Latest / Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast / Q&A #2: Stevie’s Missing Hour, the Splashes & Other Listener Questions

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Q&A #2: Stevie’s Missing Hour, the Splashes & Other Listener Questions · Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast

• Paul: Welcome to this QA episode of Crooked Tree, a West Memphis 3 podcast. Hi, everybody, welcome back. My name is Paul Day, and I'm here with my co-host, Kristen Rich. We are doing our second QA for the podcast. If you are a member of our Facebook group, you know that we occasionally post the opportunity for people to ask us questions and we'll answer them on the podcast for everybody to hear. And we received a flood of questions, some of them pertaining to episodes one through eight, a lot of general questions, and then there's some other information that I think people would just like to hear. Kristen, how you doing? I'm good. I like these Q and A episodes. It's interesting to hear what people are thinking about, what they have questions about and what we need to clarify further. Yeah, I like it because it gives me the opportunity to not only clarify some of the comments that we're making and so that we don't leave people behind, but it also allows us to re investigate and to reaffirm what it is that we thought we had together before because when people ask questions and especially if they're tough questions, you really have to know what you're talking about to be able to answer them effectively. So we're hoping that we could do that and This should be a fun time. These Q and A, I agree, are some of the most fun things that we do. Yeah. So we're gonna start off with a clarification. ⁓ there was a a conversation between Paul and Shelly on the Facebook group and it was about an image that Paul had posted of the scuff or tool marks that were found at the crime scene. And she wanted some clarification because she was thinking that these marks were found in a particular spot and turns out Maybe it wasn't stated exactly right. So Paul's gonna clarify for us where exactly on the East Bank these marks were found and why it does not indicate that the perpetrator or perpetrators left via the East Bank. Yeah, so Shelley's question was fantastic. What she was asking was if the the scoff marks are along the crown of the eastern bank, then why didn't they make their way out? And I realized I had to go back to the podcast and I listened to it and I said, ⁓ shoot, I was probably not as clear as I ought to have been. And so I was able to explain it to her on Facebook, but for you, the listener, I wanted to explain this. The East Bank extends down to a depth of about twelve feet below ground level. It's pretty far down in that hollow. Had a nice conversation about the hollow versus the holler, but it's about twelve foot below the top of that hollow. And the slicked off part of the east bank, it goes up about five feet. So everything from the bottom of the hollow to about five foot elevation off the bottom. was slicked off. Above that, it wasn't. There were leaves, there were twigs, there was all of this. And it was at the intersection between the slicked off portion of the east bank, about four and a half to five feet up. And above that, right at that interface between those two, that's exactly where the scoff marks were at about four and a half to five foot elevation up. So whoever was trying to get up and out of there, they left the scoff mark, but they weren't able to get out. You can clearly see the drag marks in the images that we posted on Facebook. But there are no marks above that. So they were not able to go the additional possibly six, seven, maybe eight feet to get all the way out to the top and be able to escape off to the east. That makes a a lot of sense. All right. We're gonna go to questions that y'all have asked. We are going to split these up like we did last time, questions pertaining to what we've been talking about or that are fairly easy to answer. And then we're gonna have kind of a second half where these are questions that don't really pertain to what we've gone over in the podcast and you can choose to listen or not to listen if you don't want to hear spoilers or talk about things that ⁓ you haven't heard on the podcast yet. Yeah, we'll make sure we give you a spoiler warning before we drop any spoilers. If you're brand new to the case and you want to experience it all afresh and new and I totally get that. It's great. But for you guys that have been studying the case for twenty years, some of you guys over thirty years, you guys are well aware of a lot of the issues in the case and you're probably about 400 steps ahead of where we are on the podcast. So we'll give you the spoiler alert so we make sure everybody's accommodated. And along those lines, if that's something you're interested in, if you are a listener and you are very familiar with the case and you want to have those conversations, please come join our Facebook group. Paul and I don't always engage in those conversations, but there are lots of members who have a lot of knowledge and a lot of curiosity who talk about topics that we have not even come close to covering yet. And if you want to have those conversations, ⁓ there's plenty of people there to have those conversations with. I will say this, I do enjoy reading them even if I don't comment on them. That's fun to lurk and to see what people going back and forth are saying, as long as the conversation is respectful, as long as we understand that this is all in furtherance of increasing our knowledge and understanding of the case, have that conversation. Debates about facts and evidence are wonderful. As long as it doesn't get personal, I look forward to seeing it. Yeah, and just because Paul and I don't respond doesn't mean we're not reading. We are absolutely reading. I'll drop a like in there every once in a while, even if I don't respond. But they're just things we don't want to comment on yet because we haven't covered it on the podcast. But you guys in the discussion group are welcome to talk about it all you want. All right. This question comes from Darren. He asks, What are the theories regarding the loud splashes heard that night? And of course he is referring to these splashes Primarily reported by Ryan and his friends while they were searching the woods on the night of the fifth for the three missing boys. Yeah, so the splashes are iconic in this case. It's one of the first timeline instances where people's hair kind of stands up saying something's wrong, something's really odd about this, and people tend to attach a lot of meaning to it. And so I did a little bit of investigation on how other people have looked at this over the years by going to the old West Memphis Three Discussion Forums. And I realize that there's kind of three or four common themes that keep coming up over and over and over again. And the first one is kind of obvious that the perpetrator, whoever had committed this crime, was throwing the bodies into the bayou and get ready to run. He hears the searchers, he throws the bodies in the bayou and he's trying