Latest / Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast / Q&A #1: Regina Meek’s Night, Creek Evidence & Other Listener Questions
Transcript
- Paul: Welcome to this bonus episode of Crooked Tree, a West Memphis 3 podcast. Welcome back everyone. I'm Kristen and I'm here with Paul, my co host. And we are gonna do something a little bit different with this episode. We let our participants in our Facebook group know that we were gonna do a question and answer session and allow them to ask us questions. And they came up with a lot of great questions, didn't they, Paul? Yeah, it was really overwhelming to see the types of questions and the depth of the questions that were being asked. And so we look forward to getting into these and of course If you're interested in asking a question or participating in the conversation, make sure you join us over on Facebook. We'd love to have you. Yes, absolutely. And before we get started with those questions, we just want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you, to those listening, to participating in our group. A special thank you to the families of the victims who have shared so much information with us. It's a bit overwhelming. We started this just because we wanted to share the information that we have. We didn't know if we'd have ten listeners and they'd all be family members or what would happen. And we are just really blessed that so many of you are listening to this podcast and coming along for the ride with us. And we just wanted to say thank you. And I know that it means a ton to the victims families that are listening to this podcast that you guys are engaged, that you're interested and that you want to find justice for these children. And your contribution really makes a difference. And again, thank you to everybody who's listening. Okay, this question is from Jen. Jen asks, can you go into the source for Meek's timeline? I know a different podcast has a slightly different timeline for her. And the answer to that is yes, we are happy to go through Meek's timeline. The best place to go first is to the West Memphis Police Department dispatch logs. You can find those on Callahan under the West Memphis Police Department and they have them all listed there. But we'll go through her timeline here because there's some additional sources to find times for her that night. She worked the three to eleven shift on May the fifth and she has badge number two fifty-six. At eight ⁓ eight PM, she is dispatched to fourteen hundred East Barton. Yeah, that's Mark Byers' house. She's responding to his call that came sometime in the previous ten minutes. Right. So she's there to take the missing persons report for Christopher, and that report is time stamped at eight ten PM. And then she is back in service at eight twenty nine. In the Eccles Baldwin trial, she says that after she left the buyer's house, she rode the neighborhood looking for the boys. Yeah. There's no evidence that she even got out of the car at that point, that she was just driving around, right? Yeah, she actually said that in trial that she did not exit her vehicle during that search. Yeah. So this is definitely not the mosquito incident. In fact, at this point, she doesn't even have the information. in her hand to tell her to go look up in that area up by the pipe bridge. So she's just kind of cruising around in the immediate neighborhood. Yeah, if you'll remember Mark and Ryan talked to the neighbors after the missing persons report and found out that they were seen going into Devil's Den. So at that time she didn't even know that's where the boys had gone. All right. At eight forty PM she is dispatched to the Bojangles restaurant on Missouri Street. Yeah. More about Bo Jangles at a future podcast. Yes. She is back in service at nine PM and at nine PM as well. She is dispatched to Roy Pugh for an egg house. Which is interesting because that brings her very close to where the four teens are searching over by the White House right around nine o'clock or where they will be at about nine o'clock. So it's possible she saw activity over there at that time. Yeah, absolutely possible. In fact it's probably one of the reasons why she's was motivated to start looking ⁓ independently. She probably saw the activity. She is back in service at nine eighteen from that call. And the next part of her timeline is gonna come from a few different sources, including Michael Moore's missing persons report, her testimony in the Eccles Baldwin trial, and a statement from Robbie Young, who is a friend of Ryan Clark's and searched with him that evening. If you'll recall, Dana Moore did not give a missing persons report when she was at the buyer's house when Meek was dispatched there. So at this time Officer Meek has decided to go find Dana Moore and do that missing persons report. His missing persons report is timestamped at nine twenty four PM. Then during the Eccles Baldwin trial, she says that after I took the report from Mrs. Moore, I was able to check a little further. I started checking empty houses in the neighborhood and I started going to this wooded area. I got over to the pipe and I went ahead and stopped. I didn't believe that three eight year old boys were gonna