Latest / Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast / Episode 7: The Bloody Stranger at Bojangles

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Episode 7: The Bloody Stranger at Bojangles · Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast

• Paul: Welcome to Crooked Tree, a West Memphis 3 podcast. On today's episode, we will be talking about several locations in the West Memphis area. We've created a couple of maps that we have posted to our X account and in our Facebook discussion group if you'd like to use those to follow along. Were you on duty on the night of May fifth, nineteen ninety-three? Yes, sir, I was. And did anything unusual happen on that night? Yes, sir. There was something unusual that happened that night. Now this was the night of the homicides, is that correct? Well, I remember reading about it in the evening paper that the boys were missing. Tell the jury what happened on the evening of May 5th in Bojangles. Welcome back, everybody. My name is Paul Day, victim advocate for Chris Byers and Stevie Branch, and I'm here with my co-host Kristen Rich, advocate for the same two children. And today we are talking about one of the most famous incidents in the case, Bojangles. The incident at Bojangles has made the location of the restaurant infamous in West Memphis. It was located at 1551 North Missouri Street. It is no longer there. It's been a number of restaurants since then. But the location of the building is still there and it is right in the middle of a bunch of little strip malls and other places to eat, places to shop. It's super close to the interstate there. I forty and I fifty five actually merge right there. There's a couple of traffic lights between there and the interstate and it depending on how heavy the traffic is, takes maybe two to four, two to five minutes to get to the interstate. So it's really close off the interstate. So they'd be a lot of traffic from people just getting off to have something to eat when they're traveling. It is fairly dense right there. There's a lot of traffic, a lot of cars, and there's a lot of police traffic right there. Yeah, transients and panhandlers are pretty common in the area as well. The police activity is pretty consistent right at that location. But there's a lot of little restaurants, little businesses in there. There's a railroad track that is a major Thoroughfare for people walking through town and one of those tracks ran across the back of the Bojangles restaurant. And also at the back of the Bojangles restaurant is the infamous ten mile biodiversion channel. It goes all the way from behind Holiday Gardens where the search had been happening and where the victims were found, the three boys, all the way to the west, about three quarters of a mile, and it runs right behind Bojangles restaurant, right adjacent to the railroad track there. So this is going to be something that is possibly connected to our crime scene. And so we're gonna take a look at it today and introduce what happened at Bojangles. And of course it all starts with the phone call to Bojangles from a gentleman by the name of Marty King. He's the manager of Bojangles restaurant. So here's Marty King talking about the call that he had to make regarding the stranger that came into his restaurant. ⁓ were you working at Bojangles restaurant on the evening of May fifth of nineteen ninety three? Yes, sir. And on that evening, ⁓ Was there something unusual that occurred there at the restaurant? Yes, sir, there was. Could you tell us what happened? Well it was about nine thirty at night. lady and her daughter came in to order some supper, I guess it was for we took her order and the lady said that she needed to take her daughter to the restroom, so I told her it was right around the corner. She immediately came back around and ⁓ I asked her if there was a problem. And she said, Yes, sir. There's a gentleman in the women's restroom. I said, Okay, I'll go check it out. And at the time I found a black gentleman sitting in the women's restroom on the commode with his head in his lap. there was could you describe the man? I later found that he was probably about five eight, five nine, somewhere in that area. About a hundred and sixty five pounds, real thin man. Tell us about his appearance. He was like I said, had his head in his lap and there was blood dripping off of his forearm and there was blood on the wall as far as where he had leaned up against the wall, maybe staggered in, I dunno but he had mud on his feet, and he seemed to be disarrayed when I talked to him. He raised up and kind of slurred that he was alright and I gave him a few more minutes to come on out and he never did, so I went back and checked on him again and that's I called the police then. So you called the police and asked them to come down there? Yes. Did the police actually come to Bojangles restaurant? ⁓ yes, sir, they did. And do you recall what officer came? It was a female officer for the West Memphis Police Department and she pulled on the light and I saw her coming, so I went up to the front door. Well she kept coming around, she went to the drive through window. Okay. Did she ever come into the restaurant ⁓ to look inside the restaurant? No, sir. And what happened then? I told her what was the problem was and that ⁓ the gentleman had previously left the restaurant walking and she basically got a description and left the restaurant. Did she ever come back to the restaurant that evening? No sir. What's interesting to me, well, the whole thing is interesting, but it really stands out to me that both the customer and her daughter went to the restroom as well as Marty King the manager went to the restroom and were just able to walk in. Now we were not at the Bojangles as it was in nineteen ninety three. So maybe the configuration was different back then, but when we went a few years ago to the same place, same building. the bathroom, the main door is what you