Glad to see these guys are getting out. We studied this in the police academy when it was going down… !7 yrs in law enforcement and this case… the Nicarico case and the Brown’s chicken murders… just a real black eye for law enforcement.
The investigators and prosecutors in this case embarrassed themselves. They either had no ability to conduct a thorough investigation or didn’t have the will… or lack of ego to ask for help. Essentially after they fucked up the crime scene to such an extent and pulled off that scam of a inteview of the kid… Nothing any of them really could bring forth today would have any credibility.
I hope the guys can get what they need… and I truly hope professionals will teach this case and not sweep it under the rug… We really need to make sure ignorant ass shit like this doesn’t occur again…
I know! A lawyer was on tv and said they were in shock when they saw what an iPhone could do. They were so poor as kids they probably never ate at a place betterr than fast food.
Yeah he acted weird the night of the murders. He lied about seeing the boys that night. He didn’t tell his wife who was at work what was going on till hours later. His wife, now ex, has publicly accused him, as has another parent of a victim.
Weird thing to wonder, but… in accounts of people being liberated from concentration camps and PoW camps where starvation diets were the norm (if that) the inmates often got violently ill when they ate “real food” again, even if they were moderate. These guys weren’t on starvation diets but they’ve eaten notoriously horrible food for 18 years- I wonder if they’ll be able to handle it.
Byers has a website- johnmarkbyers.com- but last I checked there wasn’t an update.
West Memphis has a population of 27,000, is on a major highway and has a large Greyhound race track. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of people, but West Memphis is hardly a small town in Arkansas. It is an unmitigated hellhole though.
A friend of mine served 18 years in prison and was released in 2008. He said it took him 2 years to feel comfortable out in the real world. The things that blew his mind were that practically every house had a computer, everything about the internet, cell phones, CGI in movies (he was able to watch TV, but only a small black & white one), I-pods and that everything and everyone seemed louder and faster. It was almost humourous watching him use a cell phone for the first time, using it more like a walkie talkie and shouting into it.
I’m sure these 3 guys are going to be hermits for a few months, especially the one who was in solitary. Of the quick clip I saw of them being released, they looked completely stunned and overwhelmed.
And a lot of them were stepparents looking for any excuse to get their stepchildren out of the house. He’s acting like a teenager, so he must be possessed by Satan. Send him to a mental hospital, foster home, whatever it takes. And you kind of wonder, if there was a Satan and he wanted to take over the world, why would he choose teenagers as his agents?
The Crime Library at TruTV has the best concise (well, best concise multipage) introduction to it. The two Paradise Lost documentaries and Mara Leveritt’s book Devil’s Knot (which seems to be selling extremely well today for a book that’s almost a decade old) are the best sources if you’re interested enough in the case.
Isn’t Terry Hobbs also the guy who had all of his teeth pulled right before his dental records were going to be compared to bite marks on one of the victims? If I’m wrong about that, who was that? Was that this case?
