The Case Against ... with Gary Meece
Society & Culture
Episode 20: The physical evidence against the WM3 -- "It is Our opinion the crime had taken place where the bodies of the victims were recovered."
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"It is Our opinion the crime had taken place where the bodies of the victims were recovered."
Despite fake news that authorities had no evidence against the WM3, investigators found physical evidence at the scene that linked the murders to the murderers. Other physical evidence pointed to the West Memphis 3. None of the evidence was conclusive, but none offered grounds for exoneration.
Other evidence, such as inadmissible Luminol testing and a blood-spattered pendant discovered too late to be entered into evidence, didn’t make it to the courtrooms for various reasons.
The killers did not leave a great number of forensic clues. Because of submersion in water, no fingerprints were found of anyone, including the victims. Similarly, clothing items tested negative for traces of blood. Virtually all of the DNA recovered and tested matched the boys. Several imprints from tennis shoes were found, but none matched the killers and may have been left by searchers or others walking through the woods.
By the time the bodies were found, a number of searchers had been over the woods, where the gumbo soil was muddy from several inches of rain earlier in the week.
The crime scene itself had been cleaned up, with the banks washed and smoothed over.
The killers had gone to great lengths to obscure the location of the bodies, which were found only when a boy’s tennis shoe (a Scout cap in some versions of the story; two shoes, according to Allen’s testimony in the Misskelley trial) was spotted floating in the water.
The West Memphis case has been influenced by the “CSI effect,” in which the public has come to expect a higher level of forensic evidence than often exists at crime scenes. As a corollary to the effect, the value of circumstantial evidence has been discounted.
Television shows focusing on DNA and other forensics in investigations necessarily rely on such evidence to figure into the plot. Consequently the public is largely unaware that DNA from killers is found in a relatively small fraction of all murders, with latent fingerprints or any kind of biological trace found in much fewer than half of cases. Further contributing to the relative lack of forensic evidence in the West Memphis case were the cleanup at the scene, the submersion of the bodies in dirty water over an extended time and their exposure to heat and insects in the open air for about an hour, contamination by search efforts and subsequent recovery of the bodies, etc.
As a result, for example, two samples of apparent bodily tissues found in the ligatures of the shoelace bindings on Christopher and Michael were too small and degraded to yield DNA results.
“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” the prototype of the forensics-based crime shows, premiered in October 2000, so the series and its many offshoots and imitators would have had no effect on the original juries. Even the O.J. Simpson murder case in 1994-1995, the breakthrough case for public awareness of DNA testing, followed the WM3 trials.
Even so, forensic science played a role in perceptions about the case from the beginnings.
The initial “Paradise Lost” film, while leaving out much about evidence against the killers, included the strange episode of a knife that Mark Byers gave one of the “Paradise Lost” cameramen as a gesture of goodwill. Remnants of blood were found in the knife. Testing revealed the blood could have been a match for either Byers or his stepson — an example of the ambiguous results often obtained from DNA testing. Byers had told police, “I don’t have any idea how it could be on there.” Byers ended up giving testimony during the defense portion of the Echols/Baldwin trial about his fold-back Kershaw knife.
Byers testified he could not say for sure that Christopher had never played with the knife. He testified he had used it to trim his toenails. He recalled cutting his thumb with the knife while trimming venison for Thanksgiving 1993. During a Jan. 26, 1994, interview, he told Chief Inspector Gitchell that he had not used the knife at all but had said he had used it to cut venison. He also told Gitchell he might have used it to trim his fingernails. He told Gitchell he did not remember cutting himself with the knife but recalled during testimony that he cut his thumb. The inconsistencies were mostly the consequences of not answering questions carefully, along with an apparent slip of the memory about cutting his thumb.
Much of the second film, produced in 2000, again focused on Byers, with a new angle in supposed bite marks, implying that Byers left the imprint of his teeth in the face of Stevie Branch. Byers had had his teeth pulled since the murders, a commonplace necessity framed as suspicious. A check of the supposed bite mark against his dental records found no match; the state’s medical examiners thought the mark may have left by a belt buckle. The mark also could have been left by a blow from the end of a survival knife such as the “lake knife,” a type of knife commonly carried by Echols.
