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Merged Remember the West Memphis 3?

Vixen said:
Police believe he deliberately gave them the wrong times in order to mislead.
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Which police? Got any names or evidence?

Vixen said:
The detail of the castration was not common knowledge 'within 36 hours of the crime'.
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Its was common knowledge sooner than that. The cops were talking about it on their radios the night the deceased were being transported to Little Rock for autopsy. It was a scandal. Everybody knew about it. The 36 hour timeline was mine - I slept late.

Vixen said:
Echols was able to tell the police animals would have chewed the boy's genitals. There were no animals in the swamp.
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1) Echols didn't say any such thing. The notion that the victims had been chewed by varmints didn't even come up in the train-wreck of an investigation until the defense brought it up after their convictions

2) It's not a swamp. It's Mississippi river delta. Snapping turtles, crayfish, and raccoons are all over that area. Anybody with any knowledge of the issue knows that. That would exclude you, of course.

Vixen said:
Misskelley described oral sex.
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He also described anal sex that never happened and brown ropes that never existed.
 
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Vixen said:
Don't you think it might be a good idea to get your facts right before posting in the first place?
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I think reasonable speculation which is subsequently amended or abandoned when additional facts are presented is a perfectly reasonable way to approach a discussion in a forum like this. You should try it some time.

Especially the bit about abandoning a line of thinking when the true facts are shown to you.
 
Animal scavenging is a point which isn't brought up as often as it should be. Bodies left out in the open are subject to quite a lot of damage, even just over a single night, if the right animals are in the vicinity.

I remember seeing (in a garage waiting room) a magazine article about alleged alien activity in rural central USA, and some of the photos they showed were dead cattle with damage that was being represented as deliberate (and not caused by human activity as there were no people in the vicinity). It was absolutely obviously the work of carrion birds. I've seen it dozens of times.

I probably need to read the post mortem report on the boy with the missing genitals, to see whether there was any evidence that happened before death, and also whether there really was evidence of a lot of blood loss or whether the childrens' blood was still mainly inside their bodies.
 
Rolfe said:
Animal scavenging is a point which isn't brought up as often as it should be. Bodies left out in the open are subject to quite a lot of damage, even just over a single night, if the right animals are in the vicinity.

I remember seeing (in a garage waiting room) a magazine article about alleged alien activity in rural central USA, and some of the photos they showed were dead cattle with damage that was being represented as deliberate (and not caused by human activity as there were no people in the vicinity). It was absolutely obviously the work of carrion birds. I've seen it dozens of times.

I probably need to read the post mortem report on the boy with the missing genitals, to see whether there was any evidence that happened before death, and also whether there really was evidence of a lot of blood loss or whether the childrens' blood was still mainly inside their bodies.
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Christopher Byers' autopsy report...

http://callahan.mysite.com/wm3/autcb.html
 
the alibi witnesses

Rolfe said:
That's extremely helpful. I'm unclear as to how the prosecution disputes this, given that it must if it's trying to say Jesse was involved in the murders at some point. Do they simply affect to disbelieve the alibi witnesses? It wouldn't be the first time I suppose.
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Judging by how critics of the WM3 treat the issue on discussion boards, it seems to me that the alibi witnesses are to be disbelieved, partially on the basis of inconsistencies. The person running the class that Jesse's father apparently attended said that she did not dismiss class until later, if I recall correctly. Also, IIUC the police officers responding to the domestic disturbance did not see Jesse. My response to the last point is that it is unclear why the officers would remember seeing him.

One critic of the WM3 thought it was significant that Jesse did not provide this alibi himself in court. However, there are reasons why a defendant might not do so, such as opening himself or herself up to cross-examination that might be damaging in other ways. A case from New Orleans involving John Thompson is one example.
 
Strawberry said:
Christopher Byers' autopsy report...

http://callahan.mysite.com/wm3/autcb.html
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Hmmm. There's a lot that doesn't say.

