Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [5]
Once begun, the gruesome search intensified. In quick succession the ditch yielded Michael’s Cub Scout cap and shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and the grim, forewarning sight of two more pairs of tennis shoes without laces. Reentering the water and resuming his search by hand, Ridge found more sticks stuck like pins into the muddy bottom. Twisted deliberately around them were other items of clothing. Before long, all the clothing listed on the three missing-person reports had been pulled out of the water, with the exception of a sock and two pairs of underpants. The detectives were especially intrigued by the trousers, two of which were inside out. Yet all three were zippered up and buttoned.
Ridge reentered the water farther downstream, and this time he felt what he had feared. Pulling against the mud’s suction, he released a second naked form.11As it rose eerily to the surface, the detective and officers on the banks could see that this body was also naked and bent backward like the first, and like the first, its thin arms and ankles had been tied together with shoelaces. This was the body of Stevie Branch. He too showed signs of having been beaten, and the left side of his face bore other savage marks. It was hard to tell—the wounds were so deep—but on top of everything else, it looked like Stevie’s face may have been bitten.
Minutes later, Ridge found the body of Christopher Byers. Like the others it was submerged facedown in the mud. He was also naked and tied in the same manner as the others, but when detectives rolled him over in the water, they were assaulted by another shock. Christopher’s scrotum was gone and his penis had been skinned. Only a thin flap of flesh remained where his genitals should have been, and the area around the castration had been savagely punctuated with deep stab wounds. By now it was 3P.M .
Detectives found the two bicycles thirty yards away, also underwater. At 3:20P.M ., nearly two hours after the first body was recovered, someone at the scene thought to call the county coroner. When the coroner arrived, he found all three of the bodies out of the water and lying on the bank.12He pronounced the boys dead at the scene, at approximately 4P.M .
What had begun as a search now became a murder investigation, with Gitchell still in charge. His officers photographed and videotaped the scene alongside the stream, where the three white bodies lay. By now, however, the bodies had been out of the water for so long that they were attracting flies and other insects. Gitchell ordered the stream sandbagged above where the bodies were found, and the section below it drained, in the hopes of recovering Christopher’s missing genitals, the missing underpants, and maybe a murder weapon or other evidence. Then he walked to the edge of the woods, where a large crowd had assembled. Terry Hobbs, Stevie Branch’s stepfather, was ducking under the yellow police tape as Gitchell approached. Gitchell stopped Hobbs and gently reported the news. Yes, the boys’ bodies had been found. And yes, it was clear that they had been murdered. Hobbs crumpled to the ground and cried. His wife, Pam Hobbs, Stevie’s mother, fainted.
Gitchell spoke briefly to reporters. Then he walked over to John Mark Byers, whose stepson Chris had been mutilated. Byers was leaning against a police car. As a photographer for theWest Memphis Evening Times aimed her camera and clicked the shutter, Gitchell held out a hand to Byers, as if to support or even embrace him. Byers, who stood almost a head taller than Gitchell, draped his arm over the detective’s shoulder. When a reporter approached, Byers shook his head in a gesture of bewilderment. He had searched