be out that time of night 'cause the mosquitoes. Prosecuting attorney Fogelman says, What time was it when you went to the area where the pipe is at the dead end of Macaulay? Officer Meek replies, It was probably it was shortly right after I took the report from Mrs. Moore. So it was right around nine thirty, maybe a little after. Yeah. So remember the pipe bridge is right next to the White House and she's gonna pull up over there and my understanding is this is when the four teens run into her. Right. And they had already been over across the Pipe Bridge and have now returned and they're talking to the residents at the White House when she pulls up. And then so she wants to see the Pipe Bridge for herself and that's when the mosquito incident happens. Yes, and then she starts searching with the four teens. Yeah, so she searched with Ryan and his friends at the Pipe Bridge and then over at Mayfair briefly. And Robbie Young's statement to police on May the fifteenth, nineteen ninety three. He confirms this and says that he saw a female officer at the White House and he told her about the possible gunshot that he had heard. So the next call on the dispatch log is at nine thirty-four, the dispatcher calls Regina Meek to send her to eleven ⁓ one North Ingram to a liquor store or liquor business. We think that that was not a call she responded to. We don't think she went to that call. The reason is because in the notes on the dispatch log, the dispatcher has written in two other officers' badge numbers. That's two seventy-one, which is Officer Schrader, and two twenty-three, which is Lieutenant Joplin, and then has check marks next to them. I'm assuming that means they were actually dispatched to this location. Beyond that, there's two columns, one for on the scene and then one for back in service. And those both have split times. The times coordinate to Each officer showing up from that location and then leaving that location. There is no record that Regina Meek reported to that call. It looks like those two officers responded instead. She's dealing with a very serious problem. She's got three missing kids in her ward. And I think people are saying this guy up there at eleven ⁓ one North Ingram, whatever the situation is up there, is certainly secondary to three missing children. Another reason that we believe she did not respond to that call is because on June twenty first, two thousand and seven, Terry Hobbs is interviewed by the police. And in that interview, he says that when they leave Catfish Island, that he sees Meek and she talks to him about the mosquitoes that she encountered at the pipe bridge. We've talked about the fact that Officer Moore reported to Catfish Island to take that missing persons report on Stevie Branch. He is back in service from that call at nine forty, then radios into dispatch at nine forty two PM and says that he is on Goodwin attempting to locate juveniles. That is important because we know that Terry, Pam, and Amanda followed Officer Moore over to Robin Hood. So in order for Terry to have encountered Regina Meek, she would not have been able to take that call. Yeah. So We have clear evidence at this point that it's after Michael Moore's missing persons report, which was at nine twenty four, and prior to nine forty two, which is when John Moore is checking in, because we know that Terry and Pam are following John Moore over to Devil's Den. And undoubtedly Regina Meek runs into him shortly after that. Probably moments. Yeah. Yeah. And in between all of that, she's at the Pike Bridge, she's at Mayfair, she's talking to the fourteenth. There's no way she got all that accomplished if she took this other call. Yeah, so I think it's pretty conclusive that the other two guys took the other call and that Regina Meek continued the search. All right. At ten twenty three PM, she is dispatched to Parkway for a loud music complaint. And she is back in service at ten thirty. The next time we know where Meek is is at eleven PM. And that is from testimony from Melissa Byers in the Eccles Baldwin trial. She says, Seems like It was around she said that her shift was fixing to change. So she came back by the house. She'd been driving around the area. ⁓ we talked about that previously in the timeline that Officer Meek showed up at the buyer's residence around eleven o'clock to let them know that she was going off shift and that she would inform the other officers that were coming on to shift that there were three eight year old boys missing. And then in the Miss Kelly trial, when she's testifying, she says that she continued to search a little bit longer. Until eleven fifteen or eleven twenty, and then she headed back to the police department. Yeah, so she's gonna put in a few extra minutes of overtime while there's a shift change going on. She's still looking for the kids before she's getting out of there. So she's a little late getting off shift, most likely. I find this question to be one of the most interesting and important questions that is frequently not asked, which is where was Regina Meek that night? She's a very important person in the timeline because her movements are very well documented in the police logs. And when you take her timeline and you