Echols to ask for expanded DNA testing in West Memphis Three case

No firm dates have been set for DNA testing evidence in the West Memphis Three case, but Damien Echols and his legal team plan to ask for items to be tested, Echols defense team member Lonnie Soury told Talk Business & Politics.

Echols had stated on social media that he’d hoped the testing would begin in September and that it would be completed by the end of the year, but that timeline is uncertain. Originally, Echols had asked that the ligatures that bound the three, 8-year-old victims in the case – Michael Moore, Christopher Byers and Stevie Branch – be touch DNA tested.

The defense team is now requesting that hairs and other evidence be vetted for potential testing as well. How much this testing will cost has not been released. The team hopes to use MVac technology to test the evidence.

“We have been working with the legal teams and the DNA experts to identify the best strategy for moving forward with testing. We are looking at hair samples and ligatures among other evidence. It is fairly complicated as we will be using MVac and other techniques,” Soury said.

Earlier this year, Echols said he might seek to test 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.

Moore, Byers, and Branch were riding their bikes in their West Memphis neighborhood on May 5, 1993 when they vanished. Their nude, hog-tied bodies were found in a drainage ditch in a wooded area not far from their homes the next day. Police and prosecutors developed an unproven theory that the boys were killed in a Satantic or occult ceremony.

Echols, along with two co-defendants, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were convicted in 1994 of killing the boys. Misskelley gave several error-riddled confessions that led to the arrests and subsequent incarcerations.

He said the boys were tied with ropes when they were tied with their own shoelaces. He said the attack happened in the morning when the boys were verifiably in school. Misskelley, who suffers from a low IQ and learning disabilities, told investigators that two of the boys were sexually assaulted.

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 of 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.

Misskelley recanted those confessions and refused to testify against his cohorts even though he was offered a reduced sentence. They remained incarcerated until 2011 when they agreed to Alford pleas. The three men, known as “The West Memphis Three” have maintained their innocence.

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 2020.