Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three (50 page)

⁸⁰
After a day of house painting, Mark had promised Ryan that he’d take him and his friends fishing on Lake Thunderbird in Cherokee Village. While Ryan stayed at the house to clean up and wait for a friend, Justin Copeland, to arrive, Mark went into town to pay a propane gas bill and to have a gunsmith take a look at a .22 caliber rifle that he was considering buying; the firing pin was broken, and Mark wanted to know whether it was worth fixing. Fourteen-year-old Marty Kerr and his younger cousin had gone along with Mark. On the way, they passed a group of Kerr’s schoolmates walking along the road. Kerr and one of the boys were adversaries, and the boys had been engaging in typical teenage boy behavior, the rival insulting Kerr’s mother and hitting on his girlfriend. The boys shouted taunts at Kerr as the car passed by, and Kerr insisted that Mark turn the car around. Mark told him to ignore it. Kerr said he’d just come back later on his scooter if Mark didn’t stop now, so Mark turned around and brought the car to a stop. Kerr leapt out of the car, grabbing a four-inch-long jackknife from the console of the Isuzu and palming it in the closed position, and headed toward the group of boys. Mark stepped out of the car next. From the backseat, Kerr’s young cousin scrambled out, kicking onto the ground the .22 caliber bolt-action rifle that had been lying on the floor of the car. Mark picked it up off the ground, held it at his side, and then watched as the brief fight ensued nearby. Kerr evidently got the best of the fight; the other boy, John Shaver Jr., was treated and released from the local hospital with, according to Byers, a “broken nose and a black eye.” Local news stories would say Shaver suffered a concussion. In either case, Mark and the boys picked up Ryan and Copeland and continued on to their fishing trip. When they returned at the end of the day, Hardy police chief Ernie Rose was waiting for them on the dock.

⁸¹
Melissa’s father, Kilborn A. DeFir, died on March 2, 2005, at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

⁸²
Leveritt,
Devils Knot
, p. 313.

⁸³
This is Mark’s recollection. The autopsy report of Melissa Byers reveals no indication of sexual activity. Perhaps the examiner didn’t check.

⁸⁴
George Mateljan,
World’s Healthiest Foods
:
The Guide for the Healthiest Way of Eating
.
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=90
Melissa’s potassium level was measured at 5.9 mmol/L (millimoles per liter). High potassium levels have been associated with sudden cardiac arrest. According to Mateljan, “elevated blood levels of potassium can be toxic, and may cause an irregular heartbeat or even heart attack. Under most circumstances, the body maintains blood levels of potassium within a tight range, so it is not usually possible to produce symptoms of toxicity through intake of potassium-containing foods and/or supplements.”

⁸⁵
From the Baptist Memorial Hospital resuscitation record prepared by Linda Krepps, RN, on March 29, 1996. The attending physician was Dr. David Kauffman.

⁸⁶
Center for Disease Control (CDC), 2003. Jim Clark, director of the state crime lab in Arkansas, pegs the number at between 4 and 8 percent of people die of undetermined causes in the United States, according to Mara Leveritt in a December 1997 article, “The Strange Demise of Melissa Byers,” on prisonpotpourri.com.

⁸⁷
Telephone conversation with author, February 12, 2007.

⁸⁸
As noted in Brent Turvey’s autopsy analysis, the words “hydromorphone” (Dilaudid) and “hydrocodone” (Vicodin) are both used. It seems most likely, given Melissa’s habit of injecting K4, that the references to hydrocodone were typographical errors. The Arkansas State Crime Lab, where the autopsy was performed, identified the substance as hydromorphone and further stated that it had passed to the urine and was negative in the blood.

⁸⁹
Mandy Lou Beasley was Mark’s schoolmate when he was growing up in Marked Tree. When Mark and Melissa moved to Cherokee Village, they ran into Beasley at Sharp County Circuit Court. Beasley was there with her boyfriend, who was facing a DUI charge. It turned out that Beasley was living around the corner from the Byerses on Hiawatha Drive. Melissa struck up a friendship with Beasley, and the two often discussed getting Ryan and Beasley’s daughter, Anneleise, together, saying the two would make “beautiful babies.” Beasley became one of the neighborhood “party people,” and she and the Byerses would often party down by the Spring River. When the ambulance and police cars descended on Skyline Drive during the late afternoon of March 29, Beasley saw the commotion and came by to see what was going on, and she was there when Mark returned from the hospital. Although witness Fern Moyer told police that Beasley was Mark’s “girlfriend,” there was nothing to suggest that there was any relationship between the two prior to Melissa’s death.

