Murder and Mimosas Podcast
A true crime podcast with a focus on lesser known crimes and the background of those who commit these heinous acts. Each case is told with a bit of southern sass, but with tons of in depth research and respect for those lost. Join this mom and daughter duo as they sip their mimosas while diving into tragic cases. New episodes every Saturday, just in time for brunch (and a mimosa of your own)!
Murder and Mimosas Podcast
Blood Stains and Broken Hearts in Arkansas
Experience the unsettling case of the West Memphis Three like never before. What could a single black tennis shoe found floating in a ditch reveal about a harrowing 1993 mystery? This episode of Murder and Mimosas takes you straight to the heart of West Memphis, Arkansas, on May 5th, where the disappearance of three young boys, Michael Moore, Stevie Branch, and Chris Byers, sets off a haunting chain of events. As darkness falls and families report the boys missing, the early search efforts are thwarted, only for a juvenile officer to make a chilling discovery the next day. Tune in as we unravel the initial investigation and dive into the troubling mishandling of evidence that only deepened the tragedy.
We'll also uncover more disturbing details, such as the heart-wrenching task faced by police notifying the bereaved families and the significant yet puzzling tip about a disoriented, blood-covered man seen at a Bojangles restaurant the night the boys vanished. Our discussion isn't just about piecing together facts; it's about understanding the profound impact of the early investigative missteps and the emotional toll on the community. Stay engaged for upcoming episodes where a special guest will bring previously unheard insights to light, offering a fresh perspective on this decades-old mystery.
Sources:
Paradise Lost Documentaries
The Devil's Knot by Mara Leveritt
Dark Spell by Mara Leveritt and Jason Baldwin
Life After Death by Damien Echols
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DarkCast Network. Welcome to the dark side of podcasting.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Murder and Mimosas a true crime podcast brought to you by a mother and daughter duo.
Speaker 2:Bringing you murder stories with a mimosa in hand. With a mimosa in hand, Murder Mimosas is a true crime podcast, meaning we talk about adult matters such as murder, sexual assaults and other horrendous crimes. Listener discretion is advised. We do tell our stories with the victims and the victims families in mind. However, some information is more verifiable than others. However, you can find all of our information linked in the show notes. Welcome to Murder and Mimosas. I'm Danica and I'm Shannon.
Speaker 2:We have actually in the past covered the West Memphis Three. If you've been around for a while, you know that it was our first episodes. You know that it was our first episodes. However, we are redoing them for A better audio quality and B, because in episodes two and three of this series we will have a special guest coming on to talk to us about some behind the scenes that we didn't have information on before. But let's go ahead and just start from the beginning.
Speaker 2:To set the scene, we're looking at early May of 1993, specifically May 5th, when there were three eight-year-old boys from West Memphis, Arkansas. For those that are unfamiliar, that's roughly two hours east of Little Rock, Arkansas, and about 15 minutes west of Memphis, Tennessee. We're going to start off by focusing on Michael Moore, Stevie Branch and Chris Byers. The three are all friends and attend Weaver Elementary together. It's a fairly small town so they all live pretty close to each other. After school, Michael Moore swings by Stevie Branch's house to see if he can come out and ride bikes with him. At first Stevie's mom, Pamela Hobbs, said no, but the boys begged and so she relented with one rule that Stevie needed to be back home by 4 30. The boys are excited and they head out and along the way they pick up their friend Chris Byers, and they all go ride bikes together. Now, at 4.30, Stevie isn't home, but his mother is not super concerned.
Speaker 3:I can understand that wouldn't be alarming if he isn't home right on time. Unless he has a watch, he probably doesn't even know exactly what time it is. I mean back in that time. You came in when the sun went down.
