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Q&A #4: Cub Scout Leaders, Dismemberment Profiles & Other Listener Questions · Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast

• Paul: Welcome to this QA episode of Crooked Tree, a West Memphis 3 podcast. Welcome back, everyone. My name is Kristen Rich, and I'm here with my co-host Paul Day. We are West Memphis 3 researchers and victim advocates for the Byers family. And we're going to do a QA episode. We have come to really enjoy these. We like to see your questions and what you guys are thinking about and answer those questions for you best that we can. Are you ready to do this QA, Paul? I am very excited to get this QA going. I know a couple of people that that's their favorite thing to listen to on the podcast. So we enjoy doing them because it gives us an opportunity to expand our research and to look at new things and to crystallize our ideas better. Cause if we're wrong, we're gonna admit we're wrong. So that is important to us. And with that said, one of the things that has been raised, especially on social media, is there's a question as to whether or not Kristen and I are unbiased because of our relationship with the families. I will tell you right here and right now that our relationship with the families arose after we had made these conclusions. In fact, when Mark Byers was still alive, I had established a friendship with him right before his passing to present him a lot of this data that you guys are hearing right now. And he was impressed with what we had to say. He connected us with friends and family to make sure that this stuff got some legs and started moving. We started building on that research. And it was because we were unbiased and because we were taking a very objective, evidence-based approach to this case that we developed a close relationship with the buyer's family. And then subsequent to that was Stevie's family. And so when people say that we're biased, I'm telling you whether we had that relationship or not, this podcast would still be presenting exactly the same information either way, because we've had this stuff ready to roll for about five years. And we're just excited to deliver this. So in my opinion We are not presenting this in a biased way. Comments on social media about the podcast have been overwhelmingly positive. ⁓ so thank you guys very much. We enjoy reading the reviews and the ratings that you guys leave on whatever podcast app you use. Honestly, ⁓ a few comments about possible bias don't really bother me, but I do think it's important to set the record straight and explain how we got to where we are now. And Paula's right, you know, we dug in and started researching this case almost 10 years ago. And we didn't know anybody in the case then. We hadn't talked any witnesses. We hadn't talked any law enforcement. We hadn't talked to any family members. None of that. And we did that as we moved through the case and realized this is an important person to talk to or whatever. And the majority of our research and our conclusions were developed prior to getting involved with the family members. Now, as we go, obviously we do more research, we do more digging, and so sometimes we find out things we didn't know before. But that doesn't change the conclusion that we've come to. It's just more information that we're obtaining as we go. So we realized that the information that we were gathering and the conclusions we had come to might be of importance to the family members. And that is why we reached out. It wasn't the other way around. We didn't reach out to the family and then decide to go researching and see if we could help them. Our research hopefully will help them. That's the goal. But it was the other way around. We wanted to know what happened to Christopher, Stevie, and Michael. That was how we started this. And we ended up getting to know some of the family members. And it's been an amazing relationship with them and we love that. But it doesn't change our research or our conclusions or how we interpret the case. If you've listened to our past three QA episodes, you notice that at some point during those, we tell you that if you don't want to hear information you're haven't heard before on the podcast, things we haven't covered, that you can skip the remaining questions. We're not doing that this time. We are going to include all the questions. There's no questions that you Can't listen to if you don't want to hear information that we haven't covered yet on the podcast. No spoilers this time. No spoilers. All right. Question number one comes from Ashley. My question Did any of the parents of the victims know that the unnamed creek was there in Robin Hood Hills before the boys were discovered? Were police and search and rescue aware of it beforehand, or did they just stumble upon it while searching the area for the boys? So my understanding on this is that neither Pam nor Terry knew about this, that being Stevie's. mom and stepfather, Todd did know about it because he used to play back there when he was younger. There's a line in the victimology report where Todd is telling Michael that he used to ride his motorcycle back there. So Todd would have been aware of it being back there. Mark Byers had banned Christopher from even going back there. So his knowledge that there was an actual creek back there, probably not so. Melissa definitely didn't know there was anything back there. The only person in the families that would have known would have been probably Ryan Clark. And Ryan Clark has pretty good understanding of the layout of that creek up there. But aside from Ryan Clark in terms of family members, there's no evidence that any of the parents had any knowledge of the unnamed creek outside of Todd Moore. And Todd Moore, of course, was at work that night, so he's well alibied. Ryan does say in an affidavit that he played in Robin Hood all the time and he says that he played and even swam in the ditch where the boys were found. So he was very familiar with that area. As far as the police and search and rescue members, many of them grew up in that area. And previously we talked about a newspaper article where Diane Hester was commenting that she played there growing up and was just dismayed at what they had found in the woods. And so we know several of those police officers and search and rescue team members grew up in that area and probably played in Robin Hood as children. And they May or may not have known about that specific unnamed creek, but I would say