Latest / Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast / Episode 2: Bike Tracks in Devil's Den
Transcript
- Paul: Welcome to Crooked Tree, a West Memphis 3 podcast. On today's episode, we'll be talking about several locations in the West Memphis area. We've created a couple of maps that we have posted to our ex account and in our Facebook discussion group if you'd like to use those to follow along. 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 430, 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 455 and he still wasn't at home. So I went on to work and my husband started searching for it. you Hello, everybody. Welcome back. My name is Paul Day, and I'm one of the victims advocates for Chris Byers and for Steve Branch. And I'm here with Kristen Rich. Kristen, you ready to continue this conversation that we started in the last episode talking about these three kids going missing after a very, very nice spring afternoon? Yeah, I'm excited to be back and talk about the investigation as it started to unfold after the boys went missing. Yeah. And probably the easiest place to start with this is by looking at Christopher Byers. And the main reason why he's the easy spot to start looking at this is because his is the best documented. The police reports are very clear in what happened in the hours after he went missing, where he was seen. And so we have a pretty good idea of what happened in those hours shortly after he went missing. So let's go ahead and pick up with him. The last time Christopher was seen was at about 530 underneath the carport. And Melissa's inside. on the phone doing some sort of work call and is oblivious to the fact that Christopher has now left again and is not at home where he is supposed to be. When Mark and Ryan returned from court at about 620, they are the ones that realized Christopher is gone, Melissa is still inside. She doesn't know even at that point that Christopher is not at home where he's supposed to be. So they decide they're going to go look for Christopher and they... start with the usual suspects. They go to friends' houses. He's not over at Michael's house, which would be the first obvious place to look. He had mentioned Stevie earlier in the day. They decide they're going to go by there, see if maybe he's at Stevie's house. But there's a big problem. And the big problem is that Christopher lied about where Stevie lived. Christopher unfortunately lied to his dad about where Steve lived. And the reason why he did so it's because Steve lived in a part of the neighborhood where Christopher was restricted from going to. And so to be able to say, I'm going over Steve's house without getting into trouble. said that Steve lived up in the northeastern part of the neighborhood off of Goodwin and 14th street, which is not where he lived. He actually lived on South Macaulay. So as a consequence, Melissa, Ryan, and Mark are now looking for Chris in the completely wrong neighborhood. Obviously they don't find him there because they never even find Stevie's house. They go to a few other friends' houses, mostly friends of Ryan's where Christopher's also welcome and hangs out sometimes. He's not at any of those places either. They go to Weaver Elementary where the boys go to school, see if he's on the playground. He's not there. They go over to East Junior High where Ryan attends school. He's not there. They run out of the usual places to look. So they decide to expand their search. So at that point, they expanded their search and they start looking off to not only the East, which is where Ingram Boulevard is, they also searched to the South off Broadway and they searched off to the West on 7th Street. And what's connecting 7th Street and Ingram along the Northern part of this neighborhood is a major service road. And they're on record going down that service road at about 7pm. So between 620, where they're kind of looking in the local neighborhood and at East Junior High and at Weaver. They're now expanded it out all the way to this area, to the large thoroughfare streets around the neighborhood. This is pretty relevant because we're heading into a period of time called golden hour. The shadows are lengthening at this time. The sun is now getting very close to the horizon. The sky is turning from blue to golden color to that yellow color. And so with that happening, this is kind of a warning to parents of I better find my kid and get them in. And by the way, this is starting to get kind of frightening. So that's at about seven o'clock. Sometime right around that period of time, they also go into a flash market on Ingram. Flash market is a convenience store that's pretty common in the West Memphis area. Mark Byers ran into two police officers at the flash market. He had a brief conversation, according to a witness, probably asking where Chris was at that time. He then gets back in the car, continues searching and that search continues again in that expanded area. Frantically, they're now looking at 730. They go back down on Broadway looking for Chris again. So on Broadway, there's two establishments right next to each other, one at 2000 East Broadway and one at 2050 East Broadway. Those are the Dollar General and then a big star grocery store. And Mark says it was in one parking lot. Ryan says it's in the other, but they're right next to each other. So doesn't really matter, but they encountered another police officer, a third one. And they talked to him and told him that, you know, the situation Christopher's missing, he was