Around the Neighborhood

Some Peyton Places are bigger than others. How big can one be? Memphis is not far from Twin Falls, but it's what some of its inhabitants and close neighbors describe as a big hick town. A lot more people in one place but the character of the place didn't improve. I spent a fair amount of time there back in the day, going to movies and concerts when I was younger and later on business. It's been too dangerous for a long time for me to even want to drive through.

Across the Mississippi is a place called West Memphis, sometimes called Left Memphis by the locals. Its population peaked around 1990 and has decreased steadily since then to around 24,000 today. In 1994 the case of the West Memphis Three became national news for years, probably the most attention the city has ever had. Five or six miles away is Marion, population a little over a dozen thousand these days. Unlike West Memphis the population has increased considerably since 1990.

West Memphis is... not a nice place, I'll just leave it that. Like Forrest City about forty miles away. About the same only smaller, about 13,000 and declining. Forrest City had a pretty sensational case on account of something that happened there about ten years before the West Memphis Three affair. Police and politics played a prominent role in that too.

Let's do the West Memphis thing first. I traveled through Memphis a good bit in those days, mostly to the airport but on occasion driving to a customer in the Arkansas-Missouri area. Memphis is where I-40 and I-55 cross. I had been at a bank in southern Missouri and went through Memphis on the way home. I stopped in West Memphis because there was a Walgreens store there that carried a good selection of cigars and had a liquor store attached. The liquor store got a lot of traffic from Memphis for some reason. Arkansas seems to have higher taxes on liquor than Tennesssee so it wouldn't be that, and Memphis had plenty of good liquor stores. Anyway the Walgreens had a good bit of imported beers and most liquor stores didn't have. So I'd stop and get some cigars and a bottle or two of something.

That's what I did on 5 May 1993, the day the day they found the bodies of the three eight year old boys who had been killed the previous day. Cops all over the place, sheriff department and state police too. I drove by the place where the bodies were found and saw the yellow tape but didn't know what it was about. A truck wash visible from the interstate. The Blue Beacon, had a rotating blue light on top. Later that night I watched the news and learned what had happened.

At least what was known, the bodies of the boys that went missing the day before had been found - that was about it. The whole thing has been thoroughly investigated and dicscussed and books written and movies made and what happened (besides three boys being killed) remains the subject of debate and disagreement by a lot of people. My only observation is that had the West Memphis police, upon finding that they had an unusual crime (multiple victins, children, possible sexual assault) should have immediately called the state police things may well have been quite different.

They didn't - possibly because the city was under investigation by the state for various corrupt activities - and the investigation was about what you'd expect from a corrupt and inept small town police department. You can read the rest and see what you think. The trials were held in Jonesboro, about sixty miles away. I knew - slightly - one of the defense lawyers and the foreman of one of juries. And I have no idea what happened or if they got the right guys or anything else.

Due in part to the controversy and questions about the process but more because of the publicity and the celebrities who took up their cause the three (originally sentenced to death in one case and life in prison in the other two) would eventuallly be freed after serving less than twenty years.

The only certain thing is that three young boys were murdered. As Mack Bolan said: For every action there is a reaction, for every good an evil, for every strength a weakness, and for every injustice there is somewhere a final justice.

Over in Forrest City things were a bit simpler, fewer folks with the money and political power. I don't know if it's possible to have a sheriff that isn't crooked but never knew of one. The one in St. Francis county was the stereotypical corrupt southern sheriff. He kept a tight lid on things, drug dealers and gambling joints that didn't pay him off got shut down and people went to jail. The ones that paid operated without fear. I avoided the place, it being a speed trap and the cops looked for out of town cars that weren't just passing through. I had some friends there and was visiting one day and got pulled over. Wasn't speeding or violating any other laws, they just wanted to check me out. Put me in the police car and poked around in my car and quizzed my passenger about what we were doing in town. Asked if we smoked grass. I thought that was strange, most called it pot or weed. Grass was an '60s term and this was the '70s. Wrote me a ticket for improper lane usage and let me go.

But I digress. The fact is if you weren't an insider or had friends who were you better behave. One guy who had moved around a bit ended up in Forrest City and found out the hard way. Wayne DuMond was a Vietnam vet, apparently a dodgy character. He seems to have participated in a murder and got off by turning state's evidence, had some arrests for child (teenaged) molestation and a rape charge that was dismissed. Guy like that didn't need to be hanging out in Forrest City.

When the daughter of a local elite was raped by someone or other she identified DuMond as her attacker. Over a month later. Said she saw him driving a truck her assailant drove. Some problems with her story, description of he truck, some other details. Anyway he was arrested, supposedly the victim picked him out of a lineup. Whatever the facts he was going down. Life plus twenty. Usually rapist might get thirty years or so but someone wanted DuMond gone for good. The fact that the victim was a third cousin of Slick Willie (in office as governor at the time) may have had something to do with it.

Before the trial he had some more bad luck. Couple of guys broke into his house, tied him up and castrated him. Sheriff came to he scene and collected the excised private parts and took them to the funeral home owned by the father of he victim. Put them in a jar of formaldehyde and kept them in his office for a while, showed them to people occasionally. Later he flushed them down a toilet.

While in prison DuMond sued the sheriff and won, got $110,000. No one was ever arrested for cutting his balls off. Due to the doubts some people had and the excessive sentence the governor after Slick Willie (who had become President of the U.S. Slick Willie) reduced the sentence to something more reasonable. That governor was soon convicted of crimes as part of Slick Willie's criminal enterprise as governor and resigned after the lieutenant governor started impeacment proceedings. The lieutenant governor (whose daughter would later be governor) became governor and DuMond was paroled. What the governor had to do with it is unclear, but in any case the parole board recommended it. That caused a lot more controversy.

After his release DuMond moved to Missouri. His wife had died while he was in prison and he married a woman in Missouri. Later he was arrested and charged with the rape and murder of another woman. He was convicted and died in prison a few years later.

There is reason to believe that he was railroaded for the rape in Forrest City - mainly because of the credibility of his accusers is practically non-existent - but with his record he never had a chance even if he didn't do it. But if he didn't do it his experiences didn't improve his mental condition which apparently was not good to begin with. If not for the corrupt law his guilt would be much easier to believe. The sheriff was the chief crime lord in that county for a long time but finally his past caught up with him. It started out with some a federal tax beef and once he was down the pack moved in. He was in his sixties by then and he got a bit of prison time and died there. County got another sheriff about as bad as he was.