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Episode 6: Case No. 666 · Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast

• Paul: Welcome to Crooked Tree, a West Memphis Three podcast. On today's episode, we will be discussing the crime scene and the discovery of these three missing eight year old boys. Some of this content is explicit due to the nature of their injuries. Please exercise caution when listening, especially if there are minors present. And again the case call number is ninety three zero five zero zero six six six. This will end the interview. I was shocked too when I heard it. Just had had the phone that way. ⁓ Welcome back everyone. I'm Kristen and I'm here with Paul and we are going to talk about several things today and we're gonna start with how the investigation changed on May the sixth when the bodies of our three victims were found that day. Yeah, you'll recall that from the West Memphis PD position, this all started with a series of missing persons reports, which are officially filed his complaints and ⁓ Regina Meek was responding to those complaints and then the search and rescue ensued. But once they found Malcolm Moore's body and later on the the other two children as well, this very rapidly changed from a complaint. Originally it was complaint nine three-zero five-one five four one and Gary Gitchell said, No, we we need to get a actual case number assigned to this because we're gonna investigate this thing. So he phoned in to the records department and the records department came back with the new case number, which was Nine three dash zero five dash zero six six six. What are the chances? Yeah, this is one of the most incredible aspects of the case. It's just things like this are always happening. The it turns out case number nine three-zero five-zero six six five was a stalling car that somebody had decided to investigate at one fifteen earlier that day. So here we are on case number six six six. The nine three stands for the year five means the month of May. But ⁓ six six six means it's the six hundred and sixty sixth case that they've decided to investigate in the year of nineteen ninety three. On the previous episode when we talked about the crime scene and how it was laid out and the east and the west banks, there's an area that was a particular interest to the officers that were on scene. This is referred to as the slicked off bank. And we're gonna let you listen to how Detective Ridge describes this area called the slicked off bank and this is from the Jesse Miss Kelly trial. ⁓ Jacob Reid, I wanna show you Takes exhibits 27 and 37B and ask you to describe those photographs. Yes, sir. Exhibit 27 is the bank on the east side from where the body of Michael Moore is located. This area right here between this slanted line and this tree is like a shelf. ⁓ an area that is not as extremely sloped as the rest of it. You can see where it appears to be slicked off where something is scooted across the bank or cleaned of debris or whatever. ⁓ that is exhibit twenty seven. All right let me ask you this in relation to the surrounding area ⁓ how did it compare in the amount of leaves that were on the It looked as though it had been cleaned up leaves and break. Okay, this is that same shelf. It's on the east bank. and this is the area where it looks actually it's been sniffed off or cleaned off. the grass is actually embedded in the mud or something. I don't know what the reason would be other than if you raked your hand across that portion and the grass would be actually embedded in the mud at that location. And I want to exhibit 23. Yes, sir. Again, this is where ⁓ this is the body of Michael Moore. This portion of the bank is that shelf on the east side of where his body was located. ⁓ I'm pointing out the injuries as those injuries have been documented by other officers that he had injuries to his head. ⁓ Again you can see this this muddy bank where it appears that something is just raked across it. And ⁓ twenty-six. Okay this again is the body of Michael Moore and this bank and it shows in more detail you can actually see mud over the top of this grass where it has been raped through the mud. This is exhibit twenty-six. So it's pretty obvious that Detective Ridge, who who observed this bank, is interpreting this entire thing as being somehow cleaned up, as if water was running down it, or if somebody was taking their hands and scraping the surface off or something like this, but that the area was being cleaned up is the interpretation that he's getting from looking at the slicked off bank. And hence the reason why I called it the slicked off bank. And Michael Moore is laying down in the middle of the cleaned up area. that he sees there. He's describing mud being on top of the grass, rather, you know, typically grass grows on mud, not the other way around. So there's mud on top of the grass. That indicates that there's been some type of disturbance. And this is very interesting, geographically speaking, because in order to access this location, this slicked off bank, you have to cross the creek to get to it. There's no trail over to it. We talked about that in the last episode. You would have to grab the crooked tree and somehow launch yourself across there. And even Detective Allen, who tried to do it, couldn't do it. And ⁓ he fell into the creek. So whoever caused these scoff marks, the cleaning up of this, had to have crossed the creek in order to do this. So that means that they had to have gotten into the water. And Detective Allen is not a short man. He's a tall man around six one, I believe, and he could not get across the creek without slipping in. What's also really interesting is that they located a series of footprints in the area. Not a whole lot of them, but they found several. They found one over on the West Bank that was documented in the crime scene notes. That one was actually taken into evidence. They took a plaster cast of it, they put it into evidence. I'm just gonna go ahead and spoiler alert this one. It never becomes anything because it turns out to have been Detective Bridge's own footprint. So it never became anything in the case. So if you were all excited about it for the moment saying, ⁓ we finally got a footprint that's gonna work, that's not the one. However, that Eastern Bank is really interesting, and it turns out there is definitely human activity. Over on that east bank. They do locate at least one clear tennis shoe style footprint. It's located over near the hollow tree. So this would have been over maybe eight feet north of where they laid down Michael Moore on the slipped bank. That was photographed and taken into evidence. There were also three slip marks. This looks like where somebody or something was trying to get up the bank or scurry up the bank and couldn't do it because it was too wet. And as a consequence, they dragged down and they left what we call tool marks. Tool marks look like