probably a number of them did know about it. All right. Question number two comes from Tim. I'm sure I've seen or heard it said that Stevie Branch's new bike from his grandfather was to replace his old one which was stolen. Are there any details on that? I think the only time I've heard it referenced is in an interview with Terry Hobbs, where he mentioned Stevie would have his bike confiscated as punishment, which I assume would be his old one as he only had the new one a couple of weeks. I guess I'm wondering whether it's pure coincidence his old bike was stolen or if it was an escalation of a form of punishing him. Stevie's bike was new. He had gotten it a few weeks prior to May 5th, but he had only had it at his home there in Holiday Gardens for a couple of days. He'd first brought it to his home that weekend. From what we understand, it had been at his grandparents' house prior to that, and he had brought it to his home there on Macaulay. that weekend. So Stevie used to spend his weekends with his grandma and his grandpa and his cousins and have a good time ride his bike up there. And it also had been raining quite a bit. So there was really no need to bring it from Blytheville down to West Memphis. But when the weather cleared, he wanted to ride that bike that day on May the fifth. That was the first real good clear weather where he could go out there and do this where there wasn't rain puddles all over the place and it wasn't a mess. The bike that was stolen was his old bike. And from what we understand, he kept his new bike in the house. That he didn't leave it out in the carports 'cause he didn't want it stolen like his previous bike. So he was very, very protective of that bike. As far as it being an escalation of a form of punishing him, no. His previous bike was stolen and he had just had his new bike there for a few days. What's really interesting in the door to door notes when you're looking at Stevie Branch's behavior with his bike is he's always got his bike. He's always got it right there with him. There's a couple of times where there's witnesses that will say, I saw Stevie Branch on his bike, and then I saw the other two kids just running around talking about Christopher and Michael, and there's no bike. And that happens a couple of times. Deborah O'Tinger is a classic example of this. So Michael would from time to time throw his bike out on the side of the street and then go running around and play on foot with Christopher or whatever it is that they were doing and then return to it. Michael didn't have any concerns about somebody stealing his bike. His bike was a used bike. It was recycled from his older sister, Dawn. It had been hand painted. If anybody stole that bike, they would have instantly known that it was Michael's bike and Michael would have been able to retrieve it very quickly. Stevie's bike would have been a very flashy new bicycle in the neighborhood. I've seen the bike. It's not in perfect condition, but it's certainly in good enough condition where if anybody had seen that bike next to Michael's bike and they wanted to steal a bike, they're taking Stevie's every single time. So Stevie is married to his bicycle that entire afternoon. The only time that they ever saw the bikes out on the side where Stevie wasn't on it was where Don and Kim Williams saw the bikes down by Devil's Den at the entrance where the boys had gone back and the teens had come out and offered the shot. That's the single time where we have a documented case of Stevie Branch leaving his bike with Michaels out by the road. And I don't think they even went in that far. I'm sure it was probably still within eyesight of the bikes for them. Alright, question number three comes from Carly. I always forget this, so I figured I'd drop it here. Were the bikes found in the bayou at the woods end of the pipe or the neighborhood end? Since no bike tracks were seen in the Discovery Woods, I've always thought that the boys left the bikes at the pipe on the neighborhood side. Okay. What we know about the bikes so far, based on what we have covered on the podcast, is that the bikes were in about five feet of water in the ten mile bayou. They were recovered on either side of the pipe bridge. You're right, there were no tracks discovered in the Discovery Woods, but there were tracks discovered on the neighborhood side of the pipe. So we know they were at least on that side with their bicycles. Whether or not those bikes made it to the north side of the pipe is something we will talk about later in the podcast. Yeah, there's additional details that are gonna be headed your way that are gonna clarify some of these questions that you're asking, but I don't wanna get too far ahead of ourselves yet on this because we want it to come together in a coherent picture. All right, number four. This question comes from Linda. Why weren't family members interrogated immediately? It's investigation one ⁓ one. Pam was at work and Todd was out of town, but every other person should have been thoroughly investigated instead of going down rabbit holes and exploring stupid theories like Satanism. We concur, Linda. Yeah, this was a mistake. There's no doubt about it. You know, I mean at least one ⁓ one. Yeah, I'm sure that Kristen could go off for thirty minutes on how this is Not only police one ⁓ one, but this was a clear example of a massive mistake that would be brought up in the trials. At one point, Gary Gitchell has asked, Do you guys actually have like a manual for how to do police investigations? And he said, No. No. And that's where this comes in, right? What are they being guided by? And the answer is largely the information they're getting from the public and their gut. Yeah, I could talk about this for thirty minutes. I will not, but I think they made an assumption at the beginning that this was done by a stranger or an acquaintance and had nothing to do with the family members. And even if that is the case, there's still information to be gleaned from family members. They could have found out a lot of information about the boys, things that ended up in that victimology report that they sent to the FBI. They should have interviewed every single family member immediately. And as we know, it wasn't just a lack of interviewing family members. You know, we've talked about this, we'll talk about it more because we haven't even finished the canvassing of the neighborhood. And we will get to that eventually. But there's a huge section of the neighborhood where they did no canvassing, in particular near