would lock. It's a single person restroom. There are not stalls in the restroom. So presumably if you're going to go in to use the restroom, you would lock that door that's in the hallway. And so it's interesting that the doors unlocked to me unless it was a different configuration back in nineteen ninety three. Yeah, I'm of the position that it's unlikely to be different. I mean those doors when we were there were ancient. I mean they looked like they'd been there for forty years. The toilets look like they were from the seventies. So I'm of the opinion that these are what would you say, eight by ten bathrooms? I mean they were tiny. I don't think they're even that big. Yeah, maybe not even that big. They're little, right? You walk in there, there's a sink on one side and a toilet on the other side, and a drain in the middle of the bathroom. Right. And a trash can. And a trash can. And I mean very, very basic stuff. And they were able to just walk right in on ⁓ What that tells me is if that is in fact the same way as it was back in nineteen ninety three. that Marty King noted that he was disorienced. I would say disoriented. This man is is obviously physically hurt and he's disoriented. He's not quite with it cognitively at the moment. Something is going on. After Mr. King walks in on him and then goes back to check on him again for a second time, in between those, he didn't get up and lock the door. that he doesn't even think to get up and lock the door to give himself some privacy. Yeah. His disorientation almost comes from like having your bell rung like you've been hit by something or like he's walking out of a car wreck. But of course there's no car wreck anywhere in the area. So whatever it is is some type of physical trauma has got him. He's clearly bleeding from the arm and he's on this toilet and it gets worse from there. So at this point King's called the police Regina Meek is going to be dispatched to Bojangles. Now, Regina Meek has just taken the missing persons report over at Mark Byers' house. She knows that she has three missing children, and she's got to cover this incident over at Bojangles restaurant. I think she's searching for about 11 minutes when this call comes in. So she's off searching at 829 from Mark Byers' house. This call comes in at 840. So she's got an 11 minute search that she does, and then she comes over here to Bojangles and she's at Bojangles at 850. So let's go ahead and play Regina Meek's discussion. Over on Missouri Street was there a particular establishment that you were called to? Yes, sir. And what was that establishment? Bojangles. Bojangles? Yes, sir. What is Bojangles? It's a chicken restaurant. And that's on Missouri Street? Yes, sir. And why were you called away from looking and searching for these three missing children? To go over to Bo Jangles restaurant? It was supposed to have been a male that was bleeding in the area, had left the restaurant, possibly injured. And did you receive a description of that that person? Yes, sir. They gave me a a brief description, but I could not recall it without looking at the paperwork. Okay. Let me refresh your memory. And could you also tell us when you received that call? It shows call this call came in at 840. I was dispatched at 842 and arrived on the scene at 850. Okay, so you received the or the call was received at 840, you were dispatched at 842, and you went over there at that point. Is that correct? Yes, sir. And can you recall the description of the person that was given to you? It's written on here, that's what they give me. And ⁓ what was that description that you received? A black male wearing a white cap, blue shirt, and black pants. Had a cast on his right arm it looks like and supposed to be bleeding. And he was bleeding? That's what they they said. And from there, from searching for these three missing children and going over to Bojangles restaurant, ⁓ what happened when you got to Bojangles restaurant? Okay, I went and made contact with an employee and to spoke to him for a moment. did you actually go in the restaurant or did you just go through the drive through I went the drive through and spoke to an employee, make contact the employee when a person's bleeding I I'd make the quickest route to make contact, try to c locate the person. Okay. So you did not go in the restaurant? No sir, I did not. did ⁓ You made contact and then what did you do after you made contact with that individual? ⁓ the employee told me that he saw him walking toward Delta Express, which is just south of Bojangles. And I went toward that direction and started looking for that man. I looked behind the businesses and a little field back there, checking for this subject. I never located him. Never did find him? No, sir. And did you go back to Bojangles restaurant and tell Anybody there to not clean up the blood or anything of that? No, sir, I did not. Did you ⁓ go back to get a further description from them? No sir, I did not. Do you have a report that you made regarding this incident? No sir, I do not. So the extent of your contact with Bojangles restaurant is You driving through the drive through and asking basically where this person went, is that correct? He described to me what the subject looked like and and in what area that he was bleeding. one of the I asked him if he thought he was injured or had or or if it was some other type of blood and he said he didn't really know but he was the blood was really wet and he thought he might be bleeding. Okay did you go back the next day to Bo Jangles restaurant? I don't recall, sir. Did you go back any time after that to Bo Jangles restaurant to investigate this? No, sir, I did not. Did you ever find this bleeding black man? No sir I did not. Okay. Now How long were you there at Bojangles restaurant at the at the drive through? I could not recall. Now you said that you went to look for this bleeding person. Yes, sir. And did not find him, is that correct? That's