
As much as it pained me being
1:55:28
in the garage with you all night.
1:55:30
You kind of smelled a little
1:55:33
stinky in the garage. Well
1:55:35
until next season, be good,
1:55:37
be kind and don't. Yeah.
1:55:41
Thank you. I'm glad you're here.
1:55:43
Thank you. You
1:55:47
are all very grateful. You
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