where Stevie Branch lived. Those neighbors were not spoken to. It's a huge problem. I don't know why the police chose not to interview the family members extensively. Besides interviewing Mark Byers, there are no other real notes from family members about the victims, about where any of them were that day, the next day. This was a huge, huge error on their part. So the West Memphis PD, aside from Mark Byers, who they did extensively interview and they did run down his alibi and put all that together, we're gonna spend a large amount of time covering that at some point in the podcast because Mark Byers is a very important witness. But he was also a suspect at one point. And so both of those things have to be dealt with. What is his role as a witness and how important is he and how reliable is he? And the other question, of course, is whether or not he's a viable suspect or not. So we're going to talk about all that stuff in a future episode. But, you know, Todd, when he was interviewed, he was there with Don Moore. Don Moore was actually extensively interviewed. What did you see? Who were these kids, these teenagers that came out of Devil's Den? Todd was asked about the sheriff's star, right? Not, hey, can you bring in your time cards just to make sure that everything's clean? Can you bring in your wife's time cards just so that we could verify her story? By the way, did you happen to talk to Mark Byers at all? Did you happen to talk to Terry Hobbs that day? Did you see Pam? When did you meet Pam for the first time? Any of these questions, they should have been asked from all the parents. The only one that was asked that question was Mark. And actually Mark wasn't even really asked that question. Mark just volunteered it. He went into the West Memphis PD and Mark has no filter. He just belched it all out. And he was going through item after item after item that they hardly had to ask him any questions, at least in the beginning part of the interview, because he knew where he was and what he was doing and what time things were happening and who was there. They went out and they thoroughly investigated the fourteens. We're gonna do an entire episode talking about the fourteens, this being Ryan Clark, Britt Smith, Robbie Young, and Richie Masters. They got interviewed and extensively questioned about what they saw. But where's Terry? There's nothing. Where's Where's Melissa? Melissa, nothing. You know, Melissa was asked about a photograph that was taken and a couple other things that happened. But again, these are superficial discussions as opposed to can we reconstruct that night using all the eyes and ears that were crawling through that neighborhood and in those woods? And it's infuriating that the teens and kids in the neighborhood got questioned thoroughly, but the parents, with the exception of Mark Byers, didn't. It's a huge miss, in my opinion. Our next few questions all kind of deal with the same topic. So I'm gonna read them all and then we'll answer the questions together. Dixie asks. All three boys were Cub Scouts, probably members of the same troop, although I'm not sure that was ever stated explicitly. Were the adults involved with the troop ever interviewed or investigated? The Scoutmaster and perhaps any adult helpers or volunteers who had regular contact with the boys? Is it possible that the boys were near the woods to join up with a trusted adult, perhaps lured by the prospect of a special scouting adventure? With apologies to all the great scout volunteers out there who have done wonderful work, but there have been a few abusive bad apples revealed over. the years. Then Tim piggybacks off of her question. He says Edward Lynn Lucas was interviewed and polygraphed. Interestingly, a couple of things stand out about that which could maybe be clarified. He says he visited Todd Moore at around 3 p.m. on the day the boys went missing to talk about winding the group up for the summer. Do we know if Todd was still around at this time? Secondly, he states there were no field trips, camping trips. Was that the case? And then we have a third question from Anna. Were any of the Cub Scout leaders questioned? Besides the one father, whom I assumed was questioned, but not sure that has been addressed on the podcast yet. So to answer the first part of your question, Dixie, as far as we know, Edward Lynn Lucas is the only troop leader who was actually interviewed. And Tim is correct, he was also polygraphed. They did talk to him about where he was on May the 5th. As far as your question about whether or not it was possible the boys were there to join up with a trusted adult. Anything's possible as we go through the podcast and we expand the timeline, you'll see where we're heading. But at that point, yes, that could have been a possibility. We don't know at this point what has happened, what made the boys go to Robin Hood. So that would have been a valid question. Did they investigate that angle? No. The West Memphis police did not. They did, however, like we said, interview Edward Lynn Lucas about his whereabouts that day and he was polygraphed as well. He claims that he went to the Moore residence to speak with Todd, who was the other troop leader, about disbanding Cub Scouts for the summer. He says he spoke with Todd at 3 p.m. He also said that he saw Steve Branch and his mom walk by at 3 15 PM and then he was home the rest of the day and the evening. I don't think this is accurate. We know that Todd Moore was. Off doing his long haul trucking job. Dawn Moore has said that when she arrived home from school, neither of her parents were at home, that her mother Diana arrived a little bit after she got home from school, and that Todd Moore did not arrive back in West Memphis until between 5 and 6 a.m. on the 6th. Todd Moore was not there. It is not possible that he spoke with Todd Moore at 3 p.m. on that day. It is my belief that he has the wrong day. Yeah, it's more consistent with May fourth. On May fourth, Stevie would have gotten off school at the correct time. His mom and Amanda would have come and gotten him at the correct time. And so for them to be walking out in front of Michael Moore's house on the way home at three fifteen is completely consistent with Tuesday, where the weather is sufficiently dry and Edward Lynn Lucas probably saw them. I think he's just getting his days mixed up by a little bit, and that's the big issue here. There's an interesting point that's being raised by all this though. Did the West Memphis PD look at trusted people in the