Speaker 2:Right, and in May the sun's probably not even close to going down yet. Now, around five o'clock, Pamela has to leave for work, so Terry Hobbs, which is Pamela's husband and Stevie's stepdad, drives her to work and says that he's going to go look for Stevie while she's at work. At 8 pm the first call was made from Chris Byers, home to the police. His stepfather, john Michael Byers, and his mother, melissa Byers, had notified the police that Chris was missing. Of course we were just talking about that. They should normally come home when the sun's gone down. By eight o'clock he should have been home, and at 9.24 pm Michael Moore's parents have also called the police to their home to report Michael missing. Now, sometime between the 8 pm call and the 9.24 pm call, terry and Pamela Hobbs, which again are Stevie's stepfather and mother, call the police from Pamela's job to report that Stevie too was missing, it seems super odd to me that they're doing this from her work rather than home.
Speaker 3:I mean, I know he's supposed to be out searching for Stevie.
Speaker 2:Right. I don't really know why they made that decision, but the police do come out to do missing persons reports for all three boys, but of course we've talked about already it's dark, so the police don't really search. I mean, they can't see a whole lot. The parents, though, do go out for a short time, you know, hollering the boys' names, hoping maybe like the boys just got stuck somewhere and searched for a bit, but of course they can't see a whole lot and so they don't search for a very long time. By mid-morning on the following day, may 6th, the police, search and rescue civilians and even a helicopter were in full force searching high and low for these three missing second graders.
Speaker 2:However, special attention was given to the wooded area near the three boys' homes. This area is often referred to by locals as Robin Hood Hills. Within Robin Hood Hills is a very large ditch that was created. Just for a visual, it's about 10 miles long, it's fairly wide, and as for the depth, that kind of varies depending on how much rain or water is in there, but it was created with the purpose to direct rainwater into the Mississippi. Now, before noon, the search and rescue put a john boat into this super murky water and they pulled the length of the ditch but found nothing. Shannon, for those that may not know, can you give like a brief description of a john boat?
Speaker 3:Sure, so that's like an aluminum fishing top boat that have either a flat bottom or almost flat bottom.
Speaker 2:So again we're around noon. Many have moved on from the Robin Hills area because nothing's been found, so they've decided to go on and search other areas. However, one juvenile officer, steve Jones, continued his search in the woods near the Blue Beacon truck wash and again for a visual as to where this is located, the way this is kind of set up, you have like the neighborhood. Then you have this wooded area which is Robin Hood Hills. Right on the other side of that is the Blue Beacon Truck Wash and it's right up against the highway and we will have some photos on our social media so that you can see this map and understand that layout a bit better.
Speaker 2:At about 1.30 pm Steve Jones sees a black tennis shoe floating atop this muddy water. That's in this ditch, which is really odd because A why was there just a shoe floating? But a few other things he notes is that there's no shoelaces in the shoe and he could tell from the size that it's pretty clearly a child's shoe. It's small. Officer jones radios us in and almost instantly police like swarm the area where he's located, because nothing else has been found. Like this is the first clue they've gotten all day. So sergeant allen decides to enter the water. And again, I keep saying to set the scene, but there's a lot happening and there's a lot of different like parts of this that you need to know for it to completely make sense. So again to set the scene as he's going into this ditch, uh, the bottom of it is super thick mud and it kind of like sucks you in, almost like quicksand. So as sergeant allen is like wading through the ditch, he's kind of jerking his foot up out of the mud every step he takes. So this is not a quick like wade through the mud process or wade through the water process, like it's taking some physical exertion to walk through here.
Speaker 2:Despite that, fairly quickly after entering, the body of Michael Moore floats to the surface. As if this isn't devastating enough, the state of the body was heartbreaking, to say the least. This poor eight-year-old child had his left wrist tied with shoelaces behind his back to his left ankle and his right wrist again with shoelaces tied behind his back to his right ankle, sort of in a hogtied fashion. He was completely nude and there was some damage seen on his head. So clearly it was a brutal scene and a horrifying discovery for everyone who was there.
