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By Root 534 0

Fogleman released more documents to the defense attorneys. Most of them showed how the police had been working to bolster their case as the two trials drew near. Among other activities, the records indicated that as recently as New Year’s Eve, Fogleman, Ridge, and Bray had met for yet another interview of Aaron Hutcheson. No transcript of that meeting was produced or supplied to the defense, but according to notes taken by Ridge, Aaron reiterated his statement that he had watched his friends being killed, though some of the details he now offered differed again from prior accounts. When Ron Lax reviewed the material, he was surprised to see that the police and Fogleman were still trying to wrest a coherent statement from the child. But Lax was dumbfounded by two other reports contained in the latest batch of discovery materials. These were release forms signed by Dana Moore and John Mark Byers—forms dated December 20, 1993, granting the West Memphis police, along with staff from the Arkansas crime lab, permission to search their houses. No explanation accompanied the forms, but they raised a disturbing question for Lax. Why, on the very eve of Jessie’s trial, had the police suddenly decided to search two of the victims’ homes? What could they have been looking for, more than eight months after the murders—and nearly seven months after the arrests?

“Additional Discovery”

A possible explanation—or a hint of one—came in a phone call two days later. By then, Jessie’s jury had been seated. Damien’s lawyer Val Price telephoned Lax at home to report that Fogleman had just released more records from the West Memphis police. These last-minute records concerned a knife that the police said they’d received eleven days earlier, on January 8, 1994. Lax immediately made a note of what Price related in the call. “The knife had been Federal Expressed,” Lax wrote, “but the package had been discarded. The knife was eight and three-fourth inches in length and was sent to the Arkansas crime lab for analysis. The results reflect there was blood on the knife which was consistent with the blood of Chris Byers. The results also stated this blood was consistent with eight percent of the population. The knife was given exhibit number E178.”

With Jessie on trial for his life, his attorneys, Stidham and Crow, were focused on events in the courtroom. But now the remarkable news of the FedExed knife became a serious distraction. As the lawyers waded into the trial, Lax worked outside of court, trying to learn what he could about the mysterious knife. Bit by bit, he managed to find out that it had been sent to Gitchell by the New York filmmakers Sinofsky and Berlinger. The two later explained how the knife had come into their possession—and why they’d sent it to the West Memphis police. It was a remarkable tale.

“A few days before Christmas,” they wrote,

Mark Byers gave a member of our crew a used hunting knife as a gift. We later discovered that the knife appeared to have traces of blood on it. Naturally, we were shocked and found ourselves in an extremely difficult situation. We felt it was strange that Mr. Byers had given us a used knife that seemed to have blood on it. However, it could have easily been an innocent gesture of friendship, so we did not want to carelessly hand it over to police, creating controversy for Mr. Byers, particularly in the local press.

On the other hand, since the investigation had yet to recover a definitive murder weapon, and since it was Byers’ stepson who had been castrated with a knife, we had no way of knowing if the knife was involved in the murders. We had to weigh our responsibility as journalists against our moral and civic responsibilities. We didn’t want it to create the false impression that we were manipulating the outcome of our film, nor did we want an innocent man to be falsely accused. And, on a practical level, we feared that the tremendous access and trust that people had placed in us would be destroyed if we turned over the knife—the press might play it up, and if the knife did not play a role