My Theory

John Mark Byers

the bb board is run by Byers?????

claudicici said:

Like smart blonde I do believe Jacoby was involved.Especially after reading Amanda's journal.
I have the same questions about the manhole theory as well.Why risk moving the bodies?
IMO the Jacoby residence may have been the original crime scene.
IMO Mr.Bojangles is not related to the crime.There was a lot of drug activity,shootings etc in the area as well.I think Mr,Bojangles may have been involved in any of those incidents more likely than the death of the children....IMO

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Where is Amanda's journal?

Amanda's journal is gone, its been taken down off the Callahan's site at Amanda's request. And yes, the Blackboard is run by John Mark Byers.

claudicici said:

the bb board is run by Byers?????

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I was wondering this...??? OH now I feel dumb I finished the PM sorry...

when was the journal taken out?

Cappuccino said:

I'm not tied into this manhole theory at all. I'm certainly not cherry picking facts to suit it, I'm completely neutral, agnostic on the subject.

Also, totally agree about the unreliability of eyewitness evidence. According to the Innocence Project, 75% of convictions overturned with DNA evidence involved flawed eyewitness statements at the original trial.

The fact still remains - that witness testimony is not the only thing which suggests Stevie went home after his mother went to work. The Ballards, the stomach contents, and the testimony of Pam Hobbs that she left dinner for Stevie consistent with the stomach contents.

The rest of Pam's family also testified about Terry Hobbs doing an awful lot of laundry on the night of May 6th. Maybe the shorts were muddy, and he was washing lots of other stuff as an excuse to throw them in unnoticed?

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I was not convince the manhole played a part in the crime scene-until TODAY when I saw the pics of Stevie's inside leg and looked at the rebar pics from the manhole-they matched perfectly in MO-I also think the head wound to Michael looked just like the bottom of the manhole and the wounds to Stevie face looked just like road rash and it looked a lot like the outside of the manhole-the abrasions on Michale's chest also looks like its from the outside of the manhole- thats very compelling evidence to ME-that the manhole played a very big part in the murder.JMOOC
Now-someone please tell me this has been done in the last 18 yrs-the manhole has been Luminol!!

http://www.wm3blackboard.com/forum/index.php?topic=5595.0

Explains the current standing of things over at BB
apparently too many members did not have a warm fuzzy feeling for JMB and didn't realize the board was set up for HIM??
Gee.. go figure.

SyraKelly said:

I was not convince the manhole played a part in the crime scene-until TODAY when I saw the pics of Stevie's inside leg and looked at the rebar pics from the manhole-they matched perfectly in MO-I also think the head wound to Michael looked just like the bottom of the manhole and the wounds to Stevie face looked just like road rash and it looked a lot like the outside of the manhole-the abrasions on Michale's chest also looks like its from the outside of the manhole- thats very compelling evidence to ME-that the manhole played a very big part in the murder.JMOOC
Now-someone please tell me this has been done in the last 18 yrs-the manhole has been Luminol!!

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I agree. It's very convincing!

Cappuccino said:

I'm not tied into this manhole theory at all. I'm certainly not cherry picking facts to suit it, I'm completely neutral, agnostic on the subject.

Also, totally agree about the unreliability of eyewitness evidence. According to the Innocence Project, 75% of convictions overturned with DNA evidence involved flawed eyewitness statements at the original trial.

The fact still remains - that witness testimony is not the only thing which suggests Stevie went home after his mother went to work. The Ballards, the stomach contents, and the testimony of Pam Hobbs that she left dinner for Stevie consistent with the stomach contents.

The rest of Pam's family also testified about Terry Hobbs doing an awful lot of laundry on the night of May 6th. Maybe the shorts were muddy, and he was washing lots of other stuff as an excuse to throw them in unnoticed?

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I agree the green beans in his stomach seem to indicate Stevie went home at some point. It's hard for me to imagine green beans were something he or his friends took to the woods for a snack.

To me, it's the changing into red shorts and TH then swapping those shorts for blue jeans that seems over-complicated. For one thing, I don't know that TH would even remember what Stevie was wearing when last seen by his mother. A lot of men (probably including myself) would not.

