15 posts tagged “dna”

Joint Status and Case Management Memorandum submitted by lawyers for all three and Brent Davis (to Judge Burnett) last week -- click here

Arkansas Democrat Gazette
By Cathy Frye

The pieces appeared to be falling into place.

The DNA testing.

The discovery of previously unknown details about the night of May 5, 1993.

A potential new suspect.

So on Oct. 29, 2007, defense attorneys felt confident filing new federal court documents contending that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley had been wrongly convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys.

The attorneys revealed the results of ongoing DNA testing, turning their spotlight on Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the West Memphis boys.

Two days later, a panel of forensics experts and a former FBI agent again pointed at Hobbs, saying he should have been questioned by police at the time of the slayings.

Hobbs, 49, is angry, saying that in the past year, defense investigators have ruined his reputation and caused him to have a nervous breakdown.

“I want people to know I haven’t done nothing wrong,” he said in a Friday night interview at a Memphis barbecue restaurant. “I want them to hear it from me.” The defense contends that DNA results are irrefutable and that an evolving timeline of that night shows Hobbs had motive and opportunity.

Former FBI profiler John Douglas, who has investigated Hobbs for the defense over the past year, says his subject has a dark side. He says two separate interviews revealed very different versions of Terry Hobbs.

“You’re talking to a saint — the all-American father, a great husband. And then there’s the rest of the story. We are talking about two different people.” It’s been nearly 15 years since the nude, hogtied bodies of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Chris Byers were discovered in a drainage ditch that runs through West Memphis’ Robin Hood Hills area, where the children often played.

All three of the boys had suffered numerous abrasions and puncture wounds. Most disturbing, however, were Chris Byers’ injuries. There were cuts on his inner thighs and a portion of his genitalia had been mutilated and removed.

A month later, police arrested three locals: Echols, 18; Baldwin, 16; and Misskelley, 17. In two trials that focused heavily on allegations of Satanism, all three were convicted. Echols was sentenced to death, while Misskelley and Baldwin received life sentences.

Spurred by HBO documentaries on the case, skeptics from across the nation formed a grassroots movement that eventually came to be known as Free the West Memphis 3. Money collected by supporters eventually secured a high-profile team of attorneys and forensics experts, who, in recent months have revitalized interest and publicity in the case.

The crux of the defense rests on DNA testing that wasn’t available in 1993.

In the court documents filed Oct. 29, 2007, defense attorneys said testing thus far hasn’t linked any of the three men to the crime scene. And six forensics experts contend that animals — not satanic rituals — caused the boys’ wounds. These injuries, they added, occurred after death.

Lawyers for Echols plan to take their new appeal to a state judge this month. The decision comes after U. S. District Judge William Wilson Jr. asked Echols to present parts of his appeal to state courts before turning to federal courts. Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said last month that he’s frustrated by “a misleading press campaign” suggesting that there is new DNA evidence exonerating the three men. And he stood by a state medical examiner’s conclusion that Chris’ scrotum was cut off by a knife.

A YEAR OF SCRUTINY Defense investigators arrived on Hobbs’ doorstep in late February 2007. Hobbs was leery but invited them inside. “It was raining,” he explained. The investigators, both from a private Memphis firm, had two questions: Can you account for your whereabouts on May 5, 1993 ?

Why didn’t the West Memphis Police Department ever question you about the boys’ murders ?

Before leaving, unbeknownst to Hobbs, the pair took cigarette butts from an ashtray in his living room and the front yard.

“They used to call that stealing,” Hobbs said, thumping the table for emphasis.

Over the next few months, investigators talked to Hobbs ’ neighbors and family. They also were in frequent contact with Hobbs’ ex-wife, Pam, who has long accused Hobbs — to his face and in the media — of killing Stevie, he said. “She hurt so bad, she would lash out. She didn’t think I was hurting and wanted me to feel her pain.” During such arguments, he said, Pam would yell — “You killed my son !” Meanwhile, investigators continued to dig, tracking down a video from a neighborhood bar he used to visit with his ex-wife. The tape shows the couple involved in a lengthy fight, Hobbs said.

