Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [20]
The letter mentioned what was supposed to have been one of the department’s most closely guarded secrets. Gitchell wrote that Dr. Frank Peretti, the associate medical examiner who had performed the autopsies on the boys, had “mentioned finding urine” in the stomachs of two of the boys. Peretti had asked that the police send “water samples” to the lab. Gitchell had done as Peretti requested, but so far the department had not been informed of any results. “What has been determined in regards to the urine?” Gitchell demanded. “Can the urine, if that is what it is, be used to eliminate any suspects—or develop any?” Additionally, he wanted to know, “Can you tell us which kid was killed first?” And, “Were the kids dragged?” Gitchell concluded: “Anything you can think to give us would be greatly appreciated. We need information from the crime lab desperately…without [it] our hands are tied…We feel as though we are walking blind-folded through this case.”
Two days later, Gitchell wrote another frustrated letter, this one to John Fogleman, now the district’s deputy prosecuting attorney.46Gitchell complained that he and his staff were “severely handicapped” by the lack of communication from the medical examiner’s office. He specifically cited his need of the autopsy reports, which he had still not received. Gitchell reported that under the circumstances, he had been surprised to learn that Fogleman and another deputy prosecutor had recently driven to Little Rock to meet with crime lab officials.47The visit was extraordinary in at least two respects: first, as Fogleman later acknowledged, prosecutors do not normally involve themselves to such an extent in ongoing police investigations;48and second, the visit had been conducted without Gitchell’s knowledge. “Maybe,” Gitchell fumed, “you can learn something” from the medical examiner’s office “to assist us”—something, he said, that the police, “for some unknown reason,” had been unable to learn directly.
The prosecutors’ unusual visit and the detective’s testiness were signs of how the nerves of officials were fraying as the city prepared to observe the passage of a month since the murders. The triple murder case seemed to be going nowhere. And the moon was nearing full again.
Chapter Four
The Police Investigation: Part 2
Holy men tell us life is a mystery.
They embrace that concept happily.
But some mysteries bite and bark,
And come to get you in the dark.
A rain of shadows, a storm, a squall,
Daylight retreats, night swallows all.
If Good is bright, if Evil’s gloom,
High evil walls the World entombs.
Now comes the end, the drear darkfall.49
WHILEGITCHELL WAS FEELING BLINDFOLDEDand standard approaches to the case, including investigation of the families and pursuit of tips and leads, had not produced a suspect, interest in Gitchell’s suggestion regarding a “gang or cult” was expanding to fill the void. Adherents to that theory focused their attention on a teenager from Marion who’d written the lines above. While some who read those lines might see in them Gothic influences, such as those that inspired Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King, and others might detect psychological depression or despair, law enforcement officials in Marion and West Memphis concluded that the poem suggested involvement in the occult. Though “the occult” would remain a vague term, a belief that occult, or satanic, activities were dangerously afoot in the county was already well established among some law enforcement officials by the time the murders occurred. That belief could be attributed to the efforts of Jerry Driver, a county juvenile officer, who was seen by police as the local expert on how the occult and crime converged.
Driver was not a police officer. After a career as a commercial airline pilot, he and his wife had opened