Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [76]
The sudden appearance of a knife—one owned by John Mark Byers and bearing traces of blood that was consistent with Christopher’s—was the most significant development in the case since Jessie Misskelley’s contorted confession. Its connection to people related to the crime was clear. Unlike the knife police said they’d taken from the lake, which they claimed linked two of the defendants to the murders, this knife had indisputably belonged to the father of one of the victims. And blood on it was consistent with the blood of his murdered stepson.
For the defense attorneys and Lax, the timing of the knife’s appearance could hardly have been worse. The knife cast serious suspicion on Byers. But until now, no one on the defense had ever focused on him as a suspect. That was partly because of the size and condition of what they called “the discovery mess.” It was partly because, despite Fogleman’s assurances to Judge Burnett that “everything” would be turned over to the defense by the end of August, notes of the interview detectives had conducted on May 19 with Byers had not been released until the middle of November. And it was partly because other records, such as those concerning Byers’s activities as a drug informant and his conviction for threatening to kill his ex-wife, had never been released at all. Now, faced with the startling appearance of the bloodstained knife, Lax and the defense lawyers felt handicapped by all they did not know about the stepfather of the castrated victim.
For Stidham and Crow, who were already deep into Jessie’s trial, the situation was especially acute. They had to decide whether to introduce the knife, in an attempt to suggest that there was reasonable doubt that Jessie was the killer. At the time, the defense attorneys did not even have a clear idea about how the police had reacted to the knife’s appearance. Only gradually, and amid the pressures of the trial, were they able to fill in some critical details.
According to the filmmakers, Byers had presented the knife to a member of their crew six days before Christmas, on December 19,1993.200The next day, December 20, police had conducted the search of Byers’s house and of the Moores’ house, across the street. It looked to Lax as if the two events were probably related. His suspicion was strengthened when he spoke with Sinofsky and Berlinger, who told him, as he wrote, that they had “spoken with Fogleman and Gitchell in December 1993…and apparently provided them with details of the knife.”201No record of that discussion was supplied by the West Memphis police. The knife’s existence was not reported to the defense attorneys until almost a full month later—after Jessie’s trial had already started. And the FedEx packaging in which the knife had been sent, which would have confirmed the date, had reportedly been discarded.
Gitchell said the knife was received on January 8 and that he sent it out the same day to a North Carolina laboratory for testing.202Gitchell sent a memo with the knife noting that it had what might be blood and another unknown substance in the fold. (It would later be learned that the other substance was a red fiber.) Gitchell asked that the lab test the knife and compare any results with DNA from the victims. The lab had returned its results just as Jessie’s trial was beginning. That’s when Fogleman had informed the defense attorneys about the knife’s existence—and that the blood on it was consistent with that of Christopher Byers.
Questioning Byers
Jessie’s lawyers wanted Byers questioned immediately—and by someone other than Inspector Gary Gitchell. But the West Memphis police were reticent. “State police CID [Criminal Investigation Division] officers were present,” Stidham later