West of Memphis Page #9

Byers once referred to himself

as the giant red herring of this case,

and I think

he was speaking the truth.

That is why I am interested

in Terry Hobbs.

Hope this helps to explain

where I'm coming from.

"Sending much love to you, Fran."

JACKSON:
We were working with a

private investigator, Rachael Geiser,

and we asked Rachael

to start to investigate Terry.

I'd come in to work daily,

and I would have

all of these e-mails from Fran about:

"Here's what we need to do,

thanks for what you sent."

We really didn't know

a whole lot about Stevie

because Stevie's life

was kind of confusing.

PERETTI:
These are the

photographs of Steven Branch.

GEISER:
You had his father,

Stevie, his biological father.

Here we can see...

You had Pam, and then you had Terry.

Other than the fact that nothing's there,

there's nothing that would raise any flags.

JACKSON:
And so getting Terry's

DNA became a priority for us now,

and the brief to Rachael was really

get Terry's DNA without him knowing.

GEISER:
Saturday morning, it

was raining out, I remember,

and we showed up

at his house early,

and he opened the door,

and we told him who we were.

He said,

"I've been expecting y'all."

I'll never forget it, he was like,

"Come on in."

I remember we sat there with him

for a while, and he, you know...

He was a likable-enough guy,

he really was.

He talked about their life

and how their life was.

He didn't talk a whole lot about Pam.

I think they were fighting at the time.

And he didn't talk, really,

about Amanda at all.

He interviewed with us,

told us where he was.

He said that was the first time

he'd ever told anyone his whereabouts.

So we waited in the living room

while he was in the bathroom, I assume,

and that's when I took the cigarette

butts out of the ashtray. Yeah.

RIORDAN:
We got the fax,

and I'm reading the fax,

and I'm reading the fax,

and at some point I said, "Holy f***."

We all were just kind of stunned to see

this very dramatic DNA result.

GEISER:
Terry comes in, sits down,

and we tell him, you know...

LAX:
The DNA that was found

on the hair doesn't match.

Damien or Jason or Jessie.

So it's somebody else's DNA.

They don't know whose?

Tell me. LAX:
Yours.

No. LAX:
Yes, it is.

No, that's wrong.

GEISER:
We had to get him to come in because we

knew that he didn't voluntarily give us this DNA.

We wanted to get either a voluntary

sample or we need to see him

do something, you know,

that would have left his DNA.

Terry Hobbs would not, at any point,

give me his DNA voluntarily, no.

REPORTER 1:
The biggest bombshell

of the new defense investigation

is that an unexplained hair that could

be from another victim's stepfather

was found on shoelaces

at the crime scene.

REPORTER 2:
They say the DNA matches victim

Stevie Branch's stepfather, Terry Hobbs.

Hobbs tells me tonight, quote,

"I don't have anything to hide.

I'll answer any questions."

Mr. Hobbs, do you feel like the attorneys

are accusing you of this crime?

The answer to that would be no.

Is it possible, Mr. Hobbs,

that that was your hair?

Sure, it was his son, Steven Branch,

who was murdered, and he's had

to deal with this for the last 15 years.

AMANDA:
The first tattoos I

got was my parents' name...

because I love them

more than anything in the world.

I've abused drugs for many years

and I'm only 21

and I feel like it's because

I'm trying to hide.

I did it to suppress something,

to cover something up.

And where are your kids

during this time, at your mom's?

Mm-hm. They live with my mom.

And so why don't you stay

with your mom?

She thinks I'm too wild.

So she says, "You can't stay here

because you're too wild"?

And I'm hung out on a limb.

What's that mean,

you're hung out on a limb?

That I'm going crazy the way

she did when Stevie died.

HORGAN:
Once Terry Hobbs surfaced,

it certainly advanced things.

It helped shift the momentum.

JACKSON:
The West Memphis

Police Department realized

that they had never actually

interviewed him,

despite the fact that he was

a stepfather of one of the victims.

They quickly conducted an interview

with Terry Hobbs in 2007.

Anything unusual

when you got home, at all?

Nothing other than, uh,

Stevie wasn't home.

Terry Hobbs said to everyone

that he was very concerned

when Stevie Branch didn't

come home at 4:
30 that night.

If he was so worried at 4:30,

why didn't he call Stevie's mom?

When he does finally tell her,

9:
00, almost five hours later.

This person knows that he will be

a logical suspect at some point,

but what he needs,

he needs time on his hands.

He needs to establish an alibi.

We studied his movements that night.

He had spent some period of time

on the evening of May the 5th

in the house of David Jacoby,

who was a friend of his.

And I asked David, I said,

"Would you go help me?"

He was with me probably

2:
00 or 3:00 in the morning.

May the 6th.

Jacoby here is kind of a witness.

He never had this window of opportunity

to perpetrate a crime like that

because he was with him

for such a long period of time.

JACKSON:
We got a sample of David

Jacoby's DNA voluntarily...

and the analysis came back to say

that another hair

that was found on a tree stump by

the ditch where the bodies were found

was consistent

with David Jacoby's DNA.

PAM:
I wasn't even aware that

he went to David Jacoby's.

According to Terry, he was walking the

streets and searching the whole night.

So that was news to me

when I found out.

Is there anything you can think

of that we hadn't gone over?

That we hadn't asked, something

you remembered through the years?

HORGAN:
You'd thought they would do a

meaningful interview with Terry Hobbs.

It was as if they were sitting out

on the back porch just sharing a beer.

"We know you didn't

have much to do with this."

Just, you know, for old time's sake,

why don't you describe again

"how you didn't have anything

to do with this?"

It didn't have the atmosphere

of a serious interrogation at all.

You know, I don't know what happened

out there in them woods that night.

JACKSON:
Mike Allen, the lead

investigator at the time,

and now the sheriff

of Crittenden County,

issued a statement saying

Terry Hobbs was not a suspect then

and he's not a suspect now.

A question that has got to be asked

is that why have they so staunchly

refused to regard him

as a person of interest?

There.

Terry, appreciate it, man.

SCHECK:
As we sit here today, there are

272 post-conviction DNA exonerations.

DNA is the essential element

to prove their innocence,

and these people have done

more than 3500 years in prison.

On the other hand,

there are many, many cases, urn,

where there's been DNA that's helpful,

as in the West Memphis Three case,

because it does shed light

on other suspects.

And it does put particular significance

on the absence of evidence.

There's an old phrase

in the forensic science business

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