to get out of there as quickly as possible. Another one that you see is that it's the bicycles, because the bicycles are found in that major bayou. Maybe it's the bicycles being dumped and now the perpetrator is trying to get out of there as quickly as possible. That's the second one. And the third one is that it's unrelated, that it's a natural cause. So people have speculated that it's the searchers themselves that somehow threw rocks in. Maybe one searcher threw a rock into the bayou and it was heard by another searcher, you know, that kind of thing, that there were animals crawling around inside the bayou and that caused the splashing. Or it's just some kind of random coincidence that there was sloughing going off into the bank because there's a lot of mud in the area and it fell in. It just was a total coincidence that it happened at that time. Those are the three buckets that they tend to go into. And ⁓ do you have any comments on what your thoughts are on those three, Kristen, before Yeah. And actually Darren brought it up when he was discussing this after he asked his question, that if it's someone throwing bodies or bikes into water, it's a very risky move with the number of people that are out there. searching. You can hear people yelling, right? We we know that the families are yelling all the boys' names while they're out there searching through the woods. It's no secret that there are other people out there looking. So it is a very dangerous prospect to be getting rid of bodies or evidence at the same time that all these people are in the woods. Yeah. There's also another issue, which is a lot of people don't understand the geography of the crime scene very well. That was something that takes a little bit of practice. ⁓ you have to be able to look at a map and say Here's where Devil's Den is. Here's where the pipe bridge is. Here's where the shots came from. This is where the crime scene is. And once you put all this information together, you realize that Devil's Den, which is where the splash has occurred, is located a full quarter mile off to the east of where the crime scene happened, where the bikes went in. So this is in no way, shape, or form related to the bodies or the bikes. So you can immediately eliminate options one and two. That does leave you with option three and I don't know, let's talk about the animals of the bayou. Is that a possibility? Yeah, as we've noted before, there are quite a few animals in and around that area. Could be turtles sliding into water, jumping into water. They certainly don't want people out in their habitat. So they could be scared. Other animals could be scared and jump into the water because they're trying to get away from all these people that are now invading their space. It could be rocks, it could be sliding. We don't know what it is. I think most likely it is probably some sort of animal making that noise. Yeah. I've been to the Pipe Bridge and we've seen beaver suddenly skate out out into the water and try to get away from us. There's turtles in there. There's aquatic snakes all over the place. But there's also a lot of wild animals. There's a lot of fox that lives in the trees over there and they would very easily ford across there, you know, just pounce across these little shallow waterways. Not talking about the main bayou, but Devil's Den Ditch, which is the ditch it drains into that Devil's Den is named after, was a relatively shallow ditch and foxes and things like this can run across there. But anybody who's ever been in an aquatic environment and they've seen turtles just hanging out on logs and stuff like that, once they get scared, they all jump in and some of these things can make quite a splash when they do it. So it would not surprise me if this was animal behavior. And if you're out there, you know, these boys, they're your family, they're your friends, they're your neighbors, you're out there searching for them, they're missing. You're already scared. You don't know what's happened to them. The last report is that they've gone into Devil's Den. It's now dark. You're searching for them. You're hearing noise everything you hear or the shadows you see, it becomes scary because of the environment you're in, because of the situation that you're in. And so you're going to equate these noises and these sights with something kind of ominous, even if it's not. Because that's just how you feel inside. You're you're scared. You don't know what you're about to find. You're upset, you're searching for someone you care about, and you hear these noises and you just go to the worst possible scenario. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened with Ryan and Britt, which was the splashes occurred and they hightailed it right out of there. Instead of staying in the Devil's Den area or even staying in Robin Hood, they went over to the safety of W. E. Cat and they took the parallel route over to the White House rather than follow Robbie and Richie along the bayou. And that's normal. That's just h natural human reaction. That's just the way that we react to things when we're in a stressful environment. And it's a completely normal way to react. Okay, hope we answered your question, Darren. The next question comes from Cheryl. She asks, What are your thoughts on where Stevie could have been between four and five? It seems like he was making his way home down where he was seen. You have any thoughts on that, Paul? Where you think Stevie might have been between four and five, other than the sighting by Betty Johnson? Well, there's no doubt that Stevie knew that he had to be home by four thirty. And the fact that he missed that is a huge mystery in the case. There are other kids in the neighborhood he might have run across and played with for a short period of time or even an extended period of time and lost track of time. The problem that we have is that we have a very small snapshot of the neighborhood. In terms of the canvassing of the neighborhood, it was all the area to the north of Barton and to the west of eighteenth Street. But we know that Stevie lives to the south of Barton. So we don't have any record of him playing with anybody over there because nobody asked. And we wouldn't have the report from Betty Johnson except that she told a newspaper. She was not canvased. She was in the part of the neighborhood that was not asked the questions about the boys. So had she not talked to a reporter and they had not printed it in the newspaper, we wouldn't even know about that sighting. There's some additional evidence that we're gonna have to talk about at some point that might suggest that he might have at some point made it home, but We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Yeah. I I also want to read the very last thing she said in that question because I'm sure a lot of people are wondering the same thing. Cheryl ends her question with, like, did he run into someone that was nefarious, triggering the sequence of events that followed? We don't know exactly where Stevie was between four and five. Could he have run into the person who or persons who ultimately took his life? Yes. That's a