Though long viewed by adamant “supporters” as the primary alternative suspect, with much of the “Devil’s Knot” book casting suspicion, Byers’ place as the imagined “real killer” has been supplanted by Terry Hobbs.
All that was required for the change was DNA in a single hair that might have come from Hobbs found in one of the boys’ shoelaces.
Stevie’s stepfather has acknowledged that the hair could be his, with the commonsense explanation that his stepson or one of the other boys could have picked up the hair during Hobbs’ interactions with the kids.
That possible DNA match quickly took the heat off Byers and set 2011’s “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” and 2012’s “West of Memphis” on the scent of Hobbs.
Coupled with a dearth of ironclad DNA evidence linking Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin to the crimes, that hair has been the slender thread holding together the case against Hobbs.
On the other hand, the considerable circumstantial evidence against Echols has been ignored, with an increasing focus on the supposed lack of physical evidence.
One of the most telling pieces of evidence has been routinely discounted or explained away. In his May 10 report, Ridge noted about a statement from Echols: “Steve Jones told that testicles had been cut off and someone had urinated in mouths and the bodies had been placed in water to flush out.”
Gitchell did not find out until May 16 that urine was present in the stomachs of two victims. Jones could not have revealed that information to Echols because he did not have that information; only a killer would have known about the urine.
The urine finding was one of the mostly closely held secrets in the investigation, with references to the stomach liquids deliberately obscured in written communications between Little Rock and West Memphis. Gitchell had been informed of the findings over the phone, with no mention of the urine in autopsy documentation received long after Echols’ May 10 revelations.
Further clouding most of the evidence are media misrepresentations, the cult of victimhood surrounding the killers and second and third opinions disputing original investigative findings.
Experts hired by the defense even claimed the mutilations were the result of animal predators, particularly snapping turtles, though Christopher bled to death before being placed in the water. While it is possible, even likely, that small fish or turtles left superficial wounds, it is not possible that a team of highly trained snapping turtles killed Chris.
The ditch was drained immediately after the bodies were found; there were no snapping turtles.
Stains found on one of the boys’ jeans were analyzed by Genetic Design. Michael DeGuglielmo, the DNA testing company’s director of forensic analysis, testified they were able to recover a small amount of DNA.
DeGuglielmo said the sample was most likely sperm cells, though he could not confirm that. Misskelley in his later confessions described Echols masturbating over the body of a victim and wiping his penis on the boy’s pants. There has been no other explanation offered for how sperm wound up on jeans owned by a prepubescent boy.
Some fibers retrieved from the scene were found to be microscopically similar to items taken as evidence from the Baldwin and Echols homes.
Green fibers found on a pair of blue jeans and on Michael’s Cub Scout hat were microscopically similar to fibers found in a shirt from the Echols home. One polyester fiber was found on the hat. The fiber found on the pants was cotton and polyester. The shirt from the Echols home was a child’s shirt. Lisa Sakevicius, a criminalist with the state crime laboratory, testified that the presence of the fibers suggested a secondary transfer, as the blue size 6 Garanimals shirt, which belonged to Echols’ half-brother Tim Hutchison, was much too small for Echols. In an “O.J.” style tactic, defense attorney Val Price asked Echols to attempt to put on the shirt, which he was not able to do.
Three red cotton fibers similar to those found in another T-shirt from the Echols home were recovered from Michael’s Scout shirt, a pair of blue pants and a bag of items found at the crime scene. The fibers were also a match for a red shirt found at Michael’s home.
Items from the bag recovered from a pipe, where it had been either discarded or cached near the crime scene, included a pair of Jordache size 33-34 blue jeans, a black medium-size thermal undershirt, a pair of white socks, two Bic razors, a plastic bag and a tan short sleeve shirt. The items were wet and moldy.
There was no clear evidence linking the bag and its contents to the crime, other than its presence. Despite a similar red thread potentially linking Michael, Echols and the bag, investigators were not able to establish a positive link.
The bag was from Road Runner Petro, where Echols’s father was employed and that shared parking space with Alderson Roofing & Metal. Echols told police he worked as a roofer for Anderson. The businesses were not near the crime scene.
