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The Robin Hood Hills murderer(s)
The CrimeTopics covered in this essay:

Jessie Misskelley, Jr., Damien Echols and
Jason
Baldwin were found guilty of the assaults, rapes, mutilations and murders of three 8
year old boys, Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore in Robin
Hood Hills, West Memphis, AR. Their guilt is very much in dispute. Their convictions
appear to have been significantly influenced by the religious beliefs of the townspeople -
particularly their misconceptions about secret, abusive Satanic cults. The police investigation
was hopelessly bungled.

On the afternoon of 1993-MAY-5, three adults observed the three young boys riding their bikes
near Robin Hood Hills. Some boys were seen entering the Robin Hood woods. In the early
evening, Christopher's step-father, John Mark Byers, phoned the police. He said that he
was worried that his step-son had not come home. The police and the parents of the missing
children searched the neighborhood unsuccessfully until 3 AM the next morning.
The bodies of the three 8 year-old boys were discovered in a wooded area in Robin Hood
Hills on the next day, 1993-MAY-6 at 1:30 PM. They were naked; each had had both left and
right hands tied to their corresponding feet with black and white shoe laces. One child,
had multiple wounds apparently made by a serrated knife, and injuries of a type often seen
as a result of forced oral sex. A second boy had multiple stab wounds and indications of
forced oral sex. The police believe that these two boys died by drowning. The third child
appeared also to have been forced into oral sex. The skin of his penis was removed and he
had been castrated. He had many cuts from a knife with a serrated blade. He had bled to death.
Christopher Byers had welts on his back from the buckle of a belt. These
were initially interpreted by the police to have resulted from ritual abuse by
Satanists. However, Christopher's step-father John Byers testified at the trial
that he had beaten his step-son with a belt at 5:30 PM on the day of the murder.
The boys' bodies had been dumped in a shallow drainage ditch which parallels Interstate 40 in West
Memphis, AR. The water washed away fingerprints and other traces left by the murderer(s).

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Since the early 1980's many police officers have attended seminars on Satanic
Ritual Abuse (SRA). They have been taught that an underground, evil, internationally
controlled network of Satanic cults kidnap, torture, kill and sometimes eat young children
in their rituals. By the mid-1990s, most police officers had concluded SRA was
either non-existent or extremely rare. If it did exist, then they would have
expected to discovered:
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Hard evidence of ritual killing during the previous 15 years of dedicated criminal
investigations. |
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Some perpetrators who would have violated cult secrecy and provided evidence to the police,
implicating fellow cult members. A conspiracy as large as SRA was alleged to be could not
be kept hidden for long. |
Even though evidence of SRA was missing, some police officers still believed in
its existence during 1993; a few still do. The West Memphis investigators
were under tremendous community pressure to quickly find the persons responsible for this
terrible crime. One of the West Memphis police at the crime scene was a juvenile
probation officer. He gave his opinion that the scene showed the results of a
Satanic ritual. He felt that only person in the area that was capable of such a
murder was Damien Echols -- a young man whose case the officer had followed for
years. We suspect that the main thrust of the police investigation from that
point onwards was to prove that Damien was the leader of a Satanic cult. If a jury could be convinced that the accused were devil worshipers, then a
conviction would be easy -- even though there was no hard evidence linking
Damien to the crime scene. A common local belief was that underground Satanic
cults were widespread throughout the U.S. and that they regularly sacrificed
infants and children.
Damien Echols quickly became the focus of the investigation. He was born on 1974-DEC-11 and was 18 years old
at the time of the killings. Damien was considered weird by many in his very conservative
community. He often dressed in black, occasionally wore T-shirts of rock bands who pretend
to be Satanists, and enjoyed listening to heavy metal rock music. He has stated that he
chose the name "Damien" out of respect for Father Damien, the founder of the
leper colony in Hawaii. However, many local people assume that he based it on the
anti-Christ character in the The Omen movies. When interviewed from prison he said:
"People assumed that I was guilty and had made up their minds beforehand, simply
based on my taste in clothes, music, etc. In a larger city, I would never have even been
noticed but I happened to be in a small, conservative, traditional town where I was looked
at as a freak.". Damien was picked up for questioning on MAY-9 and released
without charges being laid.
Jessie Misskelley (D.O.B. 1975-JUL-10; 17 years old) was brought in for questioning on
June 10. He was known to be an acquaintance of Damien's. He was given a lie-detector test
which demonstrated fairly conclusively that he was innocent. (Lie-detector tests are
generally regarded as being 85% reliable when conducted by trained investigators). He finally broke down, and
confessed to witnessing the child murders. He had been
interrogated for over 5 hours (some sources say 10 or 12 hours). No videotape or audiotape of
the police interrogation was made. No written records survive -- only a brief
recording of his confession. He named Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin
(1977-APR-11, 16 years old) as the two murderers. He said that one of the boys had tried
to escape, but that he caught the boy and brought him back to the other two. He described
the three teenagers as being Satan worshippers who attended cult meetings, sacrificed
animals and planned the sacrifice of the boys. Jessie's initial confession was incorrect
on two points: the material used to bind the boys, and the time of the killing. However he
was subsequently prompted by the police to correct the latter. In his confession, he knew (or guessed) which of the
victims had been castrated and that one had been cut on the face. That information had not
been formally released to the public. However, many details of the crime scene had been
circulating widely throughout the community as rumors. He retracted his confession
afterwards, claiming that he had caved in under police pressure. All three teenagers
pleaded not guilty at their trials.