On March 7, Hobbs suffered an emotional breakdown, he said. He staked a sign in his front yard, putting the contents of his rental house up for sale. “I walked away. I put myself out on the street.” He spent the next few months living in a yellow Ford pickup with his teenage daughter.

He can’t explain why the investigators’ visit prompted this reaction. “These are things men don’t like to talk about,” Hobbs said.

He also blames frequent media attention over the past 15 years. “None of us families have had a chance to go through the healing process,” he said. “But I never let this thing take a toll on me until last year.” Maybe it was because he was writing a book about the case, Hobbs said, adding, “You relive it.” Meanwhile, the defense’s investigation intensified, especially after forensics experts said a hair found in Michael’s ligatures matched mitochondrial DNA on the cigarette butts taken from Hobbs’ home.

In May, Hobbs met again with the defense investigators at their request. He stayed awhile but didn’t cooperate, he said. Around this time, he began attending church and got a job in sales at a lumber company.

In June, he was summoned to the West Memphis Police Department for questioning. His ex-wife had been talking to officers about some pocketknives he once owned, Hobbs said, adding, “It wasn’t nothing.” On Oct. 9, Hobbs began attending support group meetings to deal with his stepson’s death, he said.

A few weeks later, in the Oct. 29 filing, defense attorneys said further DNA evidence linked Hobbs to the crime scene. A second hair, found on a tree stump, belonged to a man Hobbs had visited the evening the boys disappeared, they said, adding that they didn’t believe the man had been at the crime scene.

A few days later, Hobbs received a note from the support group he had just joined. It asked that he not return until “all the uncertainties are cleared up.” Members of a second group have remained supportive, he said, as has the congregation of his current church and his coworkers.

THE DEFENSE’S THEORY Twice during the late summer, Hobbs met with former FBI profiler Douglas, once at a mall and again at the downtown Holiday Inn. The first interview was pleasant, he said. Douglas agreed, saying Hobbs presented himself well, making the retired agent wonder if he was investigating the wrong man. “After about two hours, I told the person I’m with — ‘Jesus, I don’t know about this guy. ’” Over the next few days, however, Douglas interviewed others. By the time he was done, he knew Hobbs had lied repeatedly to him in the previous interview, Douglas said.

Douglas contends that: Hobbs beat his first wife and his second wife, Pam; he was abused by his own parents; he abused Stevie and his younger daughter.

The second interview didn’t go so well. “He was rattled when we confronted him,” Douglas said.

Douglas said he believes the killings occurred after Hobbs set out to taunt and punish Stevie and his friends. The killings happened, he said, when Hobbs realized things had gone beyond “teaching a lesson.” The defense questions why Hobbs reportedly ventured near the crime scene during a search for the boys but then turned back, saying he had a creepy feeling.

“I know you’ve all heard the lowdown about me,” Hobbs says in response during the interview at the Memphis restaurant. “But it ain’t all lowdown.” He’s always been a good husband, he said, and while he and Pam once got into an altercation during which he slapped her and shot her brother, the abuse she suffered for many years was inflicted by others. That 1994 shooting, he said, happened in self-defense after the man jumped him. “Yeah, I shot the dude. He was a big guy.” The brother survived the shooting.

Hobbs scoffed at investigators’ assertions that he was abused by his own parents, alternately describing his dad as a man with a redhead’s temper and as an upstanding Pentecostal minister.

He was reluctant to discuss the subject further, however, saying again that it’s a “man thing.” “They’ve gone around to my family and have put together things they said. I’ve heard some things I didn’t know or care about. I had a good dad and mom.” Asked about allegations that he disliked or abused Stevie, Hobbs said, “He called me Dad. We had a blast. We didn’t have a hostile relationship.” On the night the boys disappeared, Hobbs said, he did go down the path that led to the crime scene.

“I couldn’t breathe. I froze. The hair started standing up.” He described the odor of blood, saying he knows the scent because of the time he worked with his dad, a butcher, but said he didn’t smell it on the path. “I had to get out of there. Something just wasn’t right. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t remember if I told police.” He’s glad he wasn’t the one to discover the bodies, Hobbs said, adding, “They were buried underwater.” He finds it a strange twist to watch Chris Byers’ stepdad, Mark Byers, go from being an implied suspect in two HBO documentaries to one of Hobbs’ accusers. “They were bashing him, and I kept saying, ‘ He didn’t do this. ’” He thinks Byers and his exwife have turned on him because of attention and the promise of money.