A red Rayon fiber matched a bathrobe owned by Baldwin’s mother. That fiber was found on a black and white polka dot shirt, which, like the blue pants, was found turned inside out. Sakevicius again suggested secondary transfer, and later explained that such transferences commonly occur when clothes are washed together.
The polka dot shirt worn by Stevie was the source of residue of blue wax similar to candle wax. A small blue candle was found on a table in Domini Teer’s bedroom, and similar wax was found on a witchcraft book, “Never on a Broomstick,” from Echols’ bedroom. Similar wax was also found in a bar of soap from the Baldwin bathroom. Jurors cited the wax as evidence against Echols. Candles are routinely used in occult ceremonies.
Sakevicius also testified that submersion in water was “very detrimental” to the recovery of trace evidence.
Sakevicius testified that a Negroid hair had been recovered from the sheet covering Christopher. The presence of that hair was never explained. One obvious and irresistible theory attributed the hair to “Mr. Bojangles,” the bleeding black man who commandeered the restroom of a local restaurant shortly after the probable time of the killings.
The hair could have been from a police officer or other searcher, but no hairs from officers were submitted for comparison.
Bolstering the idea that more than one assailant was involved were the varying knots used on the shoelaces to tie arms to legs.
The text used by local witches, “Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft,” contained a section on knot magic and how knots were used to bind magical spells. The magic number for knots was nine. Michael, Stevie and Christopher were tied with eight, 10 and four knots respectively.
The knots used on Michael: Square knot on the left wrist and ankle, three half hitches on the right wrist, four half hitches on the right ankle. Only one shoestring was used to bind Michael, by contrast with both shoelaces used on the other boys, in another deviation in the patterns of bindings. In a later confession, Misskelley described helping pull shoestrings from the shoes; his involvement would explain not only the single strand but the variance in knots used to bind Michael.
The knots used on Stevie Branch: three half hitches on both the left ankle and left wrist, three half hitches with the loop tied twice around the right leg, half hitch with figure eight on the right wrist.
On Chris Byers: double half hitches on all four knots.
The knots used were square knots, half hitches and double half hitches, with one knot being looped twice and a figure eight thrown on top of a half hitch —- at least three different knots, suggesting that three people tied up the boys. It is extremely unlikely that one person would have used three different knots to tie up the boys, particularly in a high-stress situation such as a murder scene. The forensic evidence showed that Chris and Stevie struggled against their bindings, while Michael, with deep and traumatic wounds to the head, had no such signs of struggle.
Michael also showed few if any signs of sexual molestation, fitting with Misskelley’s description of a quick, violent pounding of the face and head but subsequent protection from further predation by Baldwin and Echols.
A pagan “ax” necklace belonging to Echols was discovered to be speckled with blood from two DNA sources as the Echols/Baldwin trial neared the end. The prosecution had already rested its case when questions arose about the blood spots.
The prosecution weighed the implications of entering the necklace as trial evidence. Judge David Burnett made it clear that the prosecution would be dealing with “two basic remedies, either a mistrial or a continuance.”
At the least, the new evidence would have resulted in a continuance while the defense was allowed to examine the evidence.
Besides the possibility of a mistrial, prosecutors were concerned that it could result in a possible severance of the Echols and Baldwin cases.
One DNA source was compatible with Echols, while the second was compatible with both Stevie and Baldwin. The prosecution was prepared to argue that Stevie was the source, seeing little benefit from arguing for a match with Baldwin.
The necklace, taken from Echols at the time of his arrest, prompted a hearing on March 17, 1994, out of the presence of the jury, while the case was on continuance as the result of the discovery.
Prosecuting Attorney Brent Davis explained to Judge Burnett that “questionable” red spots had been found as Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Fogleman and some police officers were reviewing evidence. Fogleman first noticed the spots.
A deleted scene from “Paradise Lost” footage available on DVD and YouTube showed a meeting between Fogleman and the Baldwin attorneys concerning the necklace. Though marked by jovial banter, the conference illuminated the difficulties posed by the “blood necklace” for both defense and prosecution.
