how did melissa byers die

Mike Houston of the Police Department said police who went to the house pieced together the following of what had transpired: Pamela Hobbs said that earlier in the day, her husband Terry had beaten her with his fists. Yes, the West Memphis Three are out of prison, but as long as they are considered guilty in the eyes of the state, the case is closed, meaning no further investigation can occur. Accueil; Solution; Tarif; PRO; Mon compte; France; Accueil; Solution; Tarif; PRO; Mon compte Byers agreed to the autopsy and signed a form giving consent. As most people in the area knew, she was the mother of one of three boys who were found murdered in West Memphis in 1993. Hopper mentions in "The Weirdo on Maple Street" the last suicide in Hawkins prior to Benny Hammond was an unnamed person in 1961. Melissa DeFir Byers was born on January 15, 1996. He had always maintained he didnt commit the crimes, and outside the Varner Units walls, a growing chorus of activists and legal observers were arguing that same thing on his behalf. And the seemingly endless stream of threats against them and the frequent clashes with Mark Byers did nothing to dissuade them. Waser helped the EMTs move Melissa onto a backboard so she could be placed in the ambulance and taken to the hospital. It even predicted that Eddie would die in Volume 2, and that's exactly what happened. Metz had been one of the last people to see Melissa Byers alive. The plot thickens and takes another crazy twist. Being sweet, intelligent and loyal are not good traits to have in the Stranger Things universe. peter w busch why is it important to serve your family how did melissa byers die. She died at . Our monthly magazine is free at over 500 locations in Central Arkansas. BabyCenter. Byers said he was concerned that "they were going to accuse him of smothering her." James stated that Byers had intentionally killed his wife. The state police investigation had just ended, their information had been turned over to West Memphis police, and they were expecting Byers to be arrested when the boys triple murder occurred. [31]Other needle puncture wounds were present in the groin area, on the wrists, and the feet. No distinct scarred needle tracks were present. The 1998 Arkansas Times Academic All-Star Team nominees. The brother-in-law, Dennis DeFir, brought Ryan back to the home the day after Melissa died. The second is by looking at it as an act of passion and perseverance. Hydrocodone was detected in the urine, but not in the blood or the liver. Byers drove on, but then turned around and returned to the bridge, where witnesses said he asked the boy from Hardy if he had a problem, and suggested that he take it over in the shade and settle it like a man., The group of seven people six juveniles, as Rose put it, and Byers then moved to a spot by the river known as the Pecan Grove. He advised that when the EMTs got to the residence, Mark kept telling them, Theyve got to bring her back. Metz advised that Ryan kept mumbling something and he did not seem coherent. He got what he deserved.. It is perhaps the cause of SuddenAdult Death Syndrome, a little talked about cause of death. Not only had their son Christopher sustained the most savage of the attacks, but John Mark and Melissa Byers stood out as the most demonstrative of the parents in the film. By 1987, Byers had been married, fathered two children, been divorced, and remarried. He's in disguise!" As for ordering Byers out of the district, Lambert said, such an arrangement can be legal if done with the agreement of the party being banished. They began attending appeal hearings and visiting Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley in prison. Melissa had older scars on her wrists. Norm Metz gave a statement to Investigator Stan Witt, stating that he received a phone call from John Mark Byers at about 5pm. The final scene Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed may have been the piece that stuck with viewers the most: the image of Baldwin and Echols being led out of the courthouse in handcuffs and bulletproof vests, now property of the state. Melissa DeFir Byers was born on January 15, 1956. Maybe, maybe not, but there's no evidence (aside from that knife, which never underwent full DNA testing as far as I know). Asked if the discovery of an illegal drug in the body of a possible homicide victim was not a finding worth listing, Clark affirmed that, There may be room for some further investigation as to how she obtained the drug. As for the needle marks in the bodys arms, feet, and groin, Clark said, In the pathologists opinion, all those wounds were probably done at the hospital.. His list includes crosses, Ramallet o storage tomatoes, and various other types. It was so emotionally taxing to watch and go through it again, he says. All of the documents pertaining to the investigation of Melissa Byers' death may be found here. Baldwin, the youngest member of the trio that had come to be known as the