supposed to be home. We've looked all over the usual places. We can't find him. You know, now we're looking outside of our neighborhood. Have you seen him? What should we do? Do we report him missing? That kind of thing. And the officer says, Hey, it's, it's seven 30. It'll be dark by eight. Just wait until eight o'clock, go home, see if he's there. And if he's not home by eight o'clock, call the police and report him missing. so at that point they go ahead and they continue their search. What's really interesting about this is. There's an appearance that the police officer is just kind of dismissive of this. And it's been described this way for many, many years. But when you put together the timeline of what happened that night, it's pretty clear that he did take action on this and that he radioed out that Christopher Byers was probably missing because there was a search and rescue meeting happening at the Crittenden County Sheriff's Department. They actually had a meeting scheduled from seven o'clock to eight o'clock, but they got started late that day. And at seven 24, they began their meeting. And one of the persons that was attending that night was a gentleman by the name of Kevin Johnson, and he heard on the two-way radio right at the beginning of that meeting that there was a child missing. So he was aware of it at about 730. This validates the time that Mark Byers has long said that this occurred right around 730. Mark Byers was well known to the police, the West Memphis Police Department, because he was an informant. And so when he's comfortably walking up to police officers saying, hey, I'm looking for Chris, they know who Mark is. They have a familiarity with him. And so that would have been a case of, Mark is looking for his kid, just be on the lookout for this kid. And it was probably kind of an informal thing at the time, but he definitely didn't do nothing. Mark, Melissa and Ryan speak to this police officer over on Broadway, they do exactly what he says. They start to head home to see if Christopher's there along the way. They are still searching for him. They stop at a couple of more houses to see if he's at friends houses. They don't find him. They're looking up and down side streets. paying attention as they're driving to see if they can find him. They do not find Christopher. As they're heading home and they're approaching 10 till eight, eight o'clock, the light outside is drastically changing. Sunset that night is at 7 49, which means there are nothing but shadows. The sun has disappeared over the horizon at this point. And this is the beginning of blue hour. So the light in the sky transitions very rapidly within a minute from yellow and oranges to. brilliant blues and purples that extend all the way to the horizon where it transitions into a gray color. So this is going to be the beginning of a dark period of time. And by 816, it's going to be flashlight dark. It's going to be that dark. At 742, the moon is rising. There's a almost full moon, 99 % full moon that's arising at that point. It's called a waxing gibbous. And it would turn into a full moon at 1030 that night. Once they return home, Christopher. not there. They do exactly what was suggested to them. gets on the phone. He calls the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office and talks to someone there. And while they're getting information from Mark, they ask where he lives. He says 1400 East Barton. And they say, you've got to call the West Memphis Police Department. That's the correct jurisdiction. So he hangs up with Crittenden County and he calls the West Memphis PD. He reports that he has a missing child and they said they would dispatch someone to his home to take a missing persons report. person is Regina Meek and she was dispatched at 8.08 PM that evening and arrived at the buyer's residence at 8.10 PM. So Regina Meek shows up at 8.10. She starts taking the missing persons report and she's very aggressively filling this thing out. And while they're doing this and Mark is explaining where they've looked and last time they saw him, there's a knock on the door and when they opened the door, it's Dana Moore and she's there with her daughter, Moore. And they say, Hey, are you guys looking for Chris? And Mark was like, yeah, we're looking for Chris. said, well, I saw him earlier today. He was with my son and with Steve branch riding the bikes north on 14th street. That was at about six 30. So that was the first time Mark Byers was aware that Chris was with the other two kids, let alone on a bike. So they had a location that he was going north on 14th street, just north of there. She also had another interesting bit of information, which was that Chris left his. skateboard out in the middle of the road. And that would become important here in a few minutes. So she gave that information and said that, you know, this is the last time I saw them and I haven't been able to find them. And by the way, I just ran into Terry Hobbs. Terry Hobbs has been looking for Steve and he hasn't been able to find him. this point, Dana doesn't want to stick around anymore. Regina Meek is still taking the missing persons report for Christopher. She says, I'll deal with that later. And she leaves because she wants to continue looking for Michael. So she's left the Byers house. Regina Meek continues to take the missing persons report on Christopher. Let's read the missing persons report because there's some interesting notes there that will loom large later on. right. So this is the missing persons