The necklace had been sent to the crime lab, where the red spots were discovered to be blood, and then was sent to Genetic Design in North Carolina.
The prosecution learned late on the afternoon of March 15, just as preparations for closing arguments were under way, about the two DNA sources. The lab attempted an “amplification process” to further differentiate the DNA, which was successful on the larger sample from Echols, to not much effect, but was unsuccessful on differentiating Baldwin and Stevie. The prosecution learned of that in late afternoon on the 16th.
The prosecution hoped to present to the jury the DQ-Alpha match with Stevie Branch, consistent with about 11 percent of the white population.
Because Baldwin was also a match, Echols attorney Val Price explained in a court conference: “Part of our defense in this matter would be that sometime during the time period approximately a month or two before the arrest that besides my client having access to this pendant that also Jason Baldwin had access to this pendant. If that is indeed Jason Baldwin’s blood on this pendant and not Stevie Branch’s then this evidence is of no value at all and not relevant, it should be excluded and not considered by the jury at all.”
Baldwin attorney Paul Ford argued that the evidence should apply to Echols alone since he wore the necklace and presumably there could be no proof of a link to Baldwin.
Prosecutor Davis said his understanding was that a mistrial for Baldwin would result from entering the necklace into evidence but the case could proceed against Echols. Without a counter-ruling, Davis did not plan to enter the new evidence.
Judge Burnett pointed out that among the potential complications was that Echols and Baldwin could cross-implicate each other, rather than engage in a common defense, if the necklace was introduced.
Because the matches were so common, the blood spots could not have been definitively linked to either Baldwin or Stevie. The spots did raise the question of why Echols’ necklace would be splattered by two or more sources of blood.
Years later, Baldwin testified, “The necklace that had been acquired by Damien Echols at the time of his arrest was one that I believe my girlfriend Heather had given me. … I don’t recall specifically how the necklace had come into Echols’ possession.”
As with all things in the West Memphis 3 case, facts about the necklace were disputed.
Echols had more than one necklace: Ridge noted in his May 10 report that “Damien was wearing a necklace that he claimed that he had just bought at the Mall of Memphis on the Saturday before the interview. The necklace had a pentagram as a pendant that Damien explained meant some type of good symbol for the Wicca magic that he was in.” The blood-spattered pendant was a tiny axe, not a pentagram.
Echols had the axe pendant before the trip to the mall on May 8. Echols routinely wore this necklace. For example, Echols was filmed wearing the necklace at Skateland on May 7, two days after the killings. He continued to wear the axe pendant after purchasing the pentagram pendant. He was photographed wearing the axe necklace on May 9.
Because testing used up the original sample, retesting was not possible, giving the defense another possible objection since they would not be able to order tests.
A blood stain found on a shirt gathered as evidence at the Misskelley home similarly showed a possible match for both Misskelley and Michael. The HLA-DQ alleles had an expected frequency of 7.9 percent in the general population.
Misskelley said he gotten the blood on the T-shirt by throwing a Coke bottle into the air and smashing it with his fist, showing off his toughness.
The shirt was not entered into evidence at trial.
Besides the hair commonly linked to Hobbs and the Negroid hair, about four other hairs from the site were determined not to have originated with the victims. Because the DNA sampling from Hobbs was obtained by stealth via three discarded cigarette butts and a Q-tip, resulting in three variances after DNA testing, the link between Hobbs and the hair was even more questionable.
Another hair found in a tree trunk was a near-match for David Jacoby, a friend of Hobbs. There was no conclusive evidence that Jacoby was the source, that the hair dated from the time of the crime or that Jacoby or someone else did not leave a hair during the search. Jacoby said he was not in the area, but his memory was spotty.
Other hair included a dyed hair recovered from the sheet used to cover Stevie, a hair recovered from the Cub Scout cap and a hair from beneath Chris’ ligature. It’s possible, given the imperfections of the testing procedures, that the same person was the source of all three hairs.
There was no DNA testing on a number of items from the site, including other hair and tissues.
Among the many misconceptions about the case is that no blood was found. Since Stevie and Chris bled extensively —- Chris bled to death — the seeming lack of blood generated theories that the crime scene was a dump site, that the boys had been stashed down a manhole before being placed in the water, etc.