scratches in the soil. Two of those tool marks just look like just they were kind of something smooth, maybe a maybe the side of a tennis shoe or something like this was scraping along the surface. The third one is pretty distinctive and it looks like the side of a boot, as if it was sliding down the side of that bank. And that was photographed as well. So these three marks were all found. They were f located high on the bank on the eastern side. So For somebody to get over there to leave those marks, they had to go through the water to get up there. So these are probably marks left during the commission of this crime. And remember, the area's been raining. So any marks that are up there are gonna be relatively fresh. And these are all relatively fresh marks that they identify and they're located around the top. So if the slipped off bank is all cleaned up, these are things that the the killer or killers did not clean up before they left the crime scene. These were just missed. In addition to those shoe or footprints or boot prints that they found at the crime scene, they also found something that they thought was a fingerprint and that is described by Detective Tony Anderson and we're gonna play that for you. Right. ⁓ and did you have ⁓ occasion to become involved in the ⁓ triple homicide that happened on May the fifth of ninety three? Yes. Okay, ⁓ what role did you play in in that investigation? was at the crime scene, we were searching for the boys, the three boys. Come into Robin Hood Hills, we found a ditch there. At that time we found a sock and a tennis shoe, a young boy tennis shoe. At that time, Brian Ridge went off in the water where the tennis shoe was and Mike Allen went in the water. When they bumped into one of the children, floated up, they started downstream and then I jumped in the water and started going upstream. as we found the three bodies we pulled them out. We just shut it down there with a crampling dead time. Later on as I was walking around and I found this fingerprint in the mud. It was an indigenous into the mud and I seen that it was a fingerprint or a print. I don't know that it was a fingerprint, it might have been a side of a palm, it might have been the side of them, but I in my opinion I believe that it was a thumb print or a fingerprint. Was there anything else around it that That you saw any other any other prints, be ⁓ be it fingerprints, shoe prints, anything like that? Nothing that I can find. How close to it would you you think it was in relation to the the three the boys' bodies? If I remember correctly it was within five to ten feet before we found the first lighting. Now the the print that you saw, could you tell if it was made from someone that would either would be either on the bank facing the water or in the water facing going towards the bank? It was somebody was in the water. I'm sure because it was At a forty-five degree angle from the water. You're the one that found this? Yes, sir. Did you photograph it at the time? Yes, sir. we get the camera equipment and side light and put the side light on it and photographed it. I like that Detective Anderson answers the question about how that fingerprint got there. He says a Perpetrator was standing in the water and made that print. And that's fascinating that he can tell us that from the angle of the print. So that's possibly made by someone who was in that water with the three boys. So we've got three scoff marks up on the top of the slicked off area. We've got footprints above the slicked off area. We've got a fingerprint now in here. So we don't have nothing. We've got something, right? So we have evidence of the perpetrator, at least in some of these discoveries, that we could probably start to work with. So those were photographed or taken into evidence. And the location of that fingerprint is having seen the photo of where that was taken, is nowhere near where anybody up on a bank could accidentally have reached over and done this. You have to be physically in the water to leave it at that position. It's just not possible to do it in any other way. And Tony Anderson, by the way, is kind of the third searcher. He's grutely overlooked. He's mentioned on all the search and rescue lists and He was at the crime scene that day, but nobody ever really talks about him because instead of going south and finding the bodies, he went north and he was looking for trace evidence and clothing and stuff. He didn't find a whole lot up there, but he did find that fingerprint. And it does play a major role in this case because he's the guy that will be doing all the fingerprint analysis for the case. Yes, we will definitely talk about ⁓ Tony Anderson again because he plays another role in this case later on and he makes a pivotal discovery. So don't forget that name. Tony Anderson's an important guy. Yeah, he's a big deal. So In addition to that, the West Memphis PD was looking at the water and they were noticing some very interesting objects floating around in the water besides the clothing and the hat and the shoes, which we've mentioned before. We're going come back to those and talk about those a little bit of detail in a moment. But they also noticed that there were these long sticks in the water. And in fact, one of the sticks had a shirt on the end of it, and it was located right next to Michael Moore, almost directly above him, in fact. Those sticks were actually retrieved and pulled out of the creek. And what's really interesting is The three sticks that were found, two were found right above Michael Moore. A third one was found between the three boys. It was kind of in the middle of all the boys where you had Michael Moore to the north and then the other two boys, Chris and Steve to the south. The other stick was in the middle there. Of the three sticks, they actually only recovered the third one, the one in between the boys. The two, ⁓ in particular the one with the shirt on it, was just put up on the bank and it was actually left there. It wasn't collected that day. So it's one of those points of frustration in the case. The good news there is that they do have a lot of photographs which help them identify the correct sticks. Yeah. They did collect the correct sticks, but they didn't collect them as fast as they should have. And this was an oversight, unfortunately. Those sticks were placed also up with the clothing right next to Michael Moore's body. So the sticks were there, Michael Moore's body was there, and the clothing were all piled up right in close proximity to one another on the eastern bank as well. Throughout this case, we will bring up a lot of shortcomings of the West Memphis Police Department, which hindsight is 2020. We weren't there. We we pointed out during the last episode how much the discovery of these three boys had to have affected all of the officers that were on scene, as well as search and rescue and whoever else was there. And yes, they did forget to