neighborhood? And the answer is yes. They emphasize this very strongly. And we're going to be doing several episodes covering trusted people in the neighborhood, familiar faces that the kids would have experienced. One person sold comic books. There was a bunch of ice cream sellers in the neighborhood that all knew the kids, especially Michael Moore. And we talked about these kids being local celebrities in the neighborhood. Everybody knew who they were. They knew Christopher's brother, they knew Christopher, they knew Michael. The one that they probably knew the least well was Stevie, but you know, even Edward Lynn Lucas, you know, Stevie is in his troop, so he knows them. Yes. And as far as his polygraph, he was found to be truthful. There was no deception indicated, and so he was no longer looked at as a suspect. So I hope that answers your question. He was the only one, as far as we know, that had anything to do with the Cub Scouts that was interviewed and polygraphed by the police. Anna, who asked that third question about the Cub Scout leaders, asks an additional question that doesn't have to do with that. It says, It seems that everyone that has taken a polygraph thus far, everyone that's been mentioned in recent episodes, has passed. Any chance the polygraph machine was defective or otherwise compromised? Do polygraph machines receive service on a regular maintenance cycle? Just seems like the ball has been dropped on so many things. Maybe it was also dropped on this. All right, there is no routine calibration for a polygraph machine. Sometimes there are hardware malfunctions that they can resolve through functionality checks, according to what I have read. They do have to clear ink wells, refill ink wells, maintain the chart drive motors. So if there's a motor that stops working, they have to replace that kind of thing. Other than that, they wipe it down. There's not supposed to be any harsh chemicals around a polygraph machine. And they have to make sure that the things they're using to censor the person being polygraphed are in good working condition. So if they're using a blood pressure cuff or some sort of electrode or that kind of thing, they have to make sure those are in good working order. As far as how frequently the West Memphis Police Department did these things, I do not know. I can tell you that we will talk about some polygraphs where there are some people who did not pass who were found to be deceptive. But we have not come across one of those yet. Yeah, the polygraph examiner is a guy named Bill Durham. And Bill Durham, we've mentioned already several times. He's very active in this investigation. And before it's all said and done, there's 41 polygraph reports that he conducted that we have record of. And in 13 of them, there's at least one question that he interpreted as deception. So the polygraph is only as good as the interpreter of the data when it comes out, because he's reporting this to the West Memphis PD in real time, saying, This guy is lying about X, Y, or Z. Right. A polygraph machine doesn't tell you whether or not a person is being deceptive. The polygrapher reads the output from the machine and decides whether or not the person is being deceptive. So it's all up to the person reading the results. Our next question comes from Carly. Forgive me for my second question. Will the significance of the cloth material found in Michael's hand, I believe it was his right hand, correct me if I'm wrong, be revisited? Was this material lost or disposed of? What are the theories surrounding this material? So the material that was found in Michael Moore's hand was discovered by Frank Paretti when Michael Moore had gone to Little Rock to be looked at. So Frank Paretti found this thing, he booked it in. It's listed as evidence number FP one. It was submitted to the Arkansas State Crime Lab. on May seventh, so that Friday. And my understanding is that the information that came back from the crime lab was that it was considered to be a part of the morgue blanket, which would have been white in color. Kristen and I have seen these blankets. The problem is is that doesn't match the color of this fiber. So the origin or as we should say the provenance of this fiber or this fabric, whichever it is, for which there's no photograph known. Is currently unknown and as far as we can tell, it's not in evidence at the West Memphis PD at this time. All right, next question comes from Kim. Building off of the profiling episode, I would like some more detailed information on what the profile of someone who committed the dismemberment injury. I would guess that type of violence is not unheard of, but is probably rare. Also, is the general consensus that may mean the killer was targeting that one child in some way. I think it is pretty significant that the other two boys were spared this type of humiliation. Has there been a deep dive done into what type of killer profile this would be? For example, does this make it more or less likely to be a crime perpetrated by a stranger? Kim, I did some digging on the types of offenders who participate in dismemberment. And as awful as it is, it is also interesting because there have been some studies done About this type of offender. There are two reasons that in general people who dismember do so. The first one is because it is easier to hide or dispose of the body. And the second is because that person is a sexual sadist. A sexual sadist gets gratification from causing physical or mental pain, suffering, and humiliation. Those are the two reasons that an offender might dismember a body. Beyond that, there are apparently three types of people who dismember. The first one is someone who is familiar with dismemberment in another capacity. So we're talking about people who are medical professionals, whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a veterinarian, those kinds of people. And that also includes butchers and hunters. It is also noted that these people who are familiar with dismembering. Are also desensitized to the process of dismemberment. And so they might be more likely to dispose of a body in that way because it doesn't bother them as much as it might someone else. The second type of person who dismembers has suffered trauma, usually in early childhood. And they do this because they have been suppressing pain and rage for years. And this act. releases that pain and rage. And the third type of person who participates in dismemberment is someone who is suffering an acute psychotic episode and is just in a frenzy. In