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Merged Remember the West Memphis 3?

Strawberry said:
I'm thinking of the knees being bent up by the ankles being tied to the wrists, and the ebb and flow of the water accounting for the legs being apart. Does that make sense?
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I can't see it. They just aren't in a position that's consistent with that, and I don't see how the ebb and flow of water would hold the legs apart. If it did happen it would be a fluke, and we have the same fluke twice. Two bodies that look extremely consistent with being tied to chairs when rigor set in and the third, while not so striking, is also consistent with that interpretation.

Look at the relevant frame of Paradise Lost at 48 seconds in, and compare it with the position of Daniel Craig's body in that scene from Casino Royale, and I think you'll see what I mean.

This is a car crash of an investigation. The absence of blood and midgie bites were already noted as probably indicating that the boys had been killed elsewhere, possibly (as regards the lack of midgie bites) indoors. And nobody is even noticing that the position of the bodies in rigor suggests they were tied to chairs when they died and for some hours afterwards - again that would most probably point to indoors.

And yet the investigators barrel right on assuming they were killed in the woods where the bodies were found, and make no attempt to find the place where they were actually killed. That and the Bojangles story as well. It's incompetence of the grossest kind.

None of that speaks to the identity of the killer or killers of course, but as I've said before, loudly and long in another context, if you get the modus operandi wrong then if you get the right perpetrator it's only going to be by sheer blind luck.
 
Rolfe said:
I can't see it. They just aren't in a position that's consistent with that, and I don't see how the ebb and flow of water would hold the legs apart. If it did happen it would be a fluke, and we have the same fluke twice. Two bodies that look extremely consistent with being tied to chairs when rigor set in and the third, while not so striking, is also consistent with that interpretation.

Look at the relevant frame of Paradise Lost at 48 seconds in, and compare it with the position of Daniel Craig's body in that scene from Casino Royale, and I think you'll see what I mean.

This is a car crash of an investigation. The absence of blood and midgie bites were already noted as probably indicating that the boys had been killed elsewhere, possibly (as regards the lack of midgie bites) indoors. And nobody is even noticing that the position of the bodies in rigor suggests they were tied to chairs when they died and for some hours afterwards - again that would most probably point to indoors.

And yet the investigators barrel right on assuming they were killed in the woods where the bodies were found, and make no attempt to find the place where they were actually killed. That and the Bojangles story as well. It's incompetence of the grossest kind.

None of that speaks to the identity of the killer or killers of course, but as I've said before, loudly and long in another context, if you get the modus operandi wrong then if you get the right perpetrator it's only going to be by sheer blind luck.
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I do see what you mean. It feels like one of those things that when its pointed out it looks so obvious you wonder why nobody suggested it before, and as far as I know nobody ever has either on the prosecution/police side of things or on the defense side.
 
Strawberry said:
I do see what you mean. It feels like one of those things that when its pointed out it looks so obvious you wonder why nobody suggested it before, and as far as I know nobody ever has either on the prosecution/police side of things or on the defense side.
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I do seem to have form for that sort of thing! #Lockerbie

Actually, consider the symmetry of the poses of all three bodies. The legs are bent to exactly the same angles in all three cases, hips and knees both. I'd take a fair bet the spines are more or less straight too, which is a difficult thing to pull off with a recumbent body lying on its side. I can't see how a body tossed randomly on the ground or into a stream or wherever is going to take up a position like that, even once never mind in triplicate. It's exactly the effect you'd get by sitting the body in a chair any tying the ankles to the chair legs though.

I suppose my education and experience mean that this is the sort of thing I'll notice. I'm slightly surprised the police wouldn't notice, but it kind of beggars belief that a forensic pathologist wouldn't notice assuming he saw the police video which I presume he did.

I'm thinking three kitchen chairs, probably in a basement or a garage. Of course I imagine there are a large number of basements and garages around there and the police couldn't have searched all of them immediately after the bodies were found. Until you have a suspect, it's going to be very difficult.

The three accused were teenagers living with their parents. Damien at least was living in a mobile home. I would very much like to know where they carried out the murders, if they were indeed guilty. Not easy for people without a place of their own to find somewhere.

I think there must have been more than one person though. How do you catch three eight-year-olds and tie them to chairs in a garage, on your own? But the whole thing was sadistic in the extreme. Where is the group of child-torturing sadists round this neck of the woods? Is there an abandoned premises that could have been used? How much preparation would have been needed?