report for Christopher Byers. He lived at 1400 East Barton Street. Male, white. The time listed for his disappearance is 530, which is approximately when He was last seen outside picking up trash under the carport. this report was taken at 8, 10 p.m. The notes on the missing persons report reads that, The complainant stated that the victim is his son. The victim is on Ritalin for hyperactivity, but on this date has not taken his medication. The last time the victim was seen, he was cleaning up the yard at 5.30 p.m. The victim was seen at 6 p.m. by Dana Moore with her son who is also missing. Christopher was described as four feet, four inches tall, 50 pounds, light brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing blue jeans, dark shoes, and a long white sleeve shirt. And that missing persons report was given by Mark Byers. And there are a couple of things to note in that description. Christopher did have ADHD. He was on Ritalin, but he had not taken his medication that day. So it's possible he was a little extra hyper because he had not taken his medication yet. The other thing is in the discussion at the door, it says that she saw the boys last at 630. On this missing persons report, Regina Meek has reported that they were last seen at 6 PM. So there is a discrepancy there in the time. there's a similar discrepancy in the time for Christopher Byers because Christopher Byers was last under carport at 530 by Mark. However, the last time he was seen by his mother was closer to 545, 550. So Regina Meek is... somebody who rounds kind of to the nearest earliest half hour. There's an old saying, a lumper versus a splitter, right? She's a lumper. She's just kind of saying, just give me to the nearest half hour and I'm going to write that down. So these times are not super precise and probably shouldn't be relied upon. The last time Chris was seen by his mother was about 5 45 to 5 50. And the last time the three boys were seen by Dana Moore was at six 30. Somebody might be asking themselves at this point, where's Todd Moore, Michael's dad on all of this, because here we've got the Moors over here. Where's Todd? Well, of course, Todd is a trucker and he was gone. This is before the era of cell phones. So he has no idea that there's a problem and he won't know until the next morning. And I know that you had a conversation, well, many conversations with Mark, but in particular about this incident. And he told you that after Dana had left and just as Regina Meek was leaving, Terry Hobbs showed up to his home, correct? So at 829, Regina Meek went ahead and started searching by car, looking for Christopher in particular, but also for the other two kids, because she knew that there were missing kids out there beyond just Christopher, but she had a missing persons report for Christopher and she's acting on that. And so she starts searching by car. Mark looked outside his front window and he realized that there was a truck waiting underneath the pine trees in his front yard. And out of the truck came Terry Hobbs, Terry Hobbs being Steve Branch's stepfather. Now Steve Branch has been missing since 4.30 from from the Hobbs perspective, they've been looking for him this entire time. Terry Hobbs comes up and he says, Hey, you know, my name is Terry Hobbs. My son has been missing too. I've been looking for him. Mark said, I'm Mark Byers. So this is when they meet each other is right at eight 30. So as Regina Meek pulls away, that meeting happens. Their conversation is very brief. Basically, Terry says, I've been looking for him. I've been walking around and I haven't been able to find Steve. Mark says, okay, well, we were looking around in this area. We couldn't find him. And so we just heard. that he was going north on 14th. So we're going to start looking around over here. So Terry got back into the truck and drove off. Mark and Ryan then began going door to door up 14th street, north on 14th. And two very important things came from this door knocking. And one of things they discovered was one, it is absolutely true that that was Chris's skateboard, about six houses up 14th street. So what Dana said was absolutely true. Mark recovered that skateboard and took it back into his house. The other thing that they discovered was that There was a neighbor, two young children were in the car. They were coming home from the grocery store in the car on Goodwin and Goodwin street is located to the north of 14th. They were coming into that intersection of 14th and Goodwin and they said Christopher, Stevie and Michael were riding on bikes and they were going up into the wilderness area to the north of the neighborhood, an area that the local kids call Robin Hood. And that that happened as they were coming home from the grocery store just after 6 30. So you can connect those dots pretty quickly that if. Dana saw them at 630 going north on 14th street. And just after 630, they're seen going into that natural area. That's where they were going. That was the location. And so that should be the place that they should start searching. So sure enough, that's what they do. Mark and Ryan have talked to the neighbors and have kind of a direction of where the boys were headed, they go back home so that they can prepare to go out and search. Ryan decides to call his best friend, Britt Smith, to see if he can help. It just so happened that a couple of other friends are over at Britt's house. That's Robbie Young and Richie Masters. Richie is dating Britt's sister, Michelle. So that's why he's over there. So