State's
Exhibit 77, The Lake Knife
Ridge:
Okay, now when
this is going on, when this is taking place, you saw somebody with a
knife, who had a knife?
Jessie:
Jason
[Misskelley confession, June 3, 1993]
Each of the victims had dozens of injuries. At the time, a
few of these were directly
ascribed to cutting instruments, but they were significant injuries,
including the gouging of Steve Branch's face and the removal of
Christopher Byers' testicles. In Misskelley's confession he
made
clear the type of knife he saw. In the appeal filings, the gouging injuries have been ascribed to animal predation.
Ridge: Alright,
you're describing a knife that would be about 6 inches long, is that
right?
Jessie: Yes
Ridge: And,
what kind of blade did it have on it?
Jessie: Uh,
like a regular knife blade
Ridge: Was it a
knife that you fold up, or was it like a hunting knife?
Jessie: It was
Ridge: Just one
piece
Jessie: Just a
fold up knife
Ridge: It was a
folding knife?
Jessie: Yes.
[ibid]
Even though Misskelley stated that a
folding knife
was involved in the crime, the knives that played the most prominent
roles in the trials were fixed-bladed.
Knives Entered Into Evidence
There were 20
knives entered into evidence. Three
were described as found near crime scene. Four were identified as
retrieved in the searches of the defendants' and Domini
Teer's residences. Six came from other named suspects.
One came from Spring Lake in Lakeshore.
- Item
E23 was entered into evidence May 12, 1993.
- E23
Knife in a scabbard. [supplied by Susan Baldwin]
- Items
E26 through E41 submitted into evidence May 13, 1993
- E26
Boot knife in leather sheath, Richard Cummings.
- E27
Red Swiss type pocket knife, Richard Cummings.
- E28
Butterfly knife, Richard Cummings.
- E41
One small knife. Found in ditch near the scene of homicide.
- Items
E57 through 59 were submitted on May 19, 1993.
- E57
Knife found near scene. [Apartment 67, Mayfair Apartments]
- E58
Knife recovered from Michael Headlee.
- E59
Knife found on Walker Street near bayou. (About 1 1/2 miles
from where children were found.)
- Items
E74 through E135 were entered into evidence June 9, 1993.
- E74
Knife. (search Damien Echols' residence).
- E75
Wooden handled knife. (search Damien Echols' residence).
- E111
Folding knife (search Misskelley residence).
- E126
Dagger type knife with a black leather sheath (search Domini Teer's
residence).
- E134
Knife with a
black leather sheath. Provided to police by Prinicipal Heath.
Further described as a three to four inch boot
knife.
- Item E140 was
not noted as to when it was entered into evidence on the evidence lists.
- E140 Knife from Donald Warwick.
- Item E147 was not noted as to
when it was entered into evidence on the evidence lists.
- E147
Knife with a black sheath. Described as "knife found at
school."
- Item
E169 was entered into evidence on November 18, 1993.
- E169
Black handled
survival type knife, blade length approximately 9 inch, handle
approximately 5 inch in length. (Referred to as Lake Knife)
- Item
E176 was submitted into evidence, December 22, 1993.
- E176
Knife found near crime scene.
- Item
E178, January 10, 1994.
- E178
Knife, 8 3/4 inch total length. (Referred to as the Byers Kershaw knife)
Although three knives were found near where the victims were recovered,
none were linked to the crime. The source of at
least one of
these knives was determined. Kent Lynn, 15 years
old, said
on May Second
he was with some of his friends just north of the pipe.
He said he broke his knife and left it there. (Lynn
would
be dead at age 23, his hanging in the Crittenden County jail ruled a suicide.)
Probation officer Steve Jones turned over one knife to the police.
On June 8, 1993 he told Jerry
Driver that "he had an informant involved with certain individuals in
the area who were participating in ritualistic animal
sacrifices."
They went to an overpass and found the carcass of a cat, the
bones of an unknown animal and a pile of bones from ten to fifteen
pigeons. They encountered a knife in the dirt
and called in the Marion Police Department.
Three knives were taken from suspect Richard
Cummings. A possible piece of tissue was found on one and it
was
sent to Genetic Designs for testing. No DNA was found.
This
could have been because it was too small an amount of evidence or
because it wasn't human tissue.
None of the four knives seized
during the searches
had trace evidence connecting them to the crime and they were not
featured in the trials.
Jason Crosby was responsible
for providing two
knives. On the morning after the arrests, Crosby, 15
years
old, approached his principal with a concern that he may be considered
involved in the murders. He said someone had slipped a boot
knife
into his backpack at school and he didn't know who it was.
The
principal wrote up a report stating that Crosby had said "he knew the
boys that were just announced on t.v. as the killers, were guilty of
killing the three boys" and Crosby knew "Micheal Echols was in to satin
worship." The knife was turned into the police.
In a September 2nd interview
with prosecutor John Fogleman, Crosby said that he
had not told his principal that he knew who were the killers nor had he
said that he
knew Damien was a satanist. He again related the story of the
knife being slipped by an unknown person into his backpack.
Fogleman explained why this knife was significant.
Fogleman:
The reason I'm asking these questions the. . . this knife,
the
crime lab says that knife has fibers on the that came out of Jason's
house and came out of Damien's house from some clothing of Damien's.
[Jason Crosby interview, September 2, 1993]
After
being asked to take a lie detector, Crosby confessed Rick Appling had
given
him the knife but he didn't want to get Appling in trouble.
He said Appling was not really a friend, that Appling hung out
with the
"high society people which would be the
people who come to school in shirt and tie, don't want to get messed
up, want to stay on the sidewalk all the time." Appling had
taken
the knife to school for protection and then had to hide the knife
because someone had told the school authorities he was carrying it.
Later
in the month, Rick Appling gave a statement
confirming he had given the boot knife to Jason
Crosby. This knife, with its odd pedigree, was the source of
fibers that were found microscopically similar to those from a shirt in
Echols residence and the toilet seat cover in the Baldwin residence.
Other than the fibers, no evidence was offered that it had
been in
the presence of Echols or Baldwin, in fact, Appling stated that it
hadn't. Still the fibers from this knife would play a
key role in the trial and be a point of Fogleman's closing arguments.
Jason Crosby also told the story of a different
knife,
one that had been in the possession of Damien Echols. He said
Damien had left a knife on the dashboard of Crosby's truck back in
February.
Crosby had later turned it over to Paul Morrison, a reporter.
Crosby promised to get this knife and on September 16th,
turned
it over to the police.
None of these knives was to figure prominently in the trials.
That would change with the discovery of the Lake Knife.
Discovery of the "Lake
Knife," November 17, 1993 |
