Why we should be happy that the racists are out of the closet

WWW--There's a theme I keep coming across with some of my compatriots on the progressive left, and I think that it's unnecessary: the fear of traditional American racism coming out of the closet. These people are literally the lunatic fringe now, but they're white and they're loud, if not proud (OK, they're that too, just without any basis). The problem--mainly--is our reaction to them, and reaction in itself is the problem, there's too much of it. We need to be more proactive about these people rather than reactive, and that's not an endorsement of Scientology. That's why I support the legal actions of the SPLC and its director, Morris Dees. His targets seem to understand intuitively, as some of the mentally ill do, that he's got their number and that he's using the proper cure. This provokes very dramatic responses.

Just looking at the words behind the anagram tells you where they're coming from at the SPLC: The Southern Poverty Legal Center. I have had great admiration for Mr. Dees and his work for ages, and the key to his work and that of his great staff has been in tracking these groups and bringing them to the attention of the public while going after the very worst, the most dangerous of them, in the courts rather than in the streets where they're only going to be emboldened by physical attacks. Hate movements thrive on the victim mentality, but we should also remember that these folks are victims in their own right, frequently victims of poverty that breeds this form of mental dysfunction. Dees knows that this isn't simply a Southern problem, but an American one, and while it is a bit alarming that these groups have grown in numbers since the election of a black president, it's also a reason to be thankful for the fact that we have one. They're out of hiding and easy targets again, just as they became so in the 1960s. They were always out there, their number haven't really grown.

The Civil Rights movement of that decade (really beginning in the mid-1950s and cresting roughly ten years later) brought the flat-heads out of the woodwork. The ranks of the KKK swelled as they had with the great influx of European immigration during the 1920s and "White Citizens Council" offices sprang-up everywhere...and they lost, badly, to the civil rights workers and activists because history and moral authority weren't on their side. Crucially, the federal government was pressured into action and the FBI unwillingly had to conduct a barely submerged war on the Klan and other hate groups. Indeed, non-violence proved to be a vital tactic, but so too did African-American groups like the Deacons for Justice and the original Black Panthers in the South with their militancy and their rifle clubs, meant to protect black communities from terror tactics. But the real fight was won in the legislative arena and the courts and the laws are still on the books to this day and aren't likely to be rolled-back anytime soon. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, however.

In the 1990s, the late Stokely Carmichael, one of the founders of SNCC and one of the central players in the rise of black nationalism said that the problem had become deeper, that racism had "gone into hiding" and was therefore harder to combat, and he was right. Racism became institutionalized and very much a phantasm, a free-floating force that was almost impossible to pinpoint, let alone to fight with traditional methods. That has changed now that the loons have come out of the woodwork and are now shooting their mouths off, not to mention committing some very heinous acts of violence again. But that's what people do when they're desperate and feel they have no other options. They'd better enjoy the fun while it lasts, because it's not going to for very long.

In other words, they feel very threatened in their racist beliefs and identities, and that's a good thing since those culturally pathogenic personalities can ultimately be isolated and marginalized out of existence. These small, reactive faux-personalities--once again--intuit this and that's when the fear comes, when the ego externalizes its innermost and darkest tendencies. The shadow side externalizing itself can be dealt with by civil society more easily. Now they're visible targets, even their goons they've embedded within the military. But we tend to take these revelations the wrong way, we react, and we become part of the fear. This is a mistake. We know who they are now, we have their number, and it's time to go round-'em-up when they misbehave. We can also make sure that they never come into being by fighting for social and economic justice. Poverty is a breeding ground for this kind of faux-personality.

A recent cross-burning in my community has had some alarmed, but I'm not especially worried. As much as I have a problem with the FBI on other issues, they're good at criminal investigations like this and they're likely to find out who was behind it. When-and-if they do, the perpetrators are going to be dragged into court and could face real jail time if not civil penalties, meaning heavy fines that have shut them down in the past. We should also keep in mind that not all rabid racists are poor and that this is a pathogenic cultural stream predicated on keeping things as they've been in America since the beginning: oligarchical and unequal. The name Tony Zirkle should come as a good example of the privileged racist flake.