almost all cases of dismemberment, the body is moved from the site of the murder to another location. It would make sense that in most cases for dismemberment, you want a private location, whether it's a house, a vehicle, a shed, whatever. And then Those parts are moved to another location. Sometimes they're all put in one place. Sometimes they're scattered. You'll see cases where someone finds a femur and then three weeks later someone finds a skull and they find out it's from the same person. But overall, almost always when there's a dismemberment, the parts are moved from the murder site where the person is actually killed and dismembered to another location. I did read several studies about offenders who were. Profiled who were involved in dismemberment. And it's pretty interesting. There were no clear patterns in age with regard to disposal methods, but they did study specifically people who had moved bodies and/or dismembered bodies to move them. A 2007 study found that three-quarters of murders in which a body was moved was committed by an acquaintance and 16.2% by a relative. Five point four percent were committed by a stranger. So if we're talking about moving a body, whether it's dismembered or not, most of those are done by an acquaintance and then some also by a relative. Very unlikely to be a stranger. So what's really interesting is the statistics that you're providing here is is that when people do dismemberment, it's usually has a utility tied to body disposal. Yes. It's not we're just gonna cut off an arm and leave a body here and just take the arm. Correct. Okay. That's interesting. It's to make disposing of the body easier or more difficult for law enforcement to find the body. There are sexual sadists, as I mentioned, who get gratification from this behavior, but it's a very small percentage. There are not a lot of sexual sadists out there who dismember. So in most cases where there is a victim who is missing parts of the body, it is usually either to keep the police from maybe being able to identify the subject. Some of you may have followed like the Gilgo Beach murders. A lot of those were missing hands because of fingerprints and heads because of identification with teeth. So that's just to keep the police from identifying the victim, which might tie that victim to the killer. So it's just a way to distance themselves from the murder. But in a lot of cases it's also for ease of disposal because moving a dead body is very, very difficult, whether it's a child or an adult. It's a very difficult prospect. So a sexual dismemberment, as has been alleged in the case of Christopher Byers, is extremely rare. Yes. And certainly wouldn't have anything to do with the movement of the body. It would be something that a sadist would have done as some type of punishment either before or after, as a form of retribution. Correct. To the child. Yes. If this is something that is done by a human being. Right. And the question about does that indicate that Christopher Byers was the target of the attack? I can't say for sure. My understanding of the research says no for the reason that if it was a sexual sadist who was attacking these three boys, even if let's say the sexual sadist had something personal against Christopher, in that instance It is most likely that because of the mindset, the physical urges of a sexual sadist, he would have attempted or achieved the same thing with all of the boys. It would not have just been targeted on one boy. He had two other victims there. He would have taken advantage of the fact that he had two other victims and he would have continued this process of gratification. It's horrifying to talk about. Okay. A few other facts that came out of these studies of people who dismember, it explicitly says that body movement is significantly more likely to involve at least two offenders because of how difficult it is to move a body. That is why ⁓ if in cases where it's a single offender. you will see dismemberment because that makes it much easier to move the parts of the body. So if an entire body is moved with no dismemberment, you are more likely to have at least two offenders involved because of the difficulty of moving a deceased body. That's really interesting actually. The idea that yeah, that's not something that you would just know intuitively. That's really interesting that they know this. Yeah. These people have done an amazing amount of research. And this is not just research in the United States. This is from all over the world, these studies that I've been looking at. So in the question, it was asking for a specific profile of someone who dismembers. Like I said, there is not a general profile of someone who dismembers. Dismembering comes under a general umbrella of one moving a body and two concealing a body. That's just part of those two things. So there are some statistics about that. So for Moving a body in this study, they looked at 403 offenders. Okay. For those who moved a body, the average age was 34 and a half. It was a male. A third of them were white. Most of them were in a relationship, either a domestic partner, they lived with someone, they were married, and most of them had some sort of sexual criminal record. It didn't have to be a rape. It could have been an unwanted touching, an attempted some sexual assault. But they have some sort of sexual criminal record. Of those offenders who concealed a body, the average age was 31.7. So very close. You got almost 32 and then 34 and a half. Overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white, also in a relationship. This is interesting. Only about a quarter of them were employed and they had a menial job. They have a general criminal history, but their criminal history is not usually violent. They have less Than a high school education. So they dropped out of high school, may have gotten a GED, but did not graduate from high school. Forty-three percent of the victims know their killer if the body is concealed, which we've talked about before. And of concealed bodies, 20% were a family member who concealed the body. Overall, in these studies, ethnicity was not a significant factor. There are things that I found completely fascinating. So they looked at crime scenes and they picked out crime scene variables that they could use to predict whether or not a body was moved. And this is just fascinating to me. So I'm gonna run through them really quickly. Victims who were asphyxiated or had some sort of combination of trauma were six times more likely to be moved. A