collect these sticks at that time. And I'll give them a slight pass on that one because of what was happening right then, I can imagine forgetting to collect a thing or two because of what they are facing and the discovery that they had just made. Yeah, the emotional trauma was massive. And so you're gonna make mistakes. When you're under pressure and under stress and you know at this point that the entire world is aware of what's going on and you're standing in the middle of ground zero of this, you're gonna make errors. But they know for sure that they have a stick with one of the children's shirts wrapped around it in their hand. They take the shirt off. In fact, there's a photograph of Detective Ridge very famously removing the shirt from the stick and passing both the stick and the shirt up onto the eastern bank there for later collection. Unfortunately, the shirt is added to the inventory, but not the stick. And just from a forensic geologist standpoint, the sticks are actually very interesting. Because large sticks get ground up in creeks very fast. These are very high energy environments. And so you don't just normally find sticks floating around, and especially when you got a shirt wrapped around the end of it. This is very suggestive of the fact that these sticks were probably handled by a human being in that area because remember it had been raining for a couple of weeks. And so all those sticks and all that wood would have been blasted out in the early stages of the series of flood events and rainstorms that would have been happening in the area. And yet these were just kind of floating loosely above the body. Absolutely suspicious. They were right. to identify them as things of interest and they should have put all three of them into evidence that day. Unfortunately they only did one of the three. The other two collected later on. Let's revisit the clothing that was found in the unnamed creek on May the sixth and just talk about some of those items a little bit. Yeah. So in a general sense, we recognized that we had pulled out the children's clothing. We identified it as the children's clothing. Almost certainly it matched the missing persons' reports and things like this. But there's some strangeness to some of this stuff, and we wanted to go over this really quickly. First off, all the clothing was found right next to Michael Moore, up to the north. All of it was. And it was also therefore very close to the fingerprint. And the fingerprint was actually not that far away from the footprint underneath the hollow tree. And the hollow tree footprint is not that far away from the scuff marks. So there's a lot of activity up there on that eastern bank that is capturing the attention of the West Memphis PD and probably your imagination as a listener as a place of interest. But what they discovered was the pair of cougar black shoes with purple interiors. We know those belong to Christopher Byers. Those were boy size 13. What is really interesting is that in the left shoe, there was one shoelace that was intact. The other shoe had a missing lace. So presumably that was used to bind the victims. There was a second pair of black tennis shoes. These were size three. We actually don't know the brand on these things, but these shoes we know belong to Michael Moore. One of those shoes, when they looked inside, they discovered that there was a sock bundled up within the shoe. We have a single sock, and it's the only sock that was discovered at the crime scene. All the other ones are missing. We now have five missing socks, but we do have a single sock balled up in the shoe of Michael Moore. To my knowledge, it has never been determined whether or not that sock actually belonged to Michael Moore, but we could assume that it did, but Assumptions are not always good in this case. The third pair of shoes that were collected were Franklin brand white tennis shoes. The size was not noted because they were easy to identify as just white shoes. We now know that they originally had black shoelaces and both of the shoelaces were removed. So just like Michael Moore's shoelaces, they were both removed. And we know that those are the shoes that belong to Stevie branch. Also discovered right next to those shoes and the stick with the shirt wrapped around it was the Boy Scout cap. There were also three shirts, three pants. And of course the single pair of underwear was collected out of the creek. What is really interesting is that all the stuff was bundled up. It was sent off to the lab for analysis and they discovered several additional items within the clothing that the parents had told the police that they should be looking for, and one of them was Michael's sheriff star, which we talked about all the way in episode one, that he was carrying that around with him that day. Also with him was a broken bicycle reflector, and Kristen and I have Been to the evidence room. We have seen this bicycle reflector. It's still in evidence. The sheriff's star is still in evidence. And what's really interesting is the bicycle reflector is broken. And in fact, it's the broken reflector off his front wheel on his bicycle. In fact, you could see the hand painted bike paint was actually also on the reflector as well. So it clearly identifies it as coming from his bike. So at some point during the day, Michael Moore broke his bicycle reflector and put it in his pocket. And he had it in his pocket when this event happened. The other thing that was identified by the laboratory was Stevie had a friendship bracelet on his wrist and that was sent back to the West Memphis PD and that is still in evidence to this day. The last thing that was identified in the lab, which is pretty interesting, is a piece of blue or dark fabric like material that was in Michael Moore's clenched hand. Now there's a lot of online conjecture about what this is and what's going on, but it it definitely existed. It was sent off to be analyzed, the analyst said that this was a piece of fabric that was from the morgue blanket, a blue piece of fabric from the morgue blanket. The problem is is that the morgue blanket was not in contact with Michael Moore. Michael Moore was surrounded by a white sheet. And I've actually seen that white sheet with my own eyes. So he didn't come in contact with that thing, yet it was clenched in his hand. So people have gone back and looked at the crime scene photos and they are convinced that sure enough, that that piece of fabric was clenched in his hand at the time of his passing and when he was up on that eastern bank on the slipped off bank, you could see it still in his hand. That would have been in in his left hand. The problem is is that this material was not preserved. So we don't know if it's part of the mortg blanket. We have no idea what this is. I would just say that what we do know is that none of the boys clothing was ripped. It's not a piece of clothing from any of our three victims. Yeah, that's