Economic elites must become racists by-definition in order to hold onto that power, something that they're more-than-willing to do. The reality is that they're more frightened of the rest of us, these groups, and while it makes them dangerous, they're still marginal. Nonetheless, vigilance and awareness is the key, and now we have the added advantage of visible targets.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) review

Hermeneutics n,-The study of hidden meanings in sacred texts.

For fans of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, this is a triumphant return to his more fantastical side, but also a sad look back on the last few hundred years of post-Enlightenment disenchantment, war, and the death of nature, therefore, of magic. We have lost a sense of the enchanted, and that loss is seen in our most daemonic and destructive behaviors over the last few hundred years. The repressed always return one day, and the toll has been profound. While the Enlightenment brought with it classical Liberalism, democracy, and the expansion of the rights of the average person (along with more material comfort), the price has been a high one: for the most part, we have forgotten how to imagine and to dream and have lost our symbols and meaning. We have lost ourselves.

This loss of meaning is a recurrent theme in Gilliam's body of work since his first movie, Time Bandits (1981), and has carried through in some form or another in practically every one since, even in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997), yet another quest for "the dream." In that case it was the "American dream," which the characters never really find. Modernity doesn't tend to deliver on dreams but does its best to repress and eradicate them, while at the same time dazzling us with illusion devoid of meaning.

The modern world has liberated us from discomfort to a great extent, but it has also robbed us of the symbols, the archetypes, and the stories that feed the human soul. People used to dream and imagine things we no longer can as a culture, at least in a general sense, and it's beyond tragic. Now, it's down to artists like Gilliam and he himself is part of a "dying breed" of maverick filmmakers. It has also robbed us of the "quiet times" of contemplation that greeted our peasant ancestors with the harvesting and the turning of the seasons; Blake's "Satanic mills" came, the human mind fragmented, and nothing has been quite the same since. Gilliam has been acutely aware of this problem for some time and shares this feeling with director/storytellers like Werner Herzog who has stated emphatically that life cannot go on for much longer without these meanings, these symbolical signposts that are supposed to punctuate our lives. It should be said again and again: human beings were meant to dream and to yearn for a better world. The fact that we do--and the "whys"--is one of the great mysteries of this life.

Without giving too much away, Dr. Parnassus (taken from the name of the mount from which the Greek Oracle of Delphi spake) is a centuries-old Magus and Secret Chief whose last days have finally come, and the Devil had come to get what's due to him--literally. Like the suppressed inner tradition of the West, Parnassus has been with us for thousands of years, fighting the darkness, the ignorance, lack, and yes, the Devil himself ("Mr. Nick," an appropriately dapper1920s-festooned pimp in the great Tom Waits). Like the songs of the Troubadours (their Cathar verses preserved by Dante), and the hidden symbology of the Tarot, the subterranean transmission of esoteric knowledge has been embodied in Parnassus, a sage and a prophet with a mission to save souls throughout the millennia from crass materialism and jaded cynicism. He is a bringer of light in the best sense, just like a filmmaker is in his own way if he's doing the medium any justice. From Georges Méliès to Terry Gilliam, cinema has always been about magic--the trick that reveals a truth and nourishes the soul of mankind, that special place where imagination is supposed to rein.

There are more than a few jabs at the Vatican in the film, and Gilliam is definitely coming from an anti-clerical position. In one scene, the good doctor shows another character a scrapbook of his battles with Old Nick through the ages in works of art: one shows Parnassus as a Christ-like redeemer and illuminator preaching to the masses, while another is an "illuminated" page showing Waits' Devil character leading a procession of priests carrying an open-Bible. The message there is very, very clear, and the Devil's always in the details--the fine print--if you look closely and "see with eyes that see, and hear with ears that hear." Filmmakers know that bringing dreams to life has nearly always been a Faustian bargain, and the myth of Simon Magus and Faust is where this tale originates from; indeed, Faust originates from the story of Simon Magus, an early Gnostic thinker and "redeemer" who cast a few illusions and spells in his time. One could argue reasonably that Gilliam is telling us, "This is what the inner traditions have been reduced to--a rickety form of show business--but that's OK, we still need them and the eternal symbols. So be it." For this reason and others, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is also autobiographical.