correct. How long did you look for him? I couldn't recall the exact minutes of ⁓ it might be on there. I broadcast it over the radio what further information I had obtained and I'm not sure if it was put on a log sheet but another officer came to the area also helping me look. ⁓ we weren't able to find anything, any evidence of the person. d did the other officer go into the restaurant and look at the blood the mud there? I don't think so. I'm not I couldn't tell you for sure I wasn't in the same car with that officer, but I don't think they did. In this exchange the attorney is trying to get Officer Meek to say that she made a mistake by going through the drive-through, first of all, second, not returning back to the restaurant, not collecting any evidence, not looking at the bathroom. And in hindsight, yeah, that's a mistake. However, she gives a very reasonable explanation, I think, as to why she did what she did. And that is that she has a report of a bleeding man who is disoriented who went into the women's restroom and Even after being talked to by the manager twice, he doesn't seem upset. He's not in any hurry to leave. He's not fleeing the scene. He eventually wanders out and wanders down the road. She is concerned about his well being. It is not in her head that she's chasing a criminal. And I think that's really interesting insight into how Officer Meek was thinking. She's thinking this guy's hurt. He's bleeding. He's disoriented. He's in the bathroom and he stumbles off out the restaurant and she's trying to find him because she wants to help him. She thinks he probably needs an ambulance. So she goes through the drive-thru. That's the quickest contact she can make with an employee there to try to figure out if the man's still there or what direction he's gone in. So she heads in the direction that he saw this man go and cannot find him. So he's headed south towards the Delta Express, down towards the gas station. And once you get down there, there's an interesting network of roads and they go in five different directions. There's a lot of transience in the area. It's not a terribly safe place at this time in nineteen ninety-three. And it's certainly not a safe place today to be out after dark. So this is something that ⁓ is gonna be playing a role in the thinking of Regina Meek. Remember, she gets the call at eight forty. By eight fifty he's gone. So in that ten minutes he is aware that he needs to get out of the restaurant and he kind of disappears and they don't find him. Regina Meek doesn't search alone. She gets help from Captain Hendricks. Who also searches the area. Unfortunately, there's no report from Captain Hendricks. He was never interviewed. He never gave testimony. So we don't have anything from him. But as far as we could tell, he did not go into the Beaujangles restaurant either. And so they basically searched a little while and then they left. Yeah, she's back in service at nine o'clock. So she arrives about eight fifty, searches for about ten minutes and is back in service. So we have the scene of this gentleman in the bathroom. He's made a massive mess. He's bleeding. He's got a brace or a cast. By the way, that word cast is kind of interesting because when I was growing up as a kid, if you had any kind of brace on your arm, people would just say it was a cast. So sometimes it's just shorthand for your arm being in some type of brace or sling or something like that. People would say it's in a cast. So this is what we have in the bathroom here. He's got a big mess and he's gonna have limited ability to clean up this mess because he's got only one arm and the one arm he has is bleeding. So This is going to turn into a disaster for the people at Bojangles to have to deal with. So let's hear what Marty King has to say about the mess in the bathroom. Describe for us, did you go back into the that ladies' restroom that evening? Yes, sir. We had to clean it up. What what was in there? Well, like I mentioned, there was blood, mud. gentleman had wasted a whole roll of toilet tissue by soaking up blood or grabbing for it or something, 'cause he had used the restroom all over itself and sit in it. ⁓ so I assume that he was trying to clean himself up. ⁓ but it had blood all over it. There was a cross. Over the toilet paper? Yes, sir. describe that toilet paper roll for us. Well it was saturated all the way down to the cardboard roll. So what did you do with that ⁓ roll of toilet paper? I just throw it in the garbage at at that time. Was there anything else in there? Yes, sir. There was a pair of sunglasses that evidently he had apparently tried to flush down a commode. Okay. What did you do with those sunglasses? Just fished them out and throwed them in the garbage also? Okay. And then Was there mud in there? Yes, sir. There was a l ⁓ quite a bit of mud on the floor. Well how did you clean this up? Well, we drug a water hose around and washed it out. Is that the normal way for you doing that? ⁓ no sir. It would normally be just swept up and mopped, but you know, there was a large amount of mud on his feet and that was on the floor, so we just washed it down the drain. Okay. And the blood, did you say it was on the wall? Yes, sir. There was some on the ⁓ above the commode on the wall, maybe looked where like he had leaned up against the wall 'cause it looked like to be the impression of a forearm. And was there blood other places also? There was some blood on the floor, like I said, beside the commode where he was sitting. There was some on the doorknob and on the in the hallway where he had left also. Okay. And did you ever see this man again? No, sir. Okay. So we've got mud all over the place, we've got blood all over the place. We've got sunglasses that he's trying to flush down the toilet, blood on the walls on the way into the bathroom. This is a huge mess. And the way they cleaned this out was they actually brought in a hose and washed down the bathroom with