Ryan explains the situation. Christopher's missing. Some neighbors said that they were seen going into the woods. Can you come help? And of course, Britt's like, absolutely. And then the other boys are like, we'll go too. We'll help as well. And Britt's mom even offers to drive them over there. So this happened at about 8 45 and they're going to head up to the woods and Mark and Ryan are also going to head that direction so that they can look in the area where these neighbors reported that they had last seen the boys. this area where they're heading up to the locals called it Robin Hood Hills or Robin Hood Park or just Robin Hood. You'll see all three of those names used in the documents. It's a triangular shaped park that's located along the Northern part of the neighborhood. It's been there for quite a long period of time. There's little creeks in there. There's animals back there. There's trees, very tall trees. And most importantly, there's little hills and there's bike paths and places to go and run around back there. It's kind of a little paradise for kids. Kids love that kind of thing. And you could put in little ropes and swing across the gullies and things like this. And those were all in there. So to get up to Robin Hood to this natural area where they're seen for the very last time where the search is going to commence, you go north on 14th street. Now, Britt Smith lives on 14th street. He just lives further up the street there. So it was very easy for them to all rendezvous and get together. They went north on 14th street. turn west onto Goodwin. And as you're going down Goodwin, you only go maybe a hundred yards and there's a little concrete area over off to the right called Garden Drive. Garden has a different name for the kids, but it's the entranceway into this natural area and the kids. They call it Devil's Den. So it's kind of got this ominous name. So the last time the kids are seen is going into Devil's Den, this entrance on the eastern part of the Robin Hood Hills area. Now Robin Hood has within it, trees, trails, little creeks, there's hills. The hills are left over from construction projects in the fifties and sixties. A northern edge of it is bound by that 10 mile biodiversity channel that we talked about in the last episode. Goes across there and it extends across to the west. And so it bounds that whole area. it forms this pinching triangle that pinches all the way off to the West. And finally it ends over at McCauley. So it's an area where they went into in the dark and this is where the search is. Once everybody had gotten to the entrance at Devil to Stay In, which is also called the Goodwin entrance by some of the locals, they decided how they were going to split up to search. And I'm going let Paul take that because he knows this really well. So two cars are going to make their way up. 14th street. Now, Britt lives on 14th street. So that's where they're all going to meet together and they're going to go up to the north and then go over to the Devil's Den entrance. There's two cars. There's the Byers. Silver is Suzu and in the Silver is Suzu is going to be Melissa and Mark. They're going to pull up into that driveway on Garden Drive and start looking in Devil's Den right away. The next car is going to be Patty Smith and in that car with Patty Smith is Britt Smith, Ryan Clark. Robbie and Richie. Robbie and Richie are older kids. They're about 17 years old if memory serves. and Ryan were about 13 years old. So the older kids, Robbie and Richie said, we're to go out, we're going to look. We've got flashlights and they started searching in the area of Devil's Den. And while they're out in Devil's Den, going through the woods, they look down at the mud and they recognize a couple of bicycle tracks, not too far inside the entrance area, but they were clearly going from east to west. And so they recognize that there was an abrupt ending of those bicycle tracks right there, but they decided to go ahead and explore it further. And they began going to the Western portion behind some houses of Robin Hood. Shortly thereafter, Britt and Ryan decide they weren't going to just sit in the car and wait for the older kids to do this. They get out of the car. They start searching in Devil's Den. Now Devil's Den is a ditch. There's water moving through. It's a little tributary that feeds into the 10 mile bio diversion channel. There's little bridges that go over it, including one in particular that is quite noteworthy that accommodates a utility road. This bridge was where they were standing when they heard very loud splashes, five to six splashes that came out of the bayou and it scared them to death. They came running out of there as quickly as they possibly could. Of course, when they get out there at this point, Patty Smith and the buyer's car are both gone. So Ryan and Britt decided to take a parallel pathway off to the West. on a street called WECat or as locals call it, WECat, taking WECat to the West until it goes all the way to Macaulay and they ran along that sidewalk as quickly as they possibly could. And in fact, there was a eyewitness to this at about nine to 915. So they were observed doing this. Now the older teens, while they were making their way through Robin Hood in this forested area, following this track, not necessarily the bike track, but this Mub track that goes through, which presumably if there was a bicycle on it would have followed it. They heard a very loud gunshot and the gunshot came from across the bayou in a forested area off to