Show Notes
In the shadowed hours before three young boys vanished into Robin Hood Hills, a critical gap in the West Memphis Three timeline has long gone unfilled… until now.
On this episode of Crooked Tree, West Memphis Three researchers Paul Day and Kristin Rich dive deep into the missing thirty minutes between 5:15 and 5:45 p.m. on May 5, 1993. Drawing on overlooked door-to-door notes and police interviews, they track Stevie Branch and Michael Moore as they ride their bikes near Wilson and Holiday, then head toward the woods.
The most chilling detail emerges from the accounts of Kim Williams and Dawn Moore: as the two boys enter the ditch leading into Devil’s Den, three older teens—one white male and two Black males—are seen coming out. Near the fire hydrant at the edge of Devil’s Den, one of them offers Dawn a “shot.”
Paul and Kristin also uncover strange gaps in the police record—including a bizarre “555” case-number anomaly on Todd Moore’s statement, the only document in the entire file that breaks from the infamous 666 designation—and reconstruct a clearer timeline of the boys’ final free hours, revealing how the official missing-persons report may have been off by half an hour.
Who were those three teenagers exiting Devil’s Den… and what else is still hidden in the shadows of the investigation?
A deep dive into the overlooked minutes—and the unsettling documents—that may help us understand the last afternoon of Stevie, Michael, and Christopher.
More from Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast
In this Q&A episode of Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast, victim advocates and researchers Paul Day and Kristin Rich dig into detailed listener questions drawn from the case files surrounding the May 1993 murders of Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore.
On May 10, 1993—the day that never ends—Damien Echols leaves a grueling interrogation with Detectives Ridge and Sudbury and walks straight into a polygraph with Detective Bill Durham. What follows is a tense, unrecorded session of pretest questions, ten carefully crafted polygraph queries, and a high-pressure post-test interview that would haunt the West Memphis Three case for decades.
In this pivotal episode of Crooked Tree, forensic geologist and victim advocate Paul Day and criminologist and victim advocate Kristin Rich take a meticulous, slow-crawl look at one of the most consequential moments in the West Memphis Three investigation: the May 10, 1993, interview of Damien Echols at the West Memphis Police Department.
In this episode of Crooked Tree, hosts Kristin Rich and Paul Day turn their focus to Murray Farris, an 18-year-old West Memphis resident whose name appears on Jerry Driver’s list of possible occult-linked individuals. On the evening of May 9, 1993—hours after Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were questioned—Farris walks into the West Memphis Police Department.
In the hours and days after the bodies of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers are recovered, West Memphis investigators begin receiving tips steeped in the era’s widespread fears of satanic ritual abuse. A call from a Texas Child Protective Services worker about alleged ritualistic killings in Gilmer, TX sets an early tone. Lieutenant James Sudbury and juvenile officer Steve Jones quickly zero in on Damien Echols, interviewing the teenager at his family’s trailer on May 7 based on their shared belief that the crime shows “overtones of a cult sacrifice."