a hose. There's a big utility drain in the center of both bathrooms. They just washed it all straight down to that utility drain and tried to get it as clean as they possibly could that night because, you know, they got a business to run and they are clearly not thinking this is a crime scene. Or possibly connected to a crime scene associated with three missing boys located about three quarters of a mile to the east. Well, obviously no one working at Bojangles even knows about that. So the employees who are cleaning up this restroom have no idea that there are three missing boys at that moment. They would have no reason to connect those two events. The bathroom had to have been a horrific sight. He describes him s basically soiling himself. ⁓ he's covered in mud, covered in blood, covered in feces. The bathroom must have been a sight and a smell for those employees there. And they're right to clean it up. No one told them not to. They're not thinking this is a crime. They're thinking it's this guy that's in distress. And so they have to clean up the restroom so that other people can use it. So they do what they have to do. But this situation is an unusual event. I mean, there's a lot of crazy stuff that happens in that area. I've been in that area and I've seen a lot of crazy behavior and a lot of crazy things happen. But even for them, this is a little unusual. And so Marty King is thinking of this overnight and he's the manager at Bojangles opening in the morning as well. And he starts off the morning and a police officer comes in and it starts off his day with a conversation about this. So let's go ahead and hear what Marty King says to his friend Billy Covington in the morning, ⁓ at breakfast at Bojangles. Were you working on the day of May 6th of 1993? Yes, sir. I opened that morning. And ⁓ Did anything occur on that day? Well an off duty officer came in and by the name of Billy Covington, a friend of mine, and I was telling him about the event that had happened the night before and kind of struck him in a strange way and he said, Don't clean you know, don't clean that blood off the door handles or off the wall or anything and I'll get back with you in a little while. Okay. And then what happened? later on that afternoon two detectives came out and they took a report as far as what I'd seen ⁓ description of the gentleman and then they took blood scrapings off the wall in the women's restroom, off the men's door in the hallway and off the wall in the hallway. Was that detectives Ridge and Allen? Yes, sir. And could you describe their appearance that day? Well they had been at I have later found out that they had been at the crime scene and had been waiting in mud and water up to their knees and ⁓ one of them asked me, said did the man appear to have muddy feet like mine? And I said, Yes, sir. He said, 'cause we've been out there all morning long in the water and the mud and was just asking if his looked like the gentleman's on the that I'd seen and I told him yes, sir, that they were muddy like that also. Okay. Now did Was there a discussion with Detectives Ridge and Alan about the sunglasses? Well I had told them about ⁓ and ⁓ they asked me what I did with ⁓ and I told ⁓ I threw them in the garbage and and we fished ⁓ out and they took ⁓ with They took ⁓ with them? Yes, sir. What about the roll of toilet paper that had been soaked down to the core with the blood? What I told them about that also and they said that we didn't need that. So they didn't need it? No, sir. Said you just discard that. Have you ever heard from Detectives Ridge, Detective Allen, or any other person about this since then? No, sir. So on May the sixth, Detective Allen and Brian Ridge, they come out, it's about nine o'clock. They're coming straight from the crime scene where Christopher, Michael, and Stevie have been found. And this is their very first lead. They've heard about this. They're here, they're looking around and they start scraping around for stuff. Sunglasses are fished out of the toilet and then fished out of the trash can. According to Marty King, he gives them over to the police officers. They don't take the bloody roll of toilet paper. It kind of feels like the police don't think that this is something tied to what they just came from. It doesn't have the same feel to them or they just don't have the hunch for it. They're not sensing it. They're not getting it. Something like that is kind of playing out. Is that what you're getting from this as well, Kristen? They didn't seem to have any kind of urgency to go and investigate this incident. It does not feel like they thought this was connected to their three missing boys that they had just found deceased. So here we've got Marty King. He's on May sixth, he tells his friend Billy Covington in the morning, he says, Hey, there's this weird incident that happened last night. I know that we got those three missing kids and Covington says, Hey, hold on to the stuff. You know, don't clean it all up just in case it becomes relevant later on. That's kind of an interesting thing for Billy Covington to say. We don't know the exact time that Covington said that, but of course the kids were still missing at that point. Later on when Detective Ridge and Detective Allen show up to look into this situation. That's at about nine o'clock. They're about seven hours after the discovery of these children, maybe six hours after the discovery of these children, roughly. And they're straight from the crime scene. They still have mud on their shoes. And they're walking in there and asking the question, did the guy that was in here last night, did he have mud on his shoes like us? The guy that was bleeding? And Marty King's answer is yes. But the question is, is that relevant to what's going on out here? Remember it'd been raining for weeks. It's reasonable to infer that many of the creeks in the area were swollen. If somebody was outside just Doing something, going