the north. And this definitely caught their attention. It also caught the attention of some people at a local truck wash called the blue beacon truck wash. They heard it as well. So we have kind of a good timestamp for when that occurred. And we now know that that occurred probably at about 8 55 in the evening. So. The older kids moved to the West and finally made their way to the Western entrance, what we call the McCauley entrance or sometimes called the dead end entrance into Robin Hood, following this dirt track. When they got over there, they found the two younger teens standing there at the same location in front of a house, which is pretty iconic, called the White House. And the White House is located at the dead end at the end of W.E.C.A.T. and at the end of West McCauley. They're called Richie, Robbie and Britt all had Flashlights. Well, Ryan did not. And the older boys had a little bit of an advantage when they were tracking behind the houses on WeCat because there are street lights that come on in the evening. There's a line of lights that parallel the street lights in the neighborhood that go along the backyards on WE Cat. So there was some light on one portion of Robin Hood, especially where Robbie and Richie were looking and searching. And also. Very shortly after this, the moon would have been coming up off the horizon. Remember, this is a very large, bright, almost full moon that night. It would go full at 1030 at night and people that were there that night, they actually remark on how bright that moon was. And so when the moon was directly overhead, you could kind of get around without using flashlights at that point, but in the early evening, it was super dark. And so they would have relied upon these lights in these backyards, as well as their pen lights or their flashlights that they had to be able to find their way around at this period of time, right around nine o'clock. Now they've converged. They're all four kids back together at the end of Macaulay next to this White House. And they're trying to decide what they're going to do next. Both sets of boys were independently frightened by sounds they've heard out here in these trees. They don't know what's going on out there. They're not sure they want to proceed further, but they have to. They're looking for Christopher. They then decide that they are going to cross the bayou the only way you can at Macaulay, which is via the famous pipe bridge. what's really interesting is that trail that the two older teens were taking that took them to the White House, it forks. One goes to the White House. The other one goes off north, kind of abruptly down into the 10 mile bio diversion ditch. And when you get down there, there's a pipeline that seems to go across there. Now it's a sewer pipe. It's about 16 inches wide. It's pretty large, but it's supported by two very long I beams on each side. And these I-beams have a seven inch surface across the top that extends seven inches across, but they're about 42 feet long. So you could walk across this bayou on these seven inch wide I-beams for a distance of 42 feet. And so that's what they were confronted in the middle of the dark was going across this deep ditch. Let's paint the picture even a little bit starker since we've been there. We've seen it. The I-beams, the two that go across, they're not next to each other. Right? The rounded sewer pipe is in between those. So the only way you're walking on the I-beams is if you're straddling this pipe. So as I crossed it, I would have one foot on this rounded part and then one foot on the beam. And so it's a little lopsided trying to walk across this pipe bridge. But from what we understand, people did it all the time. There's only two ways you can cross it. You are either going to walk on the seven inch I-beam, cause you're right. There's an I-beam. pipe and then another I beam that is supporting it with girders that are connecting it. You're either walking or like a balance beam on that seven inch I beam, or you have one foot on the 16 inch pipe and another foot on the seven inch I beam. And you're kind of waddling across this thing. And all four of these teens decided to go ahead and make this transit. This is not just kind of a straight move across. Remember it's dark. They're doing this with flashlights. So as you are waddling across this pipe bridge. There's also another hazard, which is the sewer line is connected by a series of connecting plates and those connecting plates have very large bolts that would snag your leg and whatever and trip you up. So you can't just waddle nicely. You waddle a certain distance. Then you kind of got to throw your foot over one of these plates, waddle a little further and throw your foot over another plate. Again, this is not an easy task. I'm sure these kids do it pretty regularly, but you know, I've been across that thing many times and I can't move across it in a few seconds. It's something that takes time and some concentration and effort. And so these guys made that time and that effort to get across this bridge across the pipe bridge. the dark. The full moon and the water moving underneath their feet. So this is a very dangerous thing that they're doing. So they all cross, all four teenagers cross this pipe bridge that you've just described. They get to the other side and there's a path up a little hill across on the other side. How far did they go? So when you come up off this pipe bridge on the other side, you scurry up the bank, which is another eight feet of elevation or 