put it together with Mark Byers' timeline, suddenly you have a very powerful scaffolding on which the rest of the timeline hangs. I think a lot of people overlook that. Like you said, this is Meek's ward. This is all happening where she is serving the community. And so following what she is doing that night is very important. Yeah. I mean nobody else is walking around searching and carrying around a notebook, but effectively Meek is, right? Because everywhere she's going, she's checking in. Right. And letting people know what's going on, and then she gives sworn testimony later on that matches exactly what we're seeing in the logs and matches what Mark Byers said he was experiencing and it matches what the fourteens are saying. Right. So it's independently corroborated over and over and over again. And so we know that we have a very good foundation on which to start building a comprehensive timeline for that evening. I don't think there's really any question that this is her timeline. Yeah. What do you think the source of the confusion comes in? Because most people that have covered the case that have made the mistake of not putting the mosquito incident at nine thirty, they tend to put it at eight thirty. My inference is in listening to them is that the common cause of the error is they listen to the trial testimony and Meek's just kind of generalizing, not really being hyper specific about where she is and when she's doing certain things. And then there's a point at which prosecutor Fogelman hands her the dispatch logs and then she goes over pretty much the minute by minute discussion that you just gave. And I think a lot of people don't get to that point and they just kind of start assigning, well, she had she ran into mosquitoes and she was down by the pipe and they assumed that that was the first place she went. It turns out that that's just not a good assumption. And I think some of that confusion comes from maybe reading the transcripts from the Myth Kelly trial, but not reading the transcripts from the Eccles Baldwin trial. Because she is very vague in the Miss Kelly trial and is much more detailed in the Eccles Baldwin trial, she's very clear that after she left the buyer's house that she rode around the neighborhood and she says that she was looking from her car. She did not exit her car. And so that was very clear. She did not go to the pipe bridge at 8 30. The next question comes from Jamie. Jamie wants to know is there any particular history to Robin Hood Hills that is noteworthy or known via? courses such as town records, historians, etcetera. Also, was the area known to law enforcement, and if so, in what context? Well, there's a little bit that's known about it. In doing research on the name Robin Hood and how it got its name, the locals in the area don't really have an answer for it. They just said it always was that. When you do old tax records and you start looking at the old subdivision records, there is the occasional mention of the word Robin Hood back in the late nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. So it's entirely possible that the area back there got its name early on and it was just kind of lost to the local people living there in holiday gardens because the Ward Robin Hood was probably an early idea for a subdivision name and then it was abandoned. But the name kind of stuck it has this area up there to the north. In terms of any other stuff that's going on over there, my understanding is it just has a you know, it was a haven for kids to play, but it was also a place where transients hung out and there was the occasional drug deal that went on back there. Anything you wanted us say about that? I mean, nothing in terms of like a murder or anything like this was ever reported, is my understanding. From our research and talking to people who live there, we know that Robin Hood was frequented by children. A lot of kids went and played there. And we could because we were kind of incredulous that people crossed the pipe frequently because it's not the easiest cast. And people we talked to that lived there said, Yeah, it happened all the time. Kids played back there. It was a fun area to play in. So I imagine that police officers knew that, you know, kids like to go back there and play, ride their bikes, ride three wheelers, that kind of thing. But as far as finding any information about, you know, crazy things going on in the woods, I haven't come across anything like that. Yeah, Steve Jones was well aware of it and he started going over there on WE Cat and Goodwin right before the discovery in the creek. Right. So it was known to them and the police clearly knew this area was back there and it was something they kept an eye on. Yeah. And Officer Jones you guys will recall is a juvenile officer. He he has kids on like probation that are juveniles. So he heard all kinds of stories from kids and he knew that they hung out there. That's why that's important. Yeah. So next question. Let's just keep it rolling. The next comment comes from Chris. Chris posted this comment on a photograph posted in our Facebook group of the shoes and the hat floating in the unnamed creek. He says, I've never understood how the searchers didn't find