Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [19]
“Man to man,” Ridge assured him, “I know that.”
Two weeks had passed, and much of the investigation was an incoherent mess. The investigation of the families, such as it was, had not produced results, nor had the detectives’ pursuit of the numerous miscellaneous leads. Gitchell was floundering. The city was in a state of alarm—residents were even afraid to go shopping—and local officials were expecting arrests. Yet Gitchell still had not even received written reports on the autopsies. His hopes that the lab might help him narrow the scope of the sprawling investigation were rapidly diminishing. As the investigation approached the three-week mark, Gitchell was desperate. He phoned police in Indiana and asked them to question Ricky Lee Murray, Christopher’s biological father. But Murray had a sound alibi for his activities at the time of the murders.
On May 22, detectives questioned Melissa Byers. Some of what she said also contradicted what her husband had told the police. While he’d reported that Christopher had never disappeared from home before, Melissa said that Christopher had disappeared a few times recently, and that on a couple of those occasions he’d been gone for as much as two hours. One of the detectives also noted that “Melissa became concerned that maybe he had been molested.” When the detectives asked Melissa who she thought might have killed the boys, she said she didn’t know. But she added, “Whoever did this, the boys knew—at least one or all of the boys.”
As detectives would soon learn when they saw Christopher’s medical records, there was more to the child’s story than either of his parents was reporting.41In 1990, when Christopher was only five, the Byerses had brought him to a pediatric neurologist in Memphis for evaluation of behavioral problems.42The doctor noted in his report, “The mother is ‘at her wit’s end.’” The doctor prescribed medication and saw Christopher several times in the next three years. The last time was in January 1993, less than four months before the murders. Christopher had not improved, and the neurologist wrote that he was “in a quandary” as to why.43
Detectives filed the information away, with little apparent interest. Nor, apparently, was their interest in Byers heightened when the Arkansas State Police reported conclusive evidence that Byers had lied about the Rolex watches. UPS officials had reported their suspicions to West Memphis police six months earlier. But they’d also put their own company investigator on the case and notified the Arkansas State Police. Now the fraud case had been solved. About three weeks after the murders, the state police informed police in West Memphis that contrary to what Byers had claimed, he had indeed received the watches—and sold them to a chiropractor in Jonesboro, Arkansas, about sixty miles north of West Memphis. The chiropractor had produced two canceled checks for the watches. The checks, totaling $9,050, were made out to—and had been endorsed by—Byers. The chiropractor and the jeweler who’d shipped the watches were willing to testify against Byers.44When it became clear that Byers could be prosecuted for another felony, he placed a call to Gitchell, saying he’d “made a mistake.” Gitchell noted briefly that Byers had said “he wanted to be truthful and up-front about it. Hoping it would not interfere with the investigation.”
Gitchell Desperate
By May 26, twenty days after the bodies were found, Gitchell still had not received the written autopsy reports. He was growing frantic. He typed a letter to crime lab officials, expressing his exasperation. He raised several questions in the letter, the answers to which, he said, were “vital” to his investigation.45What were the times of death? What were the causes of death? He pointed out that he still did not know. Could he get a diagram of the boys’ wounds? Had “any tears or blood or punctures” been found in their clothes? Had a stick that was