Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [18]
Another area that Ridge and Sudbury might have explored more fully concerned Christopher’s friends. Byers said that Christopher had liked to play with a “little boy named Aaron” but that Stevie Branch was his closest friend. He admitted, however, that he had not known where Stevie lived until the night that Christopher disappeared. Neither detective asked why Byers had not known where Christopher’s best friend lived. Nor did they ask him about what others had reported, namely, that Michael, across the street, had been Christopher’s closest friend. Byers did not even mention Michael. And it seemed he did not want to discuss the Moores. When asked about them, he said that he and Melissa “didn’t have a lot to do” with them. He explained that during the past summer, the Moores had complained to police four times about parties he and Melissa had thrown at their house, including one honoring a former sheriff.39
Even when Byers seemed to catch himself in a lie, the detectives did not press. That happened when Ridge asked Byers about Christopher’s biological father. Byers blurted out, “I don’t even know his name.” He then quickly amended the statement. “He came to the funeral,” he said. “His name is Ricky Lee Murray.”
No one raised the subject of Byers’s assault on his ex-wife. Ridge simply asked, “Anybody in your family that has a history of abuse?”
“No sir,” Byers replied. With that, the topic was dropped.40
In other parts of the interview, Byers alluded to interactions with local officials. When Ridge asked if he thought that the killer or killers might be rehabilitated, for instance, and ever “go back on the street again,” the answer Byers gave suggested that he already knew who the suspects were. “No,” he told Ridge, “because from what [deputy prosecutor] John Fogleman told me, these individuals—he couldn’t see how they could plead insanity ’cause they tried to cover up their crime. And he promised me in Gary Gitchell’s office, with the other fathers in there, that it didn’t matter what age they were, that he was going to prosecute ’em as an adult, and he would try for the death penalty.”
Similarly, when Sudbury asked Byers if there was anyone police should “talk to,” anyone “from Memphis, perhaps,” that Byers had “talked to OCU [the Organized Crime Unit] about,” Byers had responded with caution. “Who’s all going to hear that tape?” he asked.
“Only us investigators,” Ridge assured him. Byers then mentioned two men that he said he’d “worked with the city here on” in connection with illegal drugs.
As the interview neared its end, Ridge asked one more question. “Okay,” he began, “Well, what I want to say right now, and what I’m going to say is that, I may have information…This information suggests strongly that you have something to do with the disappearance of the boys. And ultimately of the murder. Okay. What is your response to that?”
Byers replied, “My first response is I can’t fathom where you would get that…”
Ridge: “Okay.”
Byers: “And it makes me so mad inside that I just kind of got to hold myself here in this chair…”
Ridge: “Okay. Who, of all the people you know, might make that kind of suggestion?”
Byers: “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea.”
Ridge: “Okay.”
Byers: “If I did, it would make me want to hit ’em. You know, it would make me mad to think that someone maybe has said something like that about me. It makes me mad.”
Ridge explained that these were questions he had to ask. “It was to get a response,” he said. “We want to know what your response is. And I’m not saying anybody made that accusation. Okay. But I had to evoke that response from you. I had to know what your response was. You understand that? Do you understand?”
Byers said, “I probably will. I don’t right now. It hurts.”
“It hurts me to have to ask it,” Ridge replied. “As much as I know it hurts you when I saw your response…”
“Just tell me one thing,” Byers said. “Man to man, you tell me, man