Speaker 2:But the officers knew that where there was one of the missing children, there were likely the other two fairly close by. So they have work to do despite the scene. So detective ridge volunteers for this really daunting task of going in and going through the water, much like sergeant allen had been doing. He wades into the water and he goes a step further. He's not just wading through the water, he's kind of like on his almost on his stomach. He's using his hands to feel around on the floor of this ditch for the other two bodies. When doing this, he quickly hits something, but it isn't a body.
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Speaker 2:What Ridge found first, where multiple sticks stabbed into the mud-caked ground under the water, which, of course, is really odd, because that's not how sticks would naturally be in the water. They wouldn't naturally jam themselves straight up into the mud. So he pulls them out and around each stick is clothing that has been deliberately wrapped around the sticks and then jammed into the ground, I'm assuming that was probably to hide the clothes and keep them from floating to the surface would be my guess, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:That would be. That was kind of my assumption as well, as I was researching this and I came across that part. So they decide to pull up the sticks with the clothing. They take into account everything they have and they find everything listed in the sticks with the clothing.
Speaker 3:They take into account everything they have and they find everything listed in the missing person's reports from their parents except for one sock and two pair of underwear and just for those that might be wondering because we don't really touch on this again the underwear or the long sock have never been recovered.
Speaker 2:So Ridge continues further down the ditch until he reached another poor boy's body. Now this body was kind of suctioned into the mud. You know we've talked about how it was very thick, it was hard to get through. It kind of pulled the body down and suctioned it down. So they had to like pull it loose a little bit and it was Stevie Branch's body that floated to the surface. He was tied up in the same manner as michael moore and he had significant damage to the left side of his face and also what seemed to resemble bite marks.
Speaker 2:Now, a bit further along ridge found chris byers body face down in the which again he has to like tug his body loose. And when he floats to the surface and was removed from the water there was like shock and horror on the faces of the officers. He had some of the most savage of all the injuries. Chris Byers scrotum and most of his penis were gone. All the injuries Chris Byers scrotum and most of his penis were gone. All that remained was a bit of the skin of the penis and around that area there were several brutal injuries.
Speaker 3:And real quick here, danica. I just want to mention the cause of death, because they did not all have the same cause of death. Stevie and Michael were both drowned. Andris was his.
Speaker 2:Cause of death was due to severe injuries so ridge continued his search a bit further and he found two bikes the boys had been riding. I do want to point out that, yes, there were three boys and only two bikes. There's was some confusion about that at some point. But chris byers actually started off on a skateboard, which he left by the road in front of his house, and he ended up riding on the bike with one of the boys, and that is where that confusion comes from.
Speaker 3:So we're going to take a quick break refill those mimosas and we'll be right back Refill those mimosas and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Did you know one of the few things that Nostradamus correctly predicted was his own death? Did you know that only one professional baseball player has been killed while playing the game? What about the fact that one of the most poignant last words ever were spoken by a parrot? Each week, on Famous Last Words, we'll examine some of the final thoughts of some of the most fascinating people in history, from presidents to murderesses, from business innovators to teen pop icons. That's Famous Last Words, part of the Dark Cast Network, available right now wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're back just to set the scene.
Speaker 3:It's gonna be my new catchphrase no joke, you've said that a lot yeah sorry, but again, just a recap would maybe be better.
Speaker 2:They just discovered the bodies of the three boys. At 3 30 pm they call the coroner and he arrives at 4 pm to pronounce the boys dead and so, during this time, um all these multiple hours, where are the boys bodies? So they actually left the boys on the bank in the heat, which meant it would create issues for a timeline, um as far as the time of death. Later, as they're speeding up the decomposition process and they do like lay a white sheet over them, but for a smart.