10 feet of elevation roughly. And then at the top of that immediately you transition into a big hill. And that hill has a name it's called turtle hill. It's an additional 12 feet of height on top of it. And so the path just kind of wind straight up to the top of turtle hill. And then it splits into three separate directions immediately. You can go to the West, which takes you off to a truck stop called the union 76 truck stop. also called the loves truck stop, or you could go due North. The due North path takes you straight to the. back entrance of the Blue Beacon Truck Wash, which is a, it's a car wash for big rigs. And the other trail went east into that natural area that we were describing earlier, which is where the gunshot came from. So the boys had three choices where to search and they actually elected to go to the east in the direction that the gunshot came from. the boys are on the other side of the pipe, they are constantly calling Christopher's name, looking for him. They are using their flashlights, looking in the water and the creeks and the bayou to see if they see anything. And one of the teens, I think it's Richie, you know, he, they get scared and say, we got to get out of here. And he noted that if someone was in there and had the boys, whoever that was could get them too. And after hearing the splashes and the gunshot, they realized that this is a dangerous place and they needed to get out. They were very uncomfortable with the situation. The splashes, the gunshot. The darkness, it was very ominous to them. They were very frightened, all four of them. And so then they went over to the Blue Beacon. They talked to the Blue Beacon employees. The Blue Beacon employees said, no, we haven't seen any kids. And the four of them then retreated back across the Pipe Bridge to the White House. And when they were over there, I guess they were talking to the residents of the White House explaining what they were doing. And Regina Meek pulls up and she's searching for Christopher, Michael, and Stevie. Let's discuss Regina Meek's night for just a minute. She's kind of all over the place and we see her come and go that night. As you know, she's dispatched to the buyer's house. She gets there at 8 10 to take the missing persons report for Christopher. Dana Moore shows up at the house, explains Michael's missing as well, but she does not want to stick around and fill out a missing persons report at that time. She wants to go search for her son. This is tucked away in the back of Regina Meek's head. I've got another missing persons report to do. Michael Moore is missing. I need an official report. When I get time, I'm going to go take that report. So this is just floating around in her head as she's answering other dispatch calls throughout the night. After she leaves the buyer's home at 829, she drives around the neighborhood, does a brief search from the car, looking for the boys, doesn't find them. She is dispatched at 842 to Missouri street to a Bojangles restaurant there for a disturbance. She is on scene until 9pm. So she also calls in a license plate at 844. At 901, so right after she leaves Bojangles, she is dispatched again to an egged house on Roy Pugh. And that is in the area where the teenagers are all looking. So she's not far from them at all. She finishes that call at 918. She doesn't have another call going on. She's in the area. She sees activity and she says, I need to do Dana Moore's missing person report on Michael. So she takes it upon herself to go and find Dana and take this official report that he is missing. Dana Moore is in her front yard, which she's discovered by Regina Mink. And so we know where Dana Moore is now at 920 is that she's at home in the yard with Don. So according to the missing persons report for Michael Moore, he is a white male. He lives at 1398 East Barton Street. as we know that is directly across the street from the Byers house. This report is taken at 9.24 PM on May the 5th and Dana will say that he has been missing since 6 PM. Again, that's a little bit of a time discrepancy since Sheila saw him at 6.30. The notes from Michael Moore's missing person report, the complainant stated that she observed victim riding bicycles with his friends, Steve Branch and Christopher Byers. When she lost sight of the boys, she sent her daughter to find them. The boys could not be found. Michael is described as four feet tall, 60 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing blue pants, blue Boy Scout of America shirt, orange and blue Boy Scout hat and tennis shoes. And that is the description given by Diana Moore. So this is at the point where Regina Meek gets some pretty interesting information because she knows these boys are missing. She's finally talking to the parents again for the first time since 829 to be precise. Remember at 829, she just knows that the kids are missing. She doesn't know that they might be up in Robin Hood. So she's going to get this information and drive up to Robin Hood. Now she's aware that Robin Hood has two entrances. There's the one at the end of Macaulay, which is where the White House is. And there's the entrance over on Garden Drive, Devil's Den, right over off of Goodwin. And she's decided that she's going to go to the Macaulay entrance and search over there. look over on that end. And that's the reason why when Richie, Robbie, Britt and Ryan come back across the pipe bridge, a patrol car shows up and there's Regina Meek. And we actually know the almost the exact moment that she pulls up that's 