So many questions, and it's a bit late for answers.
 
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Rolfe said:
I do seem to have form for that sort of thing! #Lockerbie

Actually, consider the symmetry of the poses of all three bodies. The legs are bent to exactly the same angles in all three cases, hips and knees both. I'd take a fair bet the spines are more or less straight too, which is a difficult thing to pull off with a recumbent body lying on its side. I can't see how a body tossed randomly on the ground or into a stream or wherever is going to take up a position like that, even once never mind in triplicate. It's exactly the effect you'd get by sitting the body in a chair any tying the ankles to the chair legs though.

I suppose my education and experience mean that this is the sort of thing I'll notice. I'm slightly surprised the police wouldn't notice, but it kind of beggars belief that a forensic pathologist wouldn't notice assuming he saw the police video which I presume he did.

I'm thinking three kitchen chairs, probably in a basement or a garage. Of course I imagine there are a large number of basements and garages around there and the police couldn't have searched all of them immediately after the bodies were found. Until you have a suspect, it's going to be very difficult.

The three accused were teenagers living with their parents. Damien at least was living in a mobile home. I would very much like to know where they carried out the murders, if they were indeed guilty. Not easy for people without a place of their own to find somewhere.

I think there must have been more than one person though. How do you catch three eight-year-olds and tie them to chairs in a garage, on your own? But the whole thing was sadistic in the extreme. Where is the group of child-torturing sadists round this neck of the woods? Is there an abandoned premises that could have been used? How much preparation would have been needed?

So many questions, and it's a bit late for answers.
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That probably destroys my idea that the legs were bent due to the ligatures then, because the amount of slack in the ligatures was different on each child.
 
Obviously I can't see much detail from the video, but I wonder about the idea of the ligatures being put on after death to transport the bodies.

Imagine they were killed sitting in kitchen chairs with their ankles tied to the chair legs, then left there long enough for rigor to set in. I'm not sure about the hands, I can't really tell if they were also tied while rigor was progressing. They're down by their sides in two of the bodies and seem to be resting on the thighs in the third. Still symmetrical though. Now the murderer(s) has the problem of moving bodies fixed in rather inconvenient positions.

If he tied ropes or cords to them so that he could move them by lifting or dragging the cords, that's not going to change the attitudes of the bodies unless he actually broke the rigor which we can see hasn't happened. So it wouldn't matter how tight or loose the ligatures were, if they were applied after rigor had set in then the bodies would stay in the sitting positions. That might explain it.
 
Rolfe said:
Obviously I can't see much detail from the video, but I wonder about the idea of the ligatures being put on after death to transport the bodies.

Imagine they were killed sitting in kitchen chairs with their ankles tied to the chair legs, then left there long enough for rigor to set in. I'm not sure about the hands, I can't really tell if they were also tied while rigor was progressing. They're down by their sides in two of the bodies and seem to be resting on the thighs in the third. Still symmetrical though. Now the murderer(s) has the problem of moving bodies fixed in rather inconvenient positions.

If he tied ropes or cords to them so that he could move them by lifting or dragging the cords, that's not going to change the attitudes of the bodies unless he actually broke the rigor which we can see hasn't happened. So it wouldn't matter how tight or loose the ligatures were, if they were applied after rigor had set in then the bodies would stay in the sitting positions. That might explain it.
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I don't have your pathologist's eye, but even I can see that the boys were tied for some post mortem reason - whether to make them easier to move or some other reason. Certainly they weren't tied to restrain them when they were alive because the odd way they're tied wouldn't restrain anybody, all of the ligatures have enough slack that each child could have very easily freed himself if he just reached down and untied the laces round his own ankles.
 
I remember someone else earlier in the thread, or maybe in the previous thread, saying quite matter-of-factly that the stream in the wood was only the dumping place for bodies with the actual scene of the crime somewhere else. I thought that was just about the absence of blood, and I wasn't entirely sure that was conclusive because if they'd been killed in the stream that could explain where the blood went. I was aware that the trials took the line that they had been killed in the wood.

