Summary and Analysis of Devil's Knot by Worth Books

Author:Worth Books
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worth Books
Published: 2017-02-13T19:26:48+00:00

Part Three: Revelations

Chapter Twenty-One: The Appeals

As Damien, Jason, and Jessie struggled to adapt to prison life, their lawyers fought an uphill battle to have their convictions overturned. In February 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld Jessie’s conviction unanimously. They were likewise unanimous in rejecting Damien’s and Jessie’s appeals, granting the prosecution’s argument that Satanism was relevant to the motive of the crime and that the defendants were engaged in the practice.

Need to Know: Although their appeals failed, a grassroots movement advocating the West Memphis Three’s release sprung up after the 1996 premiere of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost. The award-winning film aroused outrage and sympathy for the convicted teens, and the supportive website, wm3.org, was launched. Sympathetic Paradise Lost viewers began contacting the trio. One of these was Lorri Davis, who became a frequent correspondent of Damien’s and later married him in a Buddhist ceremony in prison.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Drug Informant

It wasn’t long after the convictions that a remorseful Vicki Hutcheson started changing her tune. She got in touch with Ron Lax and admitted that the cops had told her what story to give the court, promising to make her own legal issues go away if she testified. The night of the supposed cult orgy, she had drunk a bottle of whiskey and blacked out, waking up outside her house the next day.

Hutcheson expressed alarm to Lax about John Mark Byers’s demeanor during an appearance on The Maury Povich Show—as did Chris Byers’s biological father, Ricky Murray. Murray called investigators to report that what John Mark Byers had told Maury Povich about his whereabouts on May 5 did not match what he’d said while talking to Murray at Chris’s funeral.

Meanwhile, both John Mark and Melissa Byers were running into trouble with the law, which included burglary charges. Working for the Arkansas Times, author Mara Leveritt investigated Byers’s criminal history, which dated back to his teenage years.

In March 1996, Melissa Byers died unexpectedly. Ricky Murray had told Lax she’d been hooked on heroin since she was 12, and needle marks were found on her body. Prescription drugs were found in her system, although not in lethal amounts. The incident was considered a possible homicide, and no clear resolution was ever reached. Interviewed later, Melissa’s parents claimed that John Mark Byers had abused her. Her father recalled a different sequence of the events of May 5, 1993, contrasting the one that Byers had given police. In this version of the story, Chris’s grandfather was supposed to pick Chris up from school, but John Mark Byers said he would do it instead.

Need to Know: After getting away with a string of crimes, John Mark Byers was finally sentenced to prison after accidentally dialing an Arkansas state trooper to arrange a marijuana sale. Even then, authorities did not formally put that charge on his record, citing burglary charges instead. During a jailhouse interview, Byers insisted that his role as a drug informant was limited to a one-off Good Samaritan–type incident.

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Public

One of the founders of wm3.

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