[16], When Waser returned to the Byers' home he was informed that Ryan Clark still had not returned. Melissa's heart was reportedly enlarged and her atrioventricular node was narrowed. It is worth noting that these are the two parents who have made the most TV, print, and film appearances. Several of the parents were there, and I distinctly remember being very creeped out by one man in particular. Baldwins attorneys even avoided putting him on the witness stand or mounting much of a defense, believing the burden was on the state. Nor was the Dilaudid mentioned on the page listing the medical examiners findings. That November, he says, HBO agreed to give an honorariumroughly $5,000to the families on both sides. At the time of her youngest son's murder in May of 1993, Melissa was married to John Mark Byers. [2] Metz said that prior to her death she "seemed to be irritated and had a bad attitude. It was a call about Damien Echolshe wasnt dead, but his wife, Lorri Davis, feared he might be soon. Police also noted what appeared to be attempts to clean the dining room, living room, kitchen and bathroom. Melissa Byers. He had had no prior criminal record. Critics were effusive in their praise and stunned by the footageparticularly Roger Ebert, who wrote in a four-star review that at the end of the film I was unconvinced of their guilt. The film won Emmy and Peabody awards to go with more than a dozen other nominations. I went to a Baptist school and I got accused of being a devil worshiper because I was trying to learn how to write hieroglyphics, says Sauls, today a screenwriter and VFX designer. He said, "No. The specter of the church looms over Paradise Lost, best represented by an early scene in which Mark Byers leads his congregation in prayer and song. You need corroborating evidence.. Its first season ostensibly focused on the disappearance of a Georgia beauty queen, but it spent nearly as much time digging through the salacious details of the victims love life and dipping into amateur psychology as it did looking at evidence. There he met with local law enforcement officers and with John Mark Byers, Melissa's husband. Byers acted strange, the report noted. At the time of her youngest son's murder in May of 1993, Melissa was married to John Mark Byers. To Powell, her death looked like a possible homicide. Instead, on the reports final page, the word hydromorphone, or Dilaudid, appeared as hydrocodone, which is another drug entirely. Either email addresses are anonymous for this group or you need the view member email addresses permission to view the original message. No distinct scarred needle tracks were present. Byers was later charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The attorneys representing Echols and Baldwin believed that the juries wouldnt accept the prosecutions versions of eventsthat they were too fantastical and tied to second-hand informationand that without conclusive proof, their clients would walk. NO PEACE YET: Melissa and John Mark Byers, now facing criminal charges themselves, hold a picture of their murdered son Christopher in their new home at Cherokee Village. The first and likely simplest gauge is continued interest in the case. Byers drove into Hardy accompanied by a teen-aged boy. We were finally winning, he says. Buried in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. It is perhaps the cause of SuddenAdult Death Syndrome, a little talked about cause of death. Two bandaged needle puncture wounds were described. peter w busch why is it important to serve your family how did melissa byers die. When told about the finding of blood, Byers changed his statement, claiming that he had used the knife to cut deer meat to make jerky. West Memphis 3 murders Wiki is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. The presence of this drug in the urine indicates recent use and it cannot be ruled out that this drug did not play a contributory role in death with a delay between a toxic reaction and death allowing clearing of the drug into the urine. Byers got up to get some milk and asked if Melissa wanted anything. Not only had their son Christopher sustained the most savage of the attacks, but John Mark and Melissa Byers stood out as the most demonstrative of the parents in the film. But we stuck with it, and every so often something would happen, and little by little, people would come around., They spread word about the website through online discussion groups and by hanging flyers in the art houses that screened Paradise Lost, and by 2000, WM3.org was getting 4,000 to 8,000 hits a day. Support came from unlikely corners: a classroom of kids who held a cookie sale that raised $30, local bands in Chicago who held a benefit show and sent $150. He responded proudly, 11.. The answer seems obvious. Dilaudid was not among them. By 2005, Rollins himself had raised $100,000 for the cause. They saw the same thing you did. Police said they observed injuries to Pamela Hobbs face and to the back of her head. Melissa was carried out of the house unconscious and rushed to a hospital. She died of undetermined causes on March 29, 1996. According