I didn't know the police video showing the bodies was available. I just imagined bodies lying as bodies lie. If rigor had set in while they were in the stream the positions might have been quite awkward and they'd certainly be asymmetrical. When I saw these bodies in just the position you see Daniel Craig in, in that central scene in Casino Royale, I just did a double-take.

I can't see the ligatures in the still of the video, but if they were loose and wouldn't restrain a live captive then again that supports the idea they were applied to make them easier to move after death, after sitting on chairs for hours after death had fixed the bodies in that rather awkward position.

I'm not saying it's impossible that one person could have done this, but I'm doubtful a lone killer would try given the potential for one child to escape while the others are being rounded up. But we know a single killer can handle two children slightly older than that, as Ian Huntly murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman when they were ten, and did it single-handed. So maybe.

It's just a car crash. They should have been trying to find the place the murders actually happened, difficult though that might have been. At the very least they should have included the killings happening somewhere else in the theory of the crime. It seems so obvious, but they didn't catch on at all.
 
Rolfe said:
I remember someone else earlier in the thread, or maybe in the previous thread, saying quite matter-of-factly that the stream in the wood was only the dumping place for bodies with the actual scene of the crime somewhere else. I thought that was just about the absence of blood, and I wasn't entirely sure that was conclusive because if they'd been killed in the stream that could explain where the blood went. I was aware that the trials took the line that they had been killed in the wood.

I didn't know the police video showing the bodies was available. I just imagined bodies lying as bodies lie. If rigor had set in while they were in the stream the positions might have been quite awkward and they'd certainly be asymmetrical. When I saw these bodies in just the position you see Daniel Craig in, in that central scene in Casino Royale, I just did a double-take.

I can't see the ligatures in the still of the video, but if they were loose and wouldn't restrain a live captive then again that supports the idea they were applied to make them easier to move after death, after sitting on chairs for hours after death had fixed the bodies in that rather awkward position.

I'm not saying it's impossible that one person could have done this, but I'm doubtful a lone killer would try given the potential for one child to escape while the others are being rounded up. But we know a single killer can handle two children slightly older than that, as Ian Huntly murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman when they were ten, and did it single-handed. So maybe.

It's just a car crash. They should have been trying to find the place the murders actually happened, difficult though that might have been. At the very least they should have included the killings happening somewhere else in the theory of the crime. It seems so obvious, but they didn't catch on at all.
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One killer with a gun could have controlled three children simply by pointing the gun at them. This being Arkansas it wouldn't be far fetched to theorize that it could be someone with a gun.
 
You know, I never thought about that. I'm so unused to thinking about guns or considering guns, it wasn't something I took into consideration.
 
I just heard someone in the second film say, "two of the kids did die here because they were put in the water and they drowned." That seems unlikely to me given the positions of the bodies but I don't know how solid the evidence for that is.
 
Rolfe said:
You know, I never thought about that. I'm so unused to thinking about guns or considering guns, it wasn't something I took into consideration.
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Well, a gun clearly wasn't the murder weapon so I suppose nobody was thinking of guns in connection with this case. The Bojangles man is the only thing that suggests a gun - ie, maybe he stumbled on the killer disposing of the bodies and got shot.

I don't really believe that though, I think the Bojangles man is probably a red herring, telling only because the loss of the blood scrapings from the restaurant shows incompetence on the part of the WMPD.
 
Rolfe said:
I just heard someone in the second film say, "two of the kids did die here because they were put in the water and they drowned." That seems unlikely to me given the positions of the bodies but I don't know how solid the evidence for that is.
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The cause of death on the autopsy reports for Michael and Stevie was "multiple injuries with drowning." I don't know how that effects your theory but maybe you should read the autopsy reports and see what you make of them...

http://callahan.mysite.com/wm3/autmm.html

http://callahan.mysite.com/wm3/autsb.html
 
I've just watched the second Paradise Lost documentary and I thought it was very poor. Unfocussed with a whole lot of padding, and way too much about Mark Byers who is just intensely annoying. I don't think trying to railroad Mark Byers is any more reasonable than railroading the guys who were convicted. And I don't think that's a bit mark either, and if it is I don't think it's possible to say with any certainty who made it - you might exclude people, but saying this is as good as a fingerprint is obvious nonsense.

However there were different photos of the bodies and they didn't look so symmetrical in these photos so it may be an illusion of the angle the video was taken from that made them appear so. Also, if two of them actually drowned in that stream then either there were a couple of kitchen chairs in the stream or I'm mistaken, and I think the latter is the more likely explanation.