The illuminated procession is not the only example of anti-clericalism within the plot and its imagery: Gilliam and his co-writer Charles McKeown (one of his co-writers on Brazil) have based the Tony/Heath Ledger character partly on the murdered Vatican banker, Roberto Calvi! How do I know? The bricks in the pockets and the role of organized crime in the plotline for one. To make a very complicated and long story short and comprehensible, Tony is a man that Parnassus's daughter and his helper Anton ( the other side of the coin since they share the same name) find hanging from a bridge the moment the good doctor is reading from his Tarot and pulls the hanged man card from the deck. Anton plays the god Mercury on the Parnassus stage, the god of commerce, trade, and profit, but really the god Hermes in Roman clothing. What better analogy of the movie industry could one have, that uneasy combination of vision and commerce? Hermes was the bringer of dreams, of knowledge, the guide to the underworld, a trickster, and messenger between the deathless gods and the human race. That is Anton.

Tony is a lost soul who has allegedly forgotten who he is--which is true and false--but true enough as he's lost his identity in the modern world and is as adrift as Parnassus and his struggling theater company that grants the deepest fantasies of the chosen (those they think have good hearts and who are genuine). On the other side of their mirrored-gateway into imagination, they offer one's greatest dreams, but as a test of one's true self. Mr. Nick is always waiting inside to tempt the dreamers towards their destruction, and time's running out for Parnassus who has made a series of bets with the Dark Lord with his sixteen year old daughter as the prize. In a sense, then, his daughter Valentina (played by the luminous Lily Cole) is Parnassus's final chance at redemption and mortality; he's tired of living and wants to be a normal man. He isn't alone in the traveling cosmological theater troupe: Tony is Valentina's temptation, her desire for a normal life.

Sadly, like many of the cynical and lost today, Tony has an agenda of his own and is a betrayer. This adds a measure of sorrow to the film because of the fate of Ledger, but it also lends the film a poetic quality that otherwise might not have been as powerful. This is a film no-less about the inner traditions than it is about the wrecked spiritual and natural landscape of our era, so it's not exactly going to be one of Gilliam's more uplifting tales, but since when have we come to his films for that? Christopher Plummer has probably never been so great in cinema, and were this his final role, few actors could be so proud of their work. Gilliam is a mirror, as most good artists are, of his time, and our time. Dream your dreams, because without them, there is no human race and no future. Make your dreams a reality, but be sure that those dreams are worthy of dreaming and bringing into fruition in this very material world.

Why the conspiracy view of history?

It's an American tradition going back to right before the "revolution," or what Marx accurately described as "a slaveholder's rebellion." What was the conspiracy then? That a "papist" takeover of the colonies was coming and that the Vatican was going to install a government through dictatorship to force Catholicism on protestants, and it was commonly-held. Many believed it was real at the time.

But never mind that the conspiracy view of history has been debunked over-and-over again by academic historians throughout the world (then, bringing the predictable counter-claim that they're "part of the conspiracy"), the people who think "it's all a conspiracy" are rarely ever going to listen to reason. I won't reiterate the ones going around these days among the fringes, they don't even deserve repeating. The fact is, we know generally what's going on, and that's not to say that it's comforting.

But a friend recently made the observation that, "Everyone wants to be a victim," and therein lies the crux of this form of unthinking: it's part of the personal narrative to paint ourselves as the victim, especially when we are not. The fact is, we made the mess that is America because we tolerate the way things are. We are complacent. We are lazy. We are jaded. We are spoiled, and more-than-a-few of us are nuts. The witticism that, "Americans get the government they deserve," applies here and to our common era. For those who fight against this, I believe they're simply intellectually dishonest, possibly disturbed. Make no mistake: we know the face of tyranny when it stares at us, and often, it is us, our shadow side, our own shade, the sum-total of our own loathsomeness.

Halloween II (2009) review

Once again, Rob Zombie amazes, frightens, horrifies, and even enlightens us with another film which is being called the final installment of the new story-arc in the Halloween franchise. If you really love having the living crap scared out of you, this isn't going to disappoint at all. Zombie continues his theme of the horror of violence in American life and culture and its repercussions, giving us the best of both worlds: b-horror bliss fused with elements of high cinema and social criticism.

