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his car and fight with it, holding it closed in his fist. The boy reported to Chief Rose that, when he’d closed his hand around the knife, Byers had told him, “That’s the way to do it.” Witnesses said they wanted to stop the fight, but that anytime they moved to do so, Byers had warned them to “stay put.” A highway department employee working nearby did rush to intervene. He told Rose that by the time he arrived at the site, the fight was over and Byers and his friend were leaving. The highway worker said Byers had told him, “Some smart-ass kid got his ass kicked. He got what he deserved.” When Rose arrived at the scene, he found one boy who needed to be taken to a hospital. The remaining boys offered a description of the man who’d insisted on the fight. They described him as “dirty, with a blond beard and sunglasses, 230 to 250 pounds, wearing ‘like a flag shirt’ with blue jeans, thirty-five to forty years old, with brownish black hair.” Rose later recalled that when he telephoned police in Cherokee Village and read them the description, “they told me who I was looking for.”

341. According to an affidavit filed by the neighbors, John and Donna Kingsbury, Melissa Byers said “that we had put them in a hole and they would put us in a hole we wouldn’t get out of.” The statement said that the Kingsburys’ children were afraid of the Byerses and that Melissa had warned the parents, “You can’t watch your family twenty-four hours a day.” Much of the reporting about the Byerses’ troubles in Cherokee Village was done by Angelia Roberts, of the local paper, theNews. John Kingsbury told Roberts that there were bullet holes in the side of his house. “I cannot prove how they got there,” he said, “but they are there.” Donna Kingsbury added, “They say they are victims, but we are victims too. No friends of our children are allowed to come to our house because of all the trouble we’ve had.”

342. Byers grew up in the town of Marked Tree, Arkansas. TheArkansas Times reporter who uncovered the story of the early knife attack was this author. Her source was former Poinsett County sheriff’s deputy C. L. Carter. When questioned about the attack on Byers’s parents, Carter recalled, “Mark had a knife after them. He wanted them to give him money to buy dope with.” The former deputy said he cornered Mark in a closet and ordered him to throw down the knife. Carter said he vividly recalled that, as he was putting handcuffs on Byers, the teenager looked at him and vowed, “I’ll cut your throat.”

343. Val Price declined to be interviewed for this book, citing Damien’s pending appeals.

344. “The court feels in this society that a dispute under the shade tree is not necessary,” Judge Kevin King told Byers, “and that, as an adult, you could have stopped the altercation instead of encouraging it.”

345. Melissa was taken to Eastern Ozarks Regional Hospital. When staff there saw her condition they notified Sonny Powell, the sheriff of Sharp County.

346. Arkansas State Police investigator Stan Witt headed the investigation.

347. The list included alprazolam, 1 mg.; lithium capsules, 300 mg.; Paxil tablets, 30.mg.; Lithonate capsules, 300 mg.; Desyrel, 150 mg.; and Paxil, 20 mg., plus Midol and other nonprescription medications.

348. Police reports identified the neighbor as Norm Metz.

349. Angelia Roberts, the reporter from the localNews, who’d interviewed the Byerses about their problems, eulogized Melissa, after a fashion. “When I first heard that Melissa Byers was dead,” she wrote, “sadly, I was not surprised. From my first encounter with John Mark and Melissa Byers, it seemed that trouble wasn’t even their middle name, but came first, with a capital T.” She noted that Christopher was dead, that now Melissa was dead, and that “for John Mark Byers, there will always be a perpetual dark cloud hanging over his head because, for many, there are still too many unanswered questions that began during the investigation of the West Memphis killings.”

350. Investigator Stan Witt reported being advised “that the autopsy report could not be completed until the