actually really important to recognize. Yeah, all the clothing was actually in very good shape considering the attack that they had suffered. I mean, I'll tell you if somebody was coming at me the way that these guys were attacked, my shirt would be shredded. And it leads to some question about how that happened. You really have two choices since it was in his hand on the bank prior to the coroner even arriving, or Ed Poe from the funeral home. Your choices are either he tore that from someone who was attacking him. Or somehow there was a piece of fabric in the creek and he ended up having it in his hand. Those are really your choices as to where that fabric came from. The other thing that is really interesting about this crime scene that has been argued and debated since day one is that a comprehensive search of that crime scene resulted in the discovery of no blood. Not one drop on a leaf, not one drop on the clothing, not one drop up on the Banks, nowhere on the soil, not on any of the trees. And we know that there was blood present. So where was the blood? Yeah, that's a good question. ⁓ we do know ⁓ you heard it on the on the audio from the last episode that when the boys were removed from the water and put on the bank, that shift in their bodies, and I'm sorry, this is awful, but that shift in their bodies caused residual blood that had pooled in their lungs in their ears, in their nostrils to shift and that blood then came out of, you know, whatever orifice it was in. And so they were not actually bleeding at that point, obviously they were deceased, but there was blood present when those bodies were removed from the unnamed creek and then put up on the banks. But that's all the blood that any of the people at the crime scene noted. was whatever blood came from those victims. So there's no visible blood anywhere at the crime scene. The other things that were expected to be found included the socks, which they found one of six possible socks. So five socks are missing. Two pairs of underwear are missing. And one thing we haven't mentioned yet is it was widely believed that Stevie had a pocket knife that was given to him, I think by Jackie Hicks. ⁓ that he had it in his pocket that day and that didn't show up at all. So Those are the things I expected to find and weren't able to locate. Yeah. According to Pam and and Sheila, Stevie took that pocket knife everywhere with him. He was super proud to have it and he kept it with him at all times. Obviously not at school, not allowed to have a weapon at school, but presumably when he went home before he went out to ride his bike with Michael Moore, he would have slipped that pocket knife into his pocket before going out. And it was not recovered from the scene. There's some other things that were not collected, but they were present and probably should have been collected. One was a glass bottle floating directly above the body of Michael Moore. And you can see it in the photographs. If you ever look at pictures of the crime scene before they remove the bodies out of the water and you want to know where Michael Moore is, you'll see a glass bottle floating there. He is about a foot downstream of that, just underneath the water, maybe less than six inches. So you can't see him because the water is very translucent, it's very difficult to see through it. And so you can't see him. But the bottle is there. And like the sticks, when the water starts moving during these storms, it cleans out all that trash right in the very first pulse. So finding glass bottles floating loosely in the water right above a human being that has passed away in the water is very, very suspicious. So you have this glass bottle that is in there. It's got the cap is actually screwed on it. So it's got air still in it. So it hasn't been in the water for very long. In fact, when people go out and do environmental studies, They expect to find the glass at the bottom of the creek. You know, as the creek moves along, it drags stuff along the bottom of it that's heavy like glass. And then things like twigs, leaves, and paper will move across the surface. But in this case, we have a glass bottle floating. And this indicates it has not been in the creek for very long. It's under a suspicious circumstances right above a human being when there should be no glass really floating around in that position at all. So that was unfortunately not collected. So presumably this bottle either w should have been caught up on something so that it was lodged in place or it would have floated out into the bayou, into the ten mile bayou diversion channel, correct? Absolutely right. This is something that, in my opinion, has a very high likelihood of having interacted with the killer. Also, what wasn't collected was on Monkle Moore an ivy frond. So there was a very bizarre ivy frond. That was stuck to him. And remember that when leaves, when they fall into water, they float. Yet this was stuck to his chest. So this is very interesting. This was removed from his chest and it was not collected. The analysis of that would have been interesting to find out if this was something to use to conceal him within the water as opposed to just something loose in the area. And there might have been something of evidence on it that we'll never know about. Of course, we mentioned the two sticks. The one with the shirt on it was not collected until July first. And the second stick was also collected on July first. Last major piece of evidence that they didn't collect that they knew was in the area was that brown coat that was left by the pipe by Mark Byers. So that was never collected. That's another loss for the case. There were some other things that were collected by the investigators and some of those are interesting. What all did they find, Paul? They found a pair of Jodaz 333fold jeans. They found a pair of big razors, one piece plastic bag, one pair of white socks. One medium black shirt, one large khaki, short sleeve button up shirt, and one Roadrunner plastic bag. Roadrunner is ⁓ a local convenience slash gas station fill up spot that is pretty common in the West Memphis area. They also found soon after all of this a rope and a hook that was found near the crime scene. And all of that was collected. And all of that was collected into evidence ⁓ during that period of time of that search. Yeah, so they performed ⁓ what is commonly called a grid search where they line up all along one line at arm's length from each other and they walk together forward so that they can observe every small detail around them and so that they don't miss anything. This is very common at crime scenes. And they did this both in the forest, in the creek, and they also did it in the agricultural field right to the east of there. And they were looking for footprints, they were looking for bike tracks, they were looking for anything that was not left there by the West Memphis PD, that was not their