Thanks for the link to the post mortem reports, I'll have a look later.

I don't think this can go anywhere beyond "unsolved". The three who were convicted can't be proven innocent but then neither can anyone else who was in the vicinity at the time without a reliable alibi. It's horrible, and I think it's insoluble.
 
The evidence that Michael Moore aspirated water is strong, so I guess I was wrong. I think the positions of the bodies aren't nearly as symmetrical as they seemed in the police video, when you see the photos from different angles.

I've watched the third film now and I thought it was a lot better than the second. The reversal of Byers's position was fairly startling, but I wonder if the accusations levelled at him had something to do with it, maybe letting him see the whole thing from the other side as it were.

I was uncomfortable with them going after Terry Hobbs, but I understood the nuanced position. It's possible to make a case against Hobbs which is significantly stronger than the case against the teenagers. Even so, it falls far short of showing beyond reasonable doubt that Hobbs was the murderer. The relevance of this is that if you put that case before a jury it significantly weakens the likelihood of them finding that the case against the three was beyond reasonable doubt - if for no other reason than that it takes away the objection that there's nobody else who could have done it.

Jason's speech at the end was really hard-hitting. A system that handles things like this is broken. But at least they're out. Going to watch West of Memphis, I think.
 
Rolfe said:
The evidence that Michael Moore aspirated water is strong, so I guess I was wrong. I think the positions of the bodies aren't nearly as symmetrical as they seemed in the police video, when you see the photos from different angles.

I've watched the third film now and I thought it was a lot better than the second. The reversal of Byers's position was fairly startling, but I wonder if the accusations levelled at him had something to do with it, maybe letting him see the whole thing from the other side as it were.

I was uncomfortable with them going after Terry Hobbs, but I understood the nuanced position. It's possible to make a case against Hobbs which is significantly stronger than the case against the teenagers. Even so, it falls far short of showing beyond reasonable doubt that Hobbs was the murderer. The relevance of this is that if you put that case before a jury it significantly weakens the likelihood of them finding that the case against the three was beyond reasonable doubt - if for no other reason than that it takes away the objection that there's nobody else who could have done it.

Jason's speech at the end was really hard-hitting. A system that handles things like this is broken. But at least they're out. Going to watch West of Memphis, I think.
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I thought the second Paradise Lost film was sub-par, but I suspect it was hard to not focus on John Mark Byers, given his extremely bizarre behavior.

Another nit to pick - Terry Hobbs was the only parent/step parent that the WMPD didn't interview before the trials. He left town for a couple of weeks, and the local cops never followed-up. Is that evidence of his guilt? No. It's more evidence of WMPD incompetence.
 
ETA: I looked through my notes, and the only evidence I could find regarding Misskelley seeking a reward was his own claim that he had been offered the possibility of a reward by Det. Mike Allen after he (Misskelley) had been taken into custody and Mirandized. Mike Allen denies having said this. I'm trying to find original sources.
 
I just watched all the films back to back and there was one short segment in one of them where it was at least hinted that Misskelly was offered or at least told about a reward. At the end of West of Memphis it's also stated that Baldwin was offered leniency if he testified against Echols and he refused.

Leaving rewards aside, Misskelly was offered a reduced sentence if he testified against the other two and allowed his taped confession to be entered in evidence against them. Baldwin was offered leniency if he explicitly testified that Echols had done it. He refused. Right at the end when they were all offered the Alford plea, Baldwin was absolutely adamant that he wouldn't plead guilty and would rather sit in jail till hell froze over. He only relented after a plea to do it for Damien's sake.

That, taken as a whole, is the behaviour of an innocent group of people. I don't know what to make of the evidence against Hobbs, particularly after all the fuss about Byers. But the entering of the Alford plea has presumably ensured that nobody is going to go after Hobbs anyway.
 
John Jones said:
ETA: I looked through my notes, and the only evidence I could find regarding Misskelley seeking a reward was his own claim that he had been offered the possibility of a reward by Det. Mike Allen after he (Misskelley) had been taken into custody and Mirandized. Mike Allen denies having said this. I'm trying to find original sources.
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Not original, but try this, at 14 min 02 sec.

 
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