Blood was spotted in the water after the initial discovery but the site, which had been washed down, seemed surprisingly clean. Subsequent testing with Luminol revealed areas where blood had been spilled.
There was little testimony about blood. The jury did not hear the results of Luminol testing. Since such testing was not considered valid as evidence, the defense teams successfully sought motions to suppress Luminol results.
Kermit Channel and Donald Smith of the Arkansas crime lab, in the company of Mike Allen and Bryn Ridge, spent two days studying the effects of spraying Luminol, working in the dark, running a black light over the sprayed area to pick up glowing traces of iron in blood residue.
Testing May 12 yielded traces of blood on both sides of a tree near the ditch bank with more blood on the right side of the tree, facing the stream bed; in the areas where the bodies were placed; in a concentrated area on the east side of the ditch in a pile of sticks and a depressed area in the soil, and in a large area of concentration near tree roots. Other traces were visible where the victims were placed on the bank.
The areas with the pile of sticks and the tree roots were cited as likely locations of attack.
“There were no visible signs or indication of blood at any of the locations we investigated,” their report said. The testing was begun a full week after the bodies were found. It had rained at least once. The testing was in less than optimal conditions as any light sources, such as stars and ambient light, compromised results. Some evidence would have been compromised in the search, recovery and investigation, the report noted, citing numerous reasons why investigators were unable to document findings with photographs.
Nonetheless, “It is our opinion the crime had taken place where the bodies of the victims were recovered.”
On May 13, with tenting using plastic over canvas, Luminol was freshly applied, and a “less than perfect” photograph became possible. “These photographs still documented the areas of interest, showing luminol reaction in respective areas,” reported Smith.
Soil samples were taken May 14; tested four months later, no Luminol reaction was noted, a result considered inconclusive given the age of the sample.
At the time of the Luminol report, investigators did not have the Misskelley confession. His descriptions of the attacks accord with the blood evidence.
A tree near the crime scene had the initials “ME” carved into it. Echols was sometimes known as “Michael Echols”; while in Oregon, he went by “Michael,” and was in the process of changing his name to Michael Damien Wayne Hutchison. His family called him “Michael.”
Much of the second-guessing of investigative findings by defense “experts” began with the hiring of Brent Turvey of Knowledge Solutions LLC in 1998, as Misskelley attorney Dan Stidham sought a new trial and as the second “Paradise Lost” was filming.
In his book, “The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us,” former FBI profiler Gregg O. McCrary characterized Turvey as a “self-proclaimed profiler.”
McCrary wrote: “Not only has Turvey never completed any recognized training programs, such as those run by the BFI or the International Criminal Investigative Fellowship (ICIAF), he doesn’t even have the basic qualifications to apply for those programs. As a matter of fact, he has never even completed even a basic policy academy training program anywhere. He had, however, authored a flawed textbook on ‘profiling.’”
Turvey, working pro bono, examined photos of the bodies and other evidence and determined that the ditch was a dump site. He claimed at least four crime sites: abduction site, attack site, dump site and the vehicle used to transport the bodies, based on his contention that the attack would have required light, time and privacy.
He based this claim on darkness in the woods, lack of blood and the screaming of the boys. (The attack occurred before sunset in woods well away from any homes and in an irrigation ditch depression that would have muffled sound. The crime scene was not far from busy interstates and service roads. Echols told police how background noise obscured the screaming. The boys were quickly subdued and gagged.)
Turvey also formulated the “bite marks” theory featured in “Revelations: Paradise Lost 2,” continuing to fuel baseless suspicions about Mark Byers. Despite how Turvey was presented in the film, he testified he was not an expert on human bite marks. The “new evidence” uncritically presented in the movie consisted of no evidence.
The huge amounts of money pouring into the defense fund — estimated between $10 million and $20 million — yielded nothing of value.
The fibers from the crime scene matching items from the killers’ homes, Echols’ statement about urine in the stomachs, the blood necklace, the knots used on the shoelace bindings, the semen stain on the pants, blood traces matching Misskelley’s descriptions of the attack and blue wax residue all pointed to the West Memphis 3.
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