Show Notes
In this episode of Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast, forensic geologist and victim advocate Paul Day and criminologist and victim advocate Kristin Rich pull back the curtain on the law-enforcement climate surrounding the murders of Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore.
Why did West Memphis Police Inspector Gary Gitchell decline substantial help from the Arkansas State Police—even as three children lay dead and the department reached out to the FBI? The hosts examine the West Memphis–Crittenden County Drug Task Force, its high-profile seizures of cash, vehicles, and guns, and the cloud of investigations that hung over it in early 1993. Through contemporary newspaper reporting, they document allegations of confiscated property diverted for personal use, unaccounted cash, weapons handed out far beyond the evidence locker, and the subsequent state and federal probes that followed key officers for years.
Names that surface repeatedly in the boys’ case—James Sudbury, Tony Miller, Shane Griffin, and others—also appear in these drug-unit controversies. The episode traces how those parallel scandals, personnel changes, and later criminal cases (including firings, indictments, and other serious misconduct) raise hard questions about integrity, priorities, and culture inside the agencies investigating the murders. Paul and Kristin are careful to distinguish individual failings from the trauma many officers carried, while underscoring why these issues matter to understanding the investigation itself.
A clear-eyed look at the institutional backdrop of one of the most scrutinized cases in true-crime history.
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."