possibility. We don't know the answer to that. Could it be a case where he ran into someone who followed him around? Possibly. What we do know is nothing happened right away. He eventually hooks up with his friends, Michael and Christopher, and they're playing for a short time, and then they are all three together the last time that they are seen. So if he ran into someone that triggered those events, there was a delay in those events happening if there was some interaction between four and five. This next question comes from Carly. She asks, how much did the West Memphis PD interview and investigate registered sex offenders in the area? Was there a record of any residing in the neighborhood, particularly near any one of the boys' homes? I know this angle was explored, but probably not enough as it should have been, especially since the West Memphis Police Department did believe the crime was sexually motivated at first. That's a lot of questions. The short answer is yes. Paul and I are always astounded at how many predators were living in that neighborhood. Yeah, that neighborhood and in that vicinity. And we're talking about some really bad people. Really bad people. Some of the episodes that we're gonna have to put together are gonna be hard to deliver. It's gonna be hard for you to listen to, and we gotta find a way to do it in such a way that we don't make it Harder than it has to be. There's a couple of people. One in particular that lived right there in that neighborhood that we're going to talk about that's just going to make your hair stand up. So yeah, we will get to that. But yes, they did look at sex offenders, at predators in the neighborhood for sure. Our next question comes from Linda. Linda asks, Is there any way to find out if Terry Hobbes was a confidential informant? I'm sure this originates because ⁓ it is widely known that. Mark Byers did work as an informant at some point. The chances of two of our dads being confidential informants seems kinda weird. I don't know. I've never heard that Terry Hobbs was a confidential informant. How about you? Well, the idea's been floating around for a bit because Terry Hobbs wasn't interviewed by the West Memphis P D early on and so that kind of gives people the sense that the West Memphis P D didn't really take a look at him. Same way that a lot of people early on also felt like Mark Byers wasn't given a fair look, even though Mark Byers was investigated pretty thoroughly. And interviewed e extensively. Yeah. And there's s several people in this case that were confidential informants that we'll be bringing up when we cross their paths. But any way to find out if Terry Hobbs was a confidential informant, I would say ask Terry Hobbs. I mean, he would be the one to know and anybody else that had that information, well, it's confidential. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. I mean, obviously I've heard the rumor as well. I've never heard of anything that substantiates the rumor. I've never seen any documentation. I've never heard, you know, a statement from anybody in the police force, anything that states that he was actually a confidential informant. I'm of the opinion he wasn't. I see no evidence for it and I don't think he was. I d I just don't think he was that connected to law enforcement in any way, shape, or form at that time. All right. Let's move on to Jeremy. Who asks, whatever happened to Brian Ridge? I don't think I've heard anything from him since the trials. It would be interesting to hear his opinion about everything new that's unfolded over the years since he was such a huge part of the original investigation. I did do a little searching. It appears that he has moved to another part of Arkansas and that he moved in 2018. So he's not in the West Memphis area anymore. And I will also say this I have never reached out to Brian Ridge. I have reached out to a couple of other officers who were involved in this case, and I get the standard answer. I have nothing to say. Please direct your questions to Gary Gitchell. From what I understand, people who have tried to talk to Detective Ridge about this, but he basically gives the same answer. It's not something he wants to talk about or be involved in. The next question comes from Adrian. She says, It doesn't sound like the gunshots heard at nine fifteen PM could be related to the Bojangles man. But is it possible that he saw the crime being committed, got scared, and ran through the bayou, scraping himself on the thick brush to the point of bleeding? It seems like he was in distress, and I have trouble imagining what led him there in that condition, muddy and bloody. I mean, it's possible, right? It just would have to happen well before the timing of the gunshots. So the gunshots are depends on how you timeline it. We put it at about eight fifty five. But nine fifteen is fine. It's kind of ballparkish right around the same time. Bojangles man happens at eight forty. That's when the phone call comes in from dispatch to Regina Meek. Regina Meek then goes over and starts dealing with the Bojangles call. So the timing doesn't match. So this certainly cannot be related to Bojangles, the shot. In terms of him possibly being involved in the crime earlier during the daylight hours and running through the bayou or running through the mud or running along the r train track and tripping and cutting himself or along the brush and cutting himself. It's not impossible. I agree with you. I my answer would be we know that the woods are being explored by around eight thirty. Once Mark and Ryan found out from their neighbor that the boys were seen at the Devil's Den entrance and they start searching in that area, they see nothing and no one. So whatever happened to the boys happened prior to that. it had to have. If you subscribe to the idea that whatever happened happened in those woods, it happened before that. If you subscribe to the idea that the boys were taken somewhere and then returned to the woods, then anything's possible, but you would have to believe that whatever happened happened in the woods if you're going to associate Bojangles with that. He wouldn't have seen something that happened in another place, presumably. So that timing doesn't work really either. It's too early for something like that to have happened. Of course he could be confused and disoriented and had hurt himself. But I think that would have happened directly after what he saw. Does that make sense? Like he would have been traumatized at that moment, not an hour later, two hours later, whatever the timing is. It just doesn't fit to me either. Aaron Powell So it does seem to me that people associate Bojangles in three different groups, right? It seems like there's always three or four different theories for everything. That one, he's just a guy, right? He's a guy that was I don't know, got hurt, wound up in the bathroom, and has nothing to do with this. It's just a coincidence. There's that. There's the second group that says, He's the guy. He's the killer. You can't convince me otherwise. He did it. The timeline fits. This was a huge missed opportunity. We could have caught him right there and