for a walk or catching frogs in the bayou or whatever it is they're doing, they're also gonna have similar things on them as well. Now, of course, Bojangle's man has clearly experienced some type of physical trauma and he's bleeding from his arm and he's already got a cast on the other arm. So he's in dire straits, whatever it is. Based on the conditions From the past few days, the amount of rain that they had, he might be a transient, he doesn't appear to have transportation. He's walking into Bojangles, he's leaving on foot, not in a vehicle. So presumably he's walking around town. That's how he's getting from one place to another. Anywhere he walks, he's gonna encounter mud, right? It doesn't have to come from the unnamed creek or the bayou. He's gonna run into mud wherever he's walking. Yeah, and in fact in the next clip we're gonna hear where that very issue is being raised with Marty King. The question is ⁓ aren't the conditions for which this gentleman is experiencing ⁓ isn't that kind of common right around Bojangles? You've got the ten mile bayou right behind you, you got a train track not far away, you've got a major interstate close by. Let's hear this conversation that was had with Marty King. In fact, right in behind your business. You've got ⁓ the ditch, the railroad track, and you've got a lot some ⁓ a strip of trees along the railroad track, isn't that right? Yes, sir. All right. And when you say that the the muddy shoes look like the van who'd been in there, are you you saying that it the mud came from the same place? No, sir. You mean muddy shoes or muddy shoes? Muddy shoes are muddy shoes to me. Okay. All right. And you don't know where the mud came from. I don't know where it came from, where he came from that night. And I didn't even see him coming to the restaurant. Okay, and in fact you don't even know that those sunglasses are his, do you? I didn't see him wearing ⁓ Okay. Now when you went in there, you found him in the women's restroom? Yes, sir. Right. And you said that he appeared to be disarrayed? Yes, sir. When I spoke to him he raised up like he didn't know where he was at and so and slurred. Yeah, I'm okay. Like disoriented? Yes, sir. Okay. And in fact He left blood and mud all over that restroom, right? Yes sir. Left it on the wall and on the floor? Mm-hmm. From the doorknob. Yes, sir. On the on the h out in the hall. It wasn't actually on the hall floor, it was on the hall wall where he might have staggered. Okay. And and y'all cleaned that up, isn't that right? Yes, sir. Y y'all clean y'all tried to clean it all up, didn't you? Yes, sir. And that was before Detective Ridge and Allen arrived, isn't that right? Yes, sir. So y'all had made efforts to clean it all up before they ever came, right? Yes, sir, 'cause they came the next night. I don't think that Marty King changed his description or anything in that clip. You know, and he says mud is mud, like he's not making any kind of connection. He's not insinuating that this man must have come from what they would find out is the crime scene. He's describing the man as he is. He's muddy, he's bloody, he's disoriented, and that's it. There's nothing about the man that's gonna indicate that he's been involved in a crime or that he was in a particular place prior to getting to Bojangles. There is, however, the overriding question of did they collect the evidence that they should have collected while they were there? We have a roll of toilet paper soaked to the core with blood. We've got sunglasses, and you might be saying, Well, what's the utility of sunglasses? Well, sunglasses sometimes have hairs attached to them. They sometimes have fingerprints attached to them. They probably have a little blood attached to them. So there's opportunities to Take them into evidence and that was not done unfortunately. Instead they decided to go a different route. I want to introduce one more clip where they confirm though that there's evidence concerns at this crime scene because these things were not collected. Yes, sir. He he took a pocket knife and scraped it into an envelope. And you tried to give him that toilet po paper roll that was soaked to the core. But he didn't take that, did he? No, sir. Did they take any soil samples out of the drain? No, sir. Okay. So while they had the opportunity to do this, you could tell that there was just kind of this general sense that this was not a place that Detective Allen and Detective Brian Ridge interpreted as being relevant to the crime scene that they had just left a couple of minutes earlier. They see them as completely separate things. And other than grabbing a couple of little samples with the ⁓ pocket knife, they left bojangles pretty much empty handed and got in the cars and left. Right. And this is actually consistent with how Officer Meek handled this call as well. She doesn't make any connection. She doesn't think that it's necessary to collect any evidence or to even inspect the bathroom. She thinks she's looking for a individual who is hurt and confused. Yeah. comes across as a routine issue that just happened to have strange timing and had some interesting overtones of, you know, something that happened out in nature where somebody got hurt. And so they're not taking this seriously because this is probably not an unexpected event that's going to happen in the area around Missouri Street at that time. In order to put together all the pieces for what we know happened at Bojangles, we still have two more witnesses and that is actually Detective Allen and Brian Ridge. And I want to play the first clip, this is Detective Allen Right, and on you recall approximately how long you stayed out of the crime scene on May the sixth? Yes, sir. About what time did you leave? It was roughly After eight o'clock that evening. Between eight and eight thirty. Okay. Approximately at nine o'clock PM, did you and D Detective Ridge go to the Bojangles restaurant? Yes, sir. Okay. And did