“It shames you, something like this. That’s the biggest thing I’ve had to deal with — shame.”

Video link to John Mark Byers speaking declaring his new belief that Damien, Jason and Jessie are innocent. He does nothing halfway. Watch video here.

Attorneys seek to overturn the convictions of three young men who were found guilty of brutally killing three Cub Scouts in 1993.

By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 30, 2007

Attorneys for a death row inmate found guilty of killing three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas in 1993 filed a motion in federal court to overturn his conviction based on new evidence, including DNA test results that found no genetic material on the victims' bodies from his client or two others convicted with him.

The sensational case in West Memphis concerned three Cub Scouts whose bodies were found submerged in a drainage ditch not far from their homes; one boy's body appeared to have been sexually mutilated. Two of the defendants frequently dressed in black and were described as "Goths." Accusations of satanic rituals were presented in court testimony.

In June 1993, three teenagers -- Damien Wayne Echols, 18 at the time of the killings, Charles "Jason" Baldwin, 16, and Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr., 17 -- were arrested and charged with murder. They were convicted a year later. Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole and Misskelley, who told prosecutors he saw Echols and Baldwin beat and assault the boys, got life with parole.

But skeptics have long doubted the guilt of the three young men. The case also has drawn the attention of documentary filmmakers and others.

Eddie Vedder, lead singer of the rock group Pearl Jam, performed at a benefit concert that helped fund the DNA tests and appellate work. Lorri Davis, a New York landscape architect who saw a film about the case in 1996 and became so interested that she moved to Little Rock, Ark., married Echols and took a key role in organizing post-trial investigations and appeals.

On Monday in Little Rock federal court, Echols' appellate attorney filed a habeas corpus petition, along with dozens of exhibits and affidavits, alleging that his client, along with the other two young men, had been wrongly convicted.

The brief states that DNA tests of items recovered at the crime scene show that no genetic material of three defendants was present on the victims' bodies.

"That is an exculpatory fact of great importance," according to the brief submitted by five attorneys led by Dennis P. Riordan and Donald M. Horgan of San Francisco. That, they said, undercut the confession of Misskelley, who said that he saw Echols and Baldwin beat and sexually attack Christopher Byers, Steve Branch and James Michael Moore.

In addition, an unidentified person's genetic material was found on the penis of one victim.

Tests also revealed that a hair containing DNA consistent with that of Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the boys, was found on black-and-white shoelaces used to hog-tie another of the victims. Another hair found on a tree root at the crime scene contained the DNA of David Jacoby, who, according to court documents, was with his friend Hobbs in the hours before and after the victims disappeared.

The brief acknowledges that this evidence "does not establish guilt of Hobbs or Jacoby." Hobbs has said the hair on the shoelaces must have been innocently transferred from himself to one of the victims, who "played with our little boy regularly."

The new petition includes analyses done by seven forensic scientists, including Dr. Richard Souviron, chief forensic odontologist at the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department, who played a significant role in Florida's successful 1979 prosecution of serial killer Ted Bundy. All of them challenge prosecutors' claims that Christopher had been sexually mutilated with a knife.

The forensic pathologists and odontologists, who separately reviewed autopsy tests, photos and trial testimony, state that the evidence strongly indicates that after Christopher was killed by blunt-force blows, animals ate parts of his body.

The brief also states that some of the key testimony asserting that the teenagers were part of a satanic cult -- something they have denied -- was presented by a so-called witchcraft expert with "a fraudulent PhD" from a California school that was put out of business by state authorities.

Echols' attorneys maintain that members of the jury that convicted and sentenced him to death in Jonesboro, Ark., in 1994 made misleading statements about what they knew about the case when questioned during voir dire, and considered Misskelley's confession during their deliberations -- something that the trial judge specifically told them not to do.

Misskelley was tried first. His attorneys maintained that he was borderline mentally retarded, and that he had only made a statement to prosecutors in the hope of being rewarded.

