The Forgotten WM3 /// Part 2 /// 387 | Forensic Files

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[Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who still has zero toilet paper he is the captain but
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called off the record on Stitcher premium and that is enough of the business all right everybody gather
around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] that one thing that very quickly comes
up in most profiles the the level of concealment of the victim of the body often indicates how well known the
offender was to the victim how close the two were related and where we where we have here if tying the bodies up post
morm making smaller packages making sure that those packages stay under the water
uh it it really conceals the bodies and it's somebody taking on added risk to themselves getting caught by taking that
time to conceal the bodies in this manner if it were some Maniac from the truck stop he would have done what he
wanted to do and then just fled the area exactly right yeah and that that's especially when you consider you're
talking about the risk they were taking again this was not a a remote Forest this person was was doing all that work
to conceal those bodies with semi- trucks pulling up you know in and out of a truck wash 100 feet from them people
playing in their backyards 100t in the other direction like like all this is happening around them and they're doing
it the only reason to do that is typically what I what I like to say is not necessarily that people know that
this individual was with the victims right before they died but that this individual thinks people might
know that he was with the victims right before they died so so say say whatever say person X sees you know the boys
cross the pipe and go in there and person X gets out out of their vehicle you know walks across people's yards
walks across the pipe which is in broad daylight view of the Mayfair apartments walks into the woods and then ends up
killing the boys and then it's like oh [ __ ] I don't know if anyone saw me do that you know if they weren't going
there with the intention of killing them which I don't believe they did you know
so so now they think I think people know that I was with them so that explains the risk in the concealment in the fact
that okay I've got to make sure when people come here to look that this is not where they find the boy's bodies
because someone could say hey I just saw you go in there and now the bodies are there I think that's why the we see that
level of concealment and I I think that's why we see even the bikes thrown into the Bayou as part of the
concealment because this person needed to be have a have a backup plan and somebody said hey I saw you going in
there they could say yeah I was searching I didn't find him in there whereas you know if they find the boy's
bodies very clearly and quickly and they were there then they're obviously going
to get pegged for the crime so it's it's a it's a way for them to get to put some
distance between themselves both both Geographic distance and time away from them to delay the the bodies being found
so that they can they're not they're not known to be the last people with them in
that location and and it all comes back to their being a personal relationship with them there's someone that people
would expect to be with those boys at that time which is typically you know someone who knows them now a lot of
people would say in this cast of characters because of the investigation like you're
you're making all these great points of why it was so or not why but the fact that it was
such a dis I don't even know what the word is a a [ __ ] storm uh of an investigation but you have individual
like the guy in Bojangles what what's your thought after looking into this case now on on an individual like that I
I think that there Mr Bojangles is a is a red herring uh we we kind of broke it down on the podcast
during season five um about the timing and the terrain and then as you'll see on the TV series we actually we actually
brought in um an an ex Special Forces person that that navigates terrain like that for a living and had them make the
actual run that that the Bojangles man would have had to make and and ultimately the the determination was
that there's just no way that this guy had any connection to the crime whatsoever for for a number of reasons I
mean the blood that was on him well there wasn't any blood on the boys the way they were killed uh and even what we
found in from our you know film in the TV series was the mud um there wouldn't have been any mud on them either and and
you'll see again the when your listeners are listening to this they will have already seen it and you'll see this
weekend why that's the case is it because you could have done everything from and and not be in the water no it's
because the water so we went in very similar conditions when the water was murky and gross and the you know you you
have to cross the water to get you have to cross two Creeks actually to get to Bojangles if you were taking the route
from the crime scene to follow the Bayou all the way down there and we expected our our special forces guy to come out
covered and caked in mud like Mr Bojangles was but when he came out he was perfectly clean and it was because
of the water from crossing the Bayou actually just it just rinsed all that mud right off of them and we we we tried
a few things we're like how is that possible that's just the way that it worked out is is once you cross the
Bayou to go into the Bojangles you come out no matter how much we caked mud on him once you came out the other side you
were clean so most likely we determined uh which you don't necessarily see it on
the show but we determined in the process was where this guy probably came from was from the the the open field to
the uh it would be the south of of the Bojangles restaurant there's a little ditch there and the guy probably
stumbled through that ditch on his way to the restaurant and there you can get yourself covered in mud so the the boys
are placed in the water for concealment the bikes two bicycles belonging to two of the boys are placed in the water for
concealment as well what do and this might not be important because it may have already
been left elsewhere beforehand but wasn't Christopher buers on a skateboard at some point that evening and was that
skateboard ever located or or again if it's even important to the case yeah I mean that he was on a skateboard at some
point and it was located I think it was found um just down the road from his house you know well well his dad Mark
buers excuse me well his dad Mark buers actually found him riding the skateboard
down the middle of the road that's why he took him home and gave him the whipping so you know he was off the
skateboard at that point there was another indication that he was riding earlier than that riding a skateboard
around with a girl named Lisha Freeman down the road from him but there's no no indication of him being on the
skateboard after he was punished for it you know the the bikes though the bikes where they were found helps paint a very
clear picture of the profile of our unsub which which really is another thing that should have tipped police off
they were going the wrong way so unless so the boys leave their bikes on the on the ground south of the Bayou they don't
the bike never crossed the Bayou with them so they go over there so the killer finds the boys you know where
they're at and kills them now presumably the killer didn't have murder in mind when they went that way I I don't think
anybody went across that pipe thinking I'm going to kill these three boys right now I think it just happened out of out
of Rage or it was you know probably started as a mistake but my point is they wouldn't have thrown the bikes into
the Bayou yet the bikes got thrown into the Bayou as part of concealment which tells you after the boys were killed and
after the boys were put into the water and their crime scenes concealed after that the killer throws
the bikes in the water which tells you that the killer came and went from the neighborhood not the highway where the
West Memphis 3 came and went from that they were saying right from like the truck wash from the from the highway
from over in Marion the killer had to when when they exited the crime scene went back across the bike the uh the
pipe sees the bikes there and knows those bikes are going to be a clear tip off that that's where the boys are so
they throw the bikes into the Bayou so no one knows to go look in that direction and you talked about your test
of caking the guy in mud and having him run through um run through the water and
so on and so forth talk about your the interesting test you did regarding was it was it pig or chicken that you did in
the in the water down there yeah so we and this was this was prior to the the filming of the TV series we just did
this when I started my investigation uh myself and and Mike my uh co-host and producer and our music guy Shane Yoder
who happens to be from Tennessee not far from there we all spent a week in West Memphis and you know I I looked at the
medical evidence and I had you know there's there's the theory out there and what seems to be pretty much scientific
proof proven evidence that most of the the the injuries on the boys came postmortem from animal activity namely
from Turtles and then people say well that's crazy that would never happen and you know the people who believe the West
Memphis 3 are guilty fight that so I wanted to know two things first I wanted to know a are there turtles in this
Bayou and B how will those Turtles react to flesh in the bayou so the first thing
we did is we went and we bought a couple of uh just raw chickens add them to ropes set up GoPro cameras and we said
all right I'm going to throw these in the water the GoPro battery will last about 4 hours and then we'll come back
and pull these out and see what we find throw the chickens in the water when we go walking back 4 hours later we see
turtles everywhere just scatter just away from the chicken which was pretty shocking and then we pull the chickens
out of the water and there's nothing in 4 hours there was nothing left of those chickens but a skeleton and so we we go
back and we pull the GoPro footage and sure as [ __ ] within 20 minutes of us putting that meat in the Water The
Turtles start coming and it's it's all turtle it's not big snapper turtles like you'd think it's a lot of rede Sliders
uh some snapping turtles several different species but they they they smell that flesh and go right to it and
start ripping it off the bone immediately so what that what that tells me is you know so you can argue whether
okay this was turtles or it wasn't Turtles but what I was trying to prove or disprove is is it possible to throw
flesh into that Creek in that Bayou and not have Turtles attack it and the answer is no we did that test several
times and then we eventually went and got uh we bought a 60 lb Pig and put a pig in the water so we could have
because we couldn't work with the chickens they they ate it too fast pigs a little closer to human flesh and sure
enough we watched them doing just exactly what we see with the boys they're going for soft air areas going
for the crotch the inner thighs the face the ears the turtles were just Chomp yeah those Turtles were just chomping
and chewing on that pig so you can still try and argue that you know that wasn't
animal activity but I will maintain based on what we discovered that it's literally impossible to put any kind of
meat into that Bayou and not have Turtles attack it and then once we also learned how they feed at one point we
did uh we put a turtle upstream and one Downstream about 50 ft apart because you
know we have the theory the way the boys were positioned in the bayou you know Chris buers and and Stevie Branch had
much more activity many more wounds than Michael Moore well they were Downstream
of him so if they feed by scent my theory was if I put a chicken upstream and one Downstream the one Downstream
should get more damage than the one Upstream because they're you know they're they're following the scent
upstream and the first one they come is going to get at the worst and sure enough that's what we found that you
know if we had two in the water one 50 ft further north than the or further Upstream than the other one the first
chicken would get eaten to the Bone and you would only find in that same period of time only a few bites in the one that
was further Upstream but if but if you only put one in then that one obviously gets the full brunt of it so that
explains why you have the the the thighs of buyers and all those injuries where Michael Moore didn't sustain as
much it's because the way they feed is they follow the scent upstream and when they did that the first one they came to
was Christopher buers a few feet away from him was Stevie Branch that's where the feeding friendy is is as horrible as
that is to talk about it was occurring and then you know Michael Moore was still 25 ft further Upstream so not as
many made it you know they're not going to leave a viable food source to get to another one okay so and this takes us
back again Bob to the podcast there were some pretty aggressive and have been pretty
aggressive allegations against Terry Hobbs and I'm sure most people are well aware of those and maybe he is the one
responsible for the deaths of these children I certainly don't know but part of his Alibi or part of the story we've
always been told involves another man named David jacobe you had some pretty strong opinions of David Jacob
that you voiced on your show could you could you tell us a little bit more about uh David jacobe and and your your
thoughts on that yeah I I actually um and it's going to air here on the podcast in the next few weeks um I I
actually conducted besides my multiple trips down to Arkansas to meet with with David and and to have conversations with
him and to to convince him to do an interview but I I ended up recording about a 2-hour interview I actually
videoed it so we're actually going to put it on our YouTube channel as well um it's the only and longest interview with
because he's he's been interviewed a little bit here and there but it's the only full fulllength interview with
David jacobe that's ever occurred uh that we're going to put out and I think when when you hear that you you'll see
some of it in the series in the TV series but more so when you hear this interview with him you'll you'll realize
that this guy had nothing to do with this you know there's he doesn't fit the profile at all this is a guy he's got
seven children um you actually spoke with his ex-wife and the biggest complaint anybody has with him uh from
the day from his mother and his ex-wife were the fact that he was he would never
discipline the kids could never bring himself to harm a kid um even even his own when they were in trouble you know
and his his mom and his stepmom says well that's why some of the kids are you know getting into trouble because he
never disciplined him enough um but then but then when you hear everything that David did to try to help the defense
investigators it it really becomes very apparent that this guy has no idea what happened not to mention just the raw
motion from him but you know he one thing that that I like to cite that a lot of people don't realize David jacobe
actually allowed himself to be hypnotized to try to help remember and this was part of Amy Berg's team that
did the west of Memphis you know he was working with with John Douglas and you know he's he's very emotional about
about it he was very close with Stevie and he wants to know what happened he has a hard time believing that Terry
would have anything to do with it and so of course they're trying to get him to trace down a timeline and they said well
would you agree to be hypnotized and he said yeah whatever whatever it takes so imagine if this is a guy that actually
had some knowledge of the crime do you know how D think about how dangerous it would be for that person to let
themselves be hypnotized and interviewed about it there's just there's just no way um and there there's a lot of other
things that he did too to try to help along the way you know he wore a wire he let his phone be tapped to have phone
conversations with Terry Hobbs you to try and determine if Terry had anything to do with it I don't think he realized
at the time that they were you know they were also trying to figure out if David
had anything to do with it and he really kind of got left hung out to dry with west of Memphis you know it was it was
uh it made better TV for them to put out you know there's the the hair the the the hair found on the stump that they
they know they call the jacobe Hair that you know his hair was found in the crime
scene too um but they they really didn't they put it out a little bit but they didn't really narrow it down as much as
they should have for the viewers to digest the fact that that was a hair that was found on the crime scene in a
public place six weeks after the crime that wasn't discovered by law enforcement and it matches like I don't
remember like 7% of the population of the world you know essentially if you take the the the odds of that belonging
to any particular individual and take the amount of people that we know for a fact were on the crime
scene there I don't remember the number but it it was it was several it' be something like nine of the people that
were at the crime scene that hair would they also couldn't have been excluded from it so it was
what it ended up doing is it ruined the guy's life you know he he ended up you know he would go to the grocery store
and people would throw he said he told me a story about someone throwing a head of lettuce at him at the at the Walmart
when he's trying to buy his groceries calling him a child killer spray painting child killer on his on his car
they ran him out of West Memphis which is really sad because when you talk about the west of Memphis the
documentary one of the things that always stuck out to me about uh David is when he was telling the story about how
Stevie would be doing something and Terry would be getting angry uh keep that up I'm going to bust your
butt I think he talks about marbles or something and he he would talk uh and it seems like this would be occurrence that
happened multiple times where Stevie is getting on Terry H hobbs' nerve and then
David would kind of come to the rescue well if I talk to Stevie if I play with Stevie then Terry Hobbs will get his
Focus off of Stevie right and I I don't think that once we air our my full interview with him especially the video
version of it anybody that can watch that and watch this man struggle through the his emotions and what he went
through and how desperate he is to find out who killed those boys if you can watch that and still say that you think
he had anything to do with this then more power to you because I can't I mean I'm I'm I I would I would let David
jacobe babysit my kids any day of the week he's he he's an extremely kind man dedicated father dedicated grandfather
and and there's just absolutely no way he had anything to do with this now as far as west of Memphis documentary what
do you make of the Hobbs Family secret it's it's hard to put any weight into that um it made good TV maybe it's true
I mean certainly that you know that that guy came forward with that information but uh I think there's just
too much at stake you know there was they were offering such a big big reward it seems unlikely to me that if Terry
Hobs actually did this that he would just share that information with with with his
family to where they're just discussing it over a game of pool in the basement or whatever so um I don't know it's it's
possible but I don't I personally I don't think it's all that all that [Music] credible
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visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie [Music] that what is interesting though in regards to
somebody like Terry Hobbs or maybe even John Mark buers is some of the injuries to the boys which I I get gets a little
dicey when you're trying to look through all of this because we do know that there there may have
been marks and bite marks and and different things that that occurred to the the bodies after the fact but some
of this appears to be reactionary and what Mar Leverett pointed out in I believe it was in an article in the
Arkansas times in 1994 this is still when a lot of the area really believe these teenagers did
this she points out in a in a wonderfully written article about the the criminal problems that buyers and Terry
Hobbs ran into and some of that in regards to Terry hob JS shows signs of abuse on other people and that's where I
have a hard time you know I go I go back to the injuries of reactionary and what
you said earlier about there's no reason to believe that that the person went into those woods with the intent to kill
but may have reacted to something it went too far and maybe now I have to I I've I've accidentally killed this one
boy and now I need to kill these other two boys yeah I mean that that's my theory of it's exactly my theory of what
happened that there was probably a punishment of some kind that that went too far and then now you got two
witnesses and I mean it takes a a sociopath of not a psychopath to to then turn onto two innocent 8-year-old kids
and intentionally kill them uh but it's the only way that crime scene makes sense to me what do you make of Mark
byer's passing the lie detector I don't think it matters honestly and that's you
know if you look at there's a lot of people there's still a lot of people matter of fact we had people that were
you know actively involved with our investigation on our Facebook page um you know our groups and stuff that were
kind of friends of the show during this case that knew the case really well that
eventually just kind of got pissed off and wouldn't talk to me anymore because I I didn't agree with them that Mark
buers is a likely suspect but the thing about Mark buers is he's alibied I think
Nick mentioned it earlier he Alibi 100% through the entire time and and I interviewed someone that no one's ever
heard from before that you would have seen on the show or you're going to see on the show this weekend and that's Ryan
Clark who's Chris Byers brother and you know he was I'll tell you right now he does not like Mark buers he's even told
me that he thinks Mark Byers had something to do with it but then when he walks me through the day he you know so
forget everything we know up till 6:00 so at 5:30 Mark finds Chris riding the skateboard down the middle of the road
grabs him takes him home that's when he gives him the spanking and makes him clean under the carport that's confirmed
by uh by by Chris's mother Melissa Byer she told police the same thing that he came home he got the whooping he was
cleaning under the carport Mark leaves to go pick up Ryan at court and Ryan says that's exactly what happened and
then the thing was when Ryan explain to me when they got home how that went down
now mind you he doesn't like markk and and part of him believes Mark has something to do with it because he just
he thinks you know he said Mark was abusive and didn't like Chris but he he told me the story of coming home and
walking inside and they were going to go to dinner and Mark comes in and wants to
know where Chris is at he's mad because Chris was supposed to be cleaning the carport Ryan witnessed his mother say
he's outside I just saw him and Mark's like well he's not out there and she said well well maybe he's upstairs and
Ryan goes upstairs and looks and then they start looking around the neighborhood and from that point
forward Mark was with either Ryan or Melissa or both throughout the entire rest of the evening while they're
searching so it it it it it seems to me impossible for someone to think that you
know what kind of theory could you have about when he found him and killed him if when he comes home with Ryan Melissa
his wife and Chris's mom says while you were gone with Ryan I saw Chris outside so we know Chris is home alive and safe
at that point and when he gets home Chris is already gone so there's just there's no way to to make Mark Myers fit
into the suspect pool and then he's actively looking for Chris with another person throughout the entire evening and
night that's what one thing we were able to do on our show was just point out there's just no time for him to have
done this and he's also the one that's like raising the the flags here the he's sounding the
alarm Bells because I think they're out driving around and he stops and talks to
an officer and says hey uh my kids we can't find him we were supposed to go to dinner he was supposed to be home we've
been out looking for him we can't find him anywhere should I report him missing and I believe that Officer says you know
it's it's still it was still maybe uh Twilight at that time I guess and we still got a little bit of daylight left
and so why don't you just you know take it easy he'll probably turn up if if an hour or so from now you still feel the
same way call it in and I and he's the one that phones the police at a what about 8:00 I think it was around that
time period to to notify that that Chris is missing and on top of it he seems clueless that two other boys are missing
because um Michael Moore's mother comes across the street and then says to the officer yeah I my my son is missing as
well I haven't seen him since this time and when you really start putting together the the time frame of these
possible and I I do want to stress this though these possible eyewitness accounts of having seen the boys because
I don't know that I fully believe every single one of them and we all know from doing this for a long time that
eyewitness accounts are are pretty unreliable in general but I do believe that some of these sightings occurred
and that they that they were correct and I'm not going to willy-nilly pick which
ones are right and wrong but it doesn't allow for the timeline for anything to for for Mark buers to have done anything
to Chris let alone the other two boys as well it just it just doesn't fit it's it's damn near impossible right and the
only way you know there there's a theory called the manhole Theory out there and
there there's a bunch of different crazy theories that you know he like rode a boat down the bayou late at night to put
the bodies in there and it's just it just it's just in my opinion those those are just not possible you know like I
said you know that doesn't make any sense at all um he just you know Mark's problem is and I've met Mark I
interviewed him you hear from him quite a bit on the podcast um during season five but you know he's you know he's
changed his story a few time he's a very Dynamic guy he's not you can tell by his
past he's not a great guy and so he rubs a lot of people the wrong way and so I think he you know people love to hate
him but at the same time you know to me that's no different than Damen Eckles you know people will say well daman's
changed the story he was a liar and he was a Satan worshipper it's like well you know even if he was a liar and even
if he was a Satan worshipper that still doesn't mean that he killed those boys there's still no evidence that he
actually killed those boys well and that's what's funny too is when people look at these different cast of
characters as the captain has called them and says well this person has changed their story this person has
changed their story that's why I don't like him the police have changed their story the
whole time and changed other people's story to fit their narrative and then you have people that still believe that
the the three of them did it I mean you have you know you mentioned the hollingworth uh earlier but we
have we have two people that and Captain said well what else what else evidence do we have in regards to Damen Eckles
well a a problem for Eckles that he ran into at trial is we have the Hollingsworth Clan who says I
saw Damen Eckles and Domin tier out and they were dirty they were muddy and it was it was late at night on the night
that the boys were killed and then the police have to change that that story a little bit themselves and they said you
know Jason Baldwin well he's he's a smaller guy he's short he's thin he's got long hair that you probably saw uh
Daman with with Jason Baldwin and you're AK Aken it wasn't dominer right even though narlene is saying nope I know my
niece I know for sure that was her but they still present that as evidence that that he saw Jason not to mention their
whole story of there being I think at one point ends up being like nine or 12 people in that little hatchback you know
as as the story progresses and they're reporting different times too like I I believe there's the one of the witnesses
is like an hour and a half difference from from one of the other ones they they sat they they probably sat together
came up with some kind of story because again it's the reward money that's this fueling some of of this uh confusion
around the case well there was a per this old case was a perfect situation it it was it was just the
wrong set of circumstances and the wrong set of people to create this chaos because you've got you know a
complicated case that's well it was made complicated and then and then you have all of these people you know their
emotions running High everybody wants to solve the case and then you throw this big fat reward out to a whole bunch of
poor people and and just and just it's like throwing fire on on gasoline it it just it just ignites but when you're
talking about the victimology it seems like you you believe you learned a couple things one that these murders
took place by one single individual you gave us the reasons you believe for that
you also believe that this person was connected to the boys somehow but also connected to that neighborhood somehow
you gave us your evidence reasons of those is there any other things that you guys have come to
conclusions about the profile of this murderer there was a big reveal you know I I've worked with retired FBI profiler
Jim clementy for about five years now and he's been kind of a mentor to me and and I think I did a pretty good job
profiling the crime scene his Prof profile and mine were were pretty close actually once he finally did his um but
Jim is an expert for a reason and what you'll you will see in the TV series is Jim catching something that I never
caught before and and I I guess it doesn't necessarily this may not answer your question but
it's interesting along those same lines um when he was was going through all the
evidence with with Terry Hobbs you know what his timeline what we have what's verifiable and the fact that Terry
called the police from Catfish Island when he picked Pam up um which we we knew that is what happened not till 9:00
he calls the police and reports them missing and then has the police meet him there you know I always thought you know
that's we always thought you know how Cal obviously this guy must not have a big concern why did he wait so long to
call the police and um Jim watched it and watched a I watched a light bulb go off in his head
and you will have seen that on the TV series when he tells me to hit pause and said wait a minute he called from
Catfish Island and he didn't go home he waited he met them in the parking lot there which I hadn't thought much
of and he's like why wouldn't they go home Pam's son is missing his stepson is missing they're waiting for him to go
home they're terrified where would you want to be in that situation at home right waiting for him
to come home and he says this guy didn't want the police in his house that and and Jim just I mean just poignantly that
is a red that is a huge red flag this guy was calculated for some reason Terry Hobs the evidence seems to indicate did
not want to meet the police at his house did not want the police at his house house and that's why he waited to call
it catfish Island and that's why he stayed at catfish Island to take the report instead of telling them to meet
him back at the house um so again that doesn't necessarily answer your question about the profile but it just that's
where my my mind went when you said that well I think your mind also can go to the idea that if if my son was missing
and I call the police I'd say oh well meet us back at the house cuz maybe he showed up but if you're responsible for
these murders you would know that they're not going to show up right exactly right and if if you uh if
you've seen at this point again you haven't seen the show yet but you've seen some of the trailers and if you you
you see a little bit of that moment I'm describing in the trailers and then you you also see me sitting at a desk
looking up at the sky with tears in my eyes trying to compose myself that was that was that moment when all of a
sudden it occurred to me what Pam Hobs must have been going through when she was forced to sit and stay at catfish
Island and wait for the police when her son was missing and she couldn't get home to see if he was there well there's
a lot of thought too that he never wanted to call police that he only did so because Pam questions him when he
arrives to pick her up well did did you call the police and he says no and then you're right it's very calculated for
him to deter to decide to call them there you know to to I got to end her worry by phoning the police but I'm
going to do it here right now and stay here as you said that's very interesting yeah the staying here was the big part
you know cuz I've heard people say well maybe their phone wasn't working or whatever and he in other interviews I
said they did have a working phone but yeah the staying here is is is the big thing that's you know why why not go
home and I and it just I never thought about it in that context until Jim brought that up and it's I've had a hard
time letting go of it ever since oh no and I I like the fact that you brought up when I was looking at the trailer
there's this moment that you just talked about where I was like wait did was Bob
te eyed because we've hung out several times at at crime con and fun events so we're always upbeat and it's good to see
everybody and I saw this clip and I went wow I think this gets really emotional but I also think it's important with
these cases to have people that are emotional about the cases and that that that these cases actually matter to them
and just not somebody collecting a paycheck to investigate a crime for TV on and that's one of the main reasons
I'm very excited to check this do you want to call it documentary the docu series yeah you're going to you're
definitely going to see some emotion out of me uh that I wasn't thrilled about you know that I'm on I'm on you're going
to see me on camera crying a couple times um which of course you know being the big tough Burly man that I am was
wasn't wasn't thrilled with but it's the reality you know the this docu series it's taking you the viewers along with
me while I'm doing the investigation and you're and you get to see what that really looks like you get to see what it
looks like when I sit down and you know call it an interview but I'm speaking with someone who lost their child who
lost their brother and it just it wears on I'll tell you as the you know we we filmed for about three months
and as the there there was definitely a fatigue factor it's just so much sadness and so
much hurt and pain that it got to be you know a lot of the a lot of the interviews and stuff we filmed later on
I'm just I'm I'm I'm kind of a wreck because it just it just it just weighs on me so much I just so badly want to
find the truth for these people and finally find some justice now Bob there there obviously a lot of question marks
in regards to Terry Hobs but are there is there anybody else any other persons any other people that in
the eyes of Bob Ruff should be Persons of Interest and why uh there are a few others um but what we really determined
throughout the course of this the the filming of the TV series and our active investigation last year is when we
filmed it was this case is only going to be solved one way and that's through science
there's we're not going to solve this case by by interviewing more people by finding more witnesses there's just
everybody's there too much time has passed there's too much motivation there's been too much motivation with
money and with media and memories have shifted there's too much drug use and too much alcoholism and and too many
people with agendas stories are changing but we have breaks in science we have new technology that can actually solve
this case and that's what it's going to come down to so it doesn't necessarily matter who the the the Persons of
Interest are it doesn't necessarily matter if you think Terry Hobbs did it or didn't do it I'm not saying if he did
or didn't I don't know I but I I'll tell you that he's someone that I think needs
further investigation and what it's going to take is to convince Scott Ellington the district attorney that
that holds the keys he's the gatekeeper to the evidence to release the evidence and allow us to use new technology and
science to test it and that is what is going to solve the case and that is the only thing that is going to finally
solve this case well and the statistics show this to be true that the younger a victim the more likely that they H it
has to be someone on their Inner Circle and these victims were all three eight years old if you take a victim that's
one or two it's almost somebody inside the household because the younger you are the smaller your Social Circle is
you just don't have that much going on in your life and the interesting thing here is with these
with these three victims with the three boys you're really not talking about a whole lot of circles because you you're
probably looking for the common themes throughout them when you talk about victimology okay they went to the same
school they lived in the same neighborhood they they were in the same uh all three of them were in Cub Scouts
I believe and then you also have the the because they're all three friends uh just their immediate families in general
it it feels to me like if this killer is known to the kids and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it's got to be
somebody in one of those circles yeah I agree I think that you know the the biggest the saddest part about this
whole case is that the West Memphis Police didn't do their job on day one I think that I think all of this Myster I
most of us would have never heard about this case I think it would have been easily and quickly solved had they done
their job on day one they did bad police work to begin with but they they also were not skilled in in a homicide or the
homicide of of of three children but the but the the thing that always fascinates
me with these smaller police departments that can't fight their way out of a wet
paper bag they they turn down assistance from from agencies that know better that know
what they're doing I mean we have statements of the state police saying that no they didn't want our help down
there in in West Memphis and the f as you pointed out the FBI tried to get involved yeah it's it's sad you know I
worked in government for a long I was a firefighter for for 16 years um so I worked alongside with uh you know a lot
of police officers and law enforcement but I'll just tell you you know that the there's
definitely a marking of territory that goes on and all that it's the same thing with the fire service you know I I've
been at fires where we need help we don't have enough people we don't have enough enough apparatus and so you know
I you know when I was in my younger years in the fire service I you know asked the chief you call for Mutual Aid
ask the neighboring town to come over here and help us which they would happily do and you had this mentality
where and we're talking early 2000s now not not terribly far removed from this case where you know they would a house
would end up burning down because they refused to call for help because they didn't want to admit to another
municipality that they needed their help you know that that culture L luckily and
thankfully changed over the course of my career and of course for me I was the chief by the end so I was the one that
got to make those decisions um but it was the same thing in law enforcement I think that's a lot of what you see it's
just it's just people pissing on fire hydrants you know they this is my territory and I don't need you coming in
here to tell me how to do my job but the saddest part about it is besides that even is this case was made more
complicated than it actually was that West Memphis Police Department had certainly dealt with homicides before
but this was a right a triple homicide of children this is different and that's the problem is they looked at it like it
was different but what they needed to do was investigate it the same way they investigate every other case and had
they done that I think that we would had a resolution very quickly after the boys
bodies were found and obviously we all still have the question of who did this but what questions do you still have
about the case you know that's I think that's the only that's left for me I mean there there's a lot of minutia I
mean you can get in I mean every the the Callahan website is one of the greatest
resources ever made available for any True Crime case ever you know literally you can go through every single document
in the case and that's and and and what's not on there i' I've viewed and copied myself when I went into the DA's
office to go through their files so you I've looked at all and certainly there are a million unanswered questions but
it kind of goes back to what I mentioned earlier that what what I've realized is
there's not going to be a glaring answer in those files there's not going to be a
glaring answer in a new witness you know we we we found new Witnesses you're going to hear from people this weekend
that you've never heard from before but that's not what's going to solve the case that what's going to solve the case
is going to have to be forensic so so my big question is who did it the answer is
sitting right there in front of you and and all we need to do collectively as a as as a people on both sides of this is
just want the truth is to force that issue is to convince Scott Ellington in the State's Attorney's office to allow
the evidence to be tested and allow us to find the truth look when you watch west of Memphis you just want to
strangle the guy they're basically saying look we have enough evidence to convict these guys but there's resources
and then he even says that he hasn't even dove into all the evidence so when he makes that statement he's basically
telling the Community we believe these three individuals are responsible for murdering three 8-year-old children and
we're going to release them to the public to me that that's the most [ __ ] I've ever seen like if you
actually thought that these three individuals killed these three eight-year-olds you would never release
them to the community ever because there will always be a threat to the children
all they did was we want you to uh admit that you're you're guilty of the crime so you can't sue us for the time that we
made you serve right it's the Alfred plea is it it's one of the worst pieces of our criminal justice system and it's
not what it was ever intended to be you know it was essentially the Alfred plea came from a case where you know the the
you weren't allowed to plead guilty to something if you were innocent if that makes sense so that's where that that's
where that plea came from was a guy that was like well I'll plead guilty to take
this deal but I didn't do do it while a judge was not allowed to accept that plea this ruling came in to where they
said okay for this certain circumstance will allow you to plead guilty but still
maintain your innocence and then that got turned into what we now known as the Alfred plea where prosecutors offices
use it as a as a punt as an easy way out to say okay well I'll dangle your freedom in front of you you can go home
and not have any more risk of being in prison but you have to plead guilty and be a convicted murderer for the rest of
your life life in order for that to happen and that way I get to say we got the right guys I don't have to further
investigate this because look they pleed guilty when I see Stevie Branch Christopher buers Michael
Moore these three eight-year-old victims are victims multiple times they're they're victims of one of abuse then
they're a victims they're murdered then they're victims in the sense that the whole case becomes a about three other
victims and then then they become victims Again by by the courts not standing up
and saying that we we believe that these individuals are guilty if you if you thought they were guilty you would never
left let them out but you let them out you have them make a plea where now the case is closed and in the eyes of the
law they're not going to investigate this anymore so we're never going to know all right well that's what we're
hoping to change with it and this will a lot of what I keep saying about the Ellington the forensic evidence will
make a lot more sense after this weekend when you see the when you see the series
but you know we we we've discovered there's there's new technology out there that you know we you know I went to
California to meet with um a forensic uh DNA specialist that uses the mvac DNA collection technique and and that doctor
she's convinced that if you give me this evidence I can tell you who did it and we're we can't get Scott Ellington to
pull his head out of the sand long enough to allow that testing to be done well but it's all going to take public
pressure and that's my only argument against Baldwin Eckles and Miss Kelly is that you stated in a
documentary that you could do more once you get out and if this is true like you
said that there's evidence that can be tested these three individuals should be yelling from the rooftops and using
their platforms to get the community behind this to to stir um possibly some movement because like you said like I
said if there's no public pressure normally nothing gets done well and that's what you're going to see this
weekend is all three of them asking for this DNA testing and that's the reason why uh Damien and and Jason participated
in the in the docu series you know they're not making any money off of this or anything they're a part of it because
they believe that our process here in our investigation could actually lead to the truth and and actually figure out
who killed those three little boys that's why they agreed to participate and there's only one person that's
holding up that testing right now and it's not Damian it's not Jason it's not Jesse they've all said they're all for
it there's only one person stopping this case from being solved and that's Scott
[Music] Ellington how about a little recommended viewing you guessed it it's the highly
anticipated the Forgotten West Memphis 3 available on demand on oxygen watch our
friend Bob Ruff on the Forgotten West Memphis 3 and I've had a chance to watch both parts I'd give it five bottle caps
out of five and until next week be good be kind and don't let it [Music] you can start your day off
right when you find a professional on Angie to get your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals
to get all your home projects done well visit angie.com you can do this when you
Angie that

The Forgotten WM3 /// Part 2 /// 387

Part 2 of 2

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This week we are very excited to be joined in the Garage by friend of the show Bob Ruff! Bob is the host of the very popular Truth & Justice podcast and Executive Producer and star of Oxygen’s The Forgotten West Memphis 3. Beer of the Week - Dortmunder Gold by The Great Lakes Brewing Company Garage Grade - 5 out of 5 Bottle Caps

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Brief Summary

The episode covers the West Memphis 3 case, focusing on concealment methods, suspect profiles, and the need for forensic testing to find justice.

Key points

Quality Sleep with Ashley. Ashley offers top mattress brands at winning prices with special financing options.
True Crime Garage Introduction. Hosts Nick and Captain welcome listeners and share their excitement for the episode.
The Investigation of Concealment. Discussion on how the concealment of bodies indicates the relationship between the victim and offender.
David Jacobe's Hypnosis. David Jacobe underwent hypnosis to help remember details related to the case.
The Hair That Ruined Lives. A hair found at the crime scene led to devastating consequences for an innocent man.
Mark Byers' Alibi. Mark Byers had a solid alibi during the time of the boys' disappearance, complicating suspicions against him.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This person thinks people might know he was with the victims.

Discussion about the concealment of bodies.

5:19WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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