this sooner. That's two tennis shoes and a Cub Scout hat. Surely it didn't all float up at once. I wonder how much search effort actually took place in the Blue Beacon Woods around this unnamed creek. And I think this is a good question. What do you think, Paul? Yeah, it's a great question. Without being there, I mean the records suggest that certainly from about six o'clock in the morning on until about I don't know, about eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock when the helicopter certainly is gone. There's police presence all over the place. But prior to that, you know, it was dark, it's hard to see. Mark doesn't have a flashlight and it's hard to speculate on what kind of coverage was going on prior to six o'clock. You're our scientist. So this is kind of what I was thinking when I read Chris's statement. And let me know what you think because you're the expert here. Is it possible that those items were caught on a root or a tree branch or something in the water? And then with the water movement that they were dislodged at some point. You know, people have been looking around and they didn't see them. Is it possible that they were somehow dislodged so that then they became visible at the time that they were found? So it's entirely possible when you have an active creek system that you have differences in flow that could either dislodge things or cause things to be caught off in roots and not be seen previously. In the case of the items that are seen, they're clearly being obstructed in the water flow by roots. So that is one explanation is is that the creek just changed. There's just something that changed that affected where these items are distributed in the creek so that they're now visible at the surface. But there's another interesting issue also. Remember that when Mike Allen and Steve Jones are up at the top of that bluff and they're looking down into the creek, Mike Allen said it was ten to fifteen feet. It's probably about ten feet. It's maybe a little bit higher, eleven, twelve feet total to the top of that bluff, but it's high. And so we have what we call a a bit of a slot canyon. that is running th through the woods. And that slot canyon is oriented north south. So imagine where the sun has to be for it to shine to the bottom of that and actually illuminate that creek. Exactly. Well if it's north south, it has to be roughly about between, you know, I'd say eleven thirty to, you know, one thirty, that kind of thing. Well the call came in saying, hey, we s see these items down here in the creek at about one fourteen. The actual call says close in the creek, right? That comes in at one fourteen, well that means that the sunlight is coming straight in from the south to the north and illuminating the bottom of that creek and it's only going to be illuminated for a short period of time. And for the first time, anything that is white, like a white shoe, is going to become very visible in that creek. Whereas previously, without the illumination, it would just look like garbage within the murky, muddy water. Right. That photograph that's posted in our group, it looks like the camera is right on top of those items. I would say also that, you know, people searching, they're in different spaces. And they're looking in different places. It's possible that you couldn't see those items except from a particular angle. Yeah. In fact, Steve Jones said you can really only see the items if you stand right on top of the bluff and look straight down on it. You had to catch it. So you had to have the shoe illuminated at the same time. You had to be in the right place at the right time looking down on it to be able to see it. So it's entirely possible the items were distributed differently in the creek and they came to be pressed up behind that root system. Which is now holding it in place and now we have a white shoe that gets illuminated by the sun and now it's gonna suddenly pop out. It makes it very visible. And that would have occurred sometime around noon, noonish, right? Between eleven and one thirty, something like that that day. That makes perfect sense. Okay. Kim asks, apologies if I missed it, but does the unnamed creek flow into the diversion channel or out of it? The unnamed creek flows south and it flows down into the ten mile biodiversion channel. And we're gonna have to do an extensive discussion of what that Creek does because it's gonna have an impact on how you treat this crime scene. Next question comes from Jen and she asks, How do you know Chris lied about where Stevie lives? I've never heard that reported before. In Mark's interview with police, he commented on the fact that Christopher lied to him about where Stevie lived. He's being interviewed by Detective Ridge. Detective Ridge says, Okay, what do you know about the other parent? Mark replies, ⁓ as far as Pam and Terry Hobbs, well Christopher, smart little rascal, I told him that going down fourteenth towards Broadway, that I didn't want him riding bike, skateboard, or any direction down fourteenth. I said if you want to play, you ride down fourteenth towards Goodwin. They know you stay this way. Don't head towards Broadway for any reason. And when Stephen turned up as a buddy of his, I asked him, I said, Where does Stephen live? And little boys were As little boys will do, he said, Well, you know Ryan's buddy Joe, Joe Garner, who lives on Holiday Drive. The Garner's got four or five boys and they live on, I think, holiday circle or holiday drive, which is just kind of back behind us. Ridge says, Uh-huh. Mark says, They have one son named Joe, who's Ryan's age, and they got another one named Clint, who's like a year older than Christopher. And Christopher told me, he said, Well, Stevie just lives a couple of houses down from Joe. I said, Okay, he lives just right over there by the Garner's Yeah, I said, Okay, you can go play with him. 