Tag: West Memphis 3

AG spokesman: Review in West Memphis appeal will take time:

The Arkansas State Attorney General’s Office said that it would take some time for the DNA “evidence” that has been presented in regards to the West Memphis 3 case to be processed.

In a statement, a spokesman for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said state officials are seeing the evidence put forward by lawyers representing Damien Echols for the first time.

“As litigation goes, this process will likely take months and possibly years,” spokesman Gabe Holmstrom said. “Indeed, counsel for Echols has taken years to develop these claims so it will take the state a fair amount of time to properly respond.”

And for those of you that keep calling the trial a witch hunt…

The state Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Baldwin and Echols’ convictions in 1996, citing what it called substantial evidence of guilt.

In 2002, the state Supreme Court authorized further DNA testing in the case. In 2005, the high court rejected an effort by Echols to reopen the case so he could argue that his trial lawyers mishandled his defense.

The State Supreme Court isn’t a bunch of country bumpkins that got their law degrees from a box of Moon Pies. But since most of y’all have a prejudice against the south you think they are. Little Rock is a far cry from West Memphis.

But hey, keep drinking the Kool-Aid if it makes you feel better. Just know that you’re giving a convicted killer exactly what he wants.

West Memphis Three: Defense Attorney Says New Evidence Clears His Client:

A press release was issued yesterday by the public relations firm that represents the defense team for convicted killer Damien Echols, he of the infamous West Memphis 3. Click the link if you want to read the entire release otherwise it basically just talks about the DNA evidence that was originally made public back in July.

Apparently, the lawyers got around to filing the papers about the DNA and felt that it was so important they needed a PR firm to issue a press release about it. What’s next? The next time Echols drops a deuce are they going to issue a press release about it? It just screams of attention whoring. Hey remember us, we have this DNA stuff that we think will set a killer free. Please look at us. Then again the WM3’s best weapon has been the media and they wield it well. I mean look at how many sheep they’ve collected in the past 15 years.

Like I discussed before they’re now claiming that the DNA evidence points to Terry Hobbs the step-father of one of the victims. However, the WM3 supporters pointed the finger so long at Mark Byers it’s almost like they can’t be taken seriously.

As I’ve also discussed before the press release states that Hobbs’ ex-wife and mother of one of the victims think that Hobbs is capable of the murders. Like she wouldn’t have a reason to lie.

Basically, the WM3 team is grasping at straws while trying to make themselves look like they just found Jimmy Hoffa. As far as I’m concerned the highly lauded DNA evidence neither proves nor disproves anything.

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I’m writing this part up a couple of hours after I wrote the above part. I just went to two different threads on two different websites about the WM3. One was a respected blog that had a handful of commenters and the other was a huge site devoted to news links. In both threads, WM3 supporters are still hanging on to Mark Byers just because he looked guilty in the documentaries. If you’re going to support a cause do some research people. At least pay attention to the latest news.

West Memphis 3: Mom speaks out on new evidence found at crime scene:

Pam Hobbs, the mother of West Memphis 3 victim Stevie Branch and ex-husband to Terry Hobbs, is saying that it is possible that Terry Hobbs could have committed the murders of the three boys.

“I would say there is a possibility that he could be capable. I hate to say it because I’m going on my thoughts and feelings,” she added.

Pam Hobbs said she remembers discovering 14 knives owned by her then husband Terry Hobbs.

“A bunch of knives, a few of them I was aware of but there was quite a few I wasn’t aware of. And Stevie’s knife being in that collection, that really put up a warning sign. What are you doing with Stevie’s knife, it would have been with him,” Pam Hobbs explained.

Hobbs said Steve’s grandfather gave him the knife. She also said she turned them over to police when she found them.

Pam Hobbs turned those knives over to defense attorneys in 2002 when she was separating from Terry Hobbs. Terry Hobbs claims that he is innocent and that Pam Hobbs is doing this out of spite.

Terry Hobbs dismissed the knives as having had “nothing to do with anything.”

“I’d bought some, and found some and Pam bought me some. I just threw them in a drawer, and that’s where they’d been for years.” He added, “Them knives were stolen out of my home and I’m fixing to try to get them back.”

Asked whether one of the knives was a pocket knife given to Stevie by his grandfather, Terry Hobbs responded: “I don’t know. It could have been. And it could have been it was in the drawer because we didn’t want him to have it. I didn’t want a kid of mine to go around with a pocket knife — not a kid who was 8 years old. Would you?”

Terry Hobbs said, “I raised Stevie from the time he was a year and a half, until he was 8. I tried to be a good daddy.”

As for his ex-wife, he said, “Pam’s got some problems. This thing has taken a toll on her. It’s really hurt her.

“I don’t think she really supports the idea they [the convicted men] are innocent. I think she’s doing it out of anger. As a matter of fact, I know it’s out of anger. It’s being angry at the world and not knowing how to deal with her anger.

“It’s kind of sad. And I’m really sorry that people think she supports that theory.”

Terry Hobbs has said previously that the hair sample that was recovered from the scene could have come from anywhere since all three boys were friends and frequently visited the Hobbs’ household.

I wonder if the WM3 zealots will now focus their vitriol at Terry Hobbs instead of Mark Byers now.

Court documents reveal new details in the cast of the “West Memphis 3”:

Details are being reported about the much heralded DNA evidence that is supposed to exonerate the West Memphis 3 according to their misguided followers…

New DNA testing by the defense shows that none of the genetic material recovered links Echols, Baldwin, or Misskelley to the crime scene. Instead the defense claims the tests found DNA from Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the murdered boys.