then in this case would have been over in twenty four hours. And then there's a third group that says he was a witness He got injured by the perpetrator and somehow got into the Bojangles restaurant to try to hide or clean himself up. And when the time came where he was being forced out by Marty King, he finally kind of went off to the south of the restaurant on the streets. So those are the three ideas that people have about it. In terms of it being connected to the gunshot and the crime, you know, it takes a lot of evidence to make that happen. And ⁓ right now the gunshot doesn't fit. The timing does kind of fit, you know, about eight o'clock, but again, that leads you to the question of Was he even involved at all? Right. You have to make a connection saying that he was there and he had the ability to do this. And that's an interesting conversation that we're gonna return to at some point. All right. Next question comes from LMP Adelaide. I have a question in regards to Christopher Byers' skateboard. Was this ever found? Surely someone would have picked it up if it was left behind. And we did mention that, I do believe, that his skateboard was recovered. It was seen by both. Dana Moore and his neighbor Lakeha Freeman in the road where he abandoned it when he got on Stevie's bike and that was recovered by Mark, correct? It was either recovered by Mark or Ryan, I don't recall off the top of my head. One of the two. Now Ryan will say that he has no memory of the skateboard. He didn't know it was Chris's skateboard. Of course, I asked Mark about this before Mark passed away and Mark was, hey The guy's always hustling. He would trade things all the time. That was the skateboard he was on earlier in the day when I found him in the middle of the street. So it's the same skateboard. So that's the reason why I was offering the conjecture that he had acquired the skateboard probably either that day or within seventy two hours of that day. Because Ryan had no memory of it, had no experience with it, but Mark did. And certainly Chris had been riding a skateboard that day. It was observed by numerous people doing so. And we know whether it was his, he traded for it, he borrowed it from someone We know he was on that skateboard because we have two corroborating witnesses who saw him on that specific skateboard. Now the disappointing aspect of this is the skateboard itself was never entered into evidence. It would have been wonderful had that been collected. Could you imagine if the skateboard had a drop of blood on it and it didn't belong to Chris? That might be a major lead for us to follow. But unfortunately the skateboard isn't there. We have no idea what became of it. It's entirely possible that one of the neighbors came and claimed it. You know, he might have pawned for it and the neighbor said, Hey, I really want my skateboard back, and Mark just handed him the skateboard, not realizing the possible evidentiary value of it. All right. Carly has another question for us. I don't remember if this was discussed in the episode going over the shoe prints and the lone fingerprint, but were multiple distinct shoe prints found or just the one shoe prints? It sounds as if whoever left those shoe prints did a decent enough job to cover up what they did. So the fingerprint is just a single fingerprint in the mud that is very hard to see. You had a sharp eyed detective that discovered it, Tony Anderson. Tony Anderson had some FBI training, so he really knew what to do and where to look, was very good at his job. And I'm kind of an admirer of some of the work that he did in this case. Not everything he put together makes me really happy, but in terms of h his treatment of evidence and where to look for things, he does kind of step up a little bit above the others and seems to have some insights that others don't have. In terms of the footprints, they're located right at about the same elevation as the scoff marks. They're about five feet above the bottom of the maybe slightly higher, but about five feet above the base of the creek. So they're about six or seven feet below the top of the land surface, but about five feet up the side of the hollow. And what it is is a nice clean sneaker print and It's actually one where you can see that they stepped and then they picked their foot up and then stepped down on almost exactly the same spot. They're offset slightly, but you can see it's one footprint and then it lays down back on itself again. So whoever it was raised their foot up and then put their foot down at the same spot. So how many prints are there? That's what she's asking. So we have that one distinct set over there. It's over by the hollow tree. And then the other set, which was over by the triple tree, which was later determined to be matched to Brian Ridge. That was the second one. So it was just those two. One we can eliminate, the other one is an unknown. And that wraps up the questions that pertain to our podcast episodes. That was really fun. I'm enjoying the the feedback we're getting and it was nice to be able to clarify some of these statements. Sometimes we put things out and in our head we're describing things and we think we understand exactly how we're putting it out and that it's being received that way. And then when somebody comes back with a question we said, ⁓ we weren't as articulate on that issue as we thought we were. So it's always good to get a good question that helps us to refine and clean up our information. Yes. We kind of fill in the blanks in our own heads. And Paul and I know what we're talking about. So I'll fill in a blank that he doesn't cover. He'll fill in a blank I don't cover and we don't realize that, you know, we need more clarification. So it's great that you ask these questions. Yeah. It's awesome. All right, now we're gonna move on to some questions that we have not covered on the podcast. And let's just preface this by saying we probably aren't gonna answer these questions to your satisfaction, but we will at some point. Yeah, so if you're listening to the podcast and you're green and you're learning it anew for the very first time, there's gonna be some spoilers, some names being dropped that are case related but you have not experienced yet in our podcast. So if you don't want a spoiler, then now's your time to go ahead and sign off. But if you are okay with hearing names that you might not be familiar with that kind of give you an idea of where things might be going, then you're welcome to stay with us. All right, this question is from Kelly. And she actually has three questions. She says she's been listening to the podcast and catching up on some documentaries. And these are her questions. Is there a known time of death? Her second question is, was there any other explanation to the injuries on the boys, wildlife maybe? And her third question is, was the knife that was found in the lake the only knife that has been connected? So number one, no, there is not a known time of death. There was never one placed on the autopsies or anything like that. The coroner doesn't have a time of death. Obviously they were found many hours later after they