The original 1981 sequel was a terrible disappointment, even coming from writer/director John Carpenter and the late Debra Hill (a woman whose loss I'll always mourn, a great movie producer), it wasn't good at all and the direction was flat and uninspired, and we won't even go into how bad Halloween III (1983) was, it's unwatchable and literally has nothing to do with any of the series in any incarnation.

Part of this is because it took a good two years for the original Halloween to gain a following, and by that time, Carpenter was putting the finishing-touches on The Fog (1980) and beginning pre-production on the infamous remake of The Thing (1982). He and his production company were stretched too far, and it showed in that original sequel that can only be called a meaningless and gratuitous piece of drivel. But there's still no real reason for the existence of the original sequel to the legendary Halloween other than money, to keep a franchise going, and it would get unimaginably worse as time went on. That's not the case with Rob Zombie's sequel to his own reimagining of Carpenter's and Hill's original storyline, and that's why he felt the responsibility to have meaning and a message behind the violence of the film that is both unflinching and even self-accusatory, a very brave act for a filmmaker of almost any stature.

The basic story elements of the original sequel are in-place: Michael Myers somehow survives being shot and enigmatically disappears, returning to kill Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). It's been established already in the first Zombie remake that Laurie is really Michael's sister, and he wants a family reunion. This was never handled with any real insight or imagination by the original sequel, but Zombie takes a page from expressionist film and also introduces us to Jung's concept of the "shadow self" and the archetype (deep psychological symbols common to all humanity), this time in the form of phantasms of the young Michael and his dead mother (Sherri Moon Zombie), sometimes accompanied by a white horse. There is a hinting that Michael and Laurie have some kind of psychic-link, but this is kept very ambiguous and there are no real answers, a nice touch. The 1981 version is almost entirely isolated to a hospital, not the case in Rob Zombie's version, which wisely dispenses with just about the entire plot of its original.

After a prologue that I don't want to give away, we're taken into Laurie's very sad life just one year after the horrific events of the first film, and another Halloween is approaching. While she's treated well living with Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif) and his daughter Annie (Danielle Harris), her life is tormented. This isn't the same girl we met in the first film at all. She's become very traumatized and cynical, and it shows. Her preoccupation with nihilistic youth culture makes that pretty loud and clear, and her nights are punctuated with nightmares of that night...but also of some very curious archetypes of Michael Myers as a child and his late mother, dressed in white, signifying a strange obverse of purity. Bizarrely, Laurie begins seeing archetypes from the mind of Michael Myers (starting with the dreams, very Jungian), and on one occasion, as he's disemboweling and eating an animal on his path to her and destiny, she connects with it and becomes nauseous and has a bout with vomiting.

In the mean time, Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm MacDowell) has become even more famous as a bestselling crime and psychology author, and it shows. He's become what he calls himself in one later scene when he views himself and his shadow self in the mirror: an "asshole." He couldn't be more correct. His new book on Michael Myers and his primadonna behavior at PR events and book-signings shows us that Dr. Loomis has become nothing more than an exploiter and an opportunist, and his new book exposes and damages the life of Laurie in telling the world that she's the sister of Michael Myers. The psychological effect on her is profound and permanent and there's no going back afterward.

Even Loomis's literary agent hates him for it, one of the movie's real shockers! As in the original 1978 Halloween and Zombie's reimagining, these lives will eventually converge with tragic results, but it all began back in the squalor of the Myers home during the 1970s, hence the occasional nod to past pop songs, a nice tip of the hat to Kenneth Anger whose style is also echoed in the visual style of the film. And so, after leaving a trail of dead bodies, things finally do converge once again in Haddonfield, Illinois, with "mother Myers" beckoning Michael and Laurie to an inevitable conclusion. To tell you any more would be to ruin it, but rest assured that there is a finality to it all, even with the ending that's right out of the original Psycho (1960).