He was convicted, but it was established in court that he had changed key aspects of his story more than once. He initially told police that he saw the crimes occur at a time at which it was established that the three victims and Baldwin were in school, Echols was at the doctor's and Misskelley was at work on a roofing job.

During voir dire for the separate trial of Echols and Baldwin, the judge learned that virtually all of the jurors had heard a lot about the case from newspaper and television accounts.

The judge specifically told the jury not to consider anything they might have heard about Misskelley's statement to the police. But in recent interviews, three jurors -- including the foreman -- said the statement was a factor they considered. "How could you not?" the foreman said, according to court documents. "It was a primary and deciding factor."

The jury's consideration of the statement alone violated Echols' right to a fair trial, according to his attorneys.

Chief prosecutor Brent Davis did not respond to a call and an e-mail seeking comment.

On Monday, Davis said she was hopeful that her husband and the other defendants would eventually be freed. "After all this time, you have a case that was built on a lot of hysteria and satanic panic. . . . The truth is finally seeing the light of day."

New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: October 30, 2007

ATLANTA, Oct. 29 — In 1994, three teenagers in the small city of West Memphis, Ark., were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in what prosecutors portrayed as a satanic sacrifice involving sexual abuse and genital mutilation. So shocking were the crimes that when the teenagers were led from the courthouse after their arrest, they were met by 200 local residents yelling, “Burn in hell.”

Damien W. Echols is challenging his conviction in the killing of three young Arkansas boys.

But according to long-awaited new evidence filed by the defense in federal court on Monday, there was no DNA from the three defendants found at the scene, the mutilation was actually the work of animals and at least one person other than the defendants may have been present at the crime scene.

Supporters of the defendants hope the legal filing will provide the defense with a breakthrough. Two of the men, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, are serving life in prison, while one, Damien W. Echols, is on death row. There was no physical evidence linking the teenagers, now known as the West Memphis 3, to the crime.

“This is the first time that the evidence has ever really been tested,” said Gerald Skahan, a member of the defense team. “The first trial was pretty much a witch hunt.”

Brent Davis, the local prosecutor, did not respond to requests for comment about the new evidence and the case, but in general prosecutors and investigators have continued to express confidence in their investigation.

The story the defendants’ supporters have presented — of three misfits whose fondness for heavy-metal music made them police targets — has won the men the support of celebrities like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Marilyn Manson and the creators of “South Park.” Many learned of the case through an HBO documentary, “Paradise Lost,” and a sequel.

The prosecution hinged on a confession riddled with factual errors and a Satanic cult expert with a mail-order degree. Mr. Echols’s own lawyer called him “weird” and “not the all-American boy.”

Many viewers who watched the sequel, in fact, concluded that the police should have been investigating John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the children, who made seemingly drug-addled, messianic speeches on camera, gave the filmmakers a blood-stained knife, and had a history of violence and run-ins with the police. His child, Christopher Byers, was the most badly mutilated of the three.

But there was a surprise in the new forensic report filed by Mr. Echols’s lawyers: a hair found in one of the knots binding the children belonged most likely to the stepfather of another of the victims, not to Mr. Byers.

The three victims — Christopher, Steve Branch and James Michael Moore — were last seen riding their bikes on May 5, 1993. They were found the next day in a drainage ditch in Robin Hood Hills, near West Memphis, a low-rent town across the Mississippi River from Memphis. The boys were naked and hogtied with shoelaces.

The police quickly zeroed in on Mr. Echols, then 18, who was familiar to them because he was on probation for trying to run away with his girlfriend. They also believed he was involved in cult activities.

But they could find little evidence against him until Mr. Misskelley, mildly retarded and with a history of substance abuse, came in to speak with them. At the time there was a $30,000 reward.

After hours of questioning, Mr. Misskelley, 17, gave the police a taped statement that implicated himself, Mr. Baldwin, then 16, and Mr. Echols, then 19. Despite coaching by the investigators, Mr. Misskelley was incorrect in several significant details, including the time of the crime, the way the victims were tied and the manner of death. He said the children had been sodomized, an assertion that even the state medical examiner’s testimony appears to refute.