Speaker 3:That's going to help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for those that aren't super familiar with Arkansas weather May in Arkansas is fairly warm, like it's not cold, and so they are in the elements. They're being exposed to heat. They have different temperatures now than the water that they were pulled out of. Any type of entomology is kind of out the window, because the bugs you find in the water are not the same bugs you necessarily find outside of the water. So that's a whole thing that we will come back to, and despite that, there are photographs and videos that are taken of this crime scene. If anybody's ever seen Paradise Lost, then at the beginning of that you see some of that video and how graphic it is. Gary Gitchell is now the man who is in charge of solving a triple homicide of three innocent eight-year-old boys. He decides that they should sandbag the ditch in hopes that they could maybe find more evidence.
Speaker 3:Which is exactly what it sounds like. They actually take sandbags on each side and create something akin to a dam to keep the water out bags on each side and create something akin to a dam to keep the water out.
Speaker 2:He's hoping to find anything at this point, like the murder weapon, the missing few articles of clothing or Chris Byers' genitals, which I can't even imagine hoping to find that, but obviously that would be evidence in this case. Now, despite his idea of sandbagging the ditch, nothing further was found in the ditch, nor was there really a whole lot of blood found around the ditch, like on the bank.
Speaker 3:That is kind of odd considering the brutality of the crime and the injuries the boys sustained, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. When they took Luminol out later, the only place they found it to, you know, show up was in the area that the boys' bodies had been left on the bank, which for some reason surprised them. But and so let's talk about, like, the hardest part of this case from the start Right, and it's going to be notifying these families that their young son's bodies had been found. Going to be notifying these families that the young son's bodies had been found. So Gary starts with Pam Hobbs because she's standing at the crime scene tape when he walks up, so she's just the first to be notified. When he tells Stevie's mom, she faints.
Speaker 3:That, honestly, would probably be my reaction too, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:Then he goes to John Michael Byers, which is Chris's stepfather, and there is some controversy on if Gitchell embraced him in like a hug after telling him or if he was trying to stabilize him to keep him upright and it looked like a hug. I don't know. John Michael Byers is a pretty big dude so it would take probably most of your like body weight to keep him upright. But even if they hugged him, I don't really know why that would be an issue like he's going through something traumatic. And then Melissa Moore, which is Michael's mom. She didn't want to know any of the details on what happened to the boys because she didn't feel like she could personally handle it and I totally understand that mindset.
Speaker 3:It would be so hard to hear the awful details of what happened to your baby.
Speaker 2:Especially when it's this gruesome and just awful. So of course, immediately the West Memphis police begin their investigation. Gitchell and his team are pretty much running blind, as they just found the boys but they don't have any real evidence to point to a perpetrator. But they don't have any real evidence to point to a perpetrator. They have, of course, sent everything off to the crime lab to be analyzed. They're waiting on autopsy reports and this all takes time to come back. So they're essentially blindfolded going into this and don't really have a starting point as far as suspects, because the same questions running through everybody's mind who would want to kill these three little boys?
Speaker 2:There are quite a few tips that come in because a reward is announced of $3,500. Of course, with money on the line, tons of people are calling to provide tips. Some of them are just your run of the mill. We hear about them a lot when there is reward money. They're wild. They have nothing to do with anything. They're just hoping, you know, to throw something in at Styx and they get the money somehow. But some of them are important and the police do investigate them. One important tip came in about a strange occurrence that happened the night the boys disappeared at Bojangles.
Speaker 3:And for those of you that may not be familiar, Bojangles is a fast food chicken restaurant.
Speaker 2:Now, the night the boys went missing, employees at Bojangles had called the police because a black male entered the restaurant fairly disoriented and covered in blood, which is a major red flag. He proceeds quickly to the women's restroom, where not only did he stay a bit, but he saturates the place with like mud and blood. So they've contacted the police. And the police do arrive at Bojangles, but they don't even enter the establishment. They actually drove up to the drive-thru and took the report that way, and then, as they're finishing up taking this report, report that way. And then, as they're finishing up taking this report, they claim to have gotten another call and left, never at any point stepping foot into the restaurant, much less the women's bathroom.
Speaker 3:So were they taking a police report or ordering dinner. I just cannot believe they would do this. This just makes absolutely no sense to me.