disappeared. In the Eccles Baldwin trial, ⁓ Dr. Prey was basically forced to give a time of death and he does that, but it's not accurate. I don't think he even thought so either. He was just pushed to give a time and he gave one. So no, the answer is no. Yeah, so if you're listening to how we're approaching this, we're looking at the activity of the boys and the evidence at the crime scene to see if you can bracket it down. And the boys disappear at 6 30. They're not seen alive since. At about nine o'clock, we know that the four teens crossed the pipe bridge. They do not see the bikes, but the bikes are clearly in the vicinity. They've been concealed underneath the bridge. So we know for sure the attack has happened at that point. And so you can see the direction that we're headed towards in terms of approaching this thing. And there'll be some additional evidence that we're going to be giving for why we believe the time of death is what we think it is. But this is a very controversial thing. A lot of people will say we disagree with this because of this reason or this reason or this reason. And we have a duty in this podcast to make sure that we cover all of those and explain why we accept or reject those ideas when the time comes. All right, the second one, is there another explanation for the injuries on the boys? Yes. Some of those injuries are pre mortem, some of them are post mortem It'd be kind of silly to assume that they're in a body of water full of wildlife and no wildlife touched them. So there's definitely some sort of animal predation going on there, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, there's gonna be an environmental impact on the bodies. There's the water is gonna be playing a role. Any animals that are around the bodies are probably gonna interact with those bodies in complicated ways. And there's also the issue that these boys have been brutally attacked and their bodies might have been dragged. leaving additional scratches and marks on their bodies that have to be interpreted as well. So yeah, there's lots of different ways that you can get these things. And it's not clear that we can say this scratch specifically is an impact due to animals, whereas this one here is an impact due to dragging, whereas this one is a some type of scratch that happened during the fight. A stick or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So but for the most part you can kind of figure out whether or not it's pre mortem postmortem or another new word to me in this case was perimortem, which means right around the time of their death. And that third question asking about the lake knife, was it the only knife that has been connected to this crime? So many knives. So many knives. We're gonna be dealing with a lot of knives, a lot of potential weapons in this case. How they concluded that the lake knife was their go to weapon is kind of interesting. There's two trials. During one of the trials it's the go to and the other trial it is not. This is gonna be an interesting conversation to see how they coalesced on that position, ⁓ largely because they probably didn't have anywhere else to go. But during the investigation it was definitely not the only knife. They secured a lot of knives when they were investigating. Yeah, we're gonna have an interesting series of podcasts just dealing with weapons and how they concluded what they concluded in terms of what they should take to trial, what they shouldn't have. So yeah. Hang tight for that. The next question is from Kenneth. He asks, have Chris Morgan and Brian Holland, who were two early suspects in the case, been looked at later in the investigation or with new eyes? There's no evidence that I'm aware of that either one of those people or anybody associated with those people has ever been investigated since nineteen ninety-three. They were investigated briefly, they were ruled out pretty quickly and the investigation moved on. Yeah. That doesn't mean that they don't have an interesting story and an interesting place in this case. We're gonna spend at least one full episode talking about them and certainly they have connections to other people in the case that they might not even have been aware of, but the police were aware of it. So we're gonna have to bring that up. Dustin asks, whatever happened to the other Jason Baldwin? Interesting question. We have not really discussed either Jason Baldwin. But in our case we have one of our defendants, one of our convicted, is named Jason Baldwin, and his name is Charles Jason Baldwin. And the other Jason Baldwin is Jason Howard Baldwin. And he Jason Howard Baldwin was in trouble with the law pretty frequently before this incident and after this incident. I did some digging, looked up his record. He has lots of driving citations, a DWI, several theft arrests. He did get charged with felony, residential burglary, and theft of property. And he pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to originally two hundred and forty months in prison. So twenty years. And that was reduced to a hundred and twenty months or ten years with an additional ten years of probation. That was in ninety seven. He clearly got out early. He has a couple of offenses since then, including more thefts, and was put back on probation for another ten years. So I don't know if he's still on probation or not, but he lives somewhere else now. He's not in West Memphis anymore. So he kinda ran with a rough crowd at the time. I believe he was about eighteen years old, seventeen, eighteen years old when this crime happened. He's a pretty large guy, pretty tall, pretty pretty well put together in terms of his size. Pretty opposite of R Jason Baldwin? Yeah, he's probably two hundred and fifty pounds or something like this. He's a really big guy. Whereas R Jason Baldwin was a little shorter and certainly much thinner. He was a hundred and twelve pounds. Hundred and twelve. Wow. So five eight, a hundred and twelve pounds at sixteen. Wow. So yeah, these guys couldn't be more different. And he also lived relatively close to the neighborhood. And he was somebody that the West Memphis PD definitely took a look at in nineteen ninety-three. We'll be bringing him up as somebody that ⁓ plays a minor role in the case. All right. Kind of add on to that question. ⁓ Carly asked, I've always wondered why Jason was never referred to by his full legal name. His first name is Charles, and he's just always gone by Jason, even in legal proceedings. So, like we said, his name is actually Charles Jason Baldwin. His Dad is Charles Larry Baldwin. And we assume it's just to differentiate between the two Charles Baldwins. So they go by their middle names. And so Jason, that's just how he's always been referred to as Jason. All right, our next question is from Titi. And I do apologize if I have butchered your name. You can let me know if I am mispronouncing it. And her question is: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on LG Hollingsworth. He comes up in several tips. Has an alibi that none of his supposed witnesses back up, says at first he doesn't know anything, but later ends up claiming that Damien more or less