On May 5, 1993, second-graders Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore disappeared from their West Memphis, Arkansas, homes. The following afternoon, their nude, beaten, and bound bodies were discovered in a drainage ditch less than a mile UNTYING THE KNOT JOHN MARK BYERS AND THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE By GREG DAY iUniverse, Inc. Copyright © 2012 Greg Day All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4759-1169-5 Contents Preface................................................................xiForeword...............................................................xv1. A Community in Shock................................................12. I'm No Angel........................................................353. Melissa.............................................................904. Paradise Lost.......................................................1055. Summer Camp.........................................................1536. Redemption and Revelations..........................................1917. Jason and Jessie....................................................2418. John Mark Byers, Damien Echols, and Terry Hobbs.....................249Epilogue...............................................................277Acknowledgments........................................................283About the Author.......................................................287Endnotes...............................................................289 Chapter One A Community in Shock Who can truly understand the mind of a child killer? Who can fathom the power of berserk instinct unleashed on the innocent? —Frederick Zugibe, former chief medical examiner Rockland County, New York West Memphis, Arkansas, is the kind of place one passes on the interstate and is aware of only because of the highway signs hanging overhead, proclaiming its existence. The town itself is a mile or so off the highway, but there's nothing prompting anyone to stop. If people bothered to look closely, they might feel a faint, inexplicable sadness rising up inside, only to have it subside once the freeway exits are in the rearview mirror. To the traveler, it is a faceless, almost invisible place. Think of it as the Eleanor Rigby of towns. Located on a bleak, flood-prone piece of earth between interstate highways 40 and 55, West Memphis is twenty-six square miles of barren farmland, small tract homes, trailer parks, and strip malls, crisscrossed by a system of water management drainage canals, runoff ponds, and bayous. Naming the town West Memphis was the founders' attempt to capitalize on its proximity to Memphis, which lies directly across the Mississippi, to attract investors who were paying premium prices for timber in the Memphis market. With rail and automobile bridges built in 1892 and 1917, respectively, West Memphis began to grow. Today, with a population of approximately twenty-eight thousand, it is the twelfth largest city in Arkansas. Whether the town was ever what could be called prosperous is debatable, but today West Memphis is a relatively poor town, with a median income 35 percent below the national average and per capita income well below the state average. It is also a somewhat violent place. In West Memphis alone, between 2001 and 2006 there were 23 instances of murder or manslaughter, 88 forcible rapes, 375 robberies, and more than 900 aggravated assaults, along with a soaring rate of property crimes—nearly double the state average. Because of its location at the intersection of interstate highways 40 and 55, the West Memphis cargo inspection and weigh station is one of the busiest in the United States, with an estimated 3 million cargo trucks passing through each year. For drug traffickers, consisting mostly of Mexican criminal groups, but also including motorcycle gangs and local independents, the interstate highway system offers a superb network of distribution channels for drugs coming from the Southwest and bound for points throughout the state. The state troopers are a busy lot, as are the locals. As recently as April 2010, "thirteen large bricks" of drugs were seized by West Memphis Police Department (WMPD) officers. Two months later, a pair of West Memphis police officers would be gunned down during a traffic stop of a father-and-son team of antigovernment activists. West Memphis experiences a seesaw of ennui versus action, however, and the residents' interest in the freeway system is limited to its utility in getting back and forth to Memphis to the east or Little Rock to the west. Until 1993, no real national attention was paid to West Memphis; there simply wasn't much to pay attention to. But in 1993, with the chilling discovery of the bodies of three eight-year-old boys in a wooded area of town near Interstate 40, West Memphis became the locus of a controversy that would last more than eighteen years. "There's Been a Homicide" John Mark and Melissa Byers were the first to report thei