Interestingly, the only moment of the film where John Carpenter's original score cues come are in the final scene and the credits. Welcome to the dark side of America and the products of abuse and neglect, coupled with a culture rife with violence cues and the actual thing itself. The shadow world is here, now, and Zombie's trying to show us the bloody-maw before it's too late. Family truly is forever in the world of the mind, the Platonic forms, and the realm of the archetype, birth imagery-and-all. A must see. Ignore the bad reviews, this is the real deal, real horror.

O.J. Simpson's memorabilia was his and yet not his...

WWW--This trial has been very interesting to me for a number of reasons. My brother has worked for over a decade in advertising and had the misfortune of meeting a lot of Northern Indiana businessmen over the years (hint: car dealers think "Top Gun" is the "greatest film ever made"--wrong again).

As one might vividly imagine, most of them are antisocial turds with less personality than a houseplant, but a few of them actually wanted to chum it up with "the help," so my brother had to oblige their overinflated egos.

One of these clowns was a very big O.J. fan. He took my brother down into the basement den of his very expensive and poorly-designed-and-built clapboard where there was a wall literally covered with sports memorabilia.

And there it was, it even had its own display-nook: O.J.'s 1968 Heisman trophy.

"He lets me keep it for him, and I give him money every once in a while," he said (I'm paraphrasing now, isn't it thrilling?). This was within the last eight years. Yeah, it's crazy, but these things just have a way of coming to me and not the reverse, a kind of "Jungian" latticework of coincidence that's plagued my life from its inception.

What is there to gather from this? That O.J. has such an enormous ego that in his mind he wasn't "selling" anything, but "allowing" fans to "rent" his memorabilia in return for an audience with him, to be on his "good" side. I won't even go into what it must have been like to have been on his "bad" side, that's now a foregone conclusion after this trial.

In 1999, O.J.'s Heisman was sold to a Philadelphia--that wonderful town Poe loved so much--businessman named Tom Kreissman, except that he went and sold it to the man who O.J. and his co-conspirators attacked in a Vegas hotel, Alfred Beardsley:

Nevertheless, it’s believed that he bought the 1968 Heisman trophy -- the first and maybe only one ever to be auctioned — from the winner of that 1999 sale. The trophy was originally sold to Tom Kreissman of Philadelphia at Butterfield’s auction house on Sunset Boulevard for $230,000. But a source at Butterfield’s says Kreissman returned and sold it a couple of years later. It’s thought that Beardsley was the buyer. ("O.J. Simpson's 'Victim' Part of a Long-Running Feud," Foxnews.com, 09.20.2007)

And why wouldn't Beardsley have "sold" or rented the thing out to raise money for himself and "the Juice"? Why not?

The unintelligent businessman told my brother, "I went to USC when O.J. was playing there, I've known him since then," and "I'm actually borrowing it from another collector." He exhaled on and on, painting a scenario in which all of these successful old school fans of O.J.'s were shuffling these artifacts around to hide them from the Goldman and Brown families who were doing their best to track down all of the assets he was selling off to pay them from the 1996 civil suit ruling ($33 million).

Hey, who says once something's sold that it's really "sold"?

Over time, O.J. had a number of folks around him who felt he "owed" them money, and the trophy changed hands several times before 1999, and likely afterward:

The man Simpson accused of stealing the items from him is Mike Gilbert, another one-time associate. As Simpson's licensing agent in the late 1990s, Gilbert admitted snatching Simpson's Heisman Trophy and other items from his client's Brentwood home as payment for money he said was owed to him. He later turned the items over to authorities, save the trophy's nameplate.

Gilbert swore he'd go to jail before turning the nameplate over to the Goldman family, which was trying to collect on the $33.5 million civil judgment won against Simpson. Gilbert later surrendered it under court order. ("O.J.'s Vegas Accuser Says He Wants Charges Dropped," Foxnews.com, 09.15.2008)

Yeah, real class act folks there. After 1999, the trail appears to grow cold, wikianswers-be-damned, the Wikiuniverse almost never being correct about anything.

I think that the Goldmans had a good idea this kind of shell game (aka "three card monty") was going on with wealthy fans of O.J., a constant shifting of the memorabilia around with a rental fee and lots of broken promises. Egomaniacs like Simpson can convince themselves of almost anything, the same applying to pea-brained American businessmen with penis envy.