you talk to a the manager of the Bojangles restaurant, Amarty King? Yes, sir. Okay. Was this in reference to a report that Regina Meeks had taken the night before about a black man going to Bojangles with blood on him? ⁓ yes, I would. ⁓ And during the conversation that you had with Marty King, did Marty King give you and Officer Ridge a pair of sunglasses that were left by this bleeding black man? I don't recall any sunglasses. I remember him telling about some sunglasses that the man had left, but to my knowledge, ⁓ we did not receive any sunglasses from him. Okay, do you recall either you or Officer Ridge taking blood samples from the ladies bathroom at the Bojangles restaurant? In addition to being there with Brian Ridge that night, Detective Allen had the duty of actually filling out the report for this. when he interviewed Marty King and got the information. Yeah, the report is taken at nine PM. There was a call to go to Bojangles and speak with the manager. Detective Allen and Detective ⁓ Ridge went to Bojangles and spoke with Marty King and he said that they had a black mail between nine and nine thirty PM it says AM here, but they mean PM that a black male was found in the ladies' bathroom bleeding from the arm. The manager stated that the black man was five eleven Thin, dirty, late twenties, pair of sunglasses were left in toilet, suspected by blackmail. Subject had a blue cast type brace on his arm that had white velcro on it. The black male appeared to be mental or disoriented, not intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. Police were called, subject left out on foot and walked east toward the back dumpster. Blackmail's clothing was denim sleeveless shirt, black shoes looked like tennis shoes, black thin warm up pants. Came back out to Missouri and walked toward Delta service station. Detective Allen and Detective Ridge took blood scrapings from the north wall inside the women's bathroom above toilet, took blood scrapings from inside of door to women's bathroom. An entrance hall to bathroom from sitting area at Bojangles. So there's a lot of interesting things in this little report that Detective Allen has from that night. And one of them is that he doesn't say which arm the cast was on, so apparently he didn't record that. The service call that went out initially on the dispatch log says that it was on his right arm is the way it's initially reported. And Marty King has actually said during his testimony that the cast was on his left arm, but he's bleeding from his right arm. But the dispatch log says that he's got a cast on his right arm. Yes. And so it there's an inconsistency in between those two documents and that's kind of important. The other one is the height of the person. What is the height? In the report from Alan, it says that the man is five eleven. When Marty King testifies, he says that the man was five eight or five nine. So he's shrunk two inches to three inches. So The document that is done that day is more likely to have the accurate info, but that leads to another issue. Marty King is remembering that this happened between nine and nine thirty, and he'll testify to that several times. The problem is that the dispatch log says that it happened at eight forty earlier in the evening. And that does make a big difference for this case because as we said earlier, Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore have been reported missing, or at least it's in the consciousness of the West Memphis PD that they're missing. since at least eight twenty nine. So eleven minutes later, we have this incident happening over at Bojangle. So they're coincident, which is to say they're happening at the same time. The other thing that really stands out to me is they do talk about the sunglasses and there's a discrepancy between whether or not the sunglasses were collected by Detective Ridge or not. Clearly Marty King thinks that they were collected, but when we read this document on May sixth, it is not listed as one of the things that they collected. Yeah, it says they only collected the blood. So this is a missed opportunity. They didn't get the toilet roll, they didn't get the sunglasses. They were aware of both of those options and they didn't take them. Instead you take your knife and you're gonna flake it off rather than take it off of the toilet roll, which you just have to throw it in a bag and take it with you. They went the more difficult route, but that's what they chose to do. The only thing I would say about that is that maybe they thought that the blood is obviously now dried on the wall and Mr. King is saying that that came from the suspect. Obviously he also thinks that the blood on the toilet paper role came from the suspect based on what he saw. But if that toilet paper was thrown into garbage with other items, it's possible that they thought that was contaminated for some reason. I don't know. I would have taken the role, but they chose not to, and I think that they made a mistake there. Yeah. It appears to be a missed opportunity for sure. The last part of this is we need to hear from Brian Ridge and find out what he did to not only collect the samples, but what he did with them. Detective Ridge, on May the sixth, nineteen ninety three, did you and Detective Allen go to the Bojangles restaurant? Yes, sir. Okay, and w did you talk with the manager there, Marty King? Yes, sir. Okay, did he tell you that an individual had a black man with blood on him had been at the restaurant the evening before? Yes, sir. Okay. When you were at the Bojangles restaurant, did Marty King give you a pair of sunglasses? I don't remember a pair of sunglasses, no sir. Do you recall taking blood scrapings from the north wall inside the woman's bathroom above the toilet? I found an a trace remains possibly blood in the ladies' bathroom of the bojangles, yes, sir. Did you also take blood scrapings from inside of a door to the woman's bathroom? At Bojangles? I'm