The team of forensic experts assembled by Mr. Echols’s lawyers, which included Dr. Michael Baden, the former medical examiner of New York City, also said there was no evidence of sexual abuse. Many of the wounds sustained by the victims were caused by animals, they said, including the castration of Christopher.

As for the stray hair, the West Memphis Police Department and the stepfather it appears to belong to, Terry Hobbs, have discounted the finding, saying it could easily have been picked up at home by his stepson, Steve Branch. But Dennis P. Riordan, a lawyer for Mr. Echols, said the hair was found in the shoelaces tying Michael Moore, not Steve Branch.

Further, Mr. Riordan said, a hair was found at the scene that most likely belongs to a friend of Mr. Hobbs who was with him for part of the evening.

The court filing also argues that jurors relied on the statement Mr. Misskelley gave the police to convict Mr. Echols and Mr. Baldwin, even though it was deemed inadmissible except in Mr. Misskelley’s trial. Several jurors have acknowledged that they knew about the confession before the trial, though they did not say so during jury selection.

The passing of time has not only allowed the defense to gather new information, but has also softened the public’s belief in the guilt of the convicted men, said Mara Leveritt, the author of “Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three.”

“What I’ve seen in the past 14 years has been not quite a 180-degree, but maybe a 170-degree turn,” Ms. Leveritt said. “It all comes down to, ‘Where’s the evidence?’”

Eyewitness News Everywhere received the following news release on Monday, October 29, 2007, from a public relations firm respresenting Damien Echols' legal team.

(LITTLE ROCK, AR; October 29, 2007) – Advanced DNA testing and other strong scientific evidence – combined with additional evidence from several different witnesses and experts – proves that Damien Echols was wrongfully convicted of murdering three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993, according to legal papers filed today in federal court.

The 200 page motion filed today by attorneys for Echols, who has been on death row in Arkansas for more than a decade, says that new evidence proves Echols’ innocence – and implicates Terry Hobbs, the step-father of one of the victims.

The evidence includes DNA testing on dozens of pieces of evidence; under the prosecution theory for how the crime was committed, it would be nearly impossible for at least one perpetrator’s DNA not to match crime scene evidence. No biological evidence from the crime scene matches Echols or the other two men convicted of the crime, according to the DNA test results included in today’s filing. DNA testing on multiple pieces of evidence does, however, link Terry Hobbs to the crime scene – and other evidence has emerged implicating him in the crimes.

“In recent months, we have uncovered powerful scientific evidence that Damien Echols is, in fact, innocent. The motion we filed today with the federal court that is empowered to overturn this conviction lays out overwhelming and irrefutable scientific evidence that Damien Echols is innocent,” said Dennis Riordan, Echols’ lead attorney. “By itself, any single piece of evidence we present in this filing could overturn Damien Echols’ conviction – and, combined, all of this evidence makes clear that this was a grave miscarriage of justice that must be corrected.”

The evidence in today’s filing includes:

DNA test results that fail to link Echols or the other defendants to the crime scene; in light of the prosecution claim that Echols sodomized the victims, the lack of his DNA at the crime scene is exculpatory itself.

DNA test results showing that a hair found in the ligature of one of the victims matches Terry Hobbs, the step-father of another one of the victims.

DNA test results showing foreign DNA – from someone other than Echols or the two other men who were convicted – on the penises of two of the victims.

DNA test results matching a hair at the crime scene to a man who was with Terry Hobbs on the day of the crimes. This places Hobbs at the scene of the crime, since it refutes any theory that the Hobbs hair (found in the ligature of one of the victims) was there before the crime.

Scientific analysis from some of the nation’s leading forensics experts, stating that wounds on the victims’ bodies were caused by animals at the crime scene – not by knives used by the perpetrators, as the prosecution claimed. These wounds were the centerpiece of the prosecution’s case, and evidence was presented that a knife recovered from a lake near one defendant’s home caused the wounds. The conclusive expert analysis showing that animals caused the wounds after the victims died also completely undercuts the testimony of a jailhouse informant (who testified about Echols using a knife to cause the wounds) and a discredited “expert” who testified that the knife wounds were part of a Satanic ritual.