responsibility. And their estimate of it was that there was nothing to find at all, and that there was no indication that anybody had gone into the field off to the east. So if anybody had come into that slicked off bank, they had to go across the river to do it. And this would have been somebody who was involved in the crime. So this is a a pretty interesting and important observation. That leads me to a question. Since there is no evidence that anyone ⁓ used that field on the east side there to access the creek, those prints, those smudges that we know they found at the top of the east bank, those are sliding down, correct? They there's no prints going continuing into the field. Yeah, this is it looks like somebody is trying to get up that bank and they can't get out and they're sliding down it. And so they've made an attempt, they slide, they make another attempt somewhere else, they slide, and they effectively give it up, they clean up the the slicked off bank, it's cleaned up, and they leave those scoff marks, probably unintentionally, and they get out of the crime scene in a different direction. That makes sense. So there is a case summary. Unfortunately, we don't know what time it was written or who wrote it, but this is what it says in summing up their search at the unnamed creek. A crime scene search failed to locate any traces of blood or other evidence which would lead investigators to believe that the victims had been murdered in the area where their bodies were located. A fingerprint and several tennis shoe prints were located in the mud near the site. Two plaster of Paris castings were successfully made from the shoe prints, and the earth containing the fingerprint was removed from the area. The creek was drained by attempt to locate any physical evidence at the bottom with negative results. The two bicycles belonging to two of the victims were located submerged in approximately five feet of water about fifty yards away in the body of water known as Ten Mile Bayou. The creek where the victims were located flows into Ten Mile Bayou. When the detectives left the crime scene that evening on May the sixth, these are all of the items that they had found that they had collected during their search of the unnamed creek and the area surrounding it. They would locate some more evidence later on, but that night as the They left the crime scene. Those are all of the things that they knew where they had located the victims. After the bodies were discovered in the unnamed creek, lots of officers were called to the scene to help in various capacities. One of those officers was Glenn Massingale. He was sent over to do crime scene crowd control there at the north end of West Macaulay. That's the dead end there before you get to the pipe bridge. So he is next to the White House. Mayfair apartments are on the other side of him. He is standing there making sure no one crosses the barrier, no one goes into the crime scene that they are currently searching. There are people approaching him, asking questions, telling him things that they know. And he has some interesting observations here. He is approached by a woman named Kathy Myrick. Who is actually the sister of Steve Branch, Stevie Branch's biological father. And she is talking to some of the area residents there. She's talking to a lady who lives in the Mayfair apartments. And this lady told her that there were kids practicing devil worship in the general area of the homicide. That is what he reports in his notes. Miss Myrick did not know. the name of this woman. It's just someone that she's chatting with while she's out there. But she decides that this is important information to report to the officer. So she does that. He is also approached by a resident of the neighborhood by the name of Deborah O'Tinger. And Deborah tells Officer Massingale that her younger brother told her that devil worship happens in Robin Hood as well. She does give the officer her brother's name. His name is Craig Bashears. He is 14 years old, but she did not give him any more information as she did not want to get her brother involved in this case. But now Officer Massingale has two reports from two different people that there is devil worship going on in these woods. Welcome to Case 666. Yes, Case 666. You couldn't make this stuff up. It's just absolutely crazy. They're not even gone a day. And the people standing out there next to the crime scene tape are talking about devil worshippers in Robin Hood and in the adjoining areas. And it's right here in the very first police report ever filed in this case. This is the very first investigative report. Yes. And Officer Massingale was only there for about four hours. And during that short amount of time, in four hours, he has two people approach him telling him that devil worship takes place in Robin Hood Hills. It's mind-boggling. At this point, the West Memphis PD are going to start reaching out and asking for help because this is a major crime. This is going to get major news very fast. Remember, Mark Byers has already alerted the local media since that morning and they're buzzing around in helicopters. The search and rescue helicopters have been buzzing around. The entire neighborhood's been looking for these kids. And all of a sudden it's pretty obvious that we have a triple homicide and this thing is The news is spreading like wildfire. And West Memphis PD is gonna start looking for an immediate answer to this. And so start looking for h low hanging fruit, which is to say, Hey, we need some help and here's some circumstances we're dealing with. Maybe you guys have seen it, maybe you guys know who might have been the person to do it. We can get ⁓ quick. And so the best way for them to do this is to reach out through the Arkansas Crime Information Center, the ACIC, and also through a series of radio room transmissions to see if they could secure these leads and ⁓ lock them down before it gets out of hand. Or before it gets away from ⁓ And they actually started using that ACIC system early that morning. At nine twenty eight AM, they utilized that system for the first time as far as we know. They sent out a message throughout the state about the three missing boys and they list their descriptions, their ages, their date of birth, what they were last seen wearing, so that anyone in this whole state that spotted these boys would Call them and let them know. They are still under the assumption that they could have been picked up by someone that's traveling on I forty or I-5 because the last known whereabouts is near the Blue Beacon truck wash. So they are leaving no stone unturned. So before they even really start examining the area where the boys would later be found, they have sent out this bolo or be on the lookout. out statewide looking for these three missing boys. Yeah. Well the boys might have been just runaways, right? You know, that was one of the ideas the search and rescue had. So you need