confessed to killing someone. LG is a really big deal in this case, whether he wanted to be or not. He's seen by some as a suspect. He's seen by some as a timeline witness. He's seen by some as just an innocent bystander who has nothing to do with anything. And there's all different ways you can look at it, but there's no doubt about it. He's a big deal. And unfortunately he's not alive anymore. He died in two thousand and one, I think, in a car accident. But it would have been great to be able to speak to him to hear his side of things, because I could ask him so many questions. I think we're gonna be covering three, four, maybe five episodes on LG Hollingsworth and his family. He's a big deal. And I don't think he even knew how big of a deal he was. All right. Our next question comes from Kate. And she asks have any of the members of the juries ever spoken about their time on the jury and if they still feel the same way about the guilt of the West Memphis three? There have been interviews with people on the jury, but none of them have changed their mind about guilt. The film w West of Memphis actually interviews one of the people from the jury and she talks about the lake knife and these other things. The jury does become a serious problem though, because the jury was considering information that they should not have been and that was gonna lead to a possible new trial, which later on precipitates the Alfred plea. All right. So the next question comes from Claire. If you remove Jesse Miss Kelly's confession from the case, do you believe there would have been enough evidence to charge the West Memphis three? No. That's my answer. No. Not even close. You know, they they didn't have that much when this happened when Jesse goes in and then they do the arrest. And then when you look at what they actually put up at trial. Very little of that evidence that was collected prior to June third, which is when the arrest happens, actually appears at trial. Most of that stuff is stuff that the prosecuting attorneys and the West Memphis PD acquired after the arrest. And that's what they went with. One of those pieces of evidence we were talking about earlier, the lake knife, wasn't discovered until November of that year. So these guys were in jail on basically the strength of that confession. Melanie asks, was there any DNA evidence or fiber evidence that actually linked Damien, Jason, and Jesse to the crime scene? That is up for interpretation. Based on the findings that were introduced at trial, there were fibers found at the crime scene compared to fibers that the police found in the homes of at least Damien and Jason, and they were said to be microscopically similar. to one another. With fiber evidence, there's no 100% this is exactly the same thing. That's not a conclusion that they draw. They say microscopically similar. So that's up to the analyst. The analyst makes that decision. And so a different analyst may give you a different interpretation of that evidence. So you can do with that what you will. As far as DNA, there were a couple of items that had DNA on it that could have belonged to one or more people, but nothing definitive That said this belongs to Damien, Jason, or Jesse. As far as I can tell, there's nothing definitive that connects Damien, Jason, or Jesse to the crime scene in terms of DNA or fiber evidence. Something where it's this is from them. It's either ambiguous or it doesn't exist. There's just it's one or the other. There's nothing that says this is a connection. That is true of the analysis of evidence for the trial as well as any analysis that has been done in the last thirty-three years. There has never been anything definitively linked to any of them. ⁓ next question comes from Carly. She asks if there was ever any evidence to suggest that the boys played in Robin Hood Hills often or the woods beyond the Pipe Bridge. Did anyone come forward and say that the boys had been in the woods before and saw people there that scared them? So we haven't gotten to it yet, but at some point we're going to do a podcast where the West Memphis PD effectively decide that they need to question all of Ryan's friends, all of Chris's friends. They want to find out who played up there, who was up there, who was in Robin Hood, what was the activity of the kids that were up there. We haven't gotten to it yet. So that's one of the reasons why we didn't answer this kind of in the first part of this podcast. We're kind of doing this in the second part, because we're gonna go into extreme detail on this, but there's no doubt about it. Devil's Den was an area where the kids played. Alright, couple more questions from Melanie. She says she's watching Paradise Lost, and it mentioned that Damien had written a secret alphabet. With this alphabet, he wrote the names of himself, his son, Jason, and Alistair Crowley. Do you know if Damien wrote anything else using this secret alphabet? This secret alphabet? No. He was actually learning how to do this while he was in jail, awaiting trial. This is the infamous Exhibit three hundred. This was taken out of his jail cell and was presented to him at trial, and what's really bizarre about it was he didn't see it coming. Prosecutor Davis just kind of pulled it out of his rear pocket and started questioning him about it, and his defense attorneys let it happen. It wasn't until after this was playing out in front of the jury that finally the defense team raised an objection to it. We're going to be talking about this a lot, but this was a very interesting exchange, and it kind of shows the quality of defense that Damien was getting. I mean, this was a clear case of raise your hand and object. They're presenting evidence that has not been given to both sides. Right there on the stand. It's crazy. And if you decipher what he writes there, there's some kind of interesting things there like the West Memphis PD or the jailer or whoever it is that actually got that information and was trying to decipher it so they could present at trial, actually mistranslate the top line on it where they think it says Damian Eccles. It actually says Damien loves Domini, who was his girlfriend at the time. And mother of his child. Yeah, and mother of his child. So they misinterpreted that, but if you do the cipher, he's just practicing the alphabets. He's just repeating the alphabets over and over and over and over again, trying to learn them and commit them to memory. With that said, I have looked at some of his stuff, it's been a long time, and I've never seen anything written in a alphabet like this. This is just a simple one-to-one cipher, you know People play with things like this all the time. So ⁓ it doesn't seem that strange to me. Now the Alistair Crowley thing is the thing that they were trying to get ⁓ on. Sure. All right. Melanie also asks a completely separate, different question. She would like to hear our thoughts on the buyer's knife as well as the lake knife and Stevie's knife, and wants to know if they were checked for DNA evidence. So the results from the blood typing showed that it could have belonged to Mark Byers or Christopher Byers. And remember, they