Q&A #4: Cub Scout Leaders, Dismemberment Profiles & Other Listener Questions
Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 PodcastShow Notes
In this gripping Q&A installment of Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast, West Memphis Three researchers and victim advocates Kristin Rich and Paul Day confront listener questions that cut straight to the heart of the case—and the shadows still lingering over the 1993 murders of Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore.
They open by addressing accusations of bias, revealing how their close ties to the Byers and Branch families formed only after years of independent, evidence-driven research—and why those relationships change nothing about the facts they’re presenting. From there, the episode descends into the unresolved details that continue to haunt the investigation: Did the victims’ parents or the search teams even know the unnamed creek existed before the bodies were found? What really happened to Stevie’s stolen bicycle, and why was he so fiercely protective of the new one? Where exactly were the boys’ bikes recovered in the murky waters of Ten Mile Bayou—and what do the missing tracks in the Discovery Woods suggest?
Kristin and Paul dig into one of the investigation’s most glaring failures: the near-total failure to thoroughly interrogate the families in those critical first days. They examine the Cub Scout leader who had regular contact with the boys, the polygraphs that cleared some while raising questions about others, and the mysterious cloth material recovered from Michael Moore’s hand—evidence whose true origin remains murky.
The conversation turns darker still with a detailed look at the offender profile of someone capable of the dismemberment injury inflicted on one of the boys. Drawing on studies of sexual sadists, body-disposal methods, and multi-offender crimes, the hosts explore what the violence—and what was not done to the other two children—may reveal about the killer’s motives, experience, and whether this was the work of one person or more.
Along the way they address non-public crime scene materials, the reliability of the polygraphs administered by Bill Durham, a widely circulated (and thoroughly debunked) serial-killer theory, the partial print recovered early in the case, and the origin of the podcast’s haunting theme music. They also clarify their strong working relationship with the current West Memphis Police Department—separate from the investigative failures of 1993.
No spoilers are held back this time. Every question is answered. And the episode ends with a chilling preview of what’s coming next: the first deep dive into how Damien Echols and two other teenagers were pulled into the investigation—and how that fateful focus began.
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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.
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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."