The police begin the investigation into the murders. They run into some interesting characters in West Memphis, including Damien Echols. And they begin to develop a profile of the killer or killers.Check out our new True Crime Substack the True Crime Times Check out our other show The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs for discussion on cases, controversial topics, or conversations with content creators.Get Prosecutors Podcast Merch Join the Gallery on Facebook Follow us on TwitterFollow us on Instagram Check out our website for case resources: Hang out with us on TikTokSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of The Prosecutors podcast?
I'm Brett, and I'm Alice, and we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we start the timeline of the investigation. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined, as always, by my mad co-host, Alice.
Mad respect that Brett literally left the hospital today with a brand new baby, and he is here recording because that's how much we love you guys.
It's true. It's true. But that's not what I was talking about because I wasn't late because of the baby. Oh, no, I was late because of the basketball game. Roll Tide, March Madness keeps going.
I did not know that, by the way.
Rolling into the Elite Eight.
When you said, hey, can I have 15 more minutes? I was like, oh, sweet baby needs 15 more minutes. You were watching basketball. I was.
It's true. It's true. You know, Alabama broke the record for most three-pointers in a game tonight, which probably means we won't make a single one in the next game and just get blown out. Just saying. Just saying.
That is how averages work, though, right?
Is it though? And that's like the gambler's fallacy, right? I mean, we could just make three pointers forever.
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Chapter 2: What is the timeline of the West Memphis 3 murders?
As you're thinking through sort of what the police are discovering, what the evidence is that comes in. So with that in mind, let's reset. So here are the critical times on the day of the murders. Now, look, these times are assuming that everyone is telling the truth and remembering accurately.
Telling the truth is important because I'm going to give you the statements of the eventual West Memphis three, the three defendants as well. Just so you see how this all shakes out if everybody's basically telling the truth. So the last confirmed sighting of the boys occurs at between 6 and 6.30 by Cynthia Rico and between 6.30 and 6.45 by Jeff Martins and Brian Woody.
I think those are our best last times. The very last time anyone claims to see them is at around 7 when Christopher Wall sees the boys. Now the problem with Wall's statement is he's the only one putting them that late sort of going into the woods. These are all heading in the direction of the woods at this point. And he says he saw the kids as he was coming home from class.
His girlfriend would later say that she talked to him at the school payphone around 730 and that that was something they did all the time. Basically, since the old days, guys, before we had cell phones, right? So she would wait at the payphone or he would wait at the payphone at around 730 and she would call the payphone number and he would pick it up and talk to her.
That's the way they would do it. This actually comes up not because the police are checking the timeline, which I want to talk about in a second, but because someone actually accused Wall of being involved and said, you know, he kind of was into younger boys and he would have been able to befriend them and this sort of thing.
And so they talked to her and she's like, no, he was on the phone with me at 730. So this is a little shaky. Now, it could be a different night that she talked to him through the fog of time. It is impossible to know. So before I get to the other thing, I want to criticize the police for a second because the police are up for a lot of criticism in this case.
Some of it is unfair, but I will tell you what is absolutely fair and what is incredibly frustrating if you are trying to follow this case. What is incredibly frustrating is that the police never nailed any of this down. The last sighting of the boys, you know, people talk about... Where they were at 330 and all that stuff. That's great. That might be important.
But what's really important is the time they entered the forest and the police never should have started.
Then they truly if they had nothing else, they should have pinned that down within a spectrum. But the reason it's so hard to find the spectrum is because the police don't have it pinned down whatsoever. In fact, they're like, I don't know. Maybe they were north. Maybe they were south. And like, no, no, no. This is the most important thing to pin down because this is the beginning of the end.
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Chapter 3: What are the key alibis for the suspects involved?
There's no way he could have done this. Shortly thereafter, after he calls the sheriff's department, Dana Moore is at his house. At 8.08, Regina Meeks is talking to John Mark Byers at the Byers' residence. So it really seems difficult to figure out how he could have done that. Sometime in the 8 o'clock hour, Terry Hobbs will join John Mark Byers to look for the boys.
So if it's Terry Hobbs, if that's your alternative suspect to the West Memphis Three... Incredibly tight timeline for him, too. There are windows where maybe he could have done this, but they're very small windows.
