Boy’s mother recalls fateful dayTuesday, July 6, 2010
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last of a 4-part series stemming from a recent prison interview with convicted killer Damien Echols. Some of the information is more graphic than previously published.
By George Jared
James Byard | The Sun
Damien Echols contemplates his case during an interview in
the Arkansas Department of Correction Varner Unit last month.VARNER — The last time Dana Moore saw her son Michael, he was wearing his Boy Scout shirt, blue jeans, his scout cap and a name badge.
Michael was on his bike in their West Memphis neighborhood riding with two friends, Stevie Branch and Christopher Byers, on May 5, 1993. Dana told her daughter Dawn to call the trio because it was dinner time, according to court documents.
“Right after I went around the neighborhood, and I thought he just ... you know I missed him,” Dana Moore said during Jessie Misskelley’s trial in January 1994. “I went back home and waited for him to come back. ... He didn’t come back.”
The next day police pulled the boys’ nude, bound bodies from an irrigation ditch in Robin Hood Hills, a wooded area not far from their neighborhood. Michael’s Boy Scout uniform was found submerged by a stick not far from his body.
A month later Misskelley, then 17, Damien Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16, were arrested and charged with capital murder. Misskelley and Baldwin were given life sentences for killing Stevie, Michael and Christopher.
Echols, the alleged ringleader, received a death sentence.
The convictions might be the most controversial in Arkansas justice history. No DNA or forensic evidence linked the three teens to the crimes. There were few facts to support the alleged motive — an occult or Satanic act.
Echols often thinks of the three boys whose bodies were found in the ditch, he said. Three boys he claims he never met or ever came into contact with.
“So many people have been destroyed by this,” Echols said from a holding cell in the Department of Correction’s Varner Unit.
For years supporters of the so-called “West Memphis Three” claimed a botched police investigation, zealous prosecutors Brent Davis and John Fogleman, and Judge David Burnett convicted innocent men.
DNA testingIn 2007 the state did DNA tests of dozens of pieces of evidence collected from the scene where the bodies were discovered. Several DNA profiles were found, but none of them matched Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley.
“Test everything,” Echols said. “Test. Test. Test. I want them to test every damn thing.”
The Arkansas Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Sept. 30 about the new DNA evidence and allegations that Echols-Baldwin juror foreman Kent Arnold introduced inadmissible evidence into the jury room, according to court documents.
DNA collected did not match the convicted, but a hair pulled from the ligature binding Michael was a mitochondrial match for Stevie’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, court documents state. Another hair found on a tree stump near the crime scene was a possible mitochondrial match for Hobbs’ friend, David Jacoby — the man Hobbs said he was with when the boys disappeared.
Hobbs vehemently denies killing his stepson and the boy’s friends. Attorneys, forensic experts and private investigators hired by supporters and Echols’ wife, Lorri Davis, have cast a false light on him, Hobbs said.
“These people should be ashamed of themselves,” Hobbs said. “I can’t believe what they’re willing to say and what they’re willing to do.”
Stevie’s mother, Pam Hobbs, divorced from Hobbs, has said her ex-husband could have been involved in the murders.
Pam Hobbs said she thinks her son and the other boys were murdered somewhere else and dumped into the ditch. At a 2009 court hearing Pam Hobbs approached Jason Baldwin and told him, “I hope God grants you a new trial.”
She also corresponds with Echols.
Christopher’s stepfather, John Mark Byers, said Hobbs was involved in the murders, according to sworn affidavits filed in federal court.
Media bombardmentHobbs said he still remains in contact with his former wife. Intense media coverage and bombardment from West Memphis Three supporters prompted his ex-wife’s most recent accusations, Hobbs said.
The two have a daughter, Amanda, and grandchildren, he said. Amanda has been talking with filmmakers and investigators working to free Echols and has been put under hypnosis, Hobbs said.
“It’s as low-down as it can be,” Hobbs said. “That Lorri Davis is behind this.”
Pressed further, Hobbs said he fears hypnosis might lead his daughter to conjure a false memory that places her and him at the crime scene with the dead boys.
“It’s kind of keeping me on the edge,” he said.
Davis said she heard Amanda underwent hypnosis but denied funding it.
Hobbs said the jailed men are guilty and “can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.”
Echols stopped short of accusing Hobbs. “I’m hesitant to put the finger on anyone because of what I’ve been through,” he said. Asked again, Echols said “I feel the two men whose DNA was found at the scene are the most likely suspects.”
Case remains closedThe West Memphis Police Department has steadfastly maintained neither Hobbs nor Jacoby is a suspect, and the case is closed. Detective Mike Allen, who discovered the bodies in the ditch, was not available for comment, but in a recent interview with The Sun he said police in his department still think the convicted men are guilty. Allen said Hobbs and Jacoby’s hair probably reached the crime scene by secondary hair transfer.
“We’re not saying Hobbs is the perpetrator,” Arkansas Take Action spokesman Lonnie Soury said. “But it [lack of DNA] strongly exonerates the three men in jail.”
ATA is an advocacy group for the West Memphis Three.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel is most responsible for his continued imprisonment, Echols said. McDaniel could ask for a new trial based on the new DNA evidence, allegations of juror misconduct or the findings of forensic pathologists, Echols said.
Dr. Michael Baden, Dr. Werner Spitz, Dr. Richard Souviron and Dr. Janice Ophoven testified in August the victims’ injuries were not inflicted by a knife attack, a position held by prosecutors. The forensic pathologists believe the majority of cuts to the bodies were post-mortem animal predation.
Baden previously was the chief medical examiner for New York City, and Spitz has written text books for doctoral forensic pathology courses. Souviron identified bite marks on women in Florida who were killed by notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
Ophoven is regarded as one of the top pediatric forensic pathologists in the country, according to experts.
“The attorney general doesn’t engage in back-and-forth with death row inmates,” McDaniel spokesman Aaron Sadler said. “However, to say that he is responsible for this inmate’s situation is ridiculous. The attorney general wasn’t on the jury. He wasn’t the judge. He wasn’t the prosecutor. He’s required to uphold sentences, and anyone serving as attorney general would do that.”
Review of court briefsCourt briefs filed by McDaniel’s office in the Arkansas Supreme Court say Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley’s DNA wasn’t collected at the crime scene. But that’s not enough to set them free.
“That the appellant [Echols] was excluded as the source of the biological material tested from the crime scene is inconclusive as to his claim of innocence because his exclusion as a source does not prove that he was not at the crime scene or not a killer, particularly as it was apparent there was an attempt to conceal the crimes,” the brief states.
It further states: “It is conceivable that the appellant left no biological material or that any he left was not recovered or tested, and there are wholly and obvious innocent explanations for the recovery of biological material of the victim’s stepfather and that of his friend.”
Echols hopes to be released within the year. If he gets out of prison, Echols said he wants to speak on college campuses about false imprisonment. He hopes to continue to meditate, study, and spend time with his wife.
He wants to make two trips his first year — one to celebrate Halloween in Salem, Mass., and the other to Branson, Mo., to see the Christmas lights.
If he could sit in a room with Burnett, Davis and Fogleman he’d ask them one question.
“How long do I have to sit here?” an agitated Echols asked. “They know what’s going on here. High school kids, junior high kids can come to a conclusion that they can’t? They should think about that.”
