Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row (45 page)

5. M
ICHAEL
C
ARSON’S
P
ERJURY

Like Hutcheson, Michael Carson also recanted his testimony against Baldwin. Interviewed in Berg’s
West of Memphis
, he apologizes to Baldwin and blames his lies on LSD and other drugs he was taking at the time.
¹⁹³
But even if he had not recanted, substantial evidence has surfaced since the trial that he lied on the witness stand. Danny Williams, the former counselor who warned the prosecutors that Carson was about to commit perjury, wrote to Baldwin shortly after Christmas in 1994, stating that “every word” of Michael’s testimony came from him. “We were discussing the case in a meeting,” he wrote, “and I told him what people were saying about the victims and about what was allegedly done to the bodies. This young man then went to the police and stated that you had confessed these details to him while [you were] in detention together.”
¹⁹⁴

Furthermore, in a May 29, 2008, Writ of Error Coram Nobis, Baldwin’s attorneys reported that their investigators had “interviewed all available staff or detainees who were in the facility with Baldwin and Carson (a total of approximately 10 persons)” and “none could corroborate Carson’s story.” What’s more, Joyce Cureton, who was the facility’s unit supervisor at the time, said, “There was only one log entry of Baldwin and Carson being together and this was under staff observation.” She also “reported that she was actually told by law enforcement personnel to leave town at or near the time that she might have been called as a witness for the defense.” And in a May 30, 2008, Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus and Motion for New Trial, Baldwin’s attorneys reported that when Cureton was asked to speak on his behalf during sentencing, she “was told by the sheriff that she should not be in court.” As this evidence indicates, law enforcement officers put pressure on an employee of the detention facility in order to prevent her from testifying to her belief that Carson’s testimony was false.
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If she and Williams had been allowed to testify, the jury might well have discounted Carson’s testimony and Baldwin might never have been convicted.

6. J
ODEE
M
EDFORD’S
R
ETRACTION OF
H
ER
T
ESTIMONY

As mentioned earlier, Donna Medford, the mother of Jodee Medford, has signed a sworn affidavit stating that Echols’s so-called “confession” to her daughter at a softball game “was not serious” and that “neither she nor her daughter believes he committed the crime.”
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7. A
ARON
H
UTCHESON’S
T
APED
I
NTERVIEWS

There is now evidence that police ignored obvious evidence that Aaron Hutcheson did not witness the crimes. Police tapes of their interviews with him, tapes not made available at the time of the trial since Aaron did not testify, make it clear that news reports and people close to the investigation were the sources of the few facts included in his wild imaginings. In his first tape-recorded interview, conducted by Ridge on August 25, 1993, Aaron correctly reports that the boys were beaten, drowned, and submerged in the water (although he says their bodies were held down by bricks, not by sticks), then adds, “I heard that from the news.” He then goes on to say, “Diane, Michael’s mom, said that she seen his face and it had knife stabs on it.” Ridge apparently ignored not only these obvious indications that Aaron did not witness the murders but also his inaccurate description of how the boys were tied. As Tim Hackler pointed out in an October 2004
Arkansas Times
article, Aaron “made the assumption most children or adults would make if they heard that someone had been hog-tied. He assumed the murderers had ‘put their feet together and their arms together,’” when in fact each boy’s wrists were bound to his ankles. Hackler concludes that “it would seem that the terrible way that the boys were actually tied up would make a lasting impression” on anyone who had witnessed it.
¹⁹⁷

According to Hackler, who interviewed the then nineteen-year-old, Aaron was not sure “whether he actually witnessed the murders or whether his mind was playing tricks on him during a traumatic period.”
¹⁹⁸
He was sure, however, that the police had “tricked” him into saying things that weren’t true and “messed with my words.” He also said he would like to become a lawyer to help people avoid the kind of injustice that took place in the West Memphis Three case.
¹⁹⁹