not certain it's possible. All right. ⁓ did you also take blood samples from the entrance hall to the bathroom from the sitting area at Bow Jangles? I don't think so. That area had been cleaned to the best of my knowledge. If I could approach when you went to the Bojangles restaurant, was Detective Allen did he write up a report about what you and he did at the Bow Jangles restaurant? He was talking with the manager as I was looking through the area, yes sir. Your Honor, if I could approach the witness and take a look at the yellow portion of the refresher record. Detective Ridge, what is the date that you sent the blood scrapings off to the crime lab to be analyzed? They were never sent. They were never sent? That's correct. Where are the the blood samples of this time? I don't know, sir. They're lost. They're lost? Yes, sir. You mean this is the evidence that y'all have in this case? The blood scrapings are lost? If they were blood, yes, sir, they're lost. Well, whatever they were, you took samples of something and was the purpose that you took them to send them to the crime lab? Yes sir. But they're just lost. Yes, sir. That's my mistake. I lost a piece of evidence. So they collected the evidence. It never made its way to the crime lab and it looks like it never even made it out of its car. We don't know what happened to it. ⁓ this is definitely a mistake. It was probably also a mistake to take evidence blood scrapings with your own pocket knife. Yeah. You just really get the sense that they weren't taking this as a very serious lead, even though it was the very first lead in their case of their triple homicide, they didn't take this thing nearly as seriously as they needed to. And they've gotten a lot of scrutiny over the years for it. Ever since this happened in nineteen ninety three, they have had to give some accounting for this. This is a a big missed opportunity to at least answer the question as to whether or not the bloody man who showed up right after the period of time that the boys went missing was involved in this crime. So this is a big missed opportunity. And there is a difference between the response from Officer Meek and then detectives Ridge and Allen because Officer Meek is in pursuit searching for an injured man. Detectives Ridge and Allen are coming back the next day in response to a report from a fellow officer who thinks that it's important enough to investigate this guy and this incident that happened the night before and they seriously drop the ball. They're given, you know, more than one piece of possible evidence for this guy, should he be connected to this crime, and they don't take it seriously. It's a serious problem. And it makes it very difficult to pursue this, you know, beyond just the description of this guy showing up and kind of disappearing into the dark under that full moon of that night. And people don't really have an idea of who he is because there's no way to confirm it because the evidence is lost. That doesn't mean that we can't have ideas and we can't think about this stuff, figure out who we think might be associated with this, but there's no way of absolutely confirming it. And I should say I shouldn't lump them together. Detective Allen did not lose the evidence. That's all on Detective Ridge. Yeah, and he owned it. He owned it and he needs to own it. Couple points that I wanted to bring up. So people are going to ask the question of how this is going to be relevant to the crime scene and why is this important? Well, first off, the description of Bojangle's man is somebody who's probably relatively young. They said in their twenties, probably ordinarily a physically fit person. They're thin. They do have a cast on their arm and they're bleeding from their hand. The bleeding is recent. Remember the blood is wet, so we know that this is a very recent event that occurred. He's got mud all over his feet, so he was injured in a natural area. Where were the boys killed? They were killed in a natural area. There's mud all over his feet, just like was all over the police officer's feet. The distance is not terribly far. It's about three quarters of a mile due west of what turned out to be the crime scene at the unnamed creek. That's about fifteen minutes walking time. Now d that's walking by street. Now, if you're walking across the open fields that are in the area there. It's a lot longer because you got to get across the bayou, you got to get through the mud, you got to do all this other stuff. And it's gonna take some work for you to get through there, but it's a doable thing. So it's within the radius of possibility. It could be something associated with this, unless somebody dropped him off, which is very unlikely because it's got mud all over him, right? Nobody's gonna get a muddy man, put him in their car and drop him off. This is somebody who's showing up there on his feet. And there's an interesting little note that I wanted to bring up is that Marty King, he did not bring this up during his Trial testimony, but he brought it up to the commercial appeal where he estimated that the man in the Bojangles restroom was there for about forty five minutes. Now how we know exactly that is, he doesn't actually say, but we know that there was approximately three interactions with the man while he was in the restroom, and so we could surmise that he's estimating that at about forty five minutes. If the phone call to the police department came at eight forty that evening and you take forty five minutes back, that's at seven fifty five, right around sundown. And that puts us right at a critical time for him to be walking into the Bojangles restaurant. I think the fact that Marty King estimates that this man is in his restaurant for forty five minutes also indicates that he's not afraid of this man. He doesn't seem to be threatening in any way. It took him forty five minutes to call the police. So he's giving this man time to clean himself up