to get that information out to all the law enforcement agencies you possibly can. And this is the system they would use to do that with. Now at 303 PM, West Memphis Police Department sends out a regional broadcast. They're alerting everyone that they now have three victims. I'm just going to read what the broadcast says. It says this department has a case of three male juveniles being abducted They were found with their hands tied behind their backs and their genitals had been removed with a sharp instrument. Their bodies had been dropped in a remote place. Any department with a case similar to this, please advise this department attention, Inspector Gitchell. All information appreciated. West Memphis Police Department. So three hundred three PM. If you are keeping a timeline of this, you know that this is four minutes, four very short minutes after Christopher Byers has been removed from the water. Remember, Christopher Meyer's the only one missing his genitals. So within was it two hundred and forty seconds, there's already a regional broadcast talking about this. And it's inaccurate, right? It says that the the three male juveniles have had their their genitals removed with a sharp instrument, but the reality is only one did. So this misinformation went up. And it says that their bodies have been dropped in a remote place. To me, that indicates that ⁓ Maybe they were transported there? It seems to have been an early interpretation within those early seconds. I mean, how long could they have thought about this? Four minutes since Chris Byers was removed from the water. They didn't think about it. They just simply put out a transmission. Yeah. It's kind of mind blowing to me that they put this kind of information out there so quickly after they found Christopher. The next broadcast goes out at four fifteen PM on May the sixth. It says any agency having had any young males abducted where their genitals were cut off and victims hand tied, then dropped off in remote areas, please contact this department with any information you can supply, any descriptions, etc. Contact Inspector Gitchell. Any help appreciated. West Memphis, Arkansas Police Department. Again, sending out very private, sensitive information about Christopher. They don't name him. And and this one maybe is slightly better than the last one because it doesn't say exactly that all three have had their genitals removed. It just says where their genitals were cut off and victims hands tied and dropped off in a remote area. So maybe it's slightly more accurate. But this is highly, highly sensitive information going out again at four fifteen. This is an hour and twelve minutes after the initial broadcast. Yeah, they're moving pretty fast to get that information out as quickly as possible. Because, you know, you're assuming that the killer's on the road or getting beyond their reach and they're wanting to make sure they could secure them as quickly as possible because at this point probably got a sixteen hour head start on them. And and that kind of leads into their their next broadcast, which comes at ten thirty PM that evening. They are thinking that their killer or killers might be on the move. This broadcast reads any agency having contact with two white male hitchhikers Described in their twenties, dirty looking, one has long hair, both described as carrying red knapsacks or sleeping bags. Last seen in the West Memphis area on five hundred five ninety three around six to six thirty PM. Please get all information on both subjects. Last seen walking west on I forty. Any information obtained on subjects, please contact Detective Sergeant Mike Allen, West Memphis Police Department. Info needed regarding triple homicide in our city. Yeah, my understanding is they had been observed on the side of the road by a police officer earlier in the day who just happened to notice them and it just kind of stuck in their mind. And I I remember seeing that in one of the files and undoubtedly we'll uncover who they are in the upcoming episodes. No spoilers in this one. In addition to what was being transmitted to the ACIC, the radio room was also transmitting to all the officers in the area. One of these transmissions came at ten fifty on Friday May seventh. This transmission says there is a white male in late thirties or early forties riding a bicycle. He was seen earlier and probably has had time to get to Force City by now. He needs to be identified and photographed if you could locate him. He is a transient, has a heavy brown beard. We need any and all info that could be obtained from and about this subject. Please contact us as soon as someone makes contact with him. This pertains to our homicides yesterday, and this is coming from A West Memphis Police Department Detective Ridge. Interesting. So two hitchhikers and a guy on a bike. And then back to ACIC, their the last broadcast we're going to mention was the next day on the seventh at three ⁓ seven PM. ⁓ they sent out a broadcast that says West Memphis, Arkansas, P D to all units in area. Be on the lookout for two hitchhikers who were seen around Osceola. On May sixth, ninety three, both described as being in their twenties, both five seven to five eight, both a hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds. If anyone has seen these two, please contact Sergeant Allen at the West Memphis Police Department. Thanks for your help, West Memphis Police. So they already have a handful of leads, but they already have an interest in tracking down. They're on the lookout for these people and they're reaching out to everybody. Hey, find these guys on these bikes, find these hitchhikers, find these people out there on I-40, and let's catch them and bring them in before they get too far away because we don't want to lose these leads. So the interesting thing about this is is that these ACIC ⁓ alerts and these radio room alerts that are going out, they are going out to law enforcement, but law enforcement likes to talk. And they're going to be talking about this crime all over eastern Arkansas and certainly into Memphis as well. Remember the Memphis Police Department contributed a helicopter to the search earlier in the day. So all eyes were on this portion of the world that day. And when police officers are aware of this information, they're going to talk. And if they're going to talk, it's going to be heard. And anybody with a scanner is going to be listening. And that's exactly what happened. And this information, well, why don't you tell us about what made its way into the news and how fast it got there? We're going to start on May the sixth with the Evening Times, newspaper for Crittenden County. There's an article called Murdered Boys Found in Bayou. And they note that police have no suspects in the murders, according to Gary Gitchell, public information officer for the West Memphis Police Department. Asked how officers concluded that the three deaths were a