And he has to have gone into the woods, murdered the boys, come out of the woods into the neighborhood, the very neighborhood where the boys disappeared from, where people are looking for them, probably muddy, probably wet, maybe bloody, get back to his house, change clothes, run into Dana Moore, talk to John Mark Byers in a very short period of time. So hard, but not impossible for him.
So some things to note about this, because we're talking about these things through the timeline with if you're just joining us on episode five, you know, there's the caveats of we're giving you all of the timeline. Some of it is going to be who knows if it's really true because we have conflicting times within the timeline.
But note the things the timeline purposes for Hobbes and for John Mark Byers are. are confirmed outside of themselves, right? There's the police talking. There's other people who have no incentive to create alibis for them who are giving us these times.
Whereas this is why we're going to have to spend more time, obviously, on the alibis that you're beginning to hear of those who were ultimately convicted of these murders. Obviously, if the timeline you just heard is true, they couldn't have done it. They have great alibis, but we have to go more into them.
So this is a little confusing if you're just listening to us for the first time, because we're giving you all of these things as a timeline, but not all of these entries within the timeline should be taken with equal weight.
Now, one person I have not mentioned is Jason Baldwin. Jason Baldwin, typically, when people look at this case, he's the one that strikes people as the most likely to be innocent. If the West Memphis Three, some of them committed the crime and some of them didn't, Jason Baldwin is the one that people just don't think did it because they've seen Paradise Lost.
He looks like an absolute child in Paradise Lost. And some of the things we'll talk about later lead people to doubt that he was involved. But I haven't mentioned him because of all of them. He has the weakest alibi. Basically, he has none. He has various people who put him in different places. And we'll talk about that in depth later. But none of it really hangs together.
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Chapter 4: How reliable is the timeline and witness testimony?
If you believe the Hollingsworth clan, it is a really bad piece of evidence for Damien. We will talk about them later, why there may be problems with their statements and why their statements may be believable. Okay, so that is where we are at the timeline up to this point. Alice, do you have anything to add before we dive back in?
No. So this was already covered in the last episode. We basically condensed it for you guys here. But when you condense it and kind of get rid of the extraneous chit chat, maybe the one stars we'll say, you begin to see really how tight this timeline is. And you begin to see problems with a lot of the alternative suspects to those who are convicted.
And look, there's still a lot to cover here, but you can begin to see you have to deal with all these different points. And obviously, these are all witnesses who report what they think is their timing. People's timing is really off. We do it all the time. What time is it right now? Any one of you, don't look at the clock. Maybe you just looked at the clock.
Even if you just looked at the clock, you may get it wrong. And so keep this all in mind. You guys want direct evidence? This is direct evidence. It is so faulty. It is so faulty. And that is what's so difficult about this timeline is really the lack of a lot of circumstantial evidence to back up these timelines.
Not because anyone's necessarily lying, although later on as statements change, there's reason to believe either wanting to minimize or create sorts of alibis for people that they want to create alibis for. Just purely on a direct evidence standard, people's timing and memory of times is incredibly, incredibly faulty.
So let's go to May 7th. So now the police are very much investigating this and they draw up a questionnaire for canvassing the area. I believe this was done in consultation with the FBI. Many of the questions were typical, but a few indicated the type of person the police were initially looking for.
A couple of the questions that stand out if they or anyone they know in the area is a Vietnam veteran. Now, one of the reasons they wondered about this is because apparently and I don't know if this has ever been confirmed or not, but this is what the police were under the impression to be true. The way the boys were tied, which is very strange and is not actually hog tying.
That's what everybody calls it. Apparently, there were people who said the Viet Cong in Vietnam would tie prisoners that way. So they thought maybe a Vietnam veteran is familiar with this way someone is tied up, sort of brought it back with them. So a Vietnam veteran becomes someone they're looking for. Also, they think whoever did this may have some sort of mental illness.
People who came back from Vietnam had a lot of PTSD that was untreated. There was just this notion of sort of, I mean, Rambo, you've seen Rambo, this notion of just people, whether true or not, I'm not casting aspersions on Vietnam veterans, but there was just this notion that Vietnam veterans were unstable. So another possibility there.
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Chapter 5: What was the police's initial investigation approach and profile?
I don't think this was his given name. You don't think this was his given name? I think this was his chosen name.
Well.
That's my guess, based on the other things he's going to say.