9.30 at night when this occurs. And so this is the beginning of a very interesting incident in the timeline, which is Regina then gets out. She has a conversation specifically with Ryan and says, Hey, where have you been searching? And they said, we've searched this whole area back here. And so she decides to take a look down at the pipe bridge herself. She's going to go look over there. She walks down to the pipe bridge crossing the bayou. And she said that a swarm of mosquitoes descended upon her and that they were tremendous. And that she had decided that there was just no way that three little boys would be missing in that forest with that type of mosquito behavior. And so we call this the mosquito incident. The mosquito incident is occurring right around nine 30. Regina then. crawls back up the slope. She's trying to get away from these mosquitoes. That's not a good situation for her. And she then gets together with the teens and they go across the street from the White House and there's a large apartment complex called Mayfair Apartments. Mayfair Apartments are family apartments. There's a lot of poor and working class people living there. There's playgrounds over there. And so Robbie, Richie, Ryan, and Britt. go with Regina Meek and they actually searched this area specifically around Mayfair apartments, the playgrounds and kind of walking around to see if the kids are over there. They noticed the kids aren't there. And then she takes another call and she gets in the car and she leaves. once Regina Meek leaves, the four teens decide that they're going to do a little search. Some of them searched a little longer than others, but they all wound up getting home by certainly by 10 30. Ryan was the only one that continued to search past that with his dad after 11 o'clock. But prior to that, the other three teens wound up. going back to Britt's house and they didn't participate in the search after that, not until the next day. know what the teenagers are doing. Regina Meek is back on patrol. Where are all these kids' parents? So Dana's still at home. She doesn't go out and search at that time. She's still at home, correct? Yes. The mothers, in this case, the mothers being Melissa and Dana, decide that they need to have somebody home in case the boys come home. Dana is completely dependent upon the search effort of the Byers family to try to find Michael, and she's staying at home because Todd's not there. And so this is a paralyzing event for her where she doesn't know where to go or what to do other than to stay home and to just pray that he comes home. With the situation with Melissa, she was doing the same thing and she was monitoring things from home. But Mark went searching up in Devil's Den. He took the Isuzu up there. Now the difference that he had with the Fourteens was he didn't have a flashlight and he got out. He immediately recognized two things. I can't see and Second, I'm dressed completely improperly for this and I have to change my clothes. Remember the phone call occurred to Britt at 8 45. So they all descended on devil's den and right around 8 50 that night. Mark rapidly realized he's not going to be very effective. And by 8 55, he decided he was going to go back home. He was going to get a borrowed flashlight from his neighbor, his neighbors. name is Robert Fountain. He was not able to acquire one from Robert Fountain, unfortunately. And he also changed into a pair of overalls. Those pair of overalls are famous because he wears them in all of the later documentaries about the case. He's wearing the very same overalls he wore that night. So you can see exactly how he was dressed. And then he returned. Now what's really interesting about this is that infamous gunshot that we talked about earlier, that the older teens and the younger teens remarked on, Mark did not hear it. He was very open about the fact he did not hear that. So we know that that's, can kind of put together that time that during the period of the time that Mark is gone is when that gunshot occurs. So Mark returns after the gunshot. So that means the 14s are now well to the West of where Mark is coming into the area. He does a quick search again. He's doing this by moonlight. He's wearing his overalls at his boots. He does not have a flashlight. So he's not going to be very effective and he's going to come back out to the entrance. And as he comes out to the entrance over at Devil's Den over on Garden Drive, up pulls Terry Hobbs and Terry Hobbs has a friend with him, gentleman by the name of David Jacoby. And David Jacoby is a long time friend of the Hobbs family, especially Pam. I guess he's been a family friend for a very long time. And Terry pulls up and he says, Hey, how are you guys doing searching for the kids over here? Mark says, you know, we're searching around all over over here. We haven't seen any evidence of them. thinking about searching over there by Mayfair apartments. Terry then retorts back David and I, we'd been searching, we were over in the Mayfair apartments. They're not over there. We've already searched that area thoroughly. And so at that point, that's just the first time that Mark met David Jacoby. David Jacoby and Terry then left. This would have been about nine to nine 10 that evening. They leave and Mark then returns back and starts searching by himself because the 14s are gone. His car is there, but Patty Smith is now gone as well. So he's over there and this area searching for Chris and yelling out Chris's name everywhere he could go. Everybody in the neighborhood