Speaker 2:When I heard this Well, obviously no blood samples were taken that night, but the manager does collect the sunglasses that the man left on the back of the toilet and a few days later some police do come inside Bonejangles and compensate the glasses as well as take some samples, some blood scrapings. However, they were promptly lost. Another tip that comes in from a boy who went to school with the three that were killed and his name is aaron hutchinson and he told the police that on the same day that the boys were killed, that he saw michael moore talking to a black male in a maroon car and the man supposedly was telling Michael that Michael's mother had asked him, asked the man, to come pick him up from school and take him home, and that supposedly Michael got into this man's car, which this is crazy to me because they live right by the school, so either this is all false or this man drove them like what right next door yeah, and michael's mom disputes this claim, saying that michael came right home.
Speaker 2:So it could be that this boy was scared, or maybe he saw something similar on tv and they're that young and impressionable and they're going through something this traumatic. It could be a lot of things. He may not have meant to throw the police in any type of you know wrong direction. He may have mentioned it to an adult his mom, whatever and they told him he had to tell the police. However, aaron will come up again later, so just keep his name in the back of your head. Anyway, off of those tips, there's another tip that comes in from a man named lg hollingsworth. He's a 17 year old boy who lives in town and he feels that a boy named damien eccles might be part of this murder and so does he have any reason to think that so he kind of just gut feeling.
Speaker 2:I guess he doesn't have anything. He just thinks Damien's odd. He, damien, dresses in all black. He's a little bit of an outcast. Lg is the cousin of the girl that Damien is dating, but other than the fact that Damien's just not part of the in crown and he's a little different, lg doesn't really have a reason to think he's part of this crime. The reason this comes up, though, is because, pretty quickly, rumors begin to swirl in town about Satanism, cults and sacrificial killings as the motive.
Speaker 3:And just to clarify why these rumors were being spread, was because this was the time of Satanic panic.
Speaker 2:Right Now. Jerry Driver is a juvenile officer in town and he's very big on this being a satanic killing even though I don't really know what would equal a satanic killing, but he's very focused on satanic things in general, so maybe he's just projecting. Now. I personally feel like he's kind of the origin of where these satanic killing rumors start and because he is in with the police, I think that that's where the police got this theory and it's really kind of the theory that they clung to. We will see where the theory leads everyone, since, again, the cops adopt this as their theory as well, since they have so little to go off of from the start.
Speaker 2:Next week we will get further into the investigation of these three boys and we'll look at what evidence the West Memphis police is about to uncover, which bit of a spoiler alert is really not much. There's a very little physical evidence and even the circumstantial evidence is a stretch. We will also discuss the individuals that were arrested and tried for this crime, as well as the entire trial process, with an interview with one of the attorneys for the boys that were accused the the following week we will discuss some other theories the Alford plea and what has happened with the boys that were convicted, again with some interview with the attorney for one of the boys.
Speaker 3:And I will point out before we go into next week that this did take place back in 1993. So the evidence is not the same as what we have today. We are used to the DNA and things like that, which they didn't really have back at this time.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think I mentioned before, but we will post photos on our Instagram, especially that has a map of Robin Hood Hills and a photo of the boys. But really I think If you're able, even if you don't go to our Instagram, if you're able to look up a map of the Robin Hood Hills area, it will be really beneficial Going into the next two weeks episodes, just to kind of have a mind frame Of how everything is set up.
Speaker 3:A mindset. We always recommend more bubbly and less OJ Cheers.
Speaker 2:If you'd like to see pictures from today's episode, you can find us at murdermimosas on Instagram. You can also find us at murdermimosas on Instagram. You can also find us at murdermimosas on TikTok, twitter, and if you have a case you would like us to do, you can send that to murdermimosas at gmailcom. And lastly, we are on Facebook at Murder and Mimosas Podcast, where you can interact with us there. We love any type of feedback you can give us, so please write and view us on Spotify, itunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts.