Latest / Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast / Episode 1: Two Bikes and a Skateboard

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Episode 1: Two Bikes and a Skateboard · Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast

• Paul: Welcome to Crooked Tree, a West Memphis Three podcast. This is the one. This is the case. It's the one that keeps me up at night. It's the one I can't stop thinking about. It's the one that has broken my heart over and over again. It's the one that makes me sad and frustrated and angry. It's the one that I want to see resolved. On a normal day in West Memphis on May 5th, 1993. Three eight-year-old boys did what they do. They went to school. They came home from school. They went out to play with friends, and they didn't come home. The next day, on May the 6th, they were discovered in watery graves in a drainage ditch in West Memphis. Their names were Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore, and I will never forget them. They are the reason that this case is so important. Eventually, three teenagers were... arrested, tried, and convicted for their murders. They are who are commonly known as the West Memphis Three. They went to prison, but many believe that they were wrongfully convicted. So here we are 30 years later, still trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, and will these three boys ever receive justice. My name is Kristen Rich. I'm a criminologist and a victim advocate. My research partner is Paul Day, co-host of this podcast. He is a geologist and also a victim advocate. We have been honored to be asked by two of the victims' families to officially advocate on their behalf. Those are the families of Christopher Byers and Stevie Branch. That does not mean we leave out Michael Moore. We advocate for him unofficially. Over the years, we've gotten to know the families of Christopher and Stevie, and they have been prominent in our work. Representing Christopher Byers is now George Byers. Christopher's father, Mark, tragically passed away a few years ago and George took up the cause for their family. Sheila Hicks-Mews is Stevie's aunt and she has long been the victim advocate for Stevie's family. They both have decided that they want to say a few words to all of you on behalf of their families. On behalf of Pam Hicks and myself, I would like to thank Kristen Rich and Paul Day for their tireless effort for the years of driving, interviewing people, and a search for the truth. Hello, my name is George Byers. I am Mark's brother and Christopher's uncle. Almost 33 years ago, my nephew and his friends were taken from their families and brutally beaten to death and thrown in a drainage ditch with their hands and feet tied together. The families still grieve for the loss of these young boys. Beyond that, we have never gotten justice. Jessie Miss Kelly, Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, have all served 18 years of their life in prison for murders that they did not commit. The people responsible have never paid for what they've done. I hope this podcast will help uncover the truth. Thank you for listening and if you know anything about the murders please reach out to the podcast and any information will be very helpful. Hello, my name is Sheila Muse and I'm Stevie's aunt, Tam's younger sister. We will be working as a family with the Byers family, with Kristen Rich and Paul Day on Exonerating Damien, Jesse and Jason. We do not believe that they are guilty. We believe they are innocent and deserve exoneration. We want more people to join us to fight for the injustice that was done to Stevie, Michael, and Christopher. They deserve answers. We deserve answers. The case, if anyone knows it, knows that it was just a complete travesty. miscarriage of justice, mishandling of evidence. It's just, we want answers and I feel after 32 years, we deserve them. So if you would join in with us, please join, call, message me. If I can be of any help to anyone, just let us know. But Stevie's family is joining in with George Byers, for Christopher, and the light for justice. you Hey, Kristin, we've been talking about doing this for a long time, having a conversation about the West Memphis Three and sharing some information and insights on the case with people that have a deep interest, not only in this case, but in true crime broadly. Do you think you're ready to do this? This is a pretty major endeavor we're talking about doing here. I am ready. It's going to be epic and I'm ready to get started. So I'm Paul Day. I'm one of the advocates for two of the victims in this case. I've been studying this case with Kristen for over nine years. I've become good friends with the Byers family. I knew Mark before his passing. And we've been working on this case for a long time. He had some interesting information he wanted to share. Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to give it. But we're looking forward to getting this stuff out. And I think that anybody who's going to go for the ride with us is going to have an interesting ⁓ go of it. you're going to get new perspectives. And Kristen and I have dug deeply. Kristen has lived this case. I have lived this case. ⁓ I'm more kind of an evidence guy. Kristen has been more of a witness kind of person. But together, our synergies have come together to put together kind of an amazing dossier on the case. And we have some unique perspectives that I'm really looking forward to putting out there and seeing how ⁓ people react to it. It's been a long time coming and I'm excited that we finally get to share our knowledge with everybody else and hopefully it will spark a lot of debate and questions that people will come to us with and we can sort those out with them as well. So let's start this conversation. Let's start talking about what happened that day with the kids that got this thing going. This first episode hopefully will bring people right up to speed on not everything is the way that it... it appears at first. So we're going to tell this from a victim's standpoint. And so that means we're going to start with the victims and the fact that it was a Wednesday in West Memphis, Arkansas, which is located right across the Mississippi River from the great city of Memphis, Tennessee. This is 1993. So this is a period of time when alternative music and heavy metal music was all the rage. You know, there was, it was just a different era than exists today. And these kids were raised in this period of time. So we're going to focus on these kids. these three eight year old victims and we're going to look at the case through the prism of their experience. So let's start talking about the three of them. And in particular, let's start with Steve Branch, little Steve Branch, second grader, Weaver Elementary. Let's talk about how his day unfolded, at least the starting of his day with respect to his mom. according to Pam, it was pretty much a normal day. know, Stevie went to school like he did every day. Big difference is that she was out with Amanda, his little sister, and Amanda was acting up a bit, maybe a little cranky. And she decided that they were going to pick Stevie up a little bit early because she needed to take Amanda home and deal with her. So normally school would get out at 3 p.m. and they signed Stevie out around 2 45, so about 15 minutes early so that they could get home. So they walked home at that time. Pam did not have a valid driver's license, so they walked. It was just a few blocks from their home. So not a big deal. It was a beautiful day for a walk. And they picked him up early and headed back to their home. she had a suspended license at the time, and there was some financial hardship happening in the household. They didn't have a phone or anything like this, and that's going to loom large a little later on. But yeah, it was an interesting day for them. My view on this is they walk out of Weaver Elementary. Weaver Elementary is located about a quarter mile to the north from where they live. And they're walking through these tree-lined roads, in particular 14th Street in West Memphis. You know, it's going to be shade trees covering the streets and the avenues in the area. It's really quite nice in the spring. It had been raining a couple of days, so you can imagine they were having a nice time. And in fact, Pam, when she reflects on this walk, she's talked about the fact that Steve was singing and dancing around her and, you know, doting upon his mom. letting her know how much you loved her and just have it a good time. mean, he was a good-natured kid and Pam, of course, was a good-natured mom. the other two are Michael Moore and Christopher Byers. They were also second graders at Weaver Elementary. They also had a very typical normal day there at school. They ate their lunch. What we say it was? Hamburgers, fries? Hamburgers, french fries, chocolate milk, and fruit and a cookie. Yeah. Okay. So they did all those normal things, had a typical day. They got out at three o'clock at the normal time and they would also walk home. Michael has an older sister named Dawn, who also attended Weaver Elementary. So he would walk home with her. He lived literally next door to the school. So it was a very, very short walk to get home. And then Christopher Byers lived across the street on the opposite corner from Michael. So same walk basically. So they both got out at three o'clock. Michael walked home with his sister. Christopher walked home by himself. old was Dawn? She was nine or 10. Nine or 10. Yeah, nine or 10. She was at the elementary school with him, right? Yeah. Her exact birthdate is redacted in the files because she's a juvenile. So Chris would have gone probably with Michael, walked on over. In fact, there was one other witness that said that Chris and Michael did walk together after school. Dawn would have gone over to her friend Kim's house shortly thereafter. And Mike, of course, is now looking for a friend. He's home. He's looking for a friend. And so he's decided he's going to go hang out with his friend Steve, who got out of school a little bit early. So he's headed down that way. Chris, of course, sees this. Chris has a kind of a problem, though, in that he gets home and his dad isn't home. And Chris's dad is a guy named Mark Byers. He's a very important person in this case. Mark has got a medical appointment. and he's not home from it yet. And Chris is kind of torn between staying and waiting for his dad to let him in or seeing his friends have a good time about a quarter mile to the south over at Steve's house. So I think he's patient for a very short period of time. And then he says, the heck with that. There's a party down there and I'm headed that way and I'm going to go down that way. So he followed up after Michael had already left and tried to catch up with Michael over at Steve's house over at 1601 South McCauley. So it wouldn't have been that far. It shouldn't have been that long for him to get over there. When Stevie got home, he had already done his homework. So when Michael got there, he begged for Stevie to be able to go out and ride bikes with him. Stevie had just gotten a brand new bicycle from his grandfather and was excited to ride it. And so they implored Pam to please, please, please let them go out in the neighborhood and ride their bikes together. Pam's only hesitation was that she had to be at work at five o'clock. At this time, it's about 3.30 ish. And she told Stevie he could go. as long as he was home by 4.30 so that they could take Pam to work. off they went, Michael and Stevie on their bikes. It's probably to Pam's benefit that that happened because Pam had just been promoted to a management position and she was in training for it. so she was. an hour away from going into work that day for that training. So she was out there washing her waitress uniform. She had her four-year-old daughter sitting on the couch watching Muppet babies, hoping to keep her under control while at the same time trying to get dinner made and plated for her husband who hadn't come home yet. He would arrive sometime after four o'clock. His name is Terry Hobbs. And so she's out there making green beans, Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes and plating that while getting her uniform ready while watching her daughter while, you know. trying to make sure that her, so she was probably happy that, you know, hey, I've been letting him go and run around this neighborhood for an hour and give me, you know, keep his, keep him occupied while that happens. So then shortly after they leave, Christopher shows up to their house. He's looking for Stevie and Michael and he's just missed them. They've already left. But Christopher has a little crush on Amanda and he... is talking to Pam. Pam tells him that the boys have already left, but he notices that Amanda is watching Muppet Babies. And he likes Muppet Babies, and he likes Amanda. So he asks if he can watch with her. So Pam says, sure, and lets him in. And so he sits and watches Muppet Babies with Amanda for 30 minutes. from about 3.30 that day until about four o'clock. Now, this, of course, is a problem because he's supposed to be home, and he's not home. And this is going to become a major issue here. shortly for him. yeah, Chris is an interesting character. He's enjoying his time with Amanda. He's not exactly running out the door with his buddies. He's got Muppet babies and a cute little four-year-old that he's got a crush on that he's going to sit there and spend part of this shady afternoon with. This is a good afternoon for this kid. And the other two kids are out there riding bikes and having a good time. Steve's bike is new to him. He'd gotten it about two weeks earlier from his grandfather. And so he was pretty excited to go. you know, jetting around the neighborhood on this thing. It had been raining for a couple of weeks and it was just kind of bad weather generally. So this is the first good clear day where his homework is done. He's got his best friend with him and these guys are just jetting through the neighborhood, having a great time on their bikes. It sounds like it's like the makings of a perfect afternoon. Cinco de Mayo, 1993 in West Memphis. Like it couldn't be any better. Pam sees all three kids, right? They've come and gone, all three boys. Yeah, by four o'clock she's seen all three of them come and go. Yeah. So shortly after Christopher leaves the Hobbs house, after he's watched Muppet Babies with Amanda, he leaves and just after that, Terry Hobbs, Pam's husband gets home. He's Stevie's stepfather and Amanda's father. They're half siblings. So Terry arrives home from work. He works at Memphis Ice Cream and he is going to be taking Pam to work. So he's expecting Stevie to be home with Amanda and they're all four going to take Pam to work at Catfish Island at five o'clock. He arrives home and Stevie is not home. And so he asks where Frogleg is, that was his pet name for Stevie. And Pam tells him he's out riding bikes with Michael and that he's to be home at 4.30 so that they can go to work. So it's, you know, obviously just a few minutes later after Terry arrives home and Stevie's not there. And I believe Terry says he goes out in the driveway and looks up down the street to see if Stevie's nearby. Yeah, you can go out in the front yard there. When you're standing at 1601 South Macaulay, you can look straight up the road there. And you can look down Macaulay as well and you can see if there's any kids in the vicinity. I think it's straight up 16th Street is what you can look up from their front yard. So yeah, he said that he looked up the road. He didn't see him. He looked down Macaulay, didn't see him, came in and he was, you hey, where's he at? Let's look, we need to find this kid. So they ended up staying, they were planning to leave it. 430, 435, they hang out a few more minutes to see if Stevie shows up by 445. They need to go. And so he has not shown up, but Pam knows he's with Michael. So on their way to work, they drive by Michael's house, see if he's there, if their bikes are there, whatever, and they're not there. So they go ahead and go on to Catfish Island, drop Pam off for her shift. And Terry comes back with Amanda and he says that When he got back, he got Amanda out and they went walking around the neighborhood, up and down the streets, looking to see if they could find Stevie and he doesn't see him. So that's kind of how he described spending his afternoon that day was, know, Steve didn't come home at 430. They weren't over at the Moore home. He couldn't find the bikes over there. The one thing that's kind of interesting is he was walking the area. It makes kind of sense if you're going to say he's walking. It's it's nice weather. There's kids out. You'd probably be talking to the kids. could drive the neighborhood. I will talk about the street design a little bit later, but you don't have nice clear lines of sight with the exception of 16th street and 14th street. You don't have nice clear lines of sight. You can only see about a half a block down the road and then the road curves or it switches. goes in a different direction. So driving is probably preferable, but if you're just kind of casually looking for a kid that's, know, you're not really worried about that much. You know, you're just trying to, Hey, where'd he go? He's supposed to be here. He's, he's lost a little bit. I got to remind him that he needs to get home and check in. It kind of makes sense that he'd be walking around with Amanda a little bit. he's occupying her and she's getting rid of some of that energy she's got as a four-year-old. So it makes sense that he would walk for a little bit. Yeah. And to that end, we're going to be talking about Mark Byers here in a minute. know, Mark Byers, his timeline is that he's there at 3.30 looking for Chris. Chris disappears for a little bit. And I had the chance to ask him at one point, I said, Hey, Mark, did you ever see Michael and Stevie that day. You know, I know you've seen Christopher and we'll talk about that here in a moment, but did you ever see the other two? And he said, I never saw the other two boys at all. I didn't know that Chris was even talking to them that day, with the exception of a brief conversation I had with him about Steve living in a different part of the neighborhood. So beyond that, he never saw them and didn't even dawn on him that they were playing together at that point. Michael's mother, Diana Moore, who goes by Dana, says she got home just after the boys got out of school. She didn't see Michael. Michael had asked his sister Dawn for permission to go to Stevie's house, which she gave him because she was going to her friend Kim's house. And so shortly after that, arrived home and she would say that she saw Stevie and Michael in and out of the house. A few times that afternoon, she saw them out playing around in the neighborhood. She doesn't mention Christopher then, but she did see Stevie and Michael. running in and out of the house there. Yeah, there's no indication that anybody had seen Christopher at that point from anybody at that time because well, he's down there watching Muppet Babies, right? So we know where he is. But at the same time, Dana's seeing Steve and ⁓ Michael coming in and out of her house and through the neighborhood there. Mark Byers is out in his front yard at 338 and he's yelling at Ryan Clark, his stepson, saying, hey, where's your brother Chris? He needs to be home. We've got an appointment at four o'clock. We've got a mate over at the over at the courthouse. So Mark is not happy. He doesn't know where his son is. And of course his son is just blissfully over there watching Muppet babies a quarter mile away. Unfortunately, Chris misses their appointment to go to the court with his dad and his brother. Of course, Ryan Clark, his brother, he was a witness in a hit and run case and the court, I think was open from four to six or something like this. So the hearing was relatively short. So Mark had to... basically leave Chris there. He didn't know where Chris was and he packed Ryan up and they headed off to the courthouse. So Chris is just there by himself and his mom is at work over in Memphis at this time. you know, this is going to be a problem for Chris when his dad finally finds him later on. Michael and Stevie are out playing in the neighborhood. Christopher will return home after he watches Muppet Babies with Amanda and he's got a skateboard. He doesn't have a bike like the other two at that time. And so he's going up and down the few houses next to him playing with kids. There's a neighbor right next door that he plays with this little girl a lot. Her name's Lakeitha. She says, you know, she saw him. She played with him that afternoon. And then Mark had to go pick Melissa, his wife, up from work while Ryan was in court. Correct? Yeah. So, and Mark is in court too in the audience and he leaves from court to go get her. Yeah. To go get Melissa. So he goes to get Melissa and takes her home. And when he's leaving their house again to go back to court to pick Ryan up, he finds Christopher. Yeah. That's about 530 when that happens. Yeah. He does. He's, Christopher is riding on his stomach, on his skateboard down the middle of 14th street. Yeah. Which is a big no-no. Yeah. He's in trouble. Big time. Yeah. Yeah. He was not allowed to go south on 14th and it was a rough neighborhood. It was just a dangerous place to be. And he wasn't supposed to be there at all, much less on his stomach on a skateboard in the middle of the road. So Mark finds him, scoops him up and takes him back home where he is punished. He was spanked, ⁓ as was common. I was spanked a million times in the nineties. I'm sure you were too. That was a pretty common thing, but I do think Mark, you know, didn't he tell you he kind of regretted doing that that day? Just because of how it would turn out. There's plenty of recordings actually of Mark being extremely distressed over the fact that he spanked him this day because of the circumstances that would play out shortly thereafter. But yeah, it was not just that. It was the fact that Chris had also broken the seal under the window and he was extremely upset about that as well. Chris didn't have a key to the house. know, some parents didn't trust you with keys. When I was growing up, I didn't have a key to the house. It was unlocked. You got in or you found a window or whatever. And that's basically what Chris was doing. He found a window and unfortunately tried to push into the house and he broke the window seal and Mark caught that. Of course, there's Chris south of Barton Street. So the intersection of 14th and Barton is key because that's where the kids live. But when you go south of Barton on 14th, that was a restricted area, not allowed to go down there. And of course, the problem is that's where Steve lived. So how do get to Steve without going into the forbidden territory? Well, you know, that was another problem. So yeah, Chris, ⁓ he missed his waiting for his dad after school. He disappeared for two and a half hours. He's riding on the skateboard on his stomach, breaks the seal on the window. He's in trouble. And Mark spanked him and told him he had to pick up the papers under the carport. And then he left to go pick up Ryan from court because that was the only car they had at the time. so Melissa, his mom is at home while he's there at the carport. She is on the phone, preoccupied. And so she sees him come in and out. He goes upstairs to his room, comes back down, gets a snack. And so she thinks he's just in the house doing things, but he disappears again because it's too tempting to not go outside on this beautiful day and play with his friends. think he was probably also smarting from the punishment that he got a little bit. I don't think he wanted to be inside. I think he was a little temperamental probably at the time. In fact, Mark talked about that in one of his police interviews that Chris was smarting and he walked in and got some water and a cookie, went upstairs, went back outside and Melissa said he just went outside and that was kind of... She didn't even think about it. He goes outside. You know, it's what Chris does. He's an independent person. We're going to talk about their personalities here in a little bit. But he's a very independent kid. And so the idea of him going outside, that was not considered anything to be worried about at all. And he was probably just outside playing with his friends. You know, he's got that skateboard. He's got two friends on bikes. It's pretty likely that he's going to intercept them. And to that matter, let's talk about Chris's transportation. He had a skateboard. He had a bike, but his bike was not working. So he had apparently traded for a skateboard sometime in the previous 72 hours and probably within the previous 24 hours, probably just because he wanted to be with the other guys. So he might have even done it that day. So it's kind of interesting. That's the kind of guy that Chris was. Of course, ⁓ Mark had done a lot of work in the pawn industry. So it's possible that Chris had a little bit of that in him and he was pawning stuff left and right, making trade. he had this... this pawn skateboard that he was riding around on trying to track down a good time that afternoon. don't know if Mark ever told you, did he specifically tell Christopher he had to stay at home or he's just to finish cleaning out the carport and there was no further instruction? I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, no, Mark actually made that very clear to me that Chris was instructed to stay home. So Chris kind of defied that to some extent, I mean, as well as Chris could maintain any of the stuff, Chris was defiant in general. But yeah, he was supposed to clean up the carport. Mark was going to go and get Ryan come back from court and they were all going to go out to get some food. That was what they were supposed to be doing. And I think that, you know, nobody was looking. Melissa's on the phone. Mark is gone. Hey, I'm going to goof off for a couple of minutes and nobody's even going to know. Mark goes back to court to pick Ryan up and Christopher's at home with Melissa. Melissa is on the phone and she's deep in conversation and thinks he's around, but he has absconded again. It's a good word. Yeah, he's taken his skateboard and left the building. So Christopher's off out somewhere. I don't know exactly at the moment. His parents have no idea. We would find him, but his parents have no idea where he is. And he's certainly not where he's supposed to be. No. So Terry's looking for Stevie. And when Mark returns, he will be looking for Christopher again for the second time that day. And where are, where's Michael? Is he still with Stevie? Where is Michael now? So when we... are tracking where Michael is. Michael's a little easier to find because he's running around in a Cub Scout uniform and everybody knows who Michael Moore is. He's kind of a local celebrity amongst the kids that are in the area. So is Chris for that matter. But Michael Moore is running around in a Cub Scout uniform riding his bicycle and he's with Steve. So Steve is missing. His stepdad is walking with Amanda Hobbs around the area looking for him, but Steve is with Michael. riding his bike up north of Barton, kind of in the area where Chris probably should have stayed. Instead, he went south and he got spanked by his dad. But we know that they're up there into the five o'clock hour. And by the six o'clock hour, Dana Moore is walking her dog and she realizes it's dinner time, it's time to call Michael in. And so she just happens to look down 14th Street, which has a curve. And on that curve, she looks down there and all three boys are together. Chris is on Steve's bike up on the handlebars. Michael is riding his bike right behind him and they're going north on 14th Street, all three of them, and Chris leaves his skateboard in the middle of the road. They disappear around that curve and Dana says to Dawn, who by this point has come back from her friend Kim's house, hey, it's dinnertime. Can you go up there and get Michael to him to come home? And Dawn went up there and she was not able to find him. that would have been sometime between six and six thirty. Yeah. So by six thirty. According to all of their parents, all three boys are missing. They're not where they're supposed to be. They don't know where their kids are. actually by 6.30. So when Mark comes home at 6.20 from court, he's like, let's find Chris, let's pick him up and go get food at Shoney's, which is a local restaurant there. It's now closed, but it was there at the time. They were supposed to go pick him up at 6.20. And so they started driving around the neighborhood looking for him to pick him up. And Dana has already set Don up the street. They're now searching for Michael. So the Moors are looking for their kid. Terry is looking for his stepson with Amanda since five o'clock. Hasn't found him. So here we have all three kids at 630. We know they're all alive. They're all playing. They're on bikes. They're riding away. And all three families are actually started a search, which would turn into a major search very soon. These kids are going north on 14th Street and they just kind of ride off into the ether. These parents are never going to see them again. Pam Hobbs last sees Stevie at 3.30 when he leaves with Michael. Melissa Byers last sees Christopher about 5.45. Yeah, about 5.45. Somewhere in there. And then Dana last sees Michael along with the other two boys sometime between 6.15 and 6.30. Yeah, that's probably the most reliable times between 6.15 and 6.30. There's some controversy in that time, but we'll flesh out the fact that it's 6.15 to 6.30 is the correct time. And by this point at five o'clock, again, Terry is now moving on foot. We got two car searches happening for him, but this is really about getting kids home that are, they're past curfew, right? It's dinnertime. The streetlights are almost certainly on and bright. And so they're supposed to be coming in and they're not coming in. So I think now's a good opportunity for us to take a moment to realize that there's something very strange is happening here. You got these kids that are very well tracked. They had an expectation that they should be in at a certain time. They kind of disappear into the ether. Who are these kids? They all have interesting personalities in play. And there's an interesting mix of how they interact with their environment and their families and the neighborhood. And I think that's a major part of. what we need to understand and unravel some of the behaviors and some of the things that we're doing that day. So Christopher, as we've said, eight years old, goes to Weaver Elementary. His mother is Melissa. His father is Mark. His brother is Ryan. And Chris's biological father is not in the picture. He is adopted by Mark a couple of years before this happened. But Mark is really the only dad he's ever known. He didn't really have much contact with his biological father. Mark has always been dad. And a lot of people, when they talk about this case, refer to Mark as his stepfather, but Mark was more than that, right? Mark adopted him. He became his son and he was always his dad. So that a very close relationship. said that Christopher always called him dad. And he actually said Ryan, who was his stepson, also called him dad. So Christopher was a very spirited child. He kind of moved constantly. He did have ADHD and he was on Ritalin for his ADHD. But he just, he had boundless energy. He was just always doing something, wanting, you know, to be involved in something. And he was called Wormer by his family because he was squirmy and wormy and was always on the move. He could be a bit of a challenge because of his personality. In addition to the ADHD, he would talk back sometimes, be a little defiant, just like leaving his house when he's supposed to be being punished. underneath that carport. He kind of did what he wanted to do and it got him into trouble sometimes, but he was super, super likable. Christopher had a lot of friends. And my favorite thing is that Christopher's brother Ryan adored him. He loved Christopher. And when we were talking to a friend of Ryan's from back then, he, don't know how many times in the conversation he'd talked about how much Ryan loved Christopher, loved hanging out with Christopher. He wasn't that typical older brother who has this annoying little brother following him around and wanting to be in his business. He included Christopher. He went out of his way to include Christopher, hanging out with his friends, whatever they were doing, whether they were riding skateboards or playing video games or watching TV or whatever. He included Christopher and that relationship was really, important to him. has really taken a toll on him after the events that happened. by all accounts, he misses his brother terribly. Yeah. He's, you don't recover from something like this. So, you know, and think about that day. When did Ryan see Christopher that day? Never did. Before school, I assume. Yeah. He went, they all went to school that morning and that was the last time he saw his brother was that morning. And before Christopher was seen going north on 14th and never seen again. It's one of those things you just, you're never prepared for. No. And I don't think he's ever recovered from it. You know, we know people that are close to him and it stings to this day. What about, well, in terms of people that knew Chris though, he was, because of his closeness with his brother, he had a lot of friends and he was, you know, he was, he was welcomed in most people's homes. You know, he was an eight year old kid, but he would knock on a 13 year old kid's door and say, hey, can I come in and play Nintendo? And he would do that. So for him to go over to Steve's house and kind of plop down on the couch presumptively. you know, to watch Buppet Babies. That's nothing for Chris. That's typical Chris Byers in that neighborhood at that time. And if there was something going on and he wanted to be a part of it, he found a way to be a part of it. And if that meant he got in trouble from time to time from his parents, because he wasn't home on time or whatever, it was just kind of who Chris was. It was just something he dealt with. You know, he's like, I'll deal with my parents. You know, I'm going to live in the moment kind of thing. He was definitely a free spirit. Yeah, I guess you could put it that way. And then his good friend and neighbor, Michael, whose name was actually James. His name was James Michael Moore, but he went by Michael. He lives with his mother, Dana, and then Todd, who we haven't mentioned yet. His father was a truck driver and was not home on this day. He wouldn't get home until the next morning. So Todd is just kind of not mentioned because Todd wasn't there at the time. was working. disappeared. Yeah. He was off working. And then of course his older sister Dawn as... Paul already mentioned Michael's claim to fame was wearing that Cub Scout uniform. He loved it. It didn't matter if it was on a day the Cub Scouts met or not. He was often seen wearing it. He was proud to be a Cub Scout and he wanted everybody to know it. So he wore that thing all the time. I'm talking the shirt, the scarf, the ball cap, the pant, the whole nine yards. Yeah. What's really funny about it was they actually had a scheduled. Cub Scout meeting on Thursday, the next day. Yet he's wearing his Cub Scout uniform, riding his bike around that day. getting it all dirty. He actually had kind of a cool little trinket that he had with him too, that he'd gotten, I think that weekend, I think Saturday or Sunday of that previous weekend, which was a little sheriff star that said Mike on it. And he was carrying that with him that day as well. So, I mean, he was, the guy, what do they call that? He had pieces of a flare, you know, on his uniform when he was going around. So yeah, this kid's got some personality and everybody knew who he was. And if you didn't know, you could look at the badge. Right? It's Mike. Right here. Yeah. So he was fun. He was dedicated to the Cub Scouts and he was a leader, right? It's something they teach you in Cub Scouts, but he was just naturally a leader. He was the leader of the three of them when they were together. He had a little girlfriend like his friend Christopher. ⁓ And her name was Nisi. And I don't know much else about her. Do you know anything else about her, Paul? She lived in the neighborhood. She was a young girl. mean, I haven't, she doesn't really play a major role in this other than the fact that he had a crush on her. She lived in the neighborhood. The closest that this would touch anything is later on her uncle would be interviewed about some of the happenings in that neighborhood. And he was the one that actually tells us this information because nobody else, I think even really knew it. yeah, Michael. Maybe. mean, I don't know. mean, the only time it was ever mentioned was in these documents with her uncle. But yeah, Nisi, if you're listening to this, just know that Michael, you were his one true love in his life. anyways, I just love that these, all three of these kids, by the way, wound up having girlfriends, because it turns out also Steve has one too. And so there's this glue that keeps them together and it's more than just their own friendship. It's their admiration for one another's sisters. Yes, which takes us to Stevie, who, as you know, lives with his mother Pam, his stepfather Terry, and his half-sister Amanda. And he was a fun, fun kid. He was super energetic and adventurous. As Paul mentioned, he loved to sing. I've been told that tapes of Stevie singing are some of Pam's prized possessions to this day. She loves to, you know, listen to those over and over again. And he loved to sing. He would have been great at karaoke, I do believe. He was a fun kid. loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as many kids did back in the day. And he loved to do the karate moves. I don't know who he practiced those on. Hopefully not his little sister. Probably did though. And he would do the flips and the jumps and all of that. He had boundless energy, much like Christopher. And he also had a couple of pets. He had a turtle and a dog. He was also in the Cub Scouts with the other two boys. The difference, the big difference probably with Stevie is that he was a good student. He was very well mannered. He mostly obeyed, obviously not on this day, but he was a good kid. He did do his homework on time. He paid attention in class. He didn't act up. That was not Stevie's thing. He was dependable and he was good kid. Recently, I talked to his aunt, Sheila, Pam's younger sister, and she was telling me some stories about Stevie. And she told me that once she had taken him to the grocery store with her and he wanted some sort of treat. and she told him no. And just like in a television show, he got down right in the middle of the aisle kicking and screaming and threw a tantrum. And she's embarrassed and she's telling him no, but he's looking at her with this twinkle in his eye and he's laughing. And she just ends up laughing because she said he was so charming. She couldn't stay mad at him. And she ended up giving in after she said no. She couldn't say no to him because he was just a funny, fun, loving kid and he could charm his way out of anything. And she also told me that he was a daredevil. He would do anything. He'd talk to adults, sometimes talk back to adults. He loved to like run and play and like jump over creeks and he would jump off the high dive of the swimming pool. And he just, he loved all kinds of daring activities. She did tell me that the one thing that he was afraid of was the dark. He was very afraid of the dark and that just kind of broke my heart when she told me that. My impressions of Stevie or Steve is actually what most of his friends called him. His mom called him Stevie. And so you'll hear case researchers kind of go, most of them call him Stevie because that's what Pam called him all the time. But she's given interviews when people said, well, what does friends call him? She goes, Steve. So I kind of go between the two of them. And when I'm talking about Steve, I'm talking about little Steve branch. And did we mention his dad, by the way? We haven't mentioned his dad. The fact that Steve has both a stepfather, Terry Hobbs, who we've mentioned before, and Steve Allen Branch, whom he's named after, who's also an Arkansas gentleman that is Pam's first husband. I believe she married him when she was in her teens. They didn't have a good relationship. They broke up. so later on, Pam would marry Terry Hobbs, who I think she met in the restaurant business. those, that's our three boys that are missing, right? That's what we know about them. Those are their personalities. That's