If I'm doing a post mortem of an animal that has been abused and killed, one of the most important things I have to decide is whether any or all of the injuries were post mortem. There is very little detail there to help decide on that point, and indeed the only injuries clearly caused before death were the blows to the head (which presumably killed him).

There's a lot about abrasions and contusions and some cuts, but almost nowhere is there an opinion about whether these occurred ante-mortem or post-mortem. Referring to the genital injuries, the pathologist says "Some of these wounds showed hemorrhage in the underlying soft tissue, others did not." This is kind of important as that is what determines whether the injuries were before or after death. Which ones did and which ones didn't? Was it mainly with haemorrhage, or mainly without? He doesn't say.

Another missing piece of information is about blood remaining in the body. A big pointer to an animal that has bled out or lost a great deal of blood is empty heart chambers. The post mortem report on the heart talks about the absence of lesions you'd only expect in an older adult, not a child, but doesn't mention this point. There's also no mention of whether the great vessels had the usual amount of blood in them.

I'm just questioning this "there would have been a great deal of blood" thing. It all depends on how someone dies whether there is no blood, a little blood or a lot. If they were mainly killed by hitting them over the head (with terminal drowning in two cases) and the blows were blunt, there wouldn't necessarily have been a lot of bleeding from there, depending on how long they took to die. If the remaining injuries were post mortem, as most of them seem to be I think, not much blood would come from them either. He does say there was pallor of the organs, but that doesn't necessarily mean a great deal.

But the entire investigation goes on and on about the copious quantities of blood that should have been sloshing around the scene of the crime. I'm struggling to see what the basis for that conclusion is.
 
I remember seeing (in a garage waiting room) a magazine article about alleged alien activity in rural central USA, and some of the photos they showed were dead cattle with damage that was being represented as deliberate (and not caused by human activity as there were no people in the vicinity). It was absolutely obviously the work of carrion birds. I've seen it dozens of times.
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Oh yes; supposed cattle mutilation were a huge phenomenon here for a few years. Many very sane, reasonable people saw the bodies, and swore animal predation wouldn't account for the damage being done. As it happens, you are correct, it was birds. They very deliberately pick at certain portions of corpses, and leave wounds that look manmade.
 
The genital injuries seen on Christopher certainly seem consistent with animal scavenging to me, especially after seeing what a "snapping turtle" is and how it bites. A grab at the external genitalia could easily remove the testicles entirely, as there's not much attaching these to the body - the spermatic cord isn't very strong. On the other hand the corpus cavernosum of a penis is relatively robust, even in a little boy I think, and I could see how the skin could come off while leaving the underlying structure of the penis behind.

Other wounds shown looked very much like claw marks, and believe me I've seen plenty of these too. At first I thought they were too closely spaced, then I realised it was consistent with an animal repeatedly dragging at the same limb with its claws. What the marks don't look like is something produced by the back of that serrated knife. The serrations didn't have the hooked shape necessary to get these marks.

If only some of the gouging injuries around the genital wounds had associated haemorrhage, that suggests that some of these injuries happened after death. Possibly all of them, as even dead tissue can leak a little blood - you'd really have to see it. Or it's possible it happened just as the child was dying, as the heart was stopping. The other two children were clearly still alive when the bodies were dumped and Christopher could have been as well, just without his head submerged.
 
especially after seeing what a "snapping turtle" is and how it bites.
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Oh yeah...the bite they can inflict is unbelievable. The common snapper can easily take off a finger. I don't remember if the "alligator" version is found in Alabama or not, but if so, they're the stuff of nightmares.

ETA: Yup; alligator snapping turtles are apparently pretty common in Alabama.

http://www.outdooralabama.com/alligator-snapping-turtle
 
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DragonLady said:
Oh yeah...the bite they can inflict is unbelievable. The common snapper can easily take off a finger. I don't remember if the "alligator" version is found in Alabama or not, but if so, they're the stuff of nightmares.

