New DNA evidence introduced in West Memphis Three case

COMMERCIAL APPEAL
By Marc Perrusquia
Originally published 04:20 p.m., October 29, 2007
Updated 04:20 p.m., October 29, 2007

New DNA evidence filed today offers fresh hope to three men who claim they were falsely convicted in the horrific 1993 West Memphis child murders and points a finger at a stepfather who sat through two sensational trials in a front row as a grieving parent.

Pam Hobbs tells members of the media that she has no comment outside the offices of Inquisitor Inc. Monday afternoon. Hobbs and family members of three boys murdered in West Memphis in 1993 met to go over new evidence in the case.

Mark Byers heads into the offices of Inquisitor Inc. Monday. Byers and family members of three boys murdered in West Memphis in 1993 met to go over new evidence in the case.
        
Forensic scientists retained in a new defense bid to overturn the convictions also contend that state pathologists and prosecutors made grave errors in analyzing wounds on the bodies of three 8-year-old boys found nude and hogtied in a watery ditch.

The bodies bore hundreds of wounds including a reported castration — evidence of a ritualistic, satanic slaying, prosecutors suggested at trial.

Prosecutors’ assertions of a satanic motive was key to the convictions of then-teenagers Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin, all widely rumored to have been involved in cult activities. The three, all now in their 30s, are in prison; Echols is on Death Row.

However, forensic reports offered by the defense attribute nearly all those injuries to predators — possibly dogs or raccoons — who fed on the bodies after death.

West Memphis Asst. Police Chief Mike Allen said this afternoon that he hasn’t received full details of the DNA testing, yet said he stands by the convictions.

“I personally think they do have the three right individuals in jail,’’ said Allen, who investigated the murders as a detective in 1993.

He said defense lawyers are trying to make a suspect out of Terry Hobbs, a stepfather of one of the victims, just as they had once pointed fingers at another parent, John Mark Byers.

“It’s just like Mark Byers, for 14 years they tried to make him a suspect,’’ Allen said, dismissing new defense claims that two hairs now link Hobbs to the crime scene.

DNA testing by the defense determined that Hobbs was among less than one percent of the population who couldn’t be excluded as the donor of a hair fragment found on one of the bodies and that a second hair found nearby likely came from one of Hobbs’ friends.

News of the first hair broke this summer, and Hobbs told reporters then that his hair could have landed on any of the boys through normal contact with them while they were alive.

However, news of the second hair — reportedly from a friend who was playing guitar with Hobbs in the hours before the boys disappeared — adds intrigue.

“It’s questionable that even that the (first) hair they found was that of Hobbs,’’ Allen said, but when asked of the second hair he said, “I don’t know if it would be explainable or not.’’

Hobbs couldn’t be reached today. A cell phone he carried earlier this year has been disconnected.

The new defense evidence is incorporated in a writ of habeas corpus filed today in federal court in Little Rock seeking the release of the defendants, known as the West Memphis Three by a growing network of supporters including some well-known and wealthy Hollywood actors and pop musicians.

The filing seeks federal intervention in the case. Lawyers want the federal court to overturn the convictions of all three.

The three, all indigent and represented by court-appointed counsel at trial, now have a defense with deep pockets and resources to attract big names in the forensic pathology and to conduct expensive DNA testing.

Scientific testing in the case was authorized in a 2003 court order and has taken years to complete. Its completion adds a dimension of anticipation to a case that has long puzzled and mesmerized the Mid-South.

From the moment the bodies of West Memphis second-graders Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch were pulled from a rainy-weather creek in a patch of woods along Interstate-40 on May 6, 1993, the case has stirred great fear and unending legal twists. Now there’s yet another.

A key finding of the DNA testing that Echols’s defense team conducted in DNA laboratories in Virginia and California involves two hairs found at the crime scene. Echols’ lawyers say the hairs link Hobbs — Steve Branch’s stepfather — to the crime scene.

A hair fragment attributed to Hobbs was found by police in 1993 in a shoelace use to tie the hands and feet of victim Michael Moore, defense lawyers wrote in the writ. The second hair found nearby on a tree root appears to have come from a friend, David Jacoby, the writ says.

Defense lawyers wrote in the 193-page writ that they can’t say for certain that Hobbs was involved in the murders, yet they note that the two hairs didn’t come from the victims or the defendants.

“That is an exculpatory fact of great importance,’’ defense attorneys wrote.

In a case light on physicial evidence, the hairs loom large. The convictions were built around a confession by Misskelley, a troubled youth with a low IQ, who told police how he watched as Echols and Baldwin sexually assualted and beat the boys.

“Certainly had the victims been forcibly sodomized by Echols and Baldwin, as claimed by Jessie Misskelley, it is inconceivable that those assaults could have been accomplished without leaving any genetic material.’’

The writ also tells how a team of leading forensic scientists retained by the defense believe that state investigators grossly misinterpreted wounds on the victims.

The defense forensic team, including Dr. Michael Baden, the celebrated former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, concluded that hundreds of wounds of the victims came from predators who fed on the bodies after they were dumped in the creek.

Those findings are key on several fronts. Students of the case have long marveled at the absence of blood at the crime scene. Yet defense experts now say the answer is simple: The victims were dead when most of the injuries were incurred and dead bodies of the deceased don’t bleed.

A state pathologist had testified at trial that victim Christopher Byers was castrated — something Misskelley said he witnessed in his confession. That, too, was puzzling because the state pathologist, Dr. Frank J. Peretti, said such an unusual and jagged removal would have taken him hours to perfrom under pristine conditions in a lab.

Yet defense experts say there was no castration. Rather, they concluded, the boys’ penis and testicles were removed by a predator that pulled the organs off in a manner similar industrial accidents known as “degloving.’’