Sworn affidavits outlining new evidence uncovered by Pam Hobbs (the ex-wife of Terry Hobbs) who found a knife in Terry Hobbs’ drawer that her son (one of the victims) had carried with him at all times. After her son was killed, the knife was not among his personal effects that police gave to the Hobbs families, and Pam Hobbs always assumed that her son’s murderer had taken it during the crime.

New information implicating Terry Hobbs – including his own statements to police in recent interviews where he acknowledged that several of his relatives suspect him in the crime. The filing also includes a chronology of Hobbs’ activities on the night of the crimes, when he washed his clothes for no reason other than to hide evidence from the crimes.

A sworn affidavit that refutes hearsay evidence from Echols’ trial. The mother of one of two girls who testified that they overheard Echols admit to the crime at a softball game now says that Echols’ statement was not serious and that neither she nor her daughter believes he committed the crime.

Today’s filing amends an earlier filing in the case, which outlined prosecutorial misconduct and juror misconduct in Echols’ trial.

The motion filed today in federal court says that the advanced DNA testing linking Hobbs to the crime scene was not available at the time of Echols’ trial. The filing notes that Echols was 18 years old and penniless at the time of his trial, and a court-appointed attorney represented him. That attorney failed to challenge a pattern of inaccurate and inflammatory statements made by prosecutors and others during the trial, and also failed to engage forensic experts who could have refuted the testimony that was used to convict Echols, today’s filing says.

Today’s court filing also notes the poisonous atmosphere during Echols’ trial that contributed to his wrongful conviction – citing the lead prosecutor himself, who said at the time that the community’s outrage, the national interest and the media coverage created a “shark feeding atmosphere” during the trial. The prosecution alleged that Echols and two other teenagers committed the crimes as part of a Satanic ritual.

“At the time of Damien Echols’ trial, there was no scientific evidence to support the prosecution’s case. With today’s court filing, science is finally having its day in this case – and it shows that Damien is innocent,” Riordan said. “The science backs up what witnesses and people involved with the trial now say uniformly: that Damien Echols did not commit these horrible crimes. The scientific evidence and witness affidavits we filed today flatly refute every supposed piece of evidence and every innuendo that the prosecution used to convict Damien.”

In February 1994, Echols was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. Three eight-year-old boys were found dead in a drainage ditch in Robin Hood Hills, a local wooded area near their homes, on May 6, 1993. Less than a month later, 17-year-old Jesse Misskelley “confessed” to the crime and claimed that Echols and Jason Baldwin sexually abused and beat the victims. Miskelley, a mentally handicapped boy with an IQ of 72, believed he would get a reward for confessing; many of the details of his confession (including the time of day the crimes were committed) did not match the facts of the crime. Misskelley was tried and convicted of one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder in February 1994. Baldwin and Echols were tried together after Misskelley’s trial, and they were convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in February 1994. The following day, Echols was sentenced to die, and he has been on death row ever since. Since 1995, Echols has filed a series of appeals on several grounds.

In 2001, the Arkansas Legislature passed a law granting post-conviction access to DNA testing. The law passed largely as a result of widespread doubts about the convictions of Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin. Within months of the DNA testing law taking effect, Echols filed a motion seeking DNA testing in the case. In 2004 and again in 2005, a state court ordered DNA testing to be conducted in the case, and a range of DNA testing has been conducted over the last two years."

For video on this story click here.

Reported by Janice Broach

DNA evidence proves he is innocent and he's demanding a new trial.

Echols is one of three men found guilty in the brutal murders of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis in 1993.

Renowned forensic expert Vincent DiMaio and Memphis attorney Gerald Skahan walked into the office of a private investigator.

Soon after Pam Hobbs, mother of Stevie Branch, and Mark Byers, father of Christopher Byers, walked in through a side door.

They came to hear new evidence that points to Hobbs' ex-husband Terry Hobbs as the killer and not the so called West Memphis Three.

After about an hour, Pam Hobbs' sister came out and talked.

"Terry Hobbs had the motive. Terry Hobbs is the one suspected of murder and the wounds that were inflicted on my nephew were where turtles bit his face. No knives and not weapons were used," says Jo Lynn McCaughey.