ETA I wasn't accusing you or CR of "cherry-picking" facts. Not at all. What I meant is that pieces of evidence loom larger over time and we feel a need to adapt our theories to explain items that may just be mistaken testimonies.

SyraKelly said:

did'nt TH say in the Pasdar interview that the night the boys went missing was the first night he ever meet MB or am I wrong..I could have sworn I read that somewhere!

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I really don't know much at all about this case but I did watch the interview with TH and yes, he claims he met MB that night for the first time.... He referred to MB as being burly and looking like a Shaggy DA..JMHO

I have a thought to share. what if the only reason the kids were undressed and hogtied was solely to keep them hidden underwater as long as possible. If the kids were just placed in the creek the clothing would pull up to the surface. but undressing the kids could certainly aid in keeping them down. The way they were tied probably made it easier for them to be pushed down into the mud, the clothes were pushed into the mud with a stick. if they were dressed and or tied in a more conventional way i doubt they would have been hidden for as long as they were.

what if the socks and extra undies that were missing were used as gloves or acted as towels when cleaning up the bank to minimize footprints.

The manhole theory seems too complicated for me. if TH did do this crime, I believe the kids were killed early in the eve and undressed on the bank and pushed down in the river immediately.

what if TH went out looking for them and chased them down with the car. Maybe he got close enough to the bikes just to scare them and the kids overreacted and fell head over handlebars and landed somewhere hard. He panicked thought the kids were dead and decided to hide them so he wouldnt have to admit what happened.

the reason he was missing through out the night was he was washing his clothes and privately dealing with what just happened.

The one thing that stands out to me is if TH did do this where was Amanda during this period of time? This has to be accounted for in theory.

claudicici said:

Like smart blonde I do believe Jacoby was involved.Especially after reading Amanda's journal.
I have the same questions about the manhole theory as well.Why risk moving the bodies?
IMO the Jacoby residence may have been the original crime scene.
IMO Mr.Bojangles is not related to the crime.There was a lot of drug activity,shootings etc in the area as well.I think Mr,Bojangles may have been involved in any of those incidents more likely than the death of the children....IMO

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Can you tell me where I can read the journal? I haven't seen that. Thank you in advance

Nova said:

I'm a little bothered by the extensive planning attributed to 8-year-olds in CR's account of the "runnning away plan". My idea of running away at that age consisted of conning my grandmother into inviting me for the weekend, or getting on my bike and simply riding (beyond what was allowed) to her house.

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We've discussed the whole running away thing on the BB. I am in a minority on that one. I base my belief on Pam saying in an interview somewhere that Stevie kept telling her he loved her that morning before going to school. I've always asked (and I asked Pam's sister, Sheila, who was ambivalent because she didn't live in the house), "What happened between Terry and Stevie on May 4th?" Sheila's best guess was that it could have had something to do with a scout trip that Stevie wanted to go on and Terry was refusing to go. IIRC, his grandfather, Jackie Hicks, Sr., ended up going on the trip.

Some people on the BB believe that Chris was running away, too. That is one explanation for two backpacks. Remember, Mark admits to spanking him that day for something. Maybe it was breaking into the house. IIRC, when Chris got home, no one was there. Mark was gone to take Ryan to be a witness at court in a hit-and-run case. I'm not sure where Melissa was. So, Chris broke into the house. When Mark got home, he punished (spanked) Chris for it and told him to clean up the patio and not to leave it. He went back to pick Ryan up. While he was gone, Melissa became inattentive and Chris left, leaving his skateboard in the street for Ryan to find later. So, Chris could have been angry with Mark and decided to join Stevie in running away.

There are so many layers to this thing that it's unbelievable. However, I'm not totally "sold" on the whole running away idea. I just saw it as an explanation for the backpacks. Like someone (Nova ?) said, you try to explain every little thing when you come up with a theory. Some of the things that happened (like possibly Mr. Bojangles) could just be some of life's weird coincidences.

Now I might be opening up a can of worms. Is everyone aware of the Warford affidavit? Is this something that anyone would like to discuss?

Lloyd Warford is an attorney who swore out an affidavit that remained sealed for some time in which he claims that Kent Arnold, the jury foreman in the Echols/Baldwin trial, illegally introduced Jessie's 6/3 statements into the deliberation. Since Jessie had refused to testify against Damien and Jason, Burnett (in a fit of sanity) had ruled that Jessie's statement was inadmissible. Apparently, Arnold felt otherwise.

