Todd Moore wrote the below article in response to an editorial published in the Jonesboro Sun by Chris Wessel.
Father of WM3 murder
victim certain who killed 3 boys
By Todd Moore
Guest
Columnist
I am the father of West Memphis triple murder victim
Michael Moore. I am writing this in response to your editorial in the June 6 edition
of The Sun titled "Justice Unserved." It has always been my opinion that
justice was served when Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were
convicted in 1994 for the brutal murder of my son and his friends.
The three men who slaughtered my son were convicted by
two juries that found them guilty in 1994. Despite this, the Arkansas Supreme Court
generously granted the murderers the opportunity for a new evidentiary hearing to
be held Dec, 5, 2011, to show evidence they claimed proved their innocence. They
could have been granted a new trial to prove these claims of innocence. Instead
of presenting their "new evidence" in open court last December, they
opted to plead guilty to the murders in August 2011 in exchange for time served.
Second District Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington
agreed to accept the defense’s plea offer for vague reasons we still don't understand.
Family members learned of the deal only at the last minute. The district attorney
was new to the case. But whatever the rational, this continued to make the convicts
guilty as a matter of law.
The defense team avoided sharing the results of the tests
of everything with us by preemptively entering a guilty plea for their clients.
Thanks to the plea deal, we may never know exactly what the defense found when
the evidence was retested. Absence of DNA evidence does not prove the West
Memphis Three (WM3) are innocent. The killers washed most of the evidence away in
the water- filled ditch where they drowned my son. There was plenty of other evidence
to convict them in 1994 without positive DNA. Most murderers are convicted without
DNA evidence.
The defense attorneys for the WM3 had nearly 20 years
to find "the real killer" and failed to do so. After nearly two decades
and untold millions in donated funds spent, the best they could do was find a hair
that may or may not have belonged to Terry Hobbs, step- father of victim Stevie
Branch. It was allegedly found on a shoelace used to tie my son. It has never been
proven to actually belong to Terry Hobbs.
Even if it was Terry Hobbs' hair, that fact would prove
nothing. Our sons were best friends, and my child spent considerable time in Terry
Hobbs's home and could have picked up the hair on his shoe. This would be "secondary
transfer" and makes the hair of no probative value. The defense has even admitted
as much. Terry Hobbs did not murder my son. No credible law enforcement official
believes so. Neither did Mark Byers, Mr. Bojangles nor any of the other defense
red herrings.
Contrary to your editorial, it is not up to police or
the prosecutor to continue to look for "the real killer." The real
killers were arrested and charged back in 1993, were found guilty in 1994 and then
admitted their guilt in 2011 after getting a lucky break. To his credit, Prosecutor
Ellington has stated many times that his door is open to any new leads and evidence
presented to him by the WM3 defense teams.
So far, nothing compelling enough to reopen the case
has been presented to him. District Attorney Ellington stated as much the day your
editorial appeared. This means despite the defense's grandiose claims prior to the
pleas, not one iota of credible evidence has been presented to show their clients'
innocence or even to view the convicted as anything less than what they are as
a matter of law and as a matter-of fact: guilty.
The WM3 defense team has been well-funded by numerous
celebrities who were misinformed by the biased "Paradise Lost” documentaries.
These one-sided films left out nearly all of the evidence that demonstrated the
guilt of the WM3. They caused thousands of people to support the release of the
convicted child killers with a very limited unndcrstanding of the actual facts
of the case.
Mr. Wessel, it appears that you, like so many others,
got most of your misinformation about this case from these inaccurate documentaries.
If you would take the time to dig a little deeper and actually read the case file
documents, you would know that there was ample evidence to convict these three
men for murdering my son. These documents are readily available on websites
such as www.callahan.8k.com.
Here are just a few examples of what was omitted from
the documentaries:
• Jessie Misskelley confessed to the crime at least
five times to police, prosecutors, even his own attorneys with his hand on a Bible.
Misskelley confessed the first time after less than four hours of police questioning.
That questioning was done with permission from his father. He continued to repeatedly
confess in the year that followed.
• Damien Echols amassed a mental health record 500 pages
long in the years immediately prior to the murders. In his own handwriting, he classified
himself as a "homicidal, suicidal, schizophrenic, sociopath" just a months
before he brutally murdered my son.
• Read Damien Echols' current Twitter account to discover
his deep-seated interest in skulls and the occult. There he also recently described
artwork depicting a man sawing off his own arm as "breathtaking." In addition,
Echols is obscenely profiting off the death of my son by selling his narcissistic
books, promoting his self-serving movie, and tattooing murder groupies with his
"mark." For two hundred dollars, you can have this sociopath tattoo an
“X” on your arm. These Twitter posts and money-making schemes are a slap in the
face to me, my family and my dead son.
• The movies omit the fact that these three men had no
alibis. Damien Echols' and Jessie Misskelley's alibis completely fell apart on
the stand in the 1994 trials. Jason Baldwin's attorneys didn’t even bother to
present an alibi.
• Fibers consistent with a robe in Jason Baldwin's home
and a shirt in Damien Echols’ home were found on the victims. Blue candle wax found
on Chris Byers' shirt was consistent with candle wax found in Damien Echols
bedroom.
• The crime lab found that three different knots were
used to hogtie the three victims with their own shoelaces. This points toward multiple
killers rather than one killer. Witnesses say that Mr. Bojangles, the disoriented
man near the crime scene that night, had a cast on one arm. No one person could
have subdued and hogtied three energetic young boys--not Terry Hobbs and certainly
not the one-armed Mr. Bojangles.
• A knife that could have been used in the murders was
found in a lake behind Baldwin's home. It was a unique knife with a place hold a
compass on the end that witnesses described as similar to one owned by Echols.
• A car full of eyewitnesses placed Echols near the crime
scene, covered with dirt, on the night of the murders.
• Numerous friends, acquaintances and cell-mates came
forward with tales of confessions from all three defendants.
Throw out one or even several of those facts, and there
would still be enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
I sat through those trials. The basic facts need to
be put out there. Otherwise, it makes a mockery of my son’s short life.
Todd Moore is the father of murder victim Michael
Moore.
Published in the Opinion Section of the Jonesboro
Sun on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 – Posted here by permission of Todd
Moore