how they interact with each other. And so they go missing in their neighborhood, which we haven't really talked about yet a whole lot. So their neighborhood is called Holiday Gardens. And there's a lot of houses pretty close together. It's really dense, lots of neighborhood streets, single family homes. There is ⁓ an apartment building in the neighborhood as well, Mayfair Apartments, but mostly single family homes. don't know, Paul, can you describe? The streets are kind of funky. Like how would you describe how the streets operate? The way I would describe it to somebody is imagine a cross with a spiral on it. It's kind of like that. The cross streets in particular that I'm talking about is right where the boys live, which is Barton and 14th. These are major roads that come in and out of Holiday Gardens, ⁓ that subdivision. Spiraling around it, almost like a large intestine, is Macaulay. And so there's this little North Macaulay, which then transitions into East Macaulay. And so when we're talking about North Macaulay, East Macaulay, South Macaulay and West Macaulay, those are the locations of those streets relative to the center of this cross at 14th and Barton. So if you're on West Macaulay, you're at West, you're on the Western portion. And it's, what's really strange is that road is a North South trending street. So you almost got to look at a map to kind of understand it. It's just kind of a bizarre neighborhood. Nothing is straight. Everything is bent and. contorted around. If you want to get from one place to another, you kind of got to know, you got to grab this side street, which connects to this side street, which connects to this side street. And it's not an easy thing to kind of navigate through unless you've been in the area and you know it well. Well, these kids clearly knew this neighborhood pretty well. The main thoroughfare along the northern part, if you wanted to bypass a lot of, you know, the school activity, which was on Barton Street, you'd take Goodwin, which went up to the north. If you wanted to get around to the south, you go around South Macaulay, which went right past Steve Branch's house. And then bounding this up to the north and to the south are bayous. There's two of them. Large channels are for flood control purposes. The first one is the 10 mile bayou channel, which was built sometime prior to 1950. It's quite old. Later on, another one was built in the 1950s, late 1950s to the north to help improve the drainage for that area so they could actually build holiday gardens. And that's the 10 mile bayou diversion channel. where it's diverting water away from the other bayous. So they're supporting each other. And in between this is this entire holiday garden subdivision. So it's almost like, it's almost bizarre because it's almost like an island. And if you look at it on a map, doesn't look like an island and it certainly has roads and stuff like this, but it actually functions like one. To get in and out, you got to cross bridges to get into the, to the neighborhood. And so there's these, you know, specific points where you can get in and if you're not at one of those points, you can't get in and out of the neighborhood. And that's going to play a major role in what's going to happen in the upcoming discussions and conversations we're going to have. But Macaulay is kind of strange in that it's kind of spirals from out of the middle of the neighborhood, goes around to the east, to the south, to the west, and then it actually just goes right up to the 10-mile bio diversion channel up to the... Northwest there and it just dead ends. It's almost like they had intended to build a road there that went straight across at one point and just never completed it. And it's still to this day is like that. It's never been completed. So it's kind of a bizarre situation. Nothing is straight. So you have no straight views of anything. So that was one of the problems that, you know, Terry Hobbs was having. That's one of the problems that Mark was having. Dana certainly had that problem. There's also an interesting series of cut-throughs where if you're in the middle of the block, you could look over and there's this big open walk area. You could almost drive a car through there in certain places. So you could be looking for your kid up by one of these cut-throughs and you don't know they could have gone to the north. They could have gone to the east. They could have gone to the west in particular where Dana last saw the three boys at six 30 between six 15 and six 30. There's a cut-through that goes off to the east. There's also the. elementary school, which is off to the west. So you go right into the playground area of that, or you can go north to an area off Goodwin, which is another road that I just mentioned earlier. And once you get on Goodwin, then you can go anywhere in the neighborhood. So it's one of those things where once they got out of sight, they were definitely out of sight and you were kind of doing some guesswork and trying to project where you think they might have shown up. And this is not going to be an easy task. we know from just an anecdote from being there, if I was at the Hobbs residence, We figured out like we could go from the Hobbs residence to the north side of the neighborhood on a bike in like five minutes. less. Yeah. It's, it's everything's really close together, but there's a lot of streets and a lot of houses. It's very, very dense and compact. Yeah. Dense and compact is exactly the words I would use. I mean, you can get from, you can go from the southern part of the neighborhood to the northern part of the neighborhood on a kid's bike in probably four minutes. Yeah. And with time to pass, but you're really moving pretty quick to do that. If you're on a skateboard, probably seven to eight minutes max. It's a lot of people, a lot of eyes, a lot of interactions, but at the same time, it's small enough where if you wanted to get to your house or get from point A to point B, you could do it very quickly. And we're going to find in future conversations that people are walking to other people's houses and they're just there in a few moments. It doesn't take very long, but you look on the map and it looks like they moved halfway across the neighborhood. And then in like a little bit of a broader context of where West Memphis is. So to the east of West Memphis, you've got an interstate exchange, right? You've got I-55 and I-40, which are both major interstates. I-40 going east-west, I-55 going north-south, and they cross each other right there at West Memphis. And then on the other side of those, we've got the Mississippi River. So there's a lot going on right there. Those two interstates come together right at West Memphis so that they can combine and go across the Mississippi River on the same bridge. There's