homicide, Gitchell said it was plain to an investigator's eye. It was a homicide. They did not slip and fall off a pipe that stretched across the bayou, often used as a bridge. He described how the body of one of the boys was found by a detective. One of my men noticed a shoe. Being inquisitive, he jumped in the water and started feeling around, Gitchell explained. People have been walking through here all day. We're lucky he saw one shoe. Gitchell said that area where the boys were found was saturated hard and heavy that morning or even the evening before, he said. He estimated there were fifty searchers, including police volunteers from the Crittenden County search and rescue squad and the boys' neighborhood. Well the area. was certainly saturated that morning. I don't know if I would go so far as to say it was saturated the evening before. There had been a few searchers in and around the area, but not that many. And not certain whether or not he was aware that Steve Jones was the one that identified the shoe or not, but it's certainly not the case where he had an inquisitive officer get the water and start feeling around. We had an officer fall in the water and accidentally made the discovery. So He's either uninformed or he's intentionally letting the public know something that isn't true just because that's an investigative tool, I guess. Right. As we know, the two people who originally saw the shoe were Denver Reed and Steve Jones, neither of whom worked for the West Memphis Police Department. In the commercial appeal, which is the Memphis newspaper on Friday, May the seventh, nineteen ninety-three, this is titled Mutilated Bodies of Three Boys Found in Bayou. Hunt for suspect in West Memphis. An Arkansas State Police broadcast alerting regional authorities to the slaying said the hands of the boys had been tied behind their backs and that they had been sexually mutilated. When asked about this, Inspector Gary Gitchell said we do have three homicides. I won't comment on the crime scene or what we have found. Mark Byers, father of Christopher, characterized whoever killed his son as an animal. I hope God shows a little mercy on his soul, because I sure wouldn't. And there it is, right? There's some pretty important details that are already in the news and all over the newspapers. And everybody in the entire region knows exactly what happened to these kids. Do they know the little details? No. But even these broad details should not have been out. And they're in the newspapers right away. Also in the commercial appeal on the seventh, there's another article entitled Playground Irresistible to Kids now holds neighborhoods grief. In this article, they're talking to various residents, and one person said, I think they ought to take it all down. That's a dangerous place. Those kids can't stop going back there. I play back there all the time, said Chris husband, fourteen, who said he sometimes played there with Christopher Byers. There's ramps, bike trails, hills. It's fun back there. We catch turtles and snakes and stuff. But he said he and his friends have also found hypodermic needles in the area, as well as a twenty two rifle and a pistol that was all messed up. Bo Hamrick, twenty one, said scores of people helped look for the missing children Thursday. He and his friend Tony Smith, twenty two, rode all terrain vehicles throughout the area for about eight hours, even stopping in the early morning near the pool where the boys were found. It was kind of a letdown to know we were so close and couldn't see them, Hamrick said. Maybe we could have done something. Carolyn Love, twenty eight, said she was very scared for her three children. I tell them, Do not go anywhere without telling me unless I'm there with you at all times, and I'm making a special trip to get them onto the school bus and pick them up at all times. Clifford Exley, twenty seven, whose son is now in Florida visiting relatives, said he hasn't decided whether or not to bring his boy back to West Memphis. Mark Moyes, thirty one, who lives with his three children in the Mayfair apartments adjacent to Robin Hood, said we plan on moving out of here. There's too many things going on. In the commercial appeal on May the eighth, In an article entitled Autopsies Show Three Boys Died of Multiple Blows to the Head, West Memphis gets extra help in the hunt for a suspect. Inspector Gary Gitchell confirms that the boys' hands and feet were bound. Dr. Frank Peretti, a forensic pathologist with the Crime Lab's Medical Examiner's Office, completed the autopsies about 1 PM. At 4 PM, he issued a statement that said all three children died of multiple injuries. Gitchell also said that the boys died from trauma, just trauma to their heads. Gitchell would not comment on or deny an Arkansas State Police radio broadcast Thursday night that said West Memphis police were investigating the abduction and sexual mutilation of the three boys. The FBI's behavioral sciences experts in Quantico, Virginia are also being briefed on the details of the crime, Gitchell said. So the federal psychologist might develop a profile of the killer or killers. The West Memphis case has attracted the attention of departments throughout the country, and investigators have been phoning Gitchell's office eager to see if the West Memphis case might shed light on their own. Gitchell later says, We have some of the major trucking in the nation going through here, Gitchell said. He said his detectives have not ruled out the possibility that they're looking for hitchhikers, truckers, neighborhood residents, anybody. We are leaving no stone unturned, Gitchell said Friday afternoon. We have some hopeful leads that we are checking on. It's frustrating. We'll rely heavily on the crime lab to bring forth some information to sort of steer us in one direction or the other. He said his criminal investigation division has received almost three hundred phone tips since Thursday, and that a reward fund that had been set up has swelled to six thousand dollars. Yeah, so the The details of this crime scene are being blasted all over the news and all over the media, and it's going to become common knowledge. The sexual mutilation, the fact that they were found in water, the fact that they were tied up, which he confirms in other news reports. All that stuff is out there. The public is digesting this. And of course the rumors, as we've already mentioned earlier, are gonna just fly through this neighborhood very rapidly. And of course, we have a situation where Inspector Gitchell, he's the public information officer and he's also the lead investigator for this case, he's going to start doing daily press releases. Every single day he's going to be going before the press and answering questions and giving them information because he's trying to let the public know that he's on top of this and they're going to try and get this resolved as quickly as possible because he knows that