Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [164]
The profiler also offered his assessment of the site where the bodies were found. He concluded that this was not where the boys were murdered, and that “at least four crime scenes” were involved. He identified these as what he called “the abduction site,” where the boys were apprehended; “the attack site,” a nearby structure or residence where they were killed; “the dump site,” the ditch where the bodies were found; and “the vehicle” that was used to transport the bodies from the attack site to where they were dumped. He cited three reasons for his conclusions. One: “The nature and extent of the wounds inflicted upon these victims, especially the emasculation of Chris Byers, required light, required time, and required uninterrupted privacy. As it was dark in those woods, and as search parties were traveling in and out of the area all evening, this dictates a secluded structure of some kind away from the area of immediate attention.” Two: “The nature and extent of the wounds inflicted upon these victims, especially the emasculation of Chris Byers, would have resulted in a tremendous amount of blood loss. Very little blood was found at this scene on the banks of the drainage ditch.” And three: “The stabbing injuries and emasculation injuries inflicted upon Chris Byers alone, because Chris was conscious during at least part of the assault [as indicated by evidence of struggle during the attack on his penis], would have resulted in a great deal of screaming.” Of all the sounds reported that evening by searchers and local residents, screaming was not among them. The fact that the three boys were apprehended together and that their wounds showed they put up “limited resistance” suggested to the criminal profiler that they had been approached by “someone that the victims knew and trusted.”375
The Sequel
Filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky were now also looking at the case from a different point of view. They’d won prizes and accolades for their documentaryParadise Lost :The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, but their pride had been accompanied by disappointment that discussion of the film had never, as they put it, gotten “off the entertainment page.” While most viewers were appalled by what they saw in the film, a sizable number—the filmmakers estimated 20 percent—saw the documentary as proof that the three who were convicted were guilty.376Berlinger and Sinofsky decided to make a sequel. Where the first film had been “more artistic,” this one would “be stronger, more of an advocacy film.” “Our attraction to the second story was much more that we wanted to help,” Berlinger later explained. “The first film never got the social attention it deserved. With this one, we wanted it to be discussed, not just on the entertainment pages, but on the editorial pages. We wanted people of power to rally.”
Footage from the trials had formed and informed the first film, but the filmmakers decided to base the sequel on creation of the Web site and the activism it had spawned. Another challenge was that many of the people who’d appeared in the first documentary didn’t want to be interviewed again. “Most people in Arkansas were pissed off at us,” Berlinger recalled. “The Moores would have nothing to do with us. Pam Hobbs had tried to sue us. Brent Davis wouldn’t talk to us. That left pretty much John Mark Byers. He was more than willing to appear on camera, and we put him front and center.”
Most of the filming took place in 1998—after Melissa’s death and after Byers’s banishment from the judicial district where they had been living when she died, but before the drug arrest that had led to his stint in prison. As in the first film, Byers expounded at length for the cameras, only now the pitch of his orations was more hateful and more histrionic. The film,Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, premiered on HBO in March 2000. Byers was more than “front and center.” He was the film’s target.