Adults in this area of Arkansas are mainly Fundamentalist and other Evangelical
Christians. Belief in secret, evil Satanic cults who abuse children is widespread. Many
conservative Christian churches regard the Occult as a pervasive
evil. They include within the Occult many unrelated activities: Wicca (a.k.a. "white magic") and other Neo-Pagan religions, Satanism,
membership in the Masonic Order, Tarot card reading, casting Runes, Dungeons
and Dragons & other fantasy role playing games, astrology, listening to heavy
metal rock music, etc. These are considered to be linked together and part of a Satanic
conspiracy which involves human sacrifice. We estimate that the percentage of SRA
believers in Arkansas would probably be similar to that in Utah - an area which has a
similar conservative Christian makeup. A newspaper survey has shown that about 90% of the
adults in Utah believe in abusive Satanic cults. 1
In the 9 months between the murder of the three children and the trial of the three
teenagers, many articles were published in the local media with a Satanic theme. Stories
included blood drinking, Satanic worship, homosexual orgies and demons. Newspapers and
other media often did not differentiate between Wicca, other
Neo-Pagan religions, religious Satanism and imaginary evil
Satanic cults. One newspaper published parts of Jessie's confession. This by itself
probably prevented the teens from getting a fair trial.
Considerable anger was directed by members of the public at a variety of Neo-Pagan and
other minority religions during the investigation and trial of this case. The hatred
erupted into an attempted mass execution by stoning. This happened during a march which
had been organized to promote religious tolerance and freedom in nearby Jonesboro AR. One
or more local ministers had preached that in Bible times, they knew how to handle people
of other religions - they stoned them to death. Many deaths would probably have resulted,
if it were not for the prompt action of over 5 area police forces who protected the
demonstrators.

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On 1993-MAY-5, at 8:42 PM (a few hours after the boys were last seen alive), Marty King,
the manager of a Bojangles restaurant near Robin Hood Hills, phoned the police. He
reported that an African-American male, who seemed dazed and was apparently covered in blood
had been in the women's washroom for about an hour. A police officer came to the
restaurant but did not leave her vehicle. The man subsequently left. After the boys'
bodies were discovered, a detective came to the restaurant, and collected blood scrapings.
These samples were subsequently lost.
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A few months after the killing, a similar murder of a single boy took place in Missouri,
about 650 km (400 miles) away. The suspects in the Robin Hood Hills case were in jail at
the time.
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Some people consider John Mark Byers, step-father of victim
Christopher Byers to be
another possible suspect. As Damien stated: "He had the knife with his son's blood
on it, not to mention the fact that he could never keep his alibi straight. It was also
proven in court that whoever killed those children had the skill of a surgeon and Byers
was a jewel cutter. There was also testimony that his knife could have made the wounds on
the children because the blade was consistent with the cut pattern." Byers gave a
knife to the makers of the Paradise Lost film. It was found to have human blood on
it, but the police only checked the blood type. It matched both Byers and one of the
child victims. Unfortunately, the forensic check had made a DNA test
impossible. In a HBO documentary movie, a
psychologist for the defense suggested that Byers might be sufficiently deranged to be a
suspect. In 1994-JUL, Mr. Byers was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a
minor. He had allegedly instigated a knife fight between two minors. In 1994-JUL, he was
arrested for burglary. Also during that summer, neighbors filed restraining orders against
the Byers' for allegedly whipping a 5 year old neighbor boy and firing shots at a nearby
home. In 1996-MAR, Melissa Byers died mysteriously. An autopsy found drugs in her
system, but not in concentrations high enough to cause death. 2 Her
death has never been proven to be either of natural causes or a
homicide. However, one of our readers noted that during the HBO movie "Paradise Lost
2: Revelation."
Mark Byers referred to getting a DWI after his wife was "murdered."
Could this be a confession of guilt? The only person who knows for
certain that Melissa Byers was murdered would be her murderer!
Finally, after learning about the bite-mark evidence described below,
Byers lost all of his teeth. At various times, he has claimed that the
dentist removed them, that they all fell out because of medication
that he was taking, or that they were knocked out during a fist fight.
3
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On 2007-NOV-02, Alice Whitman Leeds of Public Relations in the
Public Interest wrote about the WM3 on the West Memphis Three website:
"DNA testing has been conducted on dozens of pieces
of evidence. The DNA results show no link whatsoever to Damien Echols,
Jessie Misskelley or Jason Baldwin and all of the experts agree that,
under the prosecution theory of how the crime was committed, their DNA would
be present at the crime scene if they were guilty. Instead, the DNA results
match Terry Hobbs, the step-father of one of the victims. Our new filing
also includes strong evidence from Pam Hobbs (the ex-wife of Terry Hobbs and
the mother of one of the victims) implicating her former husband in the
murders." 4
Actually, Leed's statement is not entirely accurate. The DNA results did not conclusively match that of Terry Hobbs. The sample was a match to about 1.5% of the population. Terry Hobbs is one of that 1.5%.
New evidence indicates that the boys were
not stabbed with a knife. Their injuries were caused by animals.
More details
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- Deseret News Archives, 1992-JAN-1, P. A1-A2.
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Mara Leveritt, "The Strange Demise of Melissa Byers," Arkansas Times,
1997-DEC-26. Available at: http://www.arktimes.com/12-26-97_news03.htm
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Tom Vannah, "Between the lines: Pure evil," 2000-MAR-23,
Valley Advocate, Hartford MA, at: http://www.newmassmedia.com
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Alice Whitman Leeds, "Free the West Memphis Three," at:
http://www.wm3.org/splash.php

Copyright © 1997 to 2017 by Ontario Consultants on
Religious Tolerance
Last updated: 2017-FEB-23
Author: B.A. Robinson

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