Broader DNA and genetic testing to be requested in West Memphis Three case

Pam Hobbs had one more motherly task to perform for her 8-year-old son, Stevie Branch. He along with his two friends, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, were murdered May 5, 1993, in West Memphis. His lifeless body was at the funeral home, but he still needed her.

He needed socks. With tears in her eyes, Pam Hobbs said she slipped them onto her only boy. At that moment, she had no clue as to who ended her son’s life.

Advanced DNA testing may finally reveal who took Stevie’s, Christopher’s and Michael’s lives.

Damien Echols’ defense team member Lonnie Soury told Talk Business & Politics on Monday (May 6) that they are in the process of requesting that touch DNA testing be performed on the ligatures that bound the three boys when their nude bodies were discovered in a drainage ditch, a day after they vanished from their neighborhood.

Echols may also ask that other evidence in the case that has already been tested, such as the hairs that were DNA tested in 2007, be retested or re-analyzed using modern methods. An unknown allele that was found on one of the victims may also be a candidate for genetic genealogy testing, he added.

The requests will be made in the coming weeks, and the team is hopeful it will have results by this summer. A request will also be made that Prosecutor Sonia Fonticiella’s office “secure” the evidence so it cannot be manipulated or tainted prior to the testing, Soury said.

Echols will have to pay for the testing, and the team is trying to raise money, Soury said. How much it will cost can’t be determined until it’s known what can and will be tested.

Echols, along with two co-defendants, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were convicted in 1994 of killing the boys. They remained incarcerated until 2011 when they agreed to Alford pleas. The three men, known as “The West Memphis Three” have maintained their innocence.

PROSECUTOR CHANGE
No forensic evidence collected or tested in the case has ever been linked to the convicted. The request for new DNA testing comes after the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled last month that Echols had a right to request the testing after a lower court dismissed his request. Echols first asked for M-Vac touch DNA testing in March of 2020.

Prosecutor Scott Ellington agreed to the testing at the time, but then was elected as judge during a special election. New Prosecutor Keith Crestman fought the testing and told Talk Business & Politics in April of 2021 he would ask a judge to destroy the evidence. He said at the time it was typical for evidence to be destroyed in cases like this. Later, there was speculation the evidence was lost or destroyed in a fire, but Echols attorneys were able to locate all of it in the case in the West Memphis Police Department’s evidence room.

M-Vac President Jared Bradley told Talk Business & Politics the ligatures would be a good place to test for DNA. Theoretically the last people to have touched the shoelaces that bound the boys would have been the victims and the killer or killers. Shoelaces are rough and pull a lot of skin cells, he said. The knots could have protected the possible DNA from contamination or from being washed away by the water in the ditch, he added.

“If there’s still DNA on those ligatures, M-Vac will find it,” he said.

CASE HISTORY, MISSKELLEY TESTIMONY
Moore, Branch, and Byers were riding their bikes in the late afternoon in their West Memphis neighborhood when they vanished. Their bodies were found in a wooded area, dubbed Robin Hood Hills, not far from their homes the next day after a searcher noticed a shoe floating in the drainage creek that bifurcates the wooded area.

Police and prosecutors developed a theory early in the investigation that the boys were killed in a Satanic or occult ceremony. Echols was soon identified as a suspect based on his religious, music, and literature preferences.

Misskelley gave a what would be a confusing confession on June 3, 1994, that implicated himself, Echols and Baldwin. In his confession, he misidentified the timing of the attacks, said the boys were bound with ropes, not shoelaces, choked, and he said the two of the boys were sodomized. All of those details were inaccurate.

Misskelley gave several more confessions afterward that were more accurate, but stated in all of them the boys were sexually assaulted. His then attorney, Dan Stidham, has said Misskelley’s later confessions were more accurate because he sat through his murder trial and learned more about the case.

Soon after the confessions, Misskelley who has a low IQ and reportedly suffers from chronic learning disabilities, recanted his confessions and refused to testify against his cohorts at their trial.

POST-MORTEM ANALYSIS
State Medical Examiners Dr. Frank Perretti and Dr. William Sturner confirmed during the defendant’s post-conviction relief hearings in 2009 that no semen was recovered from the victims or their clothing. Both testified that there was no anal bruising or tearing and it would be a physical impossibility for the boys to be sexually assaulted in that manner without leaving physical evidence.

Famed forensic pathologists Dr. Werner Spitz, Dr. Michael Baden, Dr. Richard Souviron and Dr. Janice Ophoven testified that there was no evidence of a sexual assault, and there would be evidence if it occurred.

Investigators honed in on one particular injury to Byers. His genitals were “degloved” or in layman’s terms the skin was removed. Prosecutors argued that a Rambo-style knife recovered from a lake behind Baldwin’s house was used to inflict this injury.

Peretti testified it would be difficult for a skilled surgeon with a scalpel to perform that type procedure on a living person in those conditions. All four defense forensic pathologists testified that the injury was caused by animal predation, post-mortem. Spitz and Baden also noted that there were no knife cuts or stab wounds to the victims – an oddity since prosecutors claimed a knife was involved.

One hair found in the ligature that bound Moore was a likely genetic match for Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, and another hair found was a partial match to his alibi witness, David Jacoby, according to court documents. Hobbs has previously said the hair is probably his, but it arrived at the crime scene through secondary hair transfer, a notion supported by law enforcement. Hobbs has denied involvement as has Jacoby.

Jacoby also signed a sworn affidavit stating he was not with Hobbs when the boys vanished. Hobbs told Talk Business & Politics in 2022 he didn’t support DNA testing of the ligatures and he hoped a judge would order all the evidence destroyed in the case. His reasoning was that he was tired of dealing with the “WM3 and their supporters.”

“I hope a judge does the right thing and orders the evidence destroyed,” he said during an episode of the podcast “Mysterious Circumstances” that same year. In later social media posts, he said he now wants all the evidence in the case tested, not just the ligatures.

‘TEST ALL THE EVIDENCE’
Byers’ parents, John Mark and Melissa Byers, have both passed away. Before John Mark Byers passed away in 2020, he told Talk Business & Politics he believed the three men were innocent. The boy’s uncle, George Byers, attended the court hearing in June 2022 when Judge Tonya Alexander denied the new DNA testing request.

“I’m 100% for testing. Test it all. This is what my brother, Mark, wanted and it’s what I want. Any time Mark was interviewed about the case, he emphasized getting justice for his son and his son’s friends, as well as the three who were wrongfully convicted. The police and prosecutors convinced Mark that the three were guilty,” George Byers said. “When he realized they were innocent and whoever murdered Christopher was still free, he got very emotional. He made it his mission to find the truth. I want the truth. We all want the truth. I want closure for all the family members and the only way that will happen is to find out who really killed the boys. Let’s get everybody on board and test all the evidence.”

George Byers said Misskelley and Baldwin are not parties in this round of litigation, and he hopes Echols and his legal team will bring them into the fold. He said he wants all the evidence tested if possible. It’s not certain if the testing will glean usable results, he conceded. But, the family is convinced of one thing.

“The Byers family, like many others in the public, has concluded that the West Memphis Three are innocent and that the true killer(s) remain at large,” he said.