also a lot of train traffic that goes across bridges that come along there, but that's a major thoroughfare. There's several bridge systems that go across there and they... It's a major connector, right? People talk about St. Louis being kind of a major connector across the Mississippi, but Memphis is definitely probably in many respects as important, if not more important, certainly in that region. So yeah, there's a lot of traffic. There's a lot of stuff moving through there. And of course, all the people and all the trucks and all the problems that's moving along with that, you know, the graffiti and the transients and the drug pushers and the prostitutes and all the other stuff that are. playing a role and we're going to have to talk about as we go through these conversations on this case. in addition to all those truckers coming through, we've seen like, you know, stood and watched like by the Mississippi River, like tons of barges, because there's tons of freight that gets taken up and down the Mississippi. And then there's also a railroad system through there, right? Yeah, the railroad system is one of the most active railroad systems I've ever seen in my life. And I've done contract work for Union Pacific Railroad and I've seen a lot of rail traffic. But when you go to Memphis, it is just constant, constantly moving through there. And it's just because of that bridge system that funnels everything to West Memphis and into Memphis as we're shipping things from the East Coast to the West Coast. all of these things are going to complicate the investigation that's going to take place by the West Memphis Police Department, right? Yeah. Well, that's another story for another day because, you got three kids that are missing in this little neighborhood. disappear and... you have that as the environment. This is your search area, right? Memphis, Tennessee, and West Memphis, Arkansas, and all the people that are in there that might've played a role in making them disappear. I was thinking from a police standpoint, you have to stand there and think in one hour, for example, how far could someone get if someone took the boys? There's so many possibilities that they had to have been thinking of when they were investigating this case, but we're going to get to that another day. I think that's maybe a good place for us to stop. Yeah, it was a good conversation and hopefully people get a lot out of it. Hey, I mean, it's a mystery, right? So here are the big takeaways. Where was ⁓ Steve Branch at 430? Why didn't he come home? Why was he seen at 630 and he didn't check in after that? Why didn't Terry find them? At 630, where did the boys go? Why were they headed north when it was dinner time and it was past their curfew? They were expected to be back home at that point, all three of them. Why was it that they went missing? yet all three sets of parents were already searching for the kids. So this is a, it's one of those bizarre things that people just will scratch their heads over. And we're going to be digging into those very questions and seeing if we can come up some, I think some compelling answers. The conversations I think are going to be fascinating. you want to talk about media at all? Any prerequisites? Any recommended watching for? anybody that wants to get involved in this case? Anybody who wants to get involved in this case has to make sure that they're aware of what's in the media. In particular, the documentary Paradise Lost. Documentary Paradise Lost is what really brings this to the public eye and makes it the focus that it is, not just for us, because we all watch Paradise Lost, but it's the whole world saw it. This is like the kind of the first major shocking documentary in true crime that came out and it just, it's a fantastic documentary. You might not agree with some of the results and some of the conclusions in it, but there's no doubt that it's an amazing piece of filmmaking history that people should watch. But if you really want to get something, you know, some insights into the families and kind of see what they look like and understand it, you got to watch Paradise Lost and understand that they're, they don't hold back. They show things that we would probably consider shocking even to this day, even though it came out in the 1990s. That's that's a clear prerequisite. The other thing is, that we're very lucky that this has been researched. subsequent to the release of that documentary by thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who have acquired documents from the West Memphis Police Department and from other sources and have put all those sources online for the public to review. And it's all available at a place called the Callahan website, which is available. You just put in the word Callahan, named after Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry Callahan, and then put in, so Callahan WN3, which stands for West Memphis Three. And that should take you directly to the Callahan website. Once you are at the Callahan website, you should see all the documents, including many of the trial transcripts, if not all the trial transcripts, much of the audio for many of the interviews. We have reviewed literally every single document on that website, every single one. And it's taken us nine to 10 years. So you might enjoy these conversations where we're going through it so that you don't have to go plowing through them all by yourself. You know, we're going to be covering almost every single one of them. in our conversations. At least that's the plan. That's the scope of work that we've laid out for ourselves in doing this podcast. If you want to join the discussion, we strongly encourage you to contribute to the case by following Crooked Tree Pot on Facebook, on X, or to follow us on YouTube. I pray to you, Lord and Savior that the information from Kristen and Paul will help shine your light of truth on those who are responsible for the deaths of these three young innocent children. I pray that there will be closure for their families and I praise you Lord for Christian and for Paul and for the blessings they have become to the families of these boys that they may continue helping others with their tireless efforts to see justice done. I ask this in your precious name, Lord, a name so sweet for greater. Amen. Next time on Crooked Tree. After school, Michael had come over and asked, Stevie go to his house and play to Michael Moore's house, the other little boy. And at first I told him no, and he kept begging, so I went ahead and told him that he could go, and I gave him a time to be home. I told him to be home by 4.30, that if he wasn't home, he would be grounded. And I had to go to work that night, and I left for work around 4.00. 55 and he still wasn't at home. So I went out to work and my husband started searching for it.