www.midsouthjustice.com
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“The Con”
-Chronology of Events-
THEORY: The victims were conned by someone who they knew and trusted. (Link to a summary of Brent Turvey’s Crime Analysis)
Brent Turvey’s criminal profile, and an FBI profile acquired by the West Memphis
Police Department state that the real killers knew the victims and easily
earned their trust. They told the victims that they are boy scouts and together
they were going to be heroes by solving a crime at least 1 day before the
murders. The real killers either drove the victims to the primary crime scene
or asked them to meet them at the primary crime scene where their accomplices
were waiting. One was pretending to be a dead body at approximately
FACT: The image below shows the actual truck belonging to John Mark Byers during the time of the murders.
The above image of
the truck belonging to John Mark Byers comes from Paradise Lost, Part 1.
FACT: Statements Byers made to the police on May 19th, 1993. Byers: “...One day Ryan and Brett Smith were down there on their bicycles playing and come running home just kind of all white in the face and excited and said dad, dad we saw a bum, or a junkie or it was somebody and they were laying in the ditch down there and WE THOUGHT MAYBE THEY WERE DEAD and we hollered and kind of chunked some rocks over that way and THEY moved. And it was a bum down there...”
Detective Ridge asks: “Did Chris ever tell you of seeing anything down there?”
Byers: “The only person that Christopher, that I can remember, told me about was over by Mayfair apartments, RIGHT WHERE THE RAILING WAS, WHERE THE PIPE CROSSES (This is the location where the bikes were found in the bayou) There was a guy one day had a car parked out there, and Chris come running home. Christopher telling me that he SAW A MAN DEAD under a car, and I NEEDED TO COME HELP HIM. And he was so sure that he saw a dead man under a car. I GOT HIM IN THE TRUCK AND HE TOOK ME OVER THERE TO SHOW HIM AND THERE WAS A MAN under his car, but he was changing his oil. You, so, that was the only person that he had ever said.”
(Link to the actual police transcript)
FACT: In their interview on May 19th, 1993 with John Mark Byers, Detectives James Sudbury and Bryn Ridge NEVER follow up on the statements by Byers that Ryan AND Christopher had both seemingly seen dead bodies at different times in the area where the victims were found.
FACT: Inspector Gitchell formally requested a psychological profile of the killer from the FBI. However, no such profile was ever disclosed to the defense. Nine pages of the documents that the FBI sent Inspector Gitchell were missing.
(Link to the court discussion regarding the FBI psychological profile of the killer)
FACT: “Byers had told police that he had gone to a
clinic in Memphis the day of the abduction and had not been able to find
Christopher when he’d returned home at around 3:10 pm. Melissa Byers’s father
recalled a markedly different version of the afternoon’s events. He said that
Melissa had arranged with him to come to the house and stay with Christopher
after school, in case Mark wasn’t back from the clinic. The child’s grandfather
said that he had driven to West Memphis as planned, but when he got there – shortly
before Christopher was to get out of school – Mark was already home. Melissa’s
father said, “I was on my way up to the schoolhouse, which was right near their
house, you know, when Mark saw me and told me he was going to pick up Chris by
himself. He told me not to get him. He said he’d take care of it. So I just
went on my way. I’ve thought about it a hundred times. I wish I’d went ahead
and got Chris. They called me that night and told me he was missing.” Source:
Atria Books: Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot, p
312, 2002.
NOTE: It is strange that John Mark Byers mentions that
BOTH of the children who lived with him told him about a dead body that was
actually not dead but alive. Ryan was a teenager while Christopher was 8 years
old.
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