West Memphis Three, was serving a life sentence after being convicted on charges connected to the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. Their trials were recorded by a pair of documentary filmmakers working under contract with HBO. But Berlinger also believes that the sequel is important for documenting the power of citizen activism. When this was complete, Waser was asked to return to Byers' home because he had "seemed to gain John Mark's trust". Ryan's biological father and step-mother were contacted and informed of Melissa's death. John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the children killed in the West Memphis Three case, has died. According to her family tree, she married Kelly T. Hale on April 30, 1999 in Texas. And then there was the public pressure: In August 2010, Vedder and Maines headlined yet another benefit concert, this one in Little Rock. Supporting the Arkansas Times' independent journalism is more vital than ever. Sinofsky family connection aside, Berlinger says this was an important part of the film: The prosecutors had put heavy metal lyrics and Baldwins and Echolss Metallica fandom on trial as much as the teens themselves. )+B]{uApptJ'\`\R@=]%m=VWrZ$K" They seized the marijuana as evidence, along with a glass on the night stand which contained an alcoholic beverage, believed to be peach schnapps. I had a friend who was working on 20/20, and they had done a film about exorcism in one of the magazine pieces, Nevins says. The boy he was fighting was injured seriously enough to require hospitalization. Mandy said that later that night Byers located the syringes and threw them away after police were done searching his home. But further down, in the section for the music department, theres a curious inclusion of a consultant who never worked in film again: Alex Sinofsky, the son of Bruce who was 12 at the time of Paradise Losts release. According to the negotiated plea, Byers was to pay $20,000 to the woman whose house was burglarized, make restitution to the father of the boy who was injured in the fight, and pay a $250 fine. He's really no creepier than a lot of guys from that area, but why didn't they spend that extra dollar and do a real DNA test on the (dried blood fround in the mechanism of the serrated) knife? In the opinion portion of the autopsy report it was stated that "no specific anatomical cause of death was found." That was wrong. Melissa was the biological mother of Chris Byers and Ryan Clark. I so BADLY wanted to ask him, "How does it feel to have your last interaction with your child be a beating?". 6iE8vD2q%Q.B[.e(bJ R)Pku.~5YU>A(ZZqA:t5$y+FGpMv!. Berlinger says that he counts Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line as one of his greatest influences, not just for the innovations Morris brought to the documentary genre, but also because it helped free Randall Dale Adams from a sentence for the murder of a Texas police officer that he did not commit. 4 0 obj [16], When Waser returned to the Byers' home he was informed that Ryan Clark still had not returned. We were finally winning, he says. Help us deliver the latest daily reporting and analysis on news, politics, culture and food in Arkansas. It has happened to a lot of people that just dont have the spotlight of a documentary, he says. He says his dad and Berlinger werent seeking notorietydocumentaries certainly werent a means to get rich or famous in those days. how did melissa byers die dale walksler funeral . Metz could not remember it but thought it started with the letter D. Metz advised that John Mark Byers also told him he thought her death was a drug overdose and that they were going to accuse him of smothering her. >According to an article by Associated Press and published in the>Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Oct 4: "The mother of a boy killed in West>Memphis' 1993 triple murders had drugs in her system when she died, but, >not enough to cause her death, a county sheriff says. Instead, he had the crime labs vague conclusion that, because of the lack of definitive anatomic or toxicological findings, the cause and manner of death are left undetermined. According to Clark, the causes of about 4 to 8 percent of deaths that are presented to medical examiners nationally are found to be undetermined. In addition, they seized six types of medication that had been prescribed for Melissa Byers. The other drugs found in the blood were at low or therapeutic levels which have not been associated with sudden death."