ETA: Yup; alligator snapping turtles are apparently pretty common in Alabama.

http://www.outdooralabama.com/alligator-snapping-turtle
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You mean Arkansas, and yes the alligator snapping turtle is found there...

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=7060
 
Locals said they were common in that stream, and in the film I saw where someone allowed one to bite his arm the resulting lesion was extremely similar to the lesion on the forehead of one of the boys.
 
Rolfe said:
Animal scavenging is a point which isn't brought up as often as it should be. Bodies left out in the open are subject to quite a lot of damage, even just over a single night, if the right animals are in the vicinity.

I remember seeing (in a garage waiting room) a magazine article about alleged alien activity in rural central USA, and some of the photos they showed were dead cattle with damage that was being represented as deliberate (and not caused by human activity as there were no people in the vicinity). It was absolutely obviously the work of carrion birds. I've seen it dozens of times.

I probably need to read the post mortem report on the boy with the missing genitals, to see whether there was any evidence that happened before death, and also whether there really was evidence of a lot of blood loss or whether the childrens' blood was still mainly inside their bodies.
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I have always thought the medical examiners in this case were grossly incompetent. Murders in West Memphis are usually the results of drunken bar-room altercations.

I would like to hear your opinion. Unfortunately, almost 24 years have come and gone.

Cheers!
 
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Rolfe said:
[...]
I'm just questioning this "there would have been a great deal of blood" thing. It all depends on how someone dies whether there is no blood,[...]
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I may have brought this up before, but the prosecution claimed that the lack of blood was evidence of Satanic Rites, because the WM3 would have collected and saved this blood for their next Satanic Rite.

Presence of blood = proof of Satanic rites.
Absence of blood = proof of Satanic rites.

It's unfalsifiable.
 
I want to know why they believed there would have been a great deal of blood in the first place. So far I haven't seen anything to make me believe the blood wasn't still inside the bodies.
 
perhaps it was a secondary crime scene

I have not been following this thread closely, but it was my understanding that the place where the bodies were found is a secondary crime scene and that they were killed elsewhere. My apologies if this has already been discussed.
 
That's what I had believed, but I'm now questioning the basis for the assumption. This basis seems to be the absence of large quantities of blood and the absence of midge bites. I don't know about the midge bites, but I'm not seeing why anyone is so sure there should have been large quantities of blood in the first place.

The boys went to play in these woods, on their bikes, and the bikes were found there. The woods were fairly small and surrounded by suburbia. Nobody has reported seeing anything untoward anywhere else outside the woods. I'm coming back to the feeling it all happened in the woods. I don't see any reason why there should have been large quantities of blood on the ground.
 
DragonLady said:
Oh yes; supposed cattle mutilation were a huge phenomenon here for a few years. Many very sane, reasonable people saw the bodies, and swore animal predation wouldn't account for the damage being done. As it happens, you are correct, it was birds. They very deliberately pick at certain portions of corpses, and leave wounds that look manmade.
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For a long time, the UFO community claimed the cattle mutilations were the result of alien experimentation. The cuts made to soft tissue around the eyes and mouth were very clean and precise, not what you would expect from scavenger bites. So they must have been laser incisions inflicted aboard an alien spacecraft.

Then someone did an experiment. A cow corpse was placed outside for a considerable amount of time and observed. Small mites or some other insects feasted on portions of the body. The result was a very clean, not jagged, removal of soft tissue.

Ignoring the fact that many people just want to believe in UFOs, it is a common human thinking error. We all have an internal picture of how things should happen or look. Without much experience, especially in murders and death, most of us cannot accurately describe what really happens. A lot of people have a movie version of reality. How many people believe that a powerful gunshot will blow someone backward off their feet? Or that a person can be safely knocked out with a blow to the head? This is why people make such claims as: Those cuts are too precise for animals. There should be more blood in this crime scene. Those wounds could only have been inflicted by a trained doctor (as in the Jack the Ripper case).
 
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