rural location increased it by four. Evidence of the crime scene being cleaned up increases the likelihood of a human body being moved by nine. Items being stolen increases it by three. Evidence being hidden is two times more likely when a body has been moved. Evidence being destroyed is four times more likely. Mutilation is eight times more likely. It is three times more likely for the offender to return to the crime scene as long as the crime scene is not their home. So at the end of this, they took their samples and they did Sorry, I'm getting nerdy here, a backwards stepwise regression, which you can just ignore that. But basically they took the elements that were significant in this study, which were a cause of death, whether it was a rural or urban location, whether or not there was crime scene cleaning, whether or not the body was destroyed in any way, and whether or not there were sexual homicide elements present. Using those five indicators and looking at a crime scene, and these are known cases, when they put all of those into the equation. They could predict whether or not a body would be moved in ninety-four point six percent of the cases. These are very strong indicators that a body was moved from the murder site. That does not necessarily mean from a home to the woods, from a place of business to a field. Movement can be anything. It can be very small. So Let's talk about our case. If the boys were murdered in Robin Hood Hills in the woods and they were moved to the ditch, that is considered movement. That is considered concealing a body. That is considered movement of the body. Otherwise, they would have been left exactly where they were killed. So the fact that our boys are placed underwater, that their clothing is concealed under water would be indications that they were moved. From the place they were killed, whether it's by five feet or five miles. Interesting. Like what's the big takeaway, do you think, for our case then, by looking at this profile? Well, it's an interesting question. The fact that Christopher does have body parts missing that it is from his genitals might indicate that this was a sexual crime. We have not gone over the autopsies yet, so we have not talked about any other signs of sexual trauma. So we will get to that eventually. The thing that I think hinges here on this type of profile is how that happened, how this injury to Christopher happened. So was this done by whoever killed Christopher, Stevie, and Michael, or is there an environmental factor at play here? Yeah, that's pretty interesting. And then of course that feeds back into the profile of Dr. Hutt, right? Who did an unbiased profile. And the one difference is is that he says that this is probably somebody in their twenties. And if you were to do it this way, you're saying it profiles as somebody in their early thirties, like thirty one and a half, I think you said. That's just the average age of the four hundred plus offenders that they looked at. So yes, there's a wide age range, but you're talking about a mean. So it's a large age range from the twenties and into the thirties and probably some late teens and forties as well. But yeah, it's interesting. Again, it's consistent with Dr. Hutt's profile. Of the crime, I think. It is. And I do think it is interesting that they were very specific about the fact that dismemberment in regard to actually removing limbs, possibly the head, to move the body is usually a single offender. That moving a body is so difficult that typically when a body is moved, it's by multiple offenders. And we have three. So I think This is really interesting and it would play into what the West Memphis Police Department believes that there were three perpetrators and three victims. But it is interesting that it would be extremely unlikely that one offender killed all three boys and moved all three of their bodies by himself. And I say himself because it's extremely likely that our offender is male. So that is, I think, one of the most interesting things from these studies, because it is extremely difficult to move a deceased body and whoever did this had to move three of them. Well you can tell that we put great credence in Dr. Hutt's profile. And we think that this is consistent with it. In fact, it amplifies a lot of the things that he's saying where to look because here's additional details. The bodies were packaged up with strings, their own shoestrings. They were moved. There is a possible emasculation of a child here, possibly from a sexual sadist, but also possibly environmental. We're gonna be delving into that later on. We haven't gotten into those details in the podcast. And if we did it today, it would be a two hour episode just to cover this question. So we're gonna do an episode just on the autopsies at some point in the future. I did look to see if I could find any kind of information about multiple victims where only one was sexually assaulted and I could not find any. That doesn't mean they're not out there. I just haven't found one yet. I also wanna say that at some point we're gonna be covering additional cases where sexual mutilation does occur. We're going to be talking about that in the podcast in some of the episodes. The West Memphis PD are going to be notified from other jurisdictions saying, Hey, we had something that sounds a lot like what happened to you guys. Hey, you might want to take a look at this. So we'll be letting you know when those episodes come. We're all gonna be going through it together. All right. Our next question comes from Shane. In episode fifteen, timestamp thirty five minutes, thirty nine seconds. The discussion is about the West Memphis PD believing that the place of discovery was potentially a dump site as of May 7th. Paul, you stated we've seen the crime scene photos. Some of the stuff is not public. Are you able to expand on what hasn't been made public? Thanks. From the position of the West Memphis PD, most of the most graphic autopsy photos and crime scene photos are not public. They are closely held by the either the defense teams or by the West Memphis PD. We've seen a couple of these things because we have close relationships with people associated with the West Memphis PD and it's stuff that you can't unsee. And we're grateful that it's not out there. You don't want it out there. It's bad stuff. It's bad for the parents. It's stuff that I can't ever forget. With that said, ninety percent of everything is out and it's available on the Callahan website. The Callahan website, of course, is