8. D
EPOSITIONS IN
T
ERRY
H
OBBS’S
D
EFAMATION
S
UIT
A
GAINST
N
ATALIE
M
AINES

In November 2008, Terry Hobbs filed suit against Natalie Maines Pasdar (the married name of Natalie Maines) and the Dixie Chicks, whom he claimed had defamed him in letters on the Dixie Chicks website and MySpace page and in a speech at a December 2007 Free the West Memphis Three rally in Little Rock. As a result of the suit, attorneys for Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were allowed for the first time to obtain sworn depositions from both Hobbs and those who suspect him of the murders. Hill has stated that “Hobbs was required to defend his past behavior, his criminal record and his actions the night the children went missing. Under scrutiny, Hobbs’s stories became inconsistent and incoherent.”
²⁰⁰
The witnesses accused him, under penalty of perjury, of threats of murder; physical and sexual assault of a neighbor; sexual abuse of his daughter, Amanda, and his son from his first marriage; physical abuse of Amanda, his stepson Stevie Branch, and his ex-wife Pam; drug abuse; and lying about his actions the night of the murders. They also discussed the fact that he was arrested for drug possession and convicted of aggravated assault after shooting his unarmed brother-in-law in the stomach (for which he was sentenced to time in the workhouse and probation).
²⁰¹
The suit was eventually dismissed and the judge granted Maines a summary judgment in her favor and ordered Hobbs to pay her $17,590.27 for legal expenses.
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9. A
FFIDAVITS FROM
T
ERRY
H
OBBS’S
N
EIGHBORS

Suspicions that Terry Hobbs may have been involved in the murders were heightened in October 2009 when three of his former neighbors presented sworn affidavits to the Arkansas Supreme Court stating that they saw the three boys with Hobbs at approximately six-thirty p.m. the day they were killed, making him the last known person to have seen them alive. The neighbors, who lived three doors from Hobbs and were never interviewed by police after the murders, came forward with their statements after learning that Hobbs had denied seeing the three boys the day they were murdered. Hobbs made this claim under oath in a July 21, 2009, civil deposition prompted by his suit against Natalie Maines. Hobbs was asked, “It’s your testimony that you did not see Stevie Branch at all the day of May 5th of 1993, correct?” and he answered, “Correct.” When he was asked, “Did you see any of the three boys that day?” he answered, “No, I did not.”
²⁰³

In her affidavit, neighbor Jamie Clark Ballard stated:

Between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., I saw Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers playing in my backyard. I am absolutely, completely and totally positive that I saw Terry Hobbs hollering at Stevie, Michael and Christopher to get back down to the Hobbs house at approximately 6:30 p.m. If Terry Hobbs said he did not see Stevie Branch, Michael Moore or Christopher Byers on May 5, 1993, he is not telling the truth. I know for a fact that Terry Hobbs saw, was with and spoke to Stevie, Michael and Christopher on May 5, 1993.
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Sworn statements from Brandy Clark Williams, Ballard’s sister, and their mother, Deborah Moyer, corroborate her testimony.
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10. A
N
FBI P
ROFILER’S
A
SSESSMENT OF THE
E
VIDENCE

As an October 11, 2009, motion prepared by Echols’s attorneys notes, “Hobbs was never questioned by police during the original investigation of the crimes, despite the fact that the lead detective in the investigation of the murders [Gary Gitchell] has conceded both that when a child homicide occurs, police should always consider the parents of the child as potential suspects, and that it is ‘statistically proven that homicide victims are usually the result of family, close friends, [and] known acquaintances.’”
²⁰⁶

At the request of Echols’s defense team, Special Agent John Douglas, a criminal profiler who was chief of the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit for twenty-five years, interviewed Hobbs twice in 2007. Douglas reported that “I had one interview where he was very, very credible because I didn’t have any background information on him. But then five days later, when we get this more detailed information, specific information, I talked to a total liar. . . . He’s a total liar, the guy I’m talking to now is being confronted with his lies, and it’s a totally different type of bird. The person responsible for this crime can look at you right in the eye, can look at a camera and say ‘I didn’t do it’ because he’s a psychopathic personality. There is no remorse.”
²⁰⁷

After analyzing all of the case evidence, Douglas concluded, “I would say put him on the front burner.” He explained that “it was pretty easy . . . to define this case as Personal Cause Homicide. This is not a homicide . . . perpetrated by a stranger. The person responsible for this crime . . . knew these victims relatively well,” and “the initial intent . . . was not to kill but to taunt and to punish.” However, the killer lost control, perhaps because of “comments made by one of the children,” and then “went beyond just the taunting, the teaching these kids a lesson,” and killed them. The killer hid the boys, their clothes, and the bicycles so carefully because “he lives nearby” and wanted to delay the discovery of the crime so he would have time to establish an alibi. Teenagers aren’t “criminally sophisticated” enough to commit “crimes like this” without leaving substantial physical evidence, he added, so the killer was likely an adult “who’s been violent in the past, who’s violent now . . . and would also be violent in the future.”
²⁰⁸
Since Hobbs was charged with physical and sexual assault in 1982 (the charges were dismissed when he agreed to undergo counseling),
²⁰⁹
and charged with aggravated assault, fined, and given probation for shooting his brother-in-law in 1997,
²¹⁰
Douglas determined that Hobbs fit this profile.
²¹¹

11. P
AM
H
OBBS’S
D
ISCOVERY OF
H
ER
S
ON’S
P
OCKETKNIFE

According to an October 21, 2009, article by George Jared in
The Jonesboro Sun
, Pam Hobbs said that she found her son Stevie’s pocketknife in her ex-husband Terry’s drawer in 2002. Her father had given Stevie the pocketknife, she said, and he carried it with him at all times. The knife had not been among Stevie’s personal effects after his murder, and she had always assumed that it had been taken by her son’s killer. She sent the knife, along with more than a dozen others from the drawer, to one of the defense lawyers rather than to the prosecutors because, as she said, she “didn’t trust the prosecution . . . because of the evidence that was not presented at the trials.”
²¹²

Pam Hobbs also told Jared that she had suspected Terry Hobbs from the beginning. Her sister Jo Lynn McCaughey also told Jared she had suspected him from the start, pointing out that he had “repeatedly washed already clean clothes and other items around the house” the night Stevie vanished.
²¹³
Another sister, Judy Sadler, has likewise reported that Hobbs uncharacteristically washed curtains, bed linens, and items of clothing that night.
²¹⁴
Hobbs has denied these claims.

Pam Hobbs is not the only parent of a murdered child who believes Terry Hobbs may have been involved. According to another of Jared’s 2009
Jonesboro Sun
articles, “John Mark Byers has also said he thinks Terry Hobbs was involved with the murders, and he now adamantly supports efforts to free the so-called ‘West Memphis Three.’”
²¹⁵
“They’re innocent,” Byers said. “They did not kill my son.”
²¹⁶
As he told
People
magazine, “I was fooled for 14 years. But now I know an injustice was dealt upon these boys by the State of Arkansas.”
²¹⁷
Also, Rick Murray, the biological father of Chris Byers, has expressed his belief that the West Memphis Three were wrongly convicted. In a letter posted on wm3.org, he said, “I want to know who murdered my son. . . . I don’t want three innocent people to suffer for something they didn’t do.”
²¹⁸

12. “T
HE
H
OBBS
F
AMILY
S
ECRET
”

The most recent new evidence was not discovered until December 11, 2011, when the evidentiary hearing was scheduled to be in session. As
West of Memphis
reveals, three witnesses came forward after watching a
48 Hours
special on the case and testified under penalty of perjury that Michael Hobbs, Jr., the nephew of Terry Hobbs, told them his uncle was responsible for the murders. All three witnesses subsequently passed polygraph tests. According to one witness, “Michael [Jr.] said to us, ‘You are not going to believe what my dad told me today. My Uncle Terry murdered the three little boys.’ According to Michael, his dad called this ‘The Hobbs Family Secret,’ and he asked us to keep it a secret and not tell anyone.”
²¹⁹
A second witness said that Michael Jr. told him the same thing the winter before while they played pool in his basement and that “Michael was dead serious when he said this.”
²²⁰
The third witness said that when he was at Michael Jr.’s house in 2003 or 2004, he and Michael stood at the top of the stairs and listened to Michael Hobbs, Sr., and Terry Hobbs talking about the murders in the basement. He said, “I heard two men talking. One appeared to be very upset, even crying, and he said, ‘I am sorry, I regret it.’ The other man was trying to console him and said, ‘You are in the clear, no one thinks you are a suspect, those guys are already in prison.’”
²²¹