to Dan Stidham, the attorney for Misskelley, that money became essential for the cash-strapped defense teams, who needed to pay for expert witnesses and other expenses. He did not know if John Mark had anything to do with Melissa's death and said that "everyone seemed to be happy and jolly during the partying time. [21], In November of 1997, a confidential informant known as "James" told Investigator Stan Witt that he believed Byers had been giving Melissa pills the entire day when she died on March 29th, 1996. While Echols was characterized as the group s ringleader and sentenced to death, Misskelley and Ba1dwin were sentenced to life in prison. Melissa left her husband to live with her parents and had only been living at home for two to three weeks before she passed away. "[3], On March 29th, 1996, at 3:30pm, Ryan and his girlfriend, Amanda, were dropped off from school at the Byers' residence. Court records show the charges were later amended. A trial is scheduled for next March. "[12], Waser met with Sheriff Powell, Chief Burton, and Investigator Witt to discuss searching the Byers' residence. Why wasn't he questioned about several other inconsistencies and "coincidences" surrounding his step-son's murder? He said he was at the Byers' residence on March 29th, 1996. He told Witt that at a little after 5 p.m. that evening, John Mark Byers had called him on the phone, saying that he could not awaken his wife. Metz advised that Byers told him it could be bought for $50 on the street. He said he and his grandfather looked through it but did not remove anything. Their main worry was Damien, who was staring down the threat of lethal injection should the appeals fail. Waser wrote, "They went to bed, spent time talking, had intercorse (intercourse) and went to sleep, at approximately 2:30PM they went to sleep". stream There. John Mark gave a voluntary statement to Waser as well. He said that when he returned Ryan and John Mark were attempting to put pants on Melissa. (Its worth noting that despite the issues raised by Lindseys work, the first season of Up and Vanished renewed interest in the case, which ultimately led to arrests, albeit of people that Lindsey hadnt previously covered on the podcast.). Going by what was said in the article about the ME not being able to determine cause of death, we can safely assume it wasn't a natural death caused by something like a heart attack or massive cerebral hemmorage, both of which leave definite signs. Sinofsky family connection aside, Berlinger says this was an important part of the film: The prosecutors had put heavy metal lyrics and Baldwins and Echolss Metallica fandom on trial as much as the teens themselves. The idea, Berlinger says, was to tell a story of disaffected youthabout kids killing kids., There was no reason not to believe the press, Berlinger says. By 1987, Byers had been married, fathered two children, been divorced, and remarried. She died of undetermined causes on March 29, 1996. Melissa gurgled up some fluid and Metz called for an ambulance. At that time, I was a little naive that what you read in the paper must have some truth to it, and all the press reports coming out of Arkansas were saying that this was like a slam dunk, an open-and-shut case with a confession that was printed in the newspaper.. In fact, people in the audience criticized him for the beating, which is what prompted his outburst about the mutilations. Witt arrived at the hospital about 35 minutes later. I think we were the first internet sleuths, but we were not internet sleuths.. Melissa, the mother of Christopher Byers, the most brutalized of the West Memphis victims, was 40 years old. Byers was not arrested nor was the case against him revealed. To Powell, her death looked like a possible homicide. Berlinger and Sinofsky, the latter of whom died in 2015 at age 58, were able to gain incredible and immediate access to seemingly everyone the case had touched: the families of the victims and the accused, the judge, the lead investigator, members of the community. Let me go a little bit further and say theres a problem with that. . Byers himself was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a Class A misdemeanor. Rollins not only gave interviews to keep the effort alive in the press, he organized a string of benefit shows and released an album featuring Iggy Pop and Chuck D, with proceeds going to the defense. The mother of one of the three boys murdered in West Memphis died, but investigators have yet to figure out how. He told him the name of the drug. Melissa had older scars on her wrists. Eventually, they began traveling to Arkansasabout 35 trips in total, always on their own dime, Bakken and Sauls sayto collect case documents, which they scanned and uploaded to the site, also transcribing the documents so that the text could be searchable. But the list of people who have looked at the facts of the case and come away believing Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley are innocent is long. We send our thoughts our prayers to her and his family and our team wishes her to be in total health. Additionally, the