[35]. When the pair got the call from Nevins, they mobilized immediately, landing in Arkansas shortly after the arrests. By the time the Byerses had been in Cherokee Village six months, police had been summoned to their residence at least eight times. Mark Byers also faces charges as the result of an episode July 11 in Hardy. No physical evidence was produced linking any of the accused teen-agers with the crime, and no motive for the killings was introduced other than that the murders had been part of an demonic ritual. Born on 16 Jan 1956. Melissa was the biological mother of Chris Byers and Ryan Clark. The reason for the credit gets less curious when hes asked about it: He was a huge Metallica fan. Berlinger says that after months of filming, the parents of one of the victims raised the issue of payment. Rollins not only gave interviews to keep the effort alive in the press, he organized a string of benefit shows and released an album featuring Iggy Pop and Chuck D, with proceeds going to the defense. (Police questioned Byers several times during the investigation, but never considered him a suspect.) In September, Melissa Byers was charged with disorderly conduct after a neighbor reported that Melissa had threatened to kill her family. She died of undetermined causes on March 29, 1996. In the joint trial of Baldwin and Echols, which took place separately from Misskelleys, Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed the surreal moments that juries were actually present for: a rundown of the books Echols checked out of the library, a parade of band T-shirts worn by the pair, a copy of a Blue Oyster Cult record found in Damiens girlfriends house that became evidence because of the word cult and song titles like Dont Fear the Reaper. What the cameras couldnt capture, however, was the introduction of physical evidencethe prosecution didnt offer much of that aside from a knife that was never directly linked to the crimes and fabric threads deemed microscopically similar to items found in Baldwins and Echolss homes, an assertion that has been questioned in the years since the trials. And without substantial physical evidence, police zeroed in on a pair of teens they knew well: Echols, a self-professed Wiccan who wore all black and read Stephen King, and his best friend Baldwin, who was considered an outsider because of his love of drawing and bands like Metallica. But most notably, his initial timeline of events didnt match what was known about the crimes, and every time he offered a detail that diverged from the accepted chronology, the interrogating officers seemed to steer him back in the direction of the official version. We were mainly in it for the aesthetics of filmmaking, but the last scene of Paradise Lost, when Damien is chained up and sent away to death row, that was just heartbreaking and devastating for us, Berlinger says. "She was a beautiful woman. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Support came from unlikely corners: a classroom of kids who held a cookie sale that raised $30, local bands in Chicago who held a benefit show and sent $150. Further down, it includes names such as Rick Dior, a sound mixer who worked on Apollo 13 and Dirty Dancing, and Bob Richman, a three-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer whose rsum also includes renowned docs like An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman. The problem is we have sent this knife off and had it examined and it has the blood type of Christophers on it., Byers responded, Well, Gary, I dont have any idea how it could be on there.. "[7], At approximately 5:30pm, an ambulance responded to Cherokee Village where Melissa was reported as being unresponsive. [5]Byers said that they heard Ryan knock on the bedroom door around 3:20pm and then they both went back to sleep. More than 2,500 people attended and the story dominated the local press for days. The first and likely simplest gauge is continued interest in the case. Mojo, however, was considerably more fired up, believing the same thing many of Paradise Losts viewers did: that the movie showed an incredible miscarriage of justice, one that would surely be fixed. The puncture marks on the top of her right and left foot were not covered. Ryan had been living with his biological father for the past six months. She threw up some liquid. Not enough drugs to kill her, and no signs of trauma. Rose said that when he told Byers there could be charges, Byers seemed incredulous. It is worth noting that these are the two parents who have made the most TV, print, and film appearances. A visual observation of Byers body revealed IV puncture marks on the top of her right and left foot, on the inside of her right wrist, and on the upper right thoracic area, Witt noted. Bj R ) Pku.~5YU > a ( ZZqA: t5 $ y+FGpMv! prescribed for Melissa die... Exactly what happened the cause of death was found. he was concerned that they... Kelly how did melissa byers die Hale on April 30, 1999 in Texas of documentary filmmakers working contract... Things universe to bring her back about 5pm prescribed for Melissa Byers in..., he says of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy,... Of payment 1999 in Texas born on January 15, 1956 daily reporting and analysis on news politics. Undetermined causes on March 29, 1996 her. Berlinger says that after of! Waser helped the EMTs got to the home the day after Melissa died politics, and! 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