'Cause Christopher knew if he'd have told me that they lived down there on Macaulay with that bayou in their backyard, that I wouldn't have let him gone and played with Stephen. You know, kids are smart, they'll figure you, and he knew that I wouldn't have let him go down there. I basically did not know Terry and Pam at all. I thought they lived back there on holiday, and when we were doing our hour and a half searching around that neighborhood, we went up to the garner's house and asked if they knew where Stephen lived, that it was supposed to be a house or two on either side of them, and they said, Well We know who lives over here and we know who lives over here and there's no little Steven that lives over there. So both Mark and Ryan acknowledged that little Stevie Branch had only entered the friend group playing with the other two kids in the previous couple of weeks. Brian had only seen him a few times hanging out. And Mark and Melissa had no acquaintancehip at all. They had no idea where Stevie lived. They didn't really have any interactions with him. They didn't know Pam. They didn't know Terry. The relationship that did exist existed between the Hobbes and the Moors. Because they were very active in the Cub Scouts. Okay. This question comes from Sheila and it's actually a statement, not a question, but she says during episode three there was no mention of Stevie's biological dad, Steve Allen Branch, being there during the search hours after my dad arrived. So she wants to know why we did not mention him during the search on May the fifth. Yeah, and so just for those that are trying to keep track of all the people in this case, Sheila Hicks is Jackie Hicks's daughter and Pan's younger sister. I decided to go through documents to see what I could find regarding Sheila's question. The reason we didn't mention him in the search on May fifth is because he's not mentioned by anyone else. This is what I found in the documents. Pam and Terry both were interviewed on June nineteenth, two thousand and seven. Pam says and I'm quoting what exactly what she said and I will quote exactly what Terry said. Pam said around six AM, that's when daylight was getting here and that's when Todd came home. And Todd was finding out what was going on and we was still looking, you know, in this wooded area. We were looking in the part where the pipe was. We never went over the hill to go into the area that Steve and them were found. Steve's father did though. And then a few a few comments later she says, Okay, well when Todd finally arrived, well, when Steve arrived, we went out onto that wooded area and stuff again. So she's saying that sometime after six AM, after it was daylight, that is when she first saw Todd and she first saw Steve. Terry says, again quoting, Daylight, ⁓ Pam had made the statement to police or somebody that her ex husband she thought done it. Because we couldn't find Stevie and we didn't know where he was. She thought he might kidnap Steve. So they called him and he comes down the next morning. He later says he's talking about a bum that he saw near Robin Hood on the morning of the sixth during the search, and he says Pam was there and it seems like Steve was there. Pam's ex husband might have been in that area. I'm not sure if he had made it here or not, but I don't know. So according to both Pam and Terry, Steve was not present until the morning of the sixth when they had resumed their search after sunrise. Well at at least he hasn't interacted with them until that point, right? So if the police had reached out to Steve Allen branch, Stevie's dad, and it happened the night before. He may have been in the area, but nobody c crossed paths with him. And it's it's entirely possible that Jackie was aware that Steve was in the area, but there's no record of him actually searching with those guys at that time. But it's entirely possible it's true. We just don't have a record of it. That's the question. And and of course, this is one of the problems in this case, and we're gonna bring this up over and over and over again. Steve Allen branch was never interviewed in a formal way by the West Memphis PD, so we don't know where and when he arrived. We don't have his view or his his side of any of this stuff. It's just kind of a big open question. In fact, Jackie Hicks Senior was never interviewed by West Memphis PD. The reason why we know his story is because he talked to the media and because he told his family and his family has transmitted that information to us. Right. I have a few more notes. Mark Byers, ⁓ this