Show Notes
In the chaotic days after the bodies of three eight-year-old boys were discovered in West Memphis, the police—facing few solid leads—turned to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico for an offender profile. They sent a case summary and victimology reports, hoping for scientific direction. What they received instead was generic interview guidance. No profile ever came.
In this episode of Crooked Tree, victim advocates Paul Day and Kristin Rich examine the only truly unbiased profile ever produced in the West Memphis Three case: the public analysis offered by Memphis psychologist Dr. L.D. Hutt Jr. before any arrests were made. Drawing solely on publicly available facts, Hutt described a young white male familiar with the neighborhood who likely knew at least one of the victims—an assessment that aligns closely with national statistics on juvenile homicides.
Paul and Kristin break down the incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information forwarded to the FBI, the detailed victimology reports that humanize Michael Moore, Christopher Byers, and Steve Branch, and the broader science of behavioral analysis—including organized versus disorganized offenders and the dangers of confirmation bias. They also revisit the grim 1993 peak in child murders and the consistent pattern that most young victims are killed by someone they know.
This is the episode that peels back the early investigative decisions and shows how an independent expert, free of the case’s later pressures, read the evidence in real time. Essential listening for anyone seeking a clear-eyed look at the profiling that never guided the original investigation—and the one that still stands apart.
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."