Here's a link to the affidavit:

http://wm3org.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/affidavit-of-lloyd-warford-.html

(BTW, if anyone has a better version of this, please provide a link.)

ETA: This affidavit is the basis of the jury misconduct issues in the case. It's one of the things that Judge Laser was supposed to decide as part of the evidentiary hearing. It's really a moot point now, but it is another example of the problems with the criminal justice system in Arkansas.

CR... sorry if u covered this but, why would TH move the bodies from the manhole/sewer? Wouldn't it have been very risky AND wouldn't the manhole have been a good hiding spot for awhile?
TIA!

There are two schools of thought on this one:

1) He wanted the bodies to be found because he couldn't "get on with life" if the boys remained missing. When the police didn't readily find the bodies in the manhole, he moved them to the discovery ditch. He told his girlfriend (Sharon Nelson) that he had discovered the bodies "buried underwater." It was one of the documents in Jason's petition for writ of habeus corpus, Exhibit 71. I can't provide a link, but here's a discussion about in on the BB:

http://www.wm3blackboard.com/forum/index.php?topic=3919.0

2) He moved the bodies because he was afraid there might be evidence on them that would link him to the crime so he put them in water, hoping that any evidence would wash away.

I subscribe to the second theory. I believe that he waited to move the bodies until things settled down, probably around 5 am. Pam and her parents had probably fallen into an exhausted sleep, and he sneaked out of the house and moved the bodies.

In my opinion, the theory is not believable for so many reasons.

*I don't think there is any way that 3 hogtied dead bodies could have been taken out of a manhole. How wide is the opening of this manhole? Maybe 2 feet? Are there pictures of it? I don't think that the boys ever played in the manhole. While the idea would seem very cool to little Ninja Turtle fans, 8 year old boys have big mouths. They would not have kept it secret, they would have bragged to all their friends, who would have begged/demanded to be taken there too. Lots of kids would have known about it.

*If there was enough water in the manhole for the boys to drown in while lying on their backs, why would Stevie pick that as a place to run away to? Would he sleep in the water? All of the boys shoes would have gotten soaked. Their parents would have gotten a little upset about them coming home in soaked shoes and would have demanded to know how they got that way.

*If Stevie was wearing red shorts, why would Terry go to so much trouble to try to change Stevie's clothes? Why wouldn't he have simply told his wife that Stevie came in and changed into red shorts if he did? Or just acted like Stevie must have come in and changed while he was gone/in the bathroom/wherever or gotten them from a friend if questioned about it after the boys were found? There is nothing weird or suspicious about it, I'm sure she would have thought nothing of it. After taking off the shorts and finding the pants too difficult to get back on, why would he think it would be easier or take less time to completely strip all 3 boys? How would animals have been able to injure Stevie's private parts with his clothes still on? You think they crawled under his shorts and underwear? Nevermind the fact that the certified forensic pathologist who saw the injuries in person, not just in pictures, testified that he and his colleagues did not think that they were caused by animal bites.

*How would he have the nerve to return to the manhole with the dead or dying boys in it so many times? There were so many people in the woods, what if someone followed him or caught him? I think he would have stayed as far away as possible while people where searching. Not only would he not want to be caught there, but he would be trying to guide people away from the manhole.

*Why would he need the bodies to be found to get on with life?

RTC said:

I have a thought to share. what if the only reason the kids were undressed and hogtied was solely to keep them hidden underwater as long as possible. If the kids were just placed in the creek the clothing would pull up to the surface. but undressing the kids could certainly aid in keeping them down.

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I think that heavy wet clothing would actually have aided in keeping the bodies submerged, weighing them down, not causing them to float.

Okay, after reading the accounts of Jamie Clark Ballard and her sister... If TH was home with Stevie's little sister at 6:30, when did he have the opportunity to leave the house and go after the boys? This is the first i read of the little sister mentioned.
http://www.wm3blackboard.com/board/pdfs/wm3.pdf

carla79 said:

Can you tell me where I can read the journal? I haven't seen that. Thank you in advance

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aparently it has been removed from the callahan's site by Amanda's request.