2, 1994. By then, Pamela Hobbs, the mother of Stevie Branch, and her husband, Terry, had moved to Memphis. On November 6, 1994, eight months after deputies drove Damien and Jason to prison, police in Memphis received a report of a shooting at the Hobbs residence. A Memphis police officer later offered the following account: Pam Hobbs told investigators that Terry had beaten her with his fists earlier in the day. The officers noted having observed injuries to her face and the back of her head. Hobbs said that after the beating, she’d called a relative in Blytheville, Arkansas, to report that she believed Terry had broken her jaw. Hobbs had then gone to a hospital. While she was there, a group of her Arkansas relatives gathered and drove to Memphis, where they confronted Terry about the assault. According to the Memphis police, Terry Hobbs left the house when they arrived, went to a truck outside, and returned with a .357 Magnum pistol in his pocket. At that point, Pam’s brother, Jackie Hicks, confronted Terry again. An investigating officer said it appeared that “Hicks passed the first lick,” and a fight ensued. Hicks reportedly had wrestled Terry Hobbs to the ground, when Hobbs reached into his pocket, pulled out the gun, and shot Hicks in the abdomen. Police said Hobbs then rose and pointed the gun at the other relatives, threatening to shoot them too. Police took Terry Hobbs into custody and charged him with assault on his wife and aggravated assault on his brother-in-law. Hicks survived, though he was hospitalized in critical condition. Tragedy also followed the parents of Michael Moore. In June 1995, eight months after the Hobbses’ altercation, Dana Moore struck and killed a pedestrian while driving on a rural road in Crittenden County, Arkansas. Newspapers quoted police as saying that Moore was charged with driving while intoxicated. Through her lawyer, Moore negotiated a plea of guilty. She was sentenced to sixty months probation, fined $250, and ordered to pay “restitution” of $2,500, an outcome that offended members of the dead woman’s family. The Moores, who of all the families had had the least contact with the media during the trials, grew even more private after them. Their main contact with the public was through a Web site, midsouthjustice.org, that had been created by a friend. The site contained a memorial for Michael, Christopher, and Stevie, which it called “the real West Memphis Three.” It expressed confidence in the police work that had been done and in the juries’ verdicts, and criticized those who were calling for a review of the case.
338. Acting on a tip, police had obtained permission to search the Byerses’ house. There they found three Oriental rugs, which were among the items that had been reported stolen. An officer noted that “Mrs. Byers told us that she had purchased them from a flea market, but she couldn’t remember when, where or produce any receipts.” Other items stolen from the house were recovered from pawnshops in the area.
339. Accepting the plea was Sharp County circuit judge Harold Erwin. After the hearing, the Byerses’ attorney, Larry Kissee, told reporters that he would be filing a civil suit on their behalf against the West Memphis Police Department, for the department’s failure to launch a search for the missing boys until the morning after they disappeared. The lawsuit was not filed.
340. The incident occurred in the town of Hardy, Arkansas. Hardy police chief Ernie Rose reported that Byers had goaded a boy who had been riding with him in his car to fight another boy, who had reportedly hollered a taunt at Byers’s passenger. According to other teenagers who witnessed the fight, Byers had stopped his car, gotten out, and advised his rider, “Take it over in the shade and settle it like a man.” Byers reportedly told Hardy’s police chief, Ernie Rose, that as the fight ensued, he’d stood by his car with a .22 bolt-action rifle pointed at the ground in order to assure that the fight was “fair.” Byers acknowledged that he’d also instructed his passenger to get a pocketknife out of