there's a panic is going to set in if he doesn't do this. Yeah. Initially he did two press conferences a day and then at some point, I don't remember the date, he goes to one a day ⁓ because people are demanding information. People are scared. They don't they're not letting their kids out of their sight. They can't play outside. They can't ride their bikes. They're not walking to school. Yeah, I had a conversation with Sheila Hicks a couple ⁓ of days before we recorded this and we were talking about the pressure that was being exerted by the families on the police department. We always hear about the public. But according to her, she said Jackie Hicks Senior was calling every single day, saying, Where are we at? What leads are we doing? Where are we going with this? And he's pushing hard. And apparently Mark Byers was doing something very similar. Of course, Mark Byers also was doing it through the media. He was always talking to the media and putting pressure on Inspector Gitchell. So this is easily the biggest case that West Memphis PD has ever seen. And this is one of the biggest cases in US history. And this little town of of less than thirty thousand people is gonna have this just take over everything in the media and the news. Their politicians are gonna be consumed by it and it's just gonna consume this entire town. ⁓ to the point where it's even remarked upon by Dan Stitham ⁓ in trial in nineteen ninety-four, and we have the audio for that. This is the most difficult case that they've ever investigated. Ladies and gentlemen, there was a public outcry. The the public was demanding that someone be arrested for this crime. And the police department were trying to respond to this tremendous amount of pressure that they were under. So from the information from Officer Massingale to the ACIC broadcast to the newspaper articles, it seems that the West Memphis Police Department is looking in a thousand different directions because They don't have any real leads at this time that we know of, right? So it could be transients. They've gotten a little bit of information about some hitchhikers. It could be devil worshippers in Robin Hood Hills, according to the people who talked to Officer Massingale. It could be someone from the neighborhood. It could be anyone, anywhere. They don't know. So where do they go? How do they start? Where do they look? Well, one of the interesting things that happens is Diane Hester, who was at the crime scene, has a hunch. And the hunch is actually based upon something pretty smart, which is go to where the boys were last seen alive. And the last place they were seen alive is over on Goodwin at the Devil's Den entrance. There's homes over there. Let's start looking over there and asking those people. And in fact, right next to the Devil's Den concrete chute, it's located at 1400 North Goodwin, is a resident there named Thelma Turner. So while Hester was interviewing Thelma Turner, she produced a note of that interview, and this is one of the first ⁓ witness interviews. statements that we have in the case. This past Sunday observed two white males and two black males behind her residence in the field. One white male was tall, stocky bill, dark hair, medium length hair, wearing a cap, approximately late teens, was carrying a large knife. The second white male was approximately ten years old, had brown hair, not seen either in the neighborhood before. So two new faces. Number three were the two black males. Both were approximately fifteen or sixteen years of age, both tall, all were together. Observe the older white male place the knife to the chest of one of the black males last seen walking east on Goodwin. And then of course she leaves Thelma Turner's with this information about a knife being brandished towards a child in the woods right behind her house, goes across the street and at thirteen ⁓ nine there's Deborah O'Tinger. This is the same woman we were talking about earlier, who was telling of the rumors of the devil worshippers in Robin Hood, and she said that she saw all three boys at approximately five thirty or six o'clock. And that they were riding around in her yard, and she told them not to ride in her yard, and then they were last seen headed towards the trails. Well, the trails is where the knife was. So, you know, this is a kind of an interesting lead on this whole thing when you're Diane Hester, you're saying this area is starting to sound pretty dangerous. These kids were last seen going in the direction of danger, if this is in fact the case. And so there's a another interesting lead that comes up that night that is actually pretty famous. And ⁓ do you want to take this one here? On the night of May the sixth, after the boys had been found, the West Memphis Police Department received a call from a man named Marty King. He is actually the manager at the Bojangles restaurant. You might remember that when we went over the dispatch logs for Officer Regina Meek, she was sent to the Bojangles restaurant on Missouri Street the night before for a call that came in that evening. That night, once ⁓ Detective Allen and Detective Ridge left the crime scene, they They headed over to Bo Jangles restaurant in response to this call from the manager Marty King. When they arrived there, the manager would explain to them that the previous evening a very disoriented, bloody black man entered the restaurant and behaved so bizarrely that he decided he needed to call the police. Yeah. So we have a disoriented, muddy man who's dripping blood. at the Bojangles restaurant right after Regina Meek leaves Mark Byers' house to begin the search for the missing children. So those are the leads that they've got. So here's the question that we have for you. Bicyclists, transients. We got the people at Devil's Den saying there's kids with big knives that are hanging out back there. The boys were last seen going into that area. We got the bloody man at Bojangles and we're gonna have a bunch of other leads that are possibly going to come together. Question for you is which way would you go? What would you do first? What would be your first steps? Because we know which direction the West Memphis P D went in and we'll be covering that in the coming weeks. But the question is, where would you go as an armchair criminologist? Yeah, there are lots of interesting options. You've got scary teenagers, you've got witches in Robin Hood, you've got transient hitchhikers, a man on a bike, a bloody man in Bojangles. Who do you investigate first? So with that said, we're not gonna post a spoiler so that you know what the next episode is gonna be about. You're just gonna know when you see it and hopefully it'll be a surprise to you all, but it will be their first big investigative lead that they pursue on this case. If you want to join the discussion, we strongly encourage you to contribute to the case by following Crooked Tree Pot on Facebook, on X, or to follow us on YouTube.