Untying the Knot: John Mark Byers and the West Memphis Three by Greg Day

tape from Aaron’s statement that had evoked a strong reaction from Misskelley and led to his initial confession. As it turned out, the jury was able to accept Misskelley’s confession at face value.
    The Confession
    The police already had an interest in Damien Echols; Jerry Driver and Steve Jones had made sure of that. They also had the name of Jason Baldwin, who was a nearly constant companion of Echols and whose name had come up frequently as they questioned local teens about Damien. Now, thanks to Hutcheson, they were interested in Jessie Misskelley as well. He did not have Echols’s notoriety, but according to Jessie himself, the police knew him well. “They knew me since 1980, when I was five years old, ’cause that’s when I first started getting in trouble with the police. I got in trouble for stealing and fighting.” 31 On June 3, Detective Mike Allen made the trip out to Highland to bring Misskelley in for questioning. He was not at home, according to Big Jessie’s current love interest, Lee Rush, who answered the door at Misskelley’s trailer. Rush sent Allen to see the boy’s father at Jim’s Diesel, where the senior Misskelley worked as a mechanic. After taking a short drive in his pickup truck, Big Jessie returned to Jim’s with his son and made no objection to the detective taking Little Jessie back to the police station for questioning, where they arrived at 10:00 a.m.
    Misskelley again seemed more than willing to give up Damien Echols. He told the detectives right off the bat that he had heard that Damien and someone named Robert Burch had committed the murders. He gave police a mixed-up version of what he had told Vicki. Although he acknowledged that Damien drank blood and was suspected of involvement in the murders, he initially denied any knowledge of satanism or cult activity and also denied any knowledge of or involvement in the murders. It was at this point that Ridge and Allen, believing that Jessie was “not quite telling the truth,” decided to inform him of his rights and ask him whether he wanted to waive those rights; he said he did. They also wanted to get Jessie on the polygraph machine immediately. Because Jessie was only seventeen, they would need Big Jessie’s permission to administer the test, and the police quickly located him. Big Jessie had no problem with Little Jessie taking the polygraph and was not with his son during the interrogation by police; Jessie was no stranger to the system, and his father figured he’d be fine. He did, however, sign a “permission slip” giving his approval for Junior to submit to the polygraph. 32 With Misskelley Sr.’s approval, the polygraph was administered to Jessie by Officer Bill Durham beginning at approximately 11:30 a.m. After asking some standard irrelevant questions, Durham got specific. “Have you ever sold dope?” This was a control question. The rest were all considered “relevant.” “Have you ever taken part in any devil worship?” “Have you ever been in Robin Hood Hills?” “Are you involved in the murder of those three boys?” “Do you know who killed those three boys?” After Misskelley answered all these questions in the negative, Durham informed Gary Gitchell of his interpretation of the polygraph results: “He’s lying his ass off!” Gitchell and Ridge took over from there; it was 12:40 p.m. In Gitchell’s words, “We were all fairly jubilant at that point.”
    It took only an hour and forty minutes from that point for Misskelley to crack. He was told immediately after the polygraph was administered that he had failed. Detectives drew a circle, with dots on the inside and on the outside. “The people who killed those boys, Damien and Jason, are in here,” Jessie was told. “The police and anyone who is innocent are on the outside. Do you want to be on the inside or the outside?” Jessie knew he didn’t want to be inside the circle, and it is entirely possible that he thought placing himself