judge in the original trialswho under Arkansas law presided under the requests for retrials in the years following the convictionshad been elected to the state Senate that December, meaning someone new and possibly more sympathetic would oversee the case. Sharp County Sheriff T.J. "Sonny" Powell wouldn't say whether the. There also were issues with other details he provided, including how the victims were bound and whether the boys were raped. John Mark called to Ryan twice. Further down, it includes names such as Rick Dior, a sound mixer who worked on Apollo 13 and Dirty Dancing, and Bob Richman, a three-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer whose rsum also includes renowned docs like An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman. So when I saw this tiny little article in the Times, I wasnt about to free anybody that was guilty. Yes, the West Memphis Three are out of prison, but as long as they are considered guilty in the eyes of the state, the case is closed, meaning no further investigation can occur. With the guards blessings, Mojo led Baldwin to Varners visitation room, where everything had been put away aside from two chairs set up in front of a cart holding a small TV and a VCR. Ryan had been living with his biological father for the past six months. He advised that John Mark advised no, and Ryan had a funny, eery [sic] look on his face. The medical examiners office said Melissa Byers, 47, died as a result of multiple stab wounds. Byers stated that he would wait in the kitchen. They asked to see a cut, and they immediately said, Not only are we going to let you use all that music, but were not going to charge you anything for it., Metallica would be the first celebrities to throw their support behind the West Memphis Three, but they were far from the last. She also described seeing lots of blood in the home and seeing the body in the basement with what she thought was a stab in the back. That person reportedly contacted other relatives in Blytheville, and together they drove to Memphis, where they confronted Terry Hobbs about the assault. More than 2,500 people attended and the story dominated the local press for days. Manage all your favorite fandoms in one place! Melissa Byers was born on January 16, 1956. Her body showed no visible signs of trauma. Byers and his companion got back in their car and drove alongside the victim of the fight, who was still lying on the ground. The two pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in October. The trio assumed that the convictions had already been overturned by the time Bakken received the screenerthis was a modern-day witch hunt, they thought, and surely the state of Arkansas had already corrected the course. The brother-in-law, Dennis DeFir, brought Ryan back to the home the day after Melissa died. But inside, he was just another prisonerBaldwin didnt know who he could trust. He advised that when he left, he almost flipped his car over he left so fast, spinning gravel. So much progress had been made in the fight for new trials, most notably a November 2010 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that ordered a hearing on new DNA analysis and other evidence not considered in 1994. Recent injuries included: "three 1-inch blue-gray contusions on her right upper arm; six blue-gray contusions, ranging from 1/2 to 2 inches, were present on the anterior aspect of the left upper arm; four, 1/4 to 1 inch blue-gray contusions were present on the superior and anterior left upper shoulder. He was wearing sunglasses and had this weird hair, big cowboy boots. It was born out of genuine admiration for the fact that these guys took the time out of their lives to dedicate, to go down to Arkansas, to build a website, to really step out of their lives, Berlinger says. While Byers went into the local gas company to conduct some business, another boy passed by the truck and he and the boy who was riding with Byers exchanged words. The boy on foot then proceeded to whats known as the old Hardy bridge over the Spring River, where he joined a group of four other friends, ranging in age from 15 to 17 years old. Traces of one of her prescribed medications, an anti-seizure medicine used to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome, were present, as were traces of lithium, a medication that had been prescribed for her to treat manic depression. The problem facing Sheriff Powell was that no one at the hospital could figure out why. And that makes him hopeful that exoneration is on the horizon. As more people learned about the case from Paradise Lost and the work of people like Bakken and Sauls, the phrase Free the West Memphis Three caught on as a slogan for progressive musicians and actors in the 1990s, up there with Save the Rainforest and Free Tibet. Eddie Vedder became an early leading voice, soon followed by the likes of Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp, and Natalie Maines from the band then known as the Dixie Chicks. Was wearing sunglasses and had a bad attitude story dominated the local press for.! 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