an unbiased repository of data on the case. It's been built since about two thousand and two. We owe an immense debt of gratitude to the generations of researchers that went to the West Memphis PD evidence room, copied those documents, photographed those documents, uploaded those documents. The tens of thousands of hours that were put into doing this, I mean, it's incalculable how big a deal that is. And we as researchers right here in twenty twenty six when we're recording this are the benefactors of all that work that was done by people that were interested in the case, especially from about 2000 to about 2011, when the bulk of that archiving was being done. So I would say 90 to 95% of that is available on Callahan from the West Memphis PD. Now there's additional details that are held by the defense teams because they do their own investigations, they acquire their own data, and some of that stuff is closely held by them, but for the most part, almost all of it is out. Except for the most graphic of reports. And I I'm just gonna take this opportunity to say, since you brought it up, that during the years that we've been looking into this case, we have developed really, really good relationships with people in this case. And that includes the West Memphis Police Department. I know that we have just criticized their investigation back in nineteen ninety three, not talking to the parents. We just did an entire episode about quite frankly corrupt. Police officers who were in West Memphis PD and in Crittenden County. That has absolutely no bearing on who they are today, as far as we're concerned. They have been extremely kind to us. As some of you know, we have visited the West Memphis Police Department and seen the evidence in this case. And they were more than gracious. We have a good working relationship with the city attorney. What we're talking about doesn't have anything to do with them. And we 100% appreciate. kindness that they have shown us. They've been very respectful. They've been accommodating. They've helped us every time we've asked for help. The city attorney, as Kristen just mentioned, has been marvelous. He's professional. He's kind. And he's been extremely helpful in our pursuit of documenting stuff for the family and getting answers to them to the best of his ability. He wasn't around when this stuff happened. He's a relative newcomer. And in fact when we met with his name is Mike by the way. When we met with Mike, he admitted He doesn't know the case. This was entirely before his time. And a lot of the people at the West Memphis P D, this was all before their time. And so we've had nothing but a wonderful relationship with them and we can't say enough positive things about them. So just remember when we're talking about West Memphis P D, we're talking about the people in nineteen ninety three. And there was some good cops there in nineteen ninety three, but there was also some bad ones. And, you know, if you listen to our last episode, we did get into the fundamental details of what led to decertification of two cops that did play Big roles in this case. So we just wanted to clarify that what we're talking about is limited to the police officers in this case and not all of them, just some of them. We do not want people to think that we're talking about the current police department because we do not feel that way about them at all. All right. The next question comes from Victoria. Back in 2016, I read a BuzzFeed article about someone who had connected serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards to the West Memphis 3 case. Going as far as to say that Edwards is briefly featured in the first Paradise Lost documentary. Any thoughts on this theory? Yes, Victoria, I have a number of thoughts on this theory. I did some digging. I've actually read that too, but I'm just gonna tell you how I feel about this. Well, you'll figure it out. Because Edward Wayne Edwards was convicted of five murders, two sets of couples, and then his foster son. He died in prison in 2011. This assertion about Edward Wayne Edwards being involved in the West Memphis III case was made by a retired homicide detective, a cold case detective named John Cameron. This was never linked to our case. Apparently, he says a possible sighting of this guy in the documentary. I'm just gonna give you a list of the people that Detective Cameron suggests that Edward Wayne Edwards killed, and then you can make your conclusion about how I feel about this theory. According to Detective Cameron, it is possible that Edward Wayne Edwards killed the following people Jean Bonnet Ramsey, Teresa Hallbach, Lacey Peterson, Elizabeth Short the Black Dahlia, Jimmy Hoffa, the Zodiac Murders, Chandra Levy, Martha Moxley, Adam Walsh, and the wife of Dr. Sam Shepherd. The assertion that Detective Cameron makes is ridiculous, in my opinion. Yeah, I think he's just trying to get some clicks and some notoriety. There's a couple of people that come through the West Memphis Three case that they think they've got the answers. They put out like a quick book, article, pamphlet or whatever where they think, here's the smoking gun, here it is, and I'm famous and lawed me for it. And this is just one of those guys that is trying to do that. That's all. And by the way, the first time I heard of this guy and this theory wasn't even on the West Memphis three case. It was actually the Stephen Avery case with Teresa Hallbach. That was the first time I had heard that come along where people were looking at Making a murderer, that now famous documentary covering that case, where there's a guy that looks like the same guy in Paradise Lost One, similar, you know, heavy set guy walking around in the cemetery saying, ⁓ it's the same guy that's over there. It's not the same guy. If you look at clouds long enough, you'll convince yourself that you're looking at animals. And it's the same thing happening here. It's the inkblot test. And that's what this guy was doing. All right, our next question comes from Katie. She says, not a question about the case, but where did the opening music for the pod Come from. We also have a comment on a review left for our podcast. Thank you for any of you who have left ⁓ ratings and reviews on the podcast. We appreciate it. Freckles 1922 also said, By the way, I could listen to the theme song on repeat for hours. Is there a full version that I could download? I'm going to answer that question because my amazing podcast host. made that music and he did a great job. Everyone loves the music. That