and leave on his own terms without having to force him out, which is obviously why he called the police because he thought he was gonna have to have the man removed and that maybe he needed attention. But he called the police, he didn't call an ambulance. So I don't think that this man seemed threatening to Marty King at all, which is interesting. I think also there's no question that the man has a hurt arm, whether it's his right or his left. He's injured in some manner. A man with an arm injured that's in a sling or a cast or whatever the case may be, whether it's a hard cast or cloth sling, probably didn't abduct, harm, kill three eight-year-old boys. That's my thinking. That may also be what the police are thinking. You know, this guy wasn't any kind of shape to do the things that were done to these three eight-year-old boys, and maybe that's why they didn't take it seriously. I don't know, but I do believe that by Marty King's response. He did not find this man threatening in any way, or he would have called the police sooner. Yeah, and in terms of the description, I think that Marty King's trial testimony where he says the bleeding is coming off the right hand is very convincing, very persuasive. You know, when you walk in, you see blood coming off somebody's right hand and he was very clear it was from the right hand and that the cast was on the left hand, you have a man that is sitting in mud all over his legs or feet. He's soaking the area with blood, and he's gone to the bathroom on himself. This is a bad situation. He can't even take care of himself in the bathroom. He's disoriented. He's in some kind of shell shock. He can't clean himself up 'cause he's only got one arm and the one arm is bleeding. So it's one of those things where he leaves and you are gonna have a little bit of worry about his well being. Is he gonna go out and bleed out in the trees behind the bojangles? Well yeah, and as you said, there's railroad tracks directly behind that restaurant and then trees. This man could get himself hurt badly. if he's leaving disoriented and already injured. So this is their first lead. And I can't say that they got off to a r a great start on pursuing this very first lead. I guess maybe they weren't equipped for it. They had barely just gotten the case number I signed a few hours earlier, the infamous nine three dash zero five dash zero six six six. So this is one of the curses of this case, which is, you know, missed opportunities, right when you think this is the chance to really eliminate somebody or to include somebody as a possible suspect and then all of a sudden the evidence gets lost. And it it wasn't something that sat in a evidence locker for three or four months. It looks like it was lost that night. There's no evidence of it ever being booked in anywhere in any of the West Memphis PD logs that we've looked at and we've looked everywhere we could and it looks like it just didn't go anywhere. Possibly never made it out of his car. Yeah, there is a a note in the files that they did do a little checking the West Memphis PD Says they checked with East Arkansas Mental Health Center and they don't remember anyone fitting the description wearing a blue brace on an arm. So I guess they thought maybe he was a mental patient. So they did check on that. So that is what we know about Bo Jengles from trial testimony and from this report Detective Allen wrote when he and Detective Ridge went there on the evening of May the sixth. It's an interesting occurrence for sure. We don't know who this guy is. We don't know what he was involved in. We don't know if he is or isn't connected to the disappearance and then the murders of our victims because there's no evidence. There's nothing to test. They don't have any suspects to test it against, even if they had it. ⁓ they don't find this guy. But it's interesting, they've given us some clues about where they scraped in the Bojangles restaurant. So Paul and I have visited this location. We went there together once. I went back a second time. And so we have some photos. And I may include a video or two. I'm not sure yet. I'll have to look through them. We're gonna post those for you in our Facebook group so you can see what it looked like. The hallway, the bathrooms. There's an interesting twist that in the description by the detectives indicates which bathroom they're talking about. This man at Bojangles went into the women's restroom, right? The female customer took her daughter into the women's restroom and found a man in the women's restroom. So that's the room that they are describing. Based on their descriptions, it seems that at some point someone swapped those restrooms. So what was the women's became the men's restroom and what was the men's became the women's restroom. We'll see if you agree on that. I don't know. You can listen to the testimony and look at the pictures and the video and decide for yourself based on their description of taking blood scrapings above the toilet on the north wall. So that'll be interesting to hear all of your thoughts. Again, we'll post that in our Facebook group and you guys can can discuss that and you can see what it looks like. Obviously, probably it's been painted. I don't know that anything else has been done to that bathroom since it was Bojangles. So one more thing. This episode is airing on June twenty-third. And this is actually the birthday of Christopher Byers. He would have been forty-two today. And so we are thinking about him and his family, and we just wanted to pay our respects to him and to them as well. If you want to join the discussion, we strongly encourage you to contribute to the case by following Crooked Tree Pot on Facebook, on X, or to follow us on YouTube. Next time on Crooked Tree. They began an exhaustive and massive investigation. They went door to door in this community, knocking, asking, what have you seen? What have you heard? Can you tell us anything to help?