is much earlier, on May nineteenth, nineteen ninety three, when Mark Byers was interviewed, he says The next morning we got to looking and I came down seventh street first thing and as soon as I crossed the bridge I saw Todd and Terry and Steve Branch's biological father was right there. Interesting. We we went over the fact that Detective Ridge began his search early that morning and when he went to Robin Hood, the first person he saw was ⁓ Steve Branch, Stevie's father. That's very interesting. Yeah. And of course this issue of trying to remember who was where and when they were it would have been very convenient if we had that record at that time. One of the first things you would expect the West Memphis PD to do is get all the parents, you know, guys were out there searching. What time did you show up? How did you find out about the situation? And ⁓ unfortunately for many of the parents that didn't happen and for the few that it did happen, happened much, much, much later. Yeah. So the short answer is he wasn't mentioned on the night of the fifth and that's why we didn't mention him. Because we don't have any documentation that Steve Branch was there. Yeah, it would be nice to be able to say where he was and what he was doing and when he was driving down. And if you know, all of those questions could be answered cleanly by looking at the actual records. So they just aren't there. No. So the other people's eyewitness accounts of seeing Steve Branch is all we have to go on. Those are all the questions or statements that are about the episodes. We have already released episodes one through four. The following questions. our kind of general questions about the case and skip ahead farther than what we have covered so far. We're gonna answer the questions, but if you don't want any spoilers, you should stop listening right now. Yeah, you can come back and listen when the time comes, but we're gonna try to answer these questions the best we can ⁓ without at the same time ruining your podcast experience if you are new to the case. All right, here we go. The next question comes from Dustin. Dustin wants to know why there isn't a police facial composite drawing of Mr. Bojangles. I would imagine there would be some living employees from the restaurant and the police could still obtain one. That is an interesting question. And the answer there's a couple of reasons. One is that the police did not have any idea that anything happening at Bojangles had anything to do with the three missing boys. As you recall from the police log, Regina Meek is dispatched to Bojangles because she is covering for John Moore at that time. So she is going to a different ward to Bojangles to take that call. She is asked about this on the stand during the trials and she says I did not put two and two together. I did not think that anything about the incident at Bojangles had anything to do with the three missing boys. So that's the first reason. Second, eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable for the most part. So even if customers and employees had been asked at that time for a description of this man, it would not have been very accurate according to all the statistics about eyewitness testimony. In fact, there is a brief description of this man by a couple of different people and they give different descriptions, which we will cover later. So even at that time, the descriptions aren't accurate, they don't match. They are not similar necessarily. So asking employees years and years later, you can imagine how inaccurate their description would be. As far as a facial composite drawing, if there was anyone there, I looked just to see if there are studies on facial composite drawings. And what I found was that about five to eight percent of drawings are accurate once they find the suspect in question. So once they've arrested a person or convicted a person of the crime and they go back and look at the composite sketch that was made of that suspect, only five to eight percent of them actually look like the guy that did it. So they're not very accurate either. ⁓ there are some people that are super successful. In fact, I read about a woman who lives in Dallas, Texas, who is the number one sketch artist out there for police. She's helped like thirteen hundred cases get solved, which is amazing. So but most of them are not accurate and I have no idea, honestly, if West Memphis PD even had a sketch artist at that time. So I have an anecdotal story about bad memory just kind of show you how bad it is, especially if something strange is going on in front of you. ⁓ I think it was about fifteen, sixteen years ago, my sister and I went to a bank in Southern California and my sister said, Hey, I gotta go to the ATM really quick and as my sister went up to the ATM, she put the card in and started doing her thing. I was standing out in the parking lot just kinda waiting for her to get her money and come back. And I see this guy running across the parking lot. He had a giant wad of cash in his hand. I mean, it looked like a football. And this guy was sprinting. And I said, Man, why has that guy got all that money? I mean, it didn't even dawn on me that I was witnessing a bank robbery and that the