⁹⁰
James “Jimmy” Lawrence may be remembered as one of two friends in Mark’s Jonesboro apartment who were filmed for
Revelations: Paradise Lost 2
. Lawrence made such notable remarks as “You can get mean. When mean gets mean, you can get mean” on camera. He and Mark had been friends since the two were kids in Marked Tree. James Lawrence died of heart failure in 1998; Mark was a pallbearer at his funeral.

⁹¹
None of the restitution was ever paid.

⁹²
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky,
Brother’s Keeper
(IFC Films, 1992), DVD. Sinofsky said he read about the West Memphis murders in an article in the
New York Times
. According to Joe Berlinger, in his book
Metallica: This Monster Lives
, HBO producer Shelia Nevins had seen the story in the
Times
and suggested that there “could be a documentary here” and that “HBO might be interested.”

⁹³
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, DVD commentary,
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
(Creative Thinking International, 1996). Released in “Collector’s Edition” with commentary on
Paradise Lost
,
2008.

⁹⁴
Joe Berlinger and Greg Milner,
Metallica: This Monster Lives
(New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), p. 89.

⁹⁵
Vincent Bugliosi,
Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder
(New York, NY: Norton, 2008 p83).
Bugliosi, the prosecutor for the 1970 case
State of California v Charles Manson, et. al.,
commented that the televising of trials, though ostensibly done for the purpose of keeping the public informed, is all about entertainment:

The media’s only motivation, though not an improper one, is commercial. Although televising trials may indeed educate the public, that obviously is not the principal reason why people watch trials such as the Menendez and Simpson cases on television. It’s a form of entertainment for them, pure and simple. Televise a breach of contract or automobile collision lawsuit and see how many people watch. The entertainment aspect of the Simpson trial became so ludicrous that time and time again, the talking heads, and those who called in on these shows, actually complained that certain lawyers and witnesses, as well as certain evidence, were too boring and dull for their tastes—which is to say they wanted, were almost demanding, better and more scintillating entertainment.

⁹⁶
Metallica donated all the music for
Paradise Lost
and
Revelations: Paradise Lost 2
and would develop a relationship with the filmmakers that led to the documentary
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
(Paramount Films, 2004; DVD, 2005).

⁹⁷
Urban Desires, “The Interview” (1996),
http://desires.com/2.4/Performance/Reviews/Paradise/Docs/interview.html
.

⁹⁸
Ibid.

⁹⁹
The Movie Review Show with Robin and Laura Clifford
, Show 136 (
http://www.reelingreviews.com/reel136.htm
).

¹⁰⁰
George Jared, “WM3 Judge Says Decision in Case Coming,”
Jonesboro Sun
, January 16, 2010.

¹⁰¹
Jennie Yabroff “American Gothics” Salon.com, as reprinted in
Industry Central
,
http://www.industrycentral.net/director_interviews/JOBE01.HTM

¹⁰²
Berlinger and Milner,
Metallica: This Monster Lives
.

¹⁰³
Rich Rosell “Staring at the Underbelly: An Interview with Documentary Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky”
Digitally Obsessed.com
http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/showinterview.php3?ID=51&

¹⁰⁴
The attorneys’ fees for each defendant were deducted from the honoraria when the court finally ordered payment to the defense lawyers.

¹⁰⁵
The film won awards at the Kansas City Film Festival, received a Peabody Award, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
Paradise Lost
also won the “Golden Apple” award from the National Educational Media Network, USA, as well as the National Board of Review’s “Best Documentary” award for 1996.

¹⁰⁶
Konrad painted the atrocious “RIP,” a painting depicting Byers as the killer, and auctioned off at a WM3 benefit show.

¹⁰⁷
Annette Starke, “Life after Death,”
Los Angeles CityBeat
, August 2006.

¹⁰⁸
Comments made at the West Memphis Three support rally in Little Rock in December 2007. This is the same rally where Natalie Maines spoke and where Terry Hobbs claimed he was defamed by remarks she made.

¹⁰⁹
A list of questions was submitted to Joe Berlinger, including a question seeking his response to the commentary on this scene. He declined to answer.

¹¹⁰
Next to Crowley’s name, Echols had also written the names of Jason Baldwin and Echols’s son, Damien Seth Azariah Echols, who was born while Damien was in jail awaiting trial.

¹¹¹
In his biography
Almost Home
, Damien Echols uses this spelling of the word over 20 times.

¹¹²
Lawrence Sutin
Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley
New York: St. Martins Press 2000

¹¹³
Columbia Pacific University was closed between 1995 and 2000 for dormitory violations, failure of its PhD programs to meet standards, awarding excessive credit for life experiences, and failing to hire “duly qualified” professors. In a defense challenge to allowing Griffis to testify as an expert, Judge Burnett ruled that there was no law in Arkansas requiring that an expert witness have a degree to be so qualified.