Episode 15: Review of Terry Hobbs memoirs

    In the preface to "Blood on Black," I wrote that one of the untold stories about the West Memphis 3 case worthy of a book treatment was "how the victims’ families were devastated first by the loss of the boys and then by a series of betrayals and accusations that still dog them over 20 years later."There already had been a book about Mark Byers, father of Chris Byers, by Greg Day, "Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis 3." The book was a sympathetic, balanced look at a troubled man, obviously deeply grieving the loss of his son, but it was not a book written from the heart.At long last, after many years of talk about his prospective book, the story of Terry Hobbs has finally been told."Boxful of Nightmares," which is Hobbs' story as told to his cousin, Vicky Edwards, is the straightforward, deeply felt testament of a man who, after many harrowing years living in the aftermath of the murder of stepson Stevie Branch, was blindsided by a string of high-profile accusations based on the flimsiest of evidence. Evidence doesn't get much thinner than a single hair that may or may not have been from Hobbs and is perfectly explainable as a secondary transfer of evidence.The hair evidence was found in the laces that bound Michael Moore when he was murdered by drowning in the ditch that also took the life of Stevie, and where the body of their friend, Christopher Byers, was also dumped in the late afternoon of May 5, 1993, in West Memphis, Ark. The bodies of the three boys, all 8-year-old second-graders, were found the next day after an extensive search.Eventually three local teens, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were arrested after Misskelley confessed to the crimes. The three were convicted of the murders in 1994 but eventually released in 2011 after pleading guilty in exchange for release for time served.The impetus for the plea deal came from a groundswell of public opinion after two documentaries on HBO misled the public into thinking the case had been mishandled by the police and the courts. Various rock stars and Hollywood celebrities took the "Free the West Memphis 3" cause to heart. Until 2007, the public was led to believe that the likeliest suspect was Mark Byers based not on evidence but mostly on his wild demeanor, which was largely an act for the benefit of the cameras paid for by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. A book, "Devil's Knot," by an Arkansas writer devoted much of its text to Byers' life while minimizing the deeply troubling records of the convicted killers. The name of Terry Hobbs appears just four times in the index, while a whole column of indexed references cite Mark Byers. Such was the state of the case in 2002, the date of the copyright.All that changed after defense investigators used deception to gather cigarette butts probably left by Terry Hobbs and found that his DNA could not be ruled out as a source for the crime scene hair, with about 1.5 percent of the public being possible sources.Suddenly the media bought into the idea that Hobbs was a viable suspect, despite the obvious flimsiness of the "evidence."Hobbs and David Jacoby were interviewed by the West Memphis Police Department on June 21, 2007, about their recollections of May 5 and 6, 1993. Both men admitted to having difficulty recalling the exact sequence of events from a stressful time some 14 years earlier, and their stories were not consistent on details. Still, Hobbs, and Jacoby, a friend of Hobbs, described a series of events that, combined with other documented facts, effectively gave Hobbs an alibi, if one was needed. In 2009, Jacoby gave another statement describing Hobbs searching extensively for his stepson that evening, often with Jacoby and with a number of contacts with Jacoby during the time the boys were believed to have been murdered.In an online letter to fans in November 2007, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines posted about her then-recent involvement in the