West of Memphis Page #8

But these wounds are postmortem,

so why are you torturing

and mutilating dead bodies?

It doesn't make sense.

The irregular nature of the wounds,

some scratches.

There's no bleeding, there's no pattern.

To me, it's obvious animal activity.

GARNER:
We actually called the place

back there we used to ride our bikes.

Turtle City. That's just behind there,

because there were so many turtles.

Everywhere, hundreds of them.

Painted turtles, snapping turtles,

soft-shell turtles, all kinds of turtles.

SEALS:
And they actually got such thing

called the alligator snapping turtle

that could be found. I mean...

Big turtles with humps in their back.

That make them look

kind of like alligators.

JAMIE:
Our house was up against

a ditch, so we would go back.

There was a lot of them there,

turtles, fish and mud.

You'd see an armadillo that fell

in the water or got hit by a car,

and there'd be like four or five turtles

just chewing on it.

RICHARDS:
Red flags should go up when

a body is pulled from the water.

Especially in the month of May.

At that latitude,

those reptiles are in high gear.

They're feeding at their highest level,

their most voracious appetites.

Just keep going, keep going.

This is the bite mark I'm looking for.

You can already start to see

the outline of the jaw.

DIMAIO:
The animals usually

start with soft tissue.

And the scrotum and the skin around

the penis is soft and they're coming off,

so the animal doesn't have to

go against the body mass itself,

but goes at the things

that are dangled in front of it.

And then they'll go to things like lips

and the tip of the nose and the ears.

What you're dealing with

is a horrendous crime.

Three young boys

murdered in cold blood.

Just that alone upsets people.

You look at the bodies and there's

these savage injuries all over.

It affects people emotionally

and it warps their judgment.

And then someone says,

"Maybe it's Satanic!"

And they say, "Well, the only type

of person who would do this"

would be someone like that."

We didn't want just one opinion.

We thought the best thing to do

was basically to get

six or seven of the very best people,

get a wide range of views.

Every single one of the independent

experts that we approached

came out with the same findings.

BADEN:
There's no evidence that these

injuries occurred while they were alive.

There's no evidence that,

as the medical examiner testified,

they were sexually assaulted,

pulled up by the ears, fellatio involved.

The problem is bad science

drives out good science.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist

or a forensic dentist

to look at that serrations on the back

of that knife and say

that that knife made these marks.

I mean, give me a break.

That is the most ridiculous statement

that I've ever heard.

And to sell that to a jury

is unconscionable.

JACKSON:
We flew several of these

forensic pathologists down to Arkansas

to meet with Dr. Peretti face-to-face.

Dr. Peretti listened patiently

and nodded his head.

And said he would consider all this.

But he'd concluded that this couldn't

have been caused by a turtle,

and that's kind of where

he drew his line.

Now here all this

information comes in.

I start seeing a totally

different kind of situation.

This is not a lust murder

where the killer is going after

the genital areas of the victim.

This is what's starting to develop to me

as a personal-cause homicide

directed at these children, but maybe

one more than... More than others.

In all probability this person

would have been interviewed.

Should have been by now,

because he would be the logical person.

There's a connection with the victims.

DAMIEN:
The person who killed those three kids

is still out there walking on the street.

To me, that would seem like

the highest priority. Not this case.

Not me, Jason or Jessie.

You know, don't get me wrong,

we're thankful for the support

that people give us.

But the main thing

I would be thinking about

is there's someone who killed three kids

still living in my neighborhood.

JACKSON:
If you disregard the

state's Satanic ritual theory,

the entire nature

of the crime changes.

It starts you thinking, "Well, maybe we're

not looking for these extreme suspects."

We're looking for someone

who's kind of ordinary, invisible."

So at that point we thought we should

put more funding into the DNA testing.

HORGAN:
We're getting packages and

shipments of all sorts of DNA samples

that we're then forwarding

on to our DNA expert.

RIORDAN:
Out there was a

process that was going on

that either would be the impetus

for exoneration

or would be the state's last chance

to demonstrate in this highly controversial

case that he was good for it.

And Damien's reaction to that was

that he was absolutely adamant

about the DNA testing.

JACKSON:
Of all the samples and all the

various hairs and things that got tested,

there was nothing,

none of the DNA came back.

Nothing matched Damien,

Jason or Jessie.

What was interesting, however,

were some unknown hairs.

There was one hair in particular

that was in the binding

of one of the ligatures.

The boys had their hands

tied with shoelaces,

and right in the middle of a knot

that had been tightened,

there was a hair jammed

in that knot.

STIDHAM:
Had the hair been located anywhere

other than inside a ligature binding,

I would say, you know,

it's not as significant as it could be.

But given its location, I think

it's particularly damning evidence.

JACKSON:
The hair tied into Michael Moore's

ligature had to come from somebody.

So over Christmas, 2006,

we studied John Douglas's report

and started to think about

who that foreign profile could belong to.

LORRI:
"This crime was not nearly

so convoluted nor as twisted"

as the public were led to believe.

John Douglas said that this

is most likely a personal-cause killing.

That is to say, the perpetrator knew

one or more of the victims

and had good reason, at least

in his own mind, to act out violently.

We know the boys were bashed

on the head, tied up,

"and thrown into the drainage ditch."

The children were submerged in water,

which is an unnecessary act

if you're a total...

You know, total stranger.

And an unnecessary act to throw

the bicycles into the bayou.

LORRI:
"We know that all of this could have

happened in the space of just 2O minutes."

It almost certainly happened

before dark,

which means the crime in all likelihood

occurred between the hours

of 6:
30 and 7:45 p.m.

Who knew these boys

well enough to kill them?

Who was out looking for them?

From where I stand we are pretty much

left with a list of three people.

Mark Byers, Terry Hobbs,

and Todd Moore.

Mark Byers began looking

for Chris from 6 p.m.

Terry Hobbs was looking

for Stevie Branch from 5 p.m.

Todd Moore was out of town.

We're left with two stepfathers.

But only one of them has ever been

scrutinized as a suspect.

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