Copyright 1994, The Commercial Appeal
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
March 12, 1994, Saturday, Final Edition
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 7A,
LENGTH: 647 words
HEADLINE: Byers 'feels better' after countering suspicion from witness stand
BYLINE: By Marc Perrusquia, The Commercial Appeal
DATELINE: JONESBORO, Ark.
BODY:
The fire of suspicion burning under John Mark Byers flickered
Friday when he took the witness stand and countered defense
suggestions that he had a hand in the murders of his stepson and two
playmates.
''I feel better,'' Byers said afterward as he walked down a
courthouse hallway. ''It's really desperate for the defense to even
try to attack me or point a finger at me, with my time being
documented through the entire day (last May 5, the day the boys
disappeared), being with the police searching through the evening
time.
''Of all the people they'd be trying to attack, I don't know why
they would want to attack me.''
Defense attorneys triggered questions last month about Byers, 37,
when they revealed he gave a knife with traces of human blood on it to
a member of a New York film crew. The questions started shortly before
the start of the capital murder trial of Damien Wayne Echols, 19, and
Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, and have continued through two weeks of
testimony here.
Blood on the knife was consistent with both Byers's and his
stepson's blood. Byers testified Friday he cut himself with a knife
while cutting venison.
''If you're involved in a crime, what's the first thing you do
with a weapon? Do you give it to a media person?'' Byers asked a
reporter. ''Does that sound like you're trying to hide something?''
Byers has been on an emotional roller coaster since last May 6,
when police found the nude bodies of Chris Byers, Michael Moore and
Steve Branch in a watery ditch in a woods along Interstate 40 in West
Memphis, not far from their homes.
And from the start, the 6-foot-6 Byers, who was raised in a
churchgoing family in Marked Tree, Ark., was a focus of attention.
The day after the bodies were found, the local newspaper, the
Evening Times, ran a front-page photograph of police Insp. Gary
Gitchell embracing Byers, who at the time sported a long blond
ponytail and bluejean bib overalls.
''I was out looking until 4:30 a.m.,'' Byers told the Evening
Times that day. ''I walked within 10 or 15 feet of them and I didn't
see them.''
A professional jeweler who once worked in Germantown and later ran
a jewelry shop in the Holiday Plaza Mall in West Memphis, Byers
appears to lead a modest lifestyle. He has regularly appeared at the
trial dressed casually, often wearing a leather coat or a black vinyl
jacket with the words ''Eastern Arkansas Scottish Rite Bodies''
emblazoned in yellow letters on the back.
He and his wife, Melissa, 38, moved in 1989 into a comfortable
two-story, three-bath house with a swimming pool in West Memphis's
Holiday Gardens subdivision. The house, listed in Melissa's name, was
purchased for $ 59,000, Crittenden County records show.
In July 1992, Byers was arrested by Shelby County Sheriff's
Department narcotics officers at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza and
spent a night in jail, but was never charged. Records show officers
were ordered to hold Byers ''for the U.S. marshal.''
''It's none of your business,'' Byers said Friday of the arrest.
''Maybe they arrested the wrong person. Maybe I look like somebody
else. Maybe I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.''
Byers and his wife were the focus of cameras again last month,
after a jury found Jessie Misskelley Jr., 18, guilty of playing a role
in the boys' murders.
After Misskelley was sentenced to life plus 40 years, Byers yelled
at reporters, ''The only way he needs to come out of Cummins (a state
prison) is feet first in a box!''
Byers said he feels vindicated in having told his side of the
story from the witness stand.
''I didn't have anything to hide,'' he said. ''I mean, when you're
innocent, you don't have to defend yourself.''