are not genetically related. Mark adopted Christopher. So they just both happen to have the same blood type. As far as I know, there was nothing found on the lake knife. Nope. There's never been anything ever found on the lake knife. I do know that. And I don't know the answer to Stevie's knife. There was a fiber, right? But no DNA. There was a single black fiber found on Stevie. the knife that was turned over it was said to have belonged to Stevie branch. But no DNA that we know of. Not that I'm aware of. No DNA matching somebody strange or foreign or anything like that. Yeah. Okay. And then that the follow up in that same question is were the injuries to the boys made by animals or a knife? The answer is there's no evidence that we've seen or that was really presented at trial that proves that there was a knife involved in any of the injuries to the boys. We've already said that it's almost impossible that animals didn't make some of the injuries to the boys because they were submerged in that water for so long. So the answer is the injuries made by a knife, no, not as far as I know. By animals, yes, there certainly are some. Yeah, you're gonna have environmental impacts to things that are in active bio environments, especially if the victims have been Put it to the water for a period of time of greater than twelve to fourteen hours. It would be incredible to pull about for them to be pristine. That would be weird. That would be weird. That would tell you this feels like a dub site more than anything at that point. Sure. Okay. The next question comes from Ash and James. And she says that it has been stated that David Jacoby spoke to the FBI or some version of law enforcement and helped record conversations with Terry Hobbs. Can you cover this and whether or not it's true? I think the FBI statement comes from the fact that John Douglas, who is a famous FBI agent, FBI profiler, was pulled into this case. He was retired at that point, but he was asked to review the case and do a profile of possible suspects or look at the suspects they had on hand and see if it fit the crime. And so that's what he did. During his part of that investigation, he interviewed a few people. One of those people was David Jacoby and Subsequently, he did make a phone call to Terry Hobbs that was recorded. As far as I know, other than that conversation, that interview that he had, the phone call he did for John Douglas, that's the only interaction with someone from the FBI. And like I said, he was retired at that point. Otherwise, David Jacoby spoke to police to the West Memphis PD. He gave an interview. Other than that, I don't know of any other law enforcement that spoke to David Jacoby. Next question comes from Jason. He says We were always told the more kid ran. What if the other two ran? All the clothes were by Moore. I definitely think there were two people involved. Too much time for one person. This idea that Michael Moore ran is from Jesse Miss Kelly's confession, where they're prodding him, asking him how he was involved. He says eventually that Michael Moore ran and Jesse went and tracked him down, got him and brought him back to everybody else. So that's where this idea comes from that Moore ran and the fact that he is found twenty five feet or so away from the other two boys. The problem is that Jesse says he brought him back. So if he brought him back, they're all together at that point. So that theory kind of makes no sense. So but his question is what if the other two ran? There's no evidence anybody ran. That's not something that's been proven. Only somebody that was there would know that. Jesse was not there. And so that's my answer to that question. The separation of Michael Moore from the other two in a creek would have nothing to do with running on land. These would be completely unrelated phenomenon. If the Miss Kelly confession is true, then his chasing Michael Moore and bringing him back is not what we're seeing in the creek. Michael Moore's not running on water, he's not running up the creek bed, he's not jumping from the West Bank over to the slicked bank. None of that is happening. Nobody can do this. Cause water is involved in this. So we're not seeing anything related to the crime scene and the confession supporting one another through this observation of the separation of the boys. It's one of the more frustrating things that people cling to when they say that they believe the confession is accurate. The other thing is is Miss Kelly says that Michael Moore ran in the direction of the houses, but his location is twenty five feet north of the other two boys in the opposite direction from the houses. So it doesn't ring as an authentic description of Miss Kelly. running and chasing after Michael Moore. Michael Moore's separation seems to be unrelated to the Miss Kelly confession. So if you're thinking about that map, Jesse Miss Kelly would be saying that they're running toward the direction of the Pipe Bridge, right? Because once you cross the Pipe Bridge, you get to the houses. And he is actually the one that is found the farthest away from the Pipe Bridge. The other direction. Yeah. It just doesn't jive with the known geography and facts of the crime scene. If by some weird situation Miss Kelly is involved in this Then the separation is not explained by his confessions. They are unrelated to the confession. That's another circumstance that made this happen. All right. And this is our last question for this episode. This is from Carly. And she asks, What are y'all's thoughts on criminal profiling? Do you believe there is any validity to it? It's a rather contentious subject. My personal opinion is that there is some validity to it. Criminal profiling's been around for a long time. The FBI in particular has done decades of research on all types of offenders, but primarily ⁓ murderers. But they have gathered all this information about how crimes are committed, what kinds of weapons are used in crimes, whether or not people are transported, whether or not people are are hidden in, you know, kidnapping cases, how long someone's alive once they've been kidnapped until they're killed, or if it's a ransom situation. They have all kinds of data. that they've collected on all these different crimes. And so they draw from that data from what is known, also from talking to offenders. They've done an amazing job talking to people, especially serial killers, about their offenses and why they have done what they did, just so that they can understand the psychology of these people. So they draw on all of that information that they've gathered. And when someone comes to them and says, Hey, I need help, can you create a profile on this case? hear the facts from the case. And so they might talk about the victims because victimology is very important. So they'll tell you all about the victims and they'll tell you all about the crime scene and then the evidence that they found. And the FBI can take that information and give you a scenario that might fit your killer. Now, is it always accurate? No, it's not. But there have been a lot of cases that have been solved using a profile that was given to them by the FBI Or there are some police departments that have a profiler on staff. There are some people that are very intuitive and that understand how criminals think and they can get inside their heads and they understand how they operate. So there have been a lot of cases that have been helped by profiles. It's not an exact science, and that's why it takes people who understand the offenders to try to predict what they will do or what kind of a person this is going to be that you're going to find. It's particularly useful when you don't have a suspect. So in most cases, a victim is known to the perpetrator ⁓ across almost all crimes, whether it's a sexual assault or a murder or a theft, whatever it may be, most victims know the perpetrator in some way or another. For the ones who don't, where it's a random crime, it's a stranger crime, that's where this kind of thing is really useful because the police can't figure out who to even go after or they've already eliminated the usual suspects. And so they're asking for help from another agency. For a profile because they don't have anyone to look at. And so this might help them narrow down a pool of suspects for a crime. So I personally think it can be helpful, but it is only a tool. It is not something that you go, ⁓ well, this person fits ten of the twelve things that's on this profile, so he did it, let's arrest him. That's not how that works. It is simply a tool to find out who the perpetrator might be. Yeah, it puts him on the radar. That doesn't mean that you lock in on them and say this is who it is and you get what we call target fixation or tunnel vision. So you want to avoid doing that. But it does work to a certain extent because, you know, ninety nine percent of the people listening to this podcast aren't thinking this is a rich woman with three kids that did this crime. They're definitely thinking this is a male that did this crime. And probably not an older male above the age of sixty, is or it's certainly not a bunch of teenagers below the age of, say, 14, right? So this is somebody between 15 and And probably 50 and probably male. So we've now eliminated two-thirds of the country. That means we've got one third. So we understand that in principle we could do this. The question is how narrow can we make that in profiling and still be legitimately illuminating people on our radar that are authentic suspects in this case versus eliminating everybody else and saying, no, we're only fixated on who we want to see. And there have been several profiles that were made for this case. We will talk about those. And they're not the same. Some people may have gotten part of it right, depending on who you end up thinking did it. So that'll be interesting to look at at the end to see, you know, based on whoever you decide ⁓ might be the perpetrator, ⁓ how close any of these profiles are. And I think part of the reason it's contentious is because it's a fascinating subject. And so I think a lot of people, especially people who are interested in true crime, those of us who are armchair detectives, we might try our hand at this. I have heard some kind of amateur profiles on this very case. And I think part of the reason it's contentious is because people who are not trained to do this type of work are throwing their ideas in the ring. And so it kind of becomes a mockery when you don't have a trained person who specializes in this area and they're giving their two cents worth. And so I don't think it used to be when it first came out as profiling, there were definitely s even some FBI agents who thought it was kind of hogwash. You know, it's this kind of fluffy area of the FBI and it's kinda weird. But then they started being right about a lot of things and they helped catch a lot of people. And so I think it gained some notoriety and became more mainstream for a little while. And then like I said, I think in the past couple of decades, with other people trying their hands at it, that it has maybe diminished a little bit the idea of profiling, because so many people have thought, Well, I can figure that out and so They put their profile out there for whatever it's worth. And the other side of this, of course, is what they call victimology, which is certain victims match with certain profiles of perpetrator. And so you have to put together the s victimology of your victims, which we actually have the FBI's victimology report. We'll be covering that at some point in the podcast, probably soon. And looking at some of the unbiased profiles that came out early on. So one of the concerns about profiling that causes it to get a bad name is that a lot of people believe that you could profile for hire. We want it to be this person, so we're going to design the profile to be that person. Well that's exactly what we don't want to do. You want to get an unbiased profile that is not being influenced by the leads of the police or what the public is believing is going on. Yeah. You can't make evidence fit a perpetrator and you cannot make a profile fit the perpetrator. In a best case scenario whoever is doing the profile is given literally facts of the case and that's it. With no interjection of anybody that's on a suspect list. This is what the crime involved, period. These are our victims. This is what it looked like and that's it. And they don't have any extra information because otherwise it taints their profile. So as the listeners can tell, Kristen doesn't really care much for profiling. Just kidding, obviously. Yeah. I do I do think it's I do think it's useful in some cases for No, you've thought about this quite a bit and you've looked at a lot of the profiles and you know the stuff inside and out. I mean, you're a criminologist, it's your bread and butter. That was our last question. I will say please know that we are reading all of your questions. We might not answer them on the Facebook page. Sometimes I hit that like button ⁓ because I think it's a f interesting, fascinating question, but I may not actually reply to it. And that's only because we're gonna cover this down the road. And so I don't want to share my opinion at the time. And I know Paul does the exact same thing, but we read everything that you write, we promise. And we will get to all of your questions at some point. Well, I'll say that I try to. The growth of the Facebook group has been so fast and the comments sometimes come in pretty hot and pretty fast. And keeping on top of them is not always easy. However, we do the best we can to see what we have. And if we can answer a question without at the same time spoiling it for everybody else, we're gonna do that. ⁓ if we're gonna spoil it, we'll just kind of give you the whole, hey, you know we're gonna cover that at some point and it's gonna be awesome. Yeah. So keep ⁓ coming. Whether we answer them or not, it doesn't matter. Other people there will be happy to engage with you and ⁓ try to answer your question or ask more questions and try to reason those out and we will get to them at some point on the podcast. Yeah. This was real fun. So keep those questions coming. Thank you for listening. We appreciate all the support.