guy was running out and was clearly trying to fish out the diepack. But I didn't know that at the time. So I'm watching this guy run out. And my sister said, She came up, she was I don't know what just happened. The ATM just ate my card and something's going on w something weird with the bank. And sure enough, Within two minutes, the patron started coming out after this guy had run out of the parking lot and said, You know, we just got robbed and s we realized that we were suddenly witnesses to this. So when the police came, the interesting thing about this is my sister gave a very good d detailed description of what he looked like, everything from his hair color, skin tone, what he was wearing. But what was really notable was he was wearing a hat. And my remembrance of him was he was wearing a old school Legionnaire hat, like you would have seen probably in the late eighties. And I was absolutely convinced that he was wearing a Legionnaire cap. And my sister looked over at me and she said, No, that's wrong. He was wearing a fedora. And I looked right over at her and I said, He was absolutely not wearing a fedora. He was wearing a legionnaire hat. I mean, he was running right in front of me. You had your back to him. And I was completely convinced with trying to persuade her that it was a Legionnaire cap versus a fedora. Well, lo and behold, the newspaper article comes out the next day. He's called the Fedora bandit. So I was completely wrong. But I was completely persuaded that to my position that I was right. So anyway And my understanding is the guy was never caught, but I'll never forget this guy as long as I live. And in my mind, he's still wearing a Legionnaire cap, even though I know for a fact he was wearing a fedora. So that's how memory works, right? And it just happened right in front of me. My eyes were on the money, not on his hat. So my brain filled in a Legionnaire cap when in fact it was a Fedora. Yeah, and there's an interesting phenomenon too, where if you're in a trauma situation, a stressful situation, people do one of two things. Either they remember everything. Every minute detail, they remember sounds, they remember smells, they remember what everything looked like, they remember how things felt. Or they're so traumatized they can't remember any of that. And so it's a toss-up on whether or not people would have remembered it. There were no customers or employees asked the manager who called from Bojangles, gave a general description of this man. And that's all we have to go on. And asking anyone this many years later probably wouldn't yield much in the way of the description. And when we cover Bojangles, we're gonna reveal that there's an ambiguity there. And just like the Fedora versus the ⁓ Legionnaire cap, there's a one of those that's playing out in there as well. So we'll come back to that. That'll be a that'll be a fascinating conversation. Probably a series of conversations because Bojangles is the gift that just keeps giving in this case. Yes he is. Our next question comes from Cheryl. She asks, so when they were searching the night before the boys were found, were they ever really close to the boys? I asked because I wonder sometimes if the person who did this was hiding in those woods waiting for people to leave so they could get out of there undetected? Or was the person kind of mixed in with the searching people? The timeline is so tight that it is hard to understand how someone or people did this and got out of there. Yeah, she's asking the million dollar question that the police had to wrestle with, that researchers since nineteen ninety three have wrestled with, which is still in controversy to this very day. How was someone or someone's How were they attacking and ultimately killing three eight year old three rambunctious eight year old boys at at the same time there were people searching and no one heard anything? Yeah, and where are the bicycles, right? So that is a critical question that in order to narrow this thing down, we have to establish time of death. And I think that that is one of the big questions that we're gonna have to tackle while we're doing this podcast. It's the question that just keeps coming back, but when did they die? What we do have it narrowed down to so far on the podcast, episodes one through four, is that they disappeared at six thirty, going north on fourteenth street. That was when Dana Moore saw them for the last time. And then they're found again at one fourteen, or at least their clothing is found at one fourteen the next day there in the unnamed creek. So the burden is upon us to try to narrow that time of death down so that we can start to ask ourselves questions. Is it reasonable to look at searchers? Is it reasonable to look at outsiders? Is it reasonable to look at Somebody in the neighborhood, those types of questions. So time of death is a pretty important question. It is. And that's a very detailed question, Cheryl. That's a great question. And I'm gonna give you a short answer to your first question. When they were searching the night before the boys were found, were they ever really close to the boys? And the answer is yes. And I'm gonna leave it at that. Yeah, I think that's where