Branch (I’m pretty sure that’s a typo and they meant Hobbs) told Action News 5 he didn’t do it. “I’d have to laugh at that and say there’s something wrong with someone who would think that,” he said.

Hobbs claims a private investigator from the defense team told him one of his hairs was discovered in a knot in one of the shoe laces used to tie up the three eight-year-olds.

“If Michael Moore or Christopher Byers had a piece of my hair on shoes strings, these little boys came to my home and played with our little boy pretty regularly,” Hobbs said.

The DNA results also reveal, according to court documents, that most of the DNA at the crime scene came from the victims, but some of it cannot be connected to the victims or the defendants.

So the DNA evidence I’ve been hearing so much about in the past few months is nothing more than a hair that belonged to the stepfather of one of the murdered boys. Like he said the boys were at his house all the time. I hardly think this exonerates Echols and his lackeys.

To those of you who have been blinded by biased documentaries, half-assed celebrities, and the rest of the hype this does not mean that Echols and Co. were not at the crime scene.

And Terry Hobbs is not the step-father featured in the documentaries. The toothless bastard you’re thinking of is Mark Byers.

To me, Damien Echols is the second coming of Charles Manson. Except Echols succeeded in one area where Manson failed. Echols has a legion of cult-like supporters who blindly follow his every word like it was delivered from God himself as the truth just because you saw some documentary or heard Henry Rollins talk about it. The supporters are nothing more than cultists. They just don’t realize it.

My name is Trench Reynolds and I used to be a West Memphis 3 supporter.

For those of you not familiar with the West Memphis 3 I’ll give you a little recap.

In 1993 Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were convicted in the ritualistic murders of eight-year-olds Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore. The murders went beyond brutality. From Wikipedia…

Three eight-year-old boys — Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore — were reported missing on May 5, 1993 by Christopher Byers’ adoptive father, Mark Byers. An intensive police search for the children was undertaken the morning after they were reported missing. Later that day, their bodies were found shoved down in a muddy creek near Robin Hood Hills. The boys were stripped naked and had been hog-tied with their own shoelaces. All of the boys had been severely beaten and abused, Byers was considered to be the most injured, having suffered a fractured skull, stab wounds to his groin, and castration, yet all three boys were inflicted with lethal wounds.

were inconclusive as to time of death, but stated that, while Byers died of blood loss, the other two boys showed evidence of drowning. During the subsequent trial of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin the medical examiner stated that the estimated time of death was early morning the day the bodies were found. The forensic evidence showed uncertainty whether the boys had been sodomized, although expert testimony confirmed injury to their anal area.

Fast forward to 2001 when I first saw the film Paradise Lost. It’s a 1996 documentary that portrays the suspects as being wrongly accused because they were different from the rest of the West Memphis community. They were metalheads with long hair and didn’t practice Christianity. It also points out the flaws in the prosecution’s case making a compelling argument that the WM3 are innocent. At the time I did not consider myself a crime blogger. Back then I was more like a champion for the underdog and I understood what it was like to be an outsider because you dressed differently and didn’t follow the norm. So I bought into the propaganda and the movie’s message.

As the years go by I gain more insight into the mind of teen killers as I write about school shootings. With each one that happens, I see more and more the telltale signs that led up to each shooting. The predispositions between school shooters and the West Memphis 3, especially Damien Echols, were uncanny yet I couldn’t put two and two together. I still believed they were innocent. Then a blogging friend of mine pointed me in the direction of some documents that were worth looking at.

The first one was witness statement from one of Echols’ former friends that told the story about how Damien Echols’ killed a dog…

On 10-27-92 I was at Lakeshore Trailer Park with Damien Echols when he killed a Black Great Dane. The dog was already sick and he hit the dog in the back of the head. He pulled the intestines out of the dog and started stomping the dog until blood came out of his mouth. He was going to come back later with battery acid so that he could burn the hair and skin off of the dog’s head. He had two cat skulls, a dog skull and a rat skull that I already knew about. He kept these skulls in his bedroom at Jack Echols house in Lakeshore. He was trying to make the eyeballs of the dog he killed pop out when he was stomping. Damien had a camoflouge survival knife to cut the guts out of the dog with. This statement was written by Det. Ridge at my request.

It’s been said that animal killings are a precursor to serial killings.

Another was testimony from Echols’ himself about how he would have done it if he was the killer. I’ve lost that document to the ages but part of it can be found here.

During the trial Damien took to sparring with the prosecution and stated his opinion of what he thought the alleged killer might or might not have done. He said the killer would enjoy hearing the victims scream and would have thought the murders were funny.

After seeing those I felt that they were guilty however I felt that they did deserve a new trial. I based that on the fact that one of the prosecution’s witnesses who was portrayed as an “occult expert” received his degree from a correspondence school that was no longer accredited.

That was until yesterday when I read this article from an Ohio newspaper about the witness, Dale Griffis. Yes, he did receive a degree from a correspondence school that is now defunct. However, what the documentary fails to tell you is that Griffis is a well-studied former police officer who specialized in ritual killings. He is also the author of several cult related books. He also has some more information about Damien Echols’…

“When he got done testifying, what you didn’t see on television, what you didn’t see in the movie ‘Paradise Lost,’ was the fact that Damien Echols said, ‘I got three, I had 10 more to go for my coven, but that damn cop from Ohio stopped me,’” he says. “What bothers me is people aren’t told the truth of what happened.”

Dale Griffis is not just some guy off the street who considers himself a cult expert, he’s got the background to prove it.

So now I think that the West Memphis 3 are unequivocally guilty and justice has been served. No new trial is necessary. I should have been tipped off when I saw what a cause celebre that the West Memphis 3 are. Celebrity causes when it comes to crime are usually misguided.