My feeling is that these people aren't mere fans, but criminals--all of the players involved in ferring around O.J.'s memorabilia. Beardsley is just a flash point. I hope that this verdict smokes the rest of them out and that they pay the price of aiding a vile murderer simply because they love football too much. To these clowns, the murders don't even matter--only football does. What a pathetic bunch. I wouldn't use that Heisman for a doorstop, although it would make a great lighter/ashtray combination with a few modifications.

None of it matters, the game is over, finally, at long last. But I still have to wonder: where's O.J.'s 1968 Heisman...and why would anyone in their right mind want it? They may as well buy one of those lousy John Wayne Gacy oil-paintings while they're at it.

"O.J. Simpson's 'Victim' Part of a Long-Running Feud," Foxnews.com, 09.20.2007: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297400,00.html

"O.J.'s Vegas Accuser Says He Wants Charges Dropped," Foxnews.com, 09.15.2008: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296934,00.html

JOHN MARK BYERS & THE WEST MEMPHIS 3

"Just remember boys, it all started here."
--John Mark Byers, to documentarians Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger, early 1990s

Arkansas --The West Memphis Three, remember them? They've been in prison for 13-years now. I don't personally think that Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols, or Jason Baldwin committed the murders. For a good overview, check some of the links below, and watch both Paradise Lost documentaries (and do a few searches of your own).

Make up you own mind. "Paradise Lost 3" is being released this year [Ed., 11.18.2008--I assume it's going to be released sometime in 2009 with the recent developments in the case.], and a movie based on Mara Leveritt's investigative book, "Devil's Knot " is being made into a major motion picture. Who did it? I think--in my own humble opinion--that it was John Mark Byers with some unknown accomplice(s). It's even possible that one-or-more of the WM3 know the details of some of it, though if this was so one would think we would know the truth by now. Byers has a criminal record, and some members of the West Memphis community have alleged he was a drug informant working for Tennessee Police [Ed., 11.18.2008--Correction, The West Memphis PD.]

He sure acts like one:

In July 1994, Byers was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for allegedly instigating a knife fight between two youngsters [Ed.-At-gunpoint.]. That same month, he was arrested for burglary. During that summer, neighbors filed restraining orders against Byers for allegedly whipping their sons with the metal handle of a flyswatter, and firing shots at their home. Byers was on probation when he was arrested for selling Xanax to a narc in 1999. He served 18 months. (lacitybeat.com)

Both Melissa and John Mark Byers had a long history of drug abuse and criminality. With so many different-takes on the murders at Robin Hood Hills, and constantly changing his story, John Mark Byers presents a great picture of the guilty who are yearning to confess their numerous-crimes. Many individuals with a personality disorder tend to incriminate-themselves subconsciously, but most people have this tendency towards confession.

Byers illustrates plenty of examples of this in "Paradise Lost 2"--so-much so that it becomes unsettling. One of them has a chilling resonance with the occult, namely the graveyard footage in both documentaries that have the shadow of a Christmas star throwing a pentagram (inverted) onto Byer's forehead. One could call it poetic. I noticed this image in the first Paradise Lost, and Berlinger and Sinofsky put emphasis on it in the second film. It's a Jungian moment that is absolutely breathtaking, and I can recall nearly falling out of my chair when it hit me. But just listen to his statements on nearly everything--almost all of it is about hurting or punishing someone, something, and how much of a "man" he is. He plays the victim well, but not the innocent. His voice sucks too, by the way. The man cannot sing.

Aaron Hutcheson is an overlooked-aspect in the WM3 case--he might have actually witnessed the murders (he was nine, so he's not even certain today), but was pressured and coached by West Memphis Police into never mentioning he felt Byers was at the scene of the murders, and was the murderer of the three children. Rumors were also rampant in the public and the media and fear gripped West Memphis.

It was known that John Mark Byers had younger associates who he would use to harass other children for him as part of his abusive M.O. Again, this pattern resurfaces in the charges against him from the 1994-incident when he was alleged to have forced two young men into a knife fight at gunpoint.