You would think, if you're named King David Samuel Beasley, you would be sort of the leader of whatever group you're a part of. But he, in fact, was not. He was a follower of his roommate, Sir Michael Williams. Williams. So the police, just imagine, the police, they're already thinking, man, this seems weird, might be cultist. They knock on the door.
And William shows up in the black robe that he always wears with a white cross on it. Meanwhile, you have Beasley, who's wearing a necklace that has a Star of David on it, which the police in West Memphis probably were like, that's a pentagram, right? They probably didn't recognize the Star of David, right? So these two instantly pique their interest.
But they're able to confirm their alibis and they're very quickly able to sort of push them to the side as possible suspects. But they, in a lot of ways, kind of set the stage for what's going to happen as this canvas continues.
This is like a fun house of what are you going to get behind the next door? You're going to see that this is the case. And of course, here you have like Sir McKeel and also King David coming to the door. So on May 7th, the police receive a tip that Steve Skaggs, who's a 34-year-old, often spends time in Robin Hood Hills. That's the tip, by the way, that he spends time in Robin Hood Hills.
You know, people are desperate. We don't know who's done this horrendous crime. And so because they get this tip the next day, officers meet with Skaggs. Now, Skaggs worked as a mechanic and lived in a junked Cadillac behind the shop. And he claimed that he was at work on the day of the murders from 830 in the morning all the way until midnight, which is crazy. Quite the shift.
That's a very, very long work day. It's just about an entire day. Interestingly, though, Skaggs quit his job on May 6th, the day before that tip came into the police about Skaggs. And he and his brother intended to leave town, but his brother was arrested for unpaid fines on May 7th, which is why he was still around when the police came knocking. So this is all interesting timing.
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Chapter 6: Who was King David Samuel Beasley and what role did he play?
Not bad, not bad at all. Oh, and on top of all this, he's essentially kind of a floater, right? He doesn't have a house. He lives in a junked out Cadillac. I mean, this is the profile you would think of basically a wanderer who has nothing to lose, who may be doing something like this. So the police go talk to him.
And when asked if he'd heard anything about the murders, Skaggs says he kept hearing the name Damien and that this Damien might be involved in devil worship. Now, you might be thinking, well, duh, if I did it, I'm definitely going to point my fingers elsewhere. So I agree with you if I'm talking to the police and they're like, have you heard about these murders? And I am guilty of it.
I would definitely try to divert attention away. But what's interesting is he names Damien and he names him in the context of devil worship. Now, Skaggs isn't sure of the last name of this so-called Damien, and he believes Damien's last name might be Wren, like the bird. Now, in a later interview, Skaggs will say that Damien had changed his name from Michael.
In the same interview, he'll say he'd heard that Stevie Branch's father had been a big-time drug dealer, and the murders could be revenge for that. This is all over the place. Is it Damien? Is it not? You don't know who Damien is, but you somehow know that he changed his name from Michael because that's pretty personal.
By the time Damien is like here and known about town, people know him as Damien. So for you not to know who he is, but to know some very detailed facts about something that probably not everyone would know, certainly not a stranger off the street would know, is an interesting fact. So you clearly do know him a little bit better than you're letting on.
and then if you're deflecting attention to someone else this damien guy who's a devil worshiper why are you now throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying and you know what one of the victim's fathers is a big-time drug dealer because what you're implicating of course is that the drug cartel are after what the boys in order to pay back some sort of terrible debt that one of the fathers has
So he throws all this out there at them. This interview is all over the place. Your head should be ringing. And so what did the police do? They give him a polygraph test and he passes the polygraph test. We've said this many times before. Polygraph test doesn't actually read your mind. You could be lying and pass a polygraph test. So it is not admissible in court.
It is possible to pass it if you are lying. It just looks at your biometrics. But it certainly tells you if someone's nervous or not. And for whatever it is, he passes this test and then the police lose interest in him.
In this interview, the second interview is on May 15th, by the way, so not that much later. He's talking about Damien some more. I think another thing you can criticize the police for, they lived and died by these polygraphs. They believe them in a way. And look, we've talked about this before. There are a lot of police who, if you pass a polygraph, you're pretty much cleared.
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Chapter 7: Why was Steve Skaggs considered a suspect and what was his alibi?
Yeah, but that's not what they do. Now, we're about to talk about Damien again. And if you've watched Paradise Lost, there's a sort of Damien Echols tunnel vision they talk about, which I don't believe is real. And as we go through this timeline, you'll see that.
