COMMERCIAL APPEAL
Sequence of Events
Saturday, June 5, 1993
Note: This timeline was originally published June 5, 1993 based upon the information available at the time.
-- Wednesday, May 5: Weaver Elementary School second-graders Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, all 8 years old, disappear while riding bikes near the so-called Robin Hood Park, a boggy woods near Ten Mile Bayou, West Memphis's main drainage ditch.
-- Thursday, May 6: Their bodies are found submerged in a water-filled ditch near Ten Mile in their neighborhood. That evening, an Arkansas State Police broadcast indicates the boys were sexually mutilated.
-- Friday, May 7: The State Crime Lab in Little Rock gives the case top priority and completes autopsies by early afternoon. West Memphis Police Department Insp. Gary Gitchell, the lead investigator, announces that the boys were killed by multiple head blows. He does not comment on mutilation report.
-- Saturday, May 8: Volunteers collect $10,853 in donations at several West Memphis intersections to help the families of the boys. Meanwhile, reward funds are established.
-- Tuesday, May 11: Michael Moore is buried in Crittenden Memorial Park in Marion, Ark.
-- Wednesday, May 12: Christopher Byers is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery East in Memphis.
-- Thursday, May 13: Steve Branch is buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery in Steele, Mo. In West Memphis, a local funeral home erects a large canvas tent over the slaying site, deep inside the woods and brush, giving crime-scene technicians an enclosed, darkened place to work.
-- Friday, May 14: Police say no one is a solid suspect. Gitchell suspends daily news briefings, instead issuing a news release. America's Most Wanted, a network TV program, broadcasts a report on the killings.
-- Saturday, May 15: Police say the broadcast prompts 75 tips by fax machines and about 100 phone calls from around the country. More leads, but no suspects, say police.
-- Thursday, June 3: Police arrest three Crittenden County teenagers in the killings.
-- Friday, June 4: West Memphis Municipal Judge William P. Rainey appoints private attorneys for the defendants and orders them to appear in Crittenden County Circuit Court on Monday.