could probably hear him doing this. In fact, we find out later on that several neighborhood people come in, try to help as well. And they're searching in those woods as well that evening. Not a lot, but a few. so he comes back at that point and he starts searching. Terry will show back up again at nine 19. So in that 10 minutes, we know where Terry is at. He's dropping off David Jacoby and he's going and he's picking his wife up from work who got off at nine o'clock and is now waiting patiently for her husband to come and pick her up. Terry arrives with their daughter, Amanda at Calfish Island restaurant around 919 and immediately Pam goes out to the car to see Amanda. She always takes the kids a piece of candy. She's grabbed two pieces of candy, one for each of her children. And Stevie's not in the car and she wants to know where he is. And that's when Amanda tells her that. Stevie is missing. Terry goes into Catfish Island and uses the phone to call the West Memphis Police Department and report Stevie missing. That call goes to Officer John Moore because Regina is otherwise occupied and cannot go and take that missing persons report. So Officer Moore reports to Catfish Island to take the missing persons report for Steve Branch. Officer Moore covers the adjoining Western Ward. of the city. So he's coming from out of his normal service area to come and help out because Regina Meek is over there helping Dana get her missing persons report filled out when this call comes in. So this suddenly saturates Regina Meek and she says, Hey, I need some help. And John Moore comes over and helps out. branches, missing persons report states that he is a white male. He has been missing since 3.30 PM on May 5th. And this report was taken at 9.25. ⁓ If you look at the missing persons report, you will also see Officer Regina Meek's name on it. What happened here is Officer Moore responded to the call covering that area for Regina Meek because she was otherwise occupied. He will begin the missing persons report. She will conclude it. And that's why both of their names appear on this report. Stevie lives at 1601 South McCauley Street. And the notes say, complainant stated that the victim is her son. Her son left home after school and she hasn't seen him since. Diana Moore stated she saw Steve with her son Michael Moore and Christopher Byers around 6 p.m. They were riding bikes north on 14th going toward Goodwin. The complainant further stated her son has never left home like this before. Steve is described as four feet two inches tall, 60 pounds, blonde hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He was riding a 20 inch black renegade bicycle. And this description was given by Pam Hobbs at Catfish Island. There is some controversy on this one NPR based on the missing time on there. Some people think that says 3.30. Some people think that says 5.30. If you want to take a look at it, go to Callahan's website and look at Steve Branch's missing persons report. There is a image there of the actual report. You can zoom in on it and tell us what you think. It is, if that is a five or a three, making it 530 or 330. think it's 330. Paul thinks it's 530. So you can let us know what you think. I'm on team 530. But yeah, it'd be interesting to see what anybody else thinks taking a look at it. Once the missing persons report has been taken and Terry explains that all three boys are together. They've been searching for the boys over in Robin Hood. Pam wants to go there. Terry, Pam, and Amanda leave Catfish Island and go toward Robin Hood. Officer Moore does the exact same thing. Officer Moore decides to converge with the rest of the parents over at Devil's Den at the entrance over on the Goodwin side, the eastern portion. And Regina Meek, of course, decides that she's going to go ahead and go over to the western side, which is where she intercepts the four teens and the mosquito incident occurs. And that's how they wound up getting together. And that is... where we're going to leave off for this episode. know, there's a lot more happening in this night. And of course, when people are talking about what's going on, every minute matters. Where was Mark Byers that night? Where were the 14s that night? Where was Regina Meek that night? And we think that we put together, to the best of our ability, one of the most reliable and easily verifiable timelines that has ever been put together on this case. So one of the big takeaways from this whole thing is from 6.30 to 9.30, there's been a very large search for the boys. And the only thing that they found is a skateboard out in the middle of 14th street and some abruptly ending bicycle tracks in an area called Devil's Den. And we're to have to pick up on it from there next time because it just gets weirder and weirder as the night goes on. 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. Next time on Crooked Tree. Before I left the house, I picked up the phone and I called the sheriff's department to subject time. I said, look, I've had one police officer out here helping me look for these boys. I said, now I called once, y'all told me what to do. And I did that. I said, now I'm calling now and I want to know why the search and rescue squad won't come out here and help me look for my boy. And they said, well, they're probably at somebody's house and they just forgot what time it is. He said, don't worry about it. said, I'm damn worried about it. I said, my kid don't stay out. said, it's 11 o'clock at night. They're not at somebody's house. you