McCaughey says her sister is very upset. She says she is too because they believe they are hearing different stories.

In July, Terry Hobbs knew defense investigators were looking at him because his hair was discovered in the shoe laces of one of the murdered boys.

Pam Hobbs did not want to comment after the meeting saying, "I have no comment at all." Mark Byers also had nothing to say.

For years, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelly, and Jason Baldwin said they didn't do it.

They say someone else murdered those little boys.

Stevie Branch was an honor roll student who had an active imagination and loved to sing. He wrote a song when he was 8-years-old.

"He was a very intelligent little boy. I could have had the next president had he not been murdered," says Pam Hobbs.

Hobbs remembers vividly the last time she spoke to her son. She says he asked if he could ride bikes with his friends on the afternoon of May 5th, 1993.

He left her home and never came back.

Investigators found Stevie's nude body along with the bodies of Michael Moore and Christopher Byers bound in a shallow creek off I-40 in Crittenden County.

Hobbs adds, "for the first  five or six years it was hell on earth. If they could put that into words, if they could describe how I felt.'

After a massive manhunt, police charged Damien Echols, Jessie Miskelley and Jason Baldwin with killing the boys.

Echols got the death penalty. Miskelley and Baldwin got life in prison.

"I feel like the ones that killed my son, the three that were tried and convicted they are guilty. But I am like everyone else, was there someone else out there other than those three," says Hobbs.

For years, investigators have denied the possibility of anyone else being involved in the murders, while websites devoted to the case poke holes in the detectives' work.

The HBO documentary "Paradise Lost" also claimed West Memphis police botched the case.

Action News 5 reporter Janice Broach covered the West Memphis Three case extensively.

There were questions about other suspects who could have been involved.

Hobbs says she doesn't mind people supporting the West Memphis Three. She does think they are guilty. And she just doesn't know if they worked alone.
"If that's the way he wants to go down in history as a child murderer, then that's the road he chose to take in this life," adds Hobbs.

Hobbs says she's forgiven Echols and anyone else connected to the murder of her son and hopes something positive can still come from the killings.

"If God would save their souls then the devil didn't accomplish anything out of this. He just made my life a little miserable," says Hobbs.

Even though the West Memphis Three are behind bars, this case is not over.

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.’’

The West Memphis Evening Times
October 26, 2007
http://www.theeveningtimes.com/articles/2007/10/26/news/news5.txt

by LAURA SMITH

Sources could not confirm whether a meeting would take place Monday between attorneys for the three defendants and the families of the three West Memphis boys slain 14 years ago.

A spokesman for the defendants - Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Jason Baldwin - declined to comment.

Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin were convicted in 1994 for the murder of Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch and Michael Moore, 8-year-old boys who were found dead in a ditch along the 10-Mile Bayou on May 6, 1993.

Brent Davis, prosecuting attorney for the Second Judicial District which encompasses Crittenden County, said he hadn't been advised of a meeting.

"I haven't been advised by the victims' families that there is a meeting, and I haven't been advised there's not one," Davis said. "The best I can tell is that the defense will probably file something next week, and I don't know what's contained in that."

Multiple appeals at the state and federal levels have been filed by the defendants, and one appeal has sought testing on hundreds of items from the crime scene.

Davis said that testing is nearly concluded.

"As far as the testing of the items we've agreed upon to test, it appears to me - based on the original list - we've pretty much reached the end," Davis said.

Defense attorneys requested DNA tests under a new law that allows the retesting of evidentiary items when technology wasn't available at the time of the trial or crime.

Test results reported in July found no DNA connection between the defendants to evidence tested.

Nearly all of the material tested belonged to the victims except a hair found on a victim's shoelace belonging to Terry Hobbs, the step-father Stevie Branch.

Police attributed the finding of Hobbs' hair to transfer evidence and said Hobbs is not a suspect in the case.

The defendants were teens at the time of their arrests and are now in their early 30s. Damien Echols was sentenced to receive the death penalty, Misskelley is serving a sentence of life plus 40 years and Baldwin is serving life in prison without parole.