is all there is to the ⁓ music because he created that for our podcast so there is not a longer version. And you guys can all give him a round of applause for the wonderful intro and outro music for our podcast. Our next question comes from Teresa. I have a question. It is regarding the partial print found by Tony Anderson. I know partial prints are not admissible in court, but have they ran them against everyone in this case? I answered Teresa's question in our group. If you want to join our Facebook group and ask questions, sometimes we answer them on there, but we're gonna answer it on this podcast as well. Partial prints, which she knew she kind of misstated it, are absolutely admissible in court if there are enough points of comparison to compare it to another print. They did run them against quite a few people at a couple of different times trying to find a match this print. The police department wasn't actually sure what part of the body this Print came from, whether it was a finger, a toe, a foot, part of a hand, they weren't sure. And so they did run that print against a number of people in this case. But so far there have been no matches. Our next question comes from Ryan. It is a kind of graphic. question about an injury to Stevie. We have not even gone over autopsy results yet. So we will get to that in a future episode. But I just wanted to take a minute to say that you're welcome to ask these questions if you want to. Paul and I are not experts in a number of areas. We are not fingerprint experts. We are not pathologists. We don't have expertise in these areas. So we actually know people who are we have some great people on our team We have a fingerprint expert and we have a forensic death investigator that we consult. A wonderful listener actually reached out to us. She is a DNA expert and has offered her services as well. So thank you for that. So when we don't know the answer to something, we don't know how to evaluate what we're looking at. We go to someone who does. We don't pretend to be experts in all things. So we're not gonna answer this question. It may get answered in a future episode when we go. through the autopsy. But this is something that we would refer to one of our experts who may or may not come on the podcast. Sometimes they don't want to put their names out there. So we'll see who we can get to come and talk about some of these areas that they have expertise in, but we will answer those at a later date. Yeah. We are surrounded by brilliant people that frequently don't want to have their name out there because whenever you put your name out into a true crime case like West Memphis Three or John Bay Ramsey or Stephen Avery or any of these other things, you're gonna get hit by comments from social media in every direction. And sometimes you just wanna be able to help without having to suffer the social consequences of giving that help. You know, Kristen and I took it upon ourselves to be the face of this and to help advocate for these victims and the victims' families and to put this podcast out with all this information. And we've taken some hits. We've actually documented some of the nasty comments we get on social media from time to time. We get people trolling us. We deal with it all the time. But I will tell you the reason why we get the help we get is because we protect our sources. We protect those people that have had the courage to come forward and say, Hey, I have a little bit of information that might be able to help the Byers family get some answers for the what happened to their son that day. All these years later, there's still people willing to help, but they're just I can't tell you how often people say, I wanna help, but I just can't do it. ⁓ I'm just too scared to come out because I know it's gonna happen. But to that end, we are surrounded by extremely competent people. And if they were willing to put their names out, you would say, Okay, these people are legitimate experts in their field that would be respected anywhere in the world. Yeah. And we may have some of them on. We don't know yet, but we do have people that we consult from time to time about things we do not know anything about. All right. And the last question we're gonna do for this episode comes from Lisa. It's not really question, it's a statement. I'm just waiting on how they came to go after the three boys that were convicted. So far, there hasn't been anything to lead them in that direction. I'm sure y'all will get to it eventually, but it's making me crazy wondering how they came up with three teenagers that supposedly murdered the boys. Lisa, your wish is my command. We're gonna go ahead and start talking about that in the next episode. We will begin introducing for the very first time the person that is Damien Eccles. And his role in this case and how he got involved in it. And you're going to be astonished at how this thing happens. So have your coffee, hot chocolate, tea, whiskey. It's going to be a two drink minimum, probably for some people, but be prepared to listen to some stuff because it is shocking. So do we have any concluding comments or remarks for this QA? This has been a lot of fun. Researching a lot of these answers this week was fun and refreshing, but we are definitely going to be hitting the next episode pretty hard and looking forward to it. You guys asked some really interesting questions. I don't know that researching ⁓ the profile of someone who just members was necessarily fun, but I did find it interesting because that is right up my alley. So hopefully you guys found that interesting too. We appreciate all of your questions. You guys can ask ⁓ on X too if you want to. And we don't usually mention it, but we do have an Instagram account. We don't keep up with it as much as we do on X and and certainly not on Facebook. But you guys are welcome to ask questions there as well if that is your preferred platform and we can include those in our Q and A along with all the questions from Facebook. Yeah, also YouTube. So we have a YouTube channel and if you have a account, you can come in there and drop a comment and engage the community there. So if you're just not on Facebook and you want to use X or YouTube. That's totally fine with us. We check those accounts pretty regularly. Yeah. We love hearing from you. We appreciate all of the engaging questions. And we look forward to the next QA episode. But first, we get to talk about one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting suspect in this case, Damien Eccles. ⁓