we've got to leave it for now on that question. We'll come back to why that's our position later on. Yes. Our next question comes from Emily. Emily says I've heard some speculate that the kids had a plan to meet someone or watch something happen in the woods. I've also heard that kids were running away that evening. Have you come across any information on how unusual it would be for each of the kids to stay out past when he was supposed to? We know that they were alive around six six thirty. Was it already unusual that they were out that late when each was supposed to be home earlier in the day? So according to Mark Byers, in the interview he gave to the news media on May the sixth, this is before the discovery of the shoe, he said that none of the three had ever gone missing like this before. So we get it straight from him. Pam and Mark, as well as Dana, were all very clear that the children were to be in prior to the lights coming on in the neighborhood. And so whenever the photo cells clicked on the lights, they had to be in. So if they weren't in at a certain time, and certainly they had surpassed that 'cause the nightfall had come and This is the first time that any of them had ever missed that curfew ever. Yeah. And typically the three would be home for dinner, which would be before the street lights came on at you know, in May. So they were already late and they certainly were late by the time the street lights came on. Yeah, absolutely. So if this is something new for them, the idea of them not coming home on time, this is gonna stand out as a very bizarre event to the parents right away. That's to the first part of Emily's question about speculation that the kids had a plan to meet someone or watch something in the woods or that they were running away. That is something that we will address later on. We have also heard those stories and we don't want to speculate on that right now, but we will address that in upcoming episodes. Okay. And this Question comes from Jamie. What are your takes on the following theories espoused by another West Memphis three page? The Manhole and Bite Mark. The latter was explored in Paradise Lost 2 with Mark Byers in mind, while now Terry Hobbs is the supposed culprit. Through the lens of common sense, both seem like a stretch, but I'm willing to entertain the ideas if there's any evidence or further data to support them. So what's really interesting is the bite mark theory is actually. Pretty old. It's been around in the case for a long time. There was a profiler who got involved in the case in the late nineteen nineties, and he was interested in the bite mark evidence and got locked into that for a while. And one of the people that really loved the bite mark evidence is the same person who later developed the manhole theory. And this is just somebody trying to put together a unifying theory, trying to explain all the phenomenon that they're seeing in the autopsies and what they think is going on with the time of death and what they think is going on with the timeline. And trying to synthesize that to a explanation that they think fits all the data. However, it's all about connecting dots and how you connect those dots. And I would say that almost every single researcher has their own connecting of the dots and how they do it. What we're gonna do is lay out our connecting of the dots, which diverges in many ways. But at the same time, we understand that a lot of these people that are working on this, they're doing this because they're trying to find out what that unifying theory is. When we connected all those dots, we came up with a different theory than that one. Yeah, and I just want to say I've never met two researchers in this case that have identical theories. Heck, a lot of researchers will have multiple working theories all at the same time. And for quite some time we had multiple working theories at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, you you want to let the evidence lead you, not the other way around. And so when you're looking at evidence, a lot of times there's several possibilities and you have to work through them to figure out which one makes the most sense. All right. So is that do it for all of our questions? That is all of the questions that we have. We will do this again another time. If you want to contribute to our group or ask a question of us, you can do that in our Facebook discussion group. We'd be happy to have you join and be a part of that conversation. And I also just want to say that we really appreciate all of the feedback that we have been getting about the podcast. It's really interesting and fascinating to read all of your comments. in the group and on X as well. And we just appreciate that you guys are listening and that you are digging into this case with us. Yeah, it's been overwhelming. You know, we're just two podcasting novices that decided we wanted to talk about the case and share what we've figured out and see if we could be of help to push the case along. And the first four episodes have been a wild ride and you guys all out there listening and getting back to us and Sharing information with us has been an absolute blessing. It's been great. Yeah, so thank you. ⁓ Mm-hmm.