Damien Echols was definitely a prominent character from the very beginning, and he was someone that people focused on more and more as the investigation continued. But the main people who were focused on him were... were sort of ancillary to the investigation.
They were these juvenile officers, Steve Jones and this officer Sudbury, who was another person who'd been on the scene when the bodies were found. And one thing I just want to note about those people, Look, juvenile officers, very important. They do great work. I'm in no way disparaging them, but homicide detectives are at the very top of the pyramid when it comes to the police.
Juvenile officers are pretty much at the bottom. I mean, probably below patrol officers, frankly. So the notion that just because these juvenile officers were like, it's Damien Echols, he finally killed somebody, that the entire West Memphis Police Department was suddenly like, yes! We must frame Damien Echols is silly.
They very much believed this was a valuable avenue of investigation and they will pursue it. But the West Memphis Police Department is not a monolith. And I think at this early stage, Gary Gitchell is not thinking this was satanic. This was Damien Echols. And you're going to see that as we go through. But.
Steve Jones and Shane Griffin and Officer Sudbury, they're thinking, hey, we got this violent kid in the community. Let's go look at him. And they actually go to Damien's trailer to talk to him. When they get there, they note a pair of tennis shoes and combat boots, both which were caked in mud.
Now, Damien will later say that only the tennis shoes were caked in mud and that he kept his combat boots spotless.
This is really interesting because you only wear one pair of shoes typically. Only one of them needs to be muddy for this necessarily to matter, but also it doesn't necessarily mean the combat boots weren't muddy. He's himself saying if they were muddy, then I cleaned them. So either way, I don't think it really says much.
So they interview Damien. They note that he has a pentagram on his chest. Damien tells them that he was a patient of Little Rock Memorial Mental Hospital, where he was diagnosed as manic depressive and schizophrenic. He tells them that he was previously involved in a Wiccan religion and a local group called the Covenant of the Divine Light, which he describes as a white witchcraft group.
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Chapter 8: What role did Damien Echols and the alleged cult involvement have in the investigation?
So obviously they're taking exactly what Alice said and they're going to take it back to West Memphis and say, hey, we talked to this guy, Damien. You know, we got concerns about him and he's saying all this stuff about being in a cult and his shoes are muddy. You need to follow this up. So at this point on May 9th, Officer Shane Griffin and Bill Durham are going to go talk to Damien.
They show up basically at Jason Baldwin's house. Damien Echols is there, Dominique Thier is there, and Jason Baldwin is there as well. And they talk to them in the front yard of the house. According to Jason, the three had gone to Jason's uncle's house to cut the grass.
After that, he and Damien were at the laundromat in Missouri and North Washington Street, and his dad picked him up at around 6 p.m. His father then took Dominic and Jason home while Damien walked home. Now, we've talked about this before. This whole thing about where they were and when they were at the laundromat and how they got home is inconsistent across the board.
Everybody tells different stories on this. It doesn't necessarily mean anything nefarious. It's just hard to nail down when they're at the laundromat. And after this... the police are going to start talking to the people that I actually think were their first suspects.
Damien's always in the back of the mind, but now they're going to move on to people who really, I think to this day, maybe there are some people who are curious about these individuals.
Right, so on May 9th, the police interview Murray Ferris, who was a student at the local high school. And the reason he's kind of on their radar is Murray had once pulled a knife in school and threatened to kill another student. Now 18, he was said to be involved in cults and was described by Jennifer Bearden as the head of the local cult.
In fact, Jennifer said that Damien speculated he might have killed the kids. Again, very interesting. This is all like he said, she said, but I guess that is how tips work before there were, you know, cell phones. So I guess this is their form of tips, right? So Damien, apparently, this is only through Jennifer, speculated that Ferris may have killed the kids.
Ferris told the police that he was the leader of a cult, he's like, yep, he's owning that, of white witches called the Order of the Divine Light. You may have remembered hearing about them. Damien also said he was part of this order. And police noted the hex mark, a pentagram, that he wore on a necklace. So think about this. The police are investigating.
They've already heard basically like cult, witchcraft come up in multiple contexts. Now they're talking to this guy, Ferris, and they see this pentagram around his neck. And so what do they do? They go to their trusty, dusty polygraph machine. And they ask Murray to take a polygraph test. And lo and behold, he passes it. So the police are like, well, there you go. He passes it.
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