Hutcheson seems to hint at some kind of knowledge of this type of behavior exhibited by Byers:

Aaron, who is now 19, is convinced the three boys were killed by Christopher Byers’ stepfather, Mark Byers. West Memphis officials have acknowledged that Byers, a former drug informant, once was considered a suspect. He was never charged. Aaron contends Mark Byers hated kids. Aaron is sure he told the police in the first interviews about Mark Byers. (Arkansas Times, 10.07.2004)

Aaron's mother was told by West Memphis Police Detective Gary Gitchell "... and Marion police officer Donald Bray [to] sign an "affidavit of silence" pledging themselves never to mention that Aaron had named Mark Byers." There is no such thing, and it's a telling example of the lack of police procedure surrounding the Robin Hood Hills murder case. The detectives were assuming that most of the people they interrogated/interviewed were completely ignorant and would simply capitulate under pressure to their version of events, just as Jessie Misskelley did in his forced confession.

They had already decided where the case was going, and became angered when they got answers that didn't conform with this preconception. It's possible they also succumbed to the rumors about the murders. Many of them bizarrely suggested a "Satanic panic." This doesn't even qualify as an investigation in this light. Why the Marion policeman was asked to sign the phony-document is unclear, though it could have been a good cop/bad cop approach on the part of Gitchell and Officer Bray. This is all very peculiar procedure. Yet, why didn't the prosecution and investigators look-into the fact that Byers told them early-on that he felt the murders "...might be retaliation for his work as an undercover drug informant. His wife would name two pawnbrokers as possible suspects." (Commercial Appeal, 04.21.2002) In what could be a connected event, around 9:30 pm (some sources cite 8:42 pm) on what must have been the night of the murders, Bojangles restaurant manager Marty King was informed by a female patron that a Black man was in the women's restroom covered in blood, cleaning himself.

According to King: "I found a black gentleman sitting in the women's restroom on the commode with his head in his lap. He was about 5'8" or 5'9", 165 lbs, real thin man. He had his head in his lap and there was blood dripping off of his forearm." West Memphis Police Detectives Bryn Ridge and Mike Allen scraped blood off of the walls of the women's bathroom...and promptly lost the evidence. Nobody was ever punished for this, not even a verbal-warning or forced leave without pay. Nothing. There is no physical evidence linking the West Memphis Three to the murders of the three eight-year-olds, and we can thank the local Police that there is none whatsoever.

There is something more to this. Something that includes a convergence of incompetence and criminality on the part of the West Memphis Police Department, and maybe even the Sheriff's Department. It's as if they are protecting John Mark Byers to hide their own sins. I really wish there was no Paradise Lost 3 being made, I really do. Free these men, but at the very least, give them another trial that includes this new DNA evidence. [Ed., 11.18.2008--No dice so far.]

Byers now lives in Tennessee. Expect more news about him, this guy loves attention. I would expect him to be in the new documentary. You think he ever watched Robert Mitchum in "Night of the Hunter"? I do. If it proves anything, it's that Arkansas is brimming with incredibly stupid citizens who don't qualify to sit on a jury. My grandparents left there for a reason, and they never looked back.

"John Mark Byers" on Myspace (Adult Swim):
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=19690619

An Update on the Death of Melissa Byers:
http://www.maraleveritt.com/categories/?pg=3&c=cases

A Medical Report on Melissa Byers:
http://www.arwar.org/wm6caseinformation/deathofmbyers.html

A Recent LA City Beat Article on the WM3:
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4287&IssueNum=169

John Mark Byers' Criminal-Background:http://www.prisonpotpourri.com/JUVENILES/WESTMEMPHISTHREE.damienechols/The%20strange%20demise%20of%20Melissa%20Byers%20-%20By%20Mara%20Leveritt%20-%20December%2026,%201997.html

Aaron Hutcheson:
http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=2707a60b-b5d2-42d3-999e-0577590f8a9a

The "Bojangles Incident":
http://www.wm3.org/live/trialshearings/abstracts.php?abstract_Id=37&page=2
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/cda/article_print/1,1983,MCA_437_1094800_ARTICLE-DETAIL-PRINT,00.html