(Editors note: This is the second installment of a five part series, Murder in West Memphis: The Man in the White Tank Top.)
Law Enforcement (LE): "The one in the white tank top - does he like to be the boss?"
Aaron Hutchinson: "Kind of. He always tells them (the other men in the woods) what to do and they do it."
The story told by Aaron Hutchinson, Bennie Guy and Billy Stewart, in my opinion, is quite possibly the true narrative for the events that took place on May 5, 1993. This very well could be the motive for the murder of the three young boys.
This narrative seems much more plausible than the young boys being murdered as a part of a satanic ritual performed by teenagers.
Sadly, Aaron Hutchinson’s story has been mostly ignored over the years. It seems to me that law enforcement should have focused on searching for the following obvious suspects:
A male (or males), between the ages of 20 and 35, who knew the victims very well and were possibly homosexual or bi-sexual. The suspect(s) would have either been unemployed, or working a job with a shift schedule that allowed them to frequent the woods after 4:30pm.
Furthermore, the suspect(s) would have been residents of West Memphis and knew the Robin Hood Hills and Blue Beacon woods very well.
Now let’s dig deeper into the lives of Bennie Guy and Billy Stewart. Both Bennie and Billy were close friends with a teenager named Buddy Lucas. After the murders of Stevie, Chris and Michael, rumors began to circulate that Buddy was somehow involved.
Allegedly, Buddy had told a family member that his mother found a pair of his shoes -- these shoes were covered in blood.
Furthermore, when Buddy would talk about the heinous murders, he would allegedly lead people to believe that he somehow knew intimate details of the crime.
According to Bennie Guy, Buddy’s statements about the murders led Bennie to confront Buddy about his knowledge of the crime. Buddy then allegedly admitted to Bennie that he (Buddy) had participated in the murders of the little boys. In fact, Buddy allegedly confessed to committing the murders with three other men: LG Hollingsworth, Terry Hobbs and David Jacoby.
Wait. There is more!
Over a year after Buddy’s alleged confession to Bennie, he made the same confession to Billy Stewart.
Later, as fate would have it, LG Hollingsworth was sitting in a county jail cell with Bennie Guy, and guess what? LG Hollingsworth allegedly shared the same story with Bennie Guy…the very story that Buddy Lucas had shared with him about the murders.
Two different men - the same confession…
Their story went something like this:
LG and Buddy both alleged that on May 5th, 1993 they had been walking around Lakeshore Trailer Park in West Memphis when they were approached by Terry Hobbs and David Jacoby.
Hobbs and Jacoby were allegedly looking for marijuana and asked the teenagers if they knew who would be “holding” some “weed” locally. Buddy told Hobbs and Jacoby that his friend Billy Stewart had some weed and he would go with them to get it.
Hollingsworth and Lucas jumped in the truck with Hobbs and Jacoby, purchased the weed from Stewart, and then the four took off together to smoke and drink whiskey.
After driving around for some time, Hollingsworth and Lucas describe how all four men end up at the Blue Beacon Woods where Terry Hobbs demands that the teen boys “wrestle”.
After the boys wrestled, Hobbs offered them more whiskey.
According to Billy Stewart’s statement, he believes that at this point sexual activity happened between the men and the teenage boys and this is when Terry Hobbs noticed the three 8-year-old boys spying on the men.
In a drunken and stoned rage, Hobbs screamed “Get them f******! Catch them!” Hollingsworth and Lucas complied and this is when Hobbs informed the little boys he was going to teach them a lesson.
Due to the brutality of the crime, I will not go into further detail regarding how Hollingsworth and Lucas describe the murder of the young boys. The details, sadly, are horrific.
It’s hard for me to personally dismiss the confessions of Hollingsworth and Lucas for the simple fact that their statements match up almost exactly with what Aaron Hutchinson originally told police...His friends would hide in the woods as they watched grown men smoke and have sex. Aaron went on to describe how one man (Terry Hobbs) always told the others what to do.
Think about this: Terry Hobbs was the step-father of Stevie Branch.
Think about how angry Hobbs would have been if Stevie caught him in the woods doing drugs and having sex with another man.
It makes complete sense that he would fly into rage, hitting and beating the boys… and possibly murdering them out of anger.
According to Terry Hobbs, he dropped his wife Pam off at work and then he returned home. After extensively researching the crime and reading through the evidence and interviews, it is very apparent that Hobbs was unaccounted for between the hours of 5pm and 9pm on May 5.
Furthermore, Hobbs does not have a solid alibi. He did have both the time and the motive (if we believe Hutchinson, Lucas and Hollingsworth) to commit these brutal murders.
In 2011, additional evidence surfaced which I believe implicates Terry Hobbs even further.
A woman named Jamie Ballard and her sister and mother all came forward when they discovered that Terry Hobbs claimed he never saw Stevie, Chris and Michael on May 5.
According to Jamie and her family, the three 8-year-old boys were playing in her backyard before they headed toward the Hobbs home. Just as the boys were headed to the Hobbs home, Ballard claims that Terry Hobbs, who was their neighbor, called to Stevie and demanded that he “get on home.”
This contradicts Terry’s statements that he never saw the boys on the evening of May 5th.
Even more interesting is the fact that before Stevie’s mother, Pam, went to work, she made a dinner of steak and green beans.
When the autopsy was performed on Stevie Branch, a partially digested green vegetable-like substance was found in his stomach.
In my opinion, this strengthens the theory that Stevie did in fact go home and eat dinner. If Stevie did in fact go home and eat dinner, it makes perfect sense to conclude that Terry Hobbs DID see Stevie on the evening of May 5th.
Ask yourself, why would Terry Hobbs lie about seeing his own step-son that evening?
Let’s go further and look at the science behind digestion. Remember, it was determined that Stevie had a partially digested green vegetable-like substance in his stomach. The partial digestion indicates that Stevie had to have eaten this vegetable sometime between 5 and 6:30pm.
According to research, it takes roughly 30-45 minutes to digest vegetables and most experts lean toward green beans taking a good 40-45 minutes to digest.
Now, let’s look at when experts believe the boys were murdered. According to the medical examiner and other experts, it is believed the boys were murdered around 7pm on May 5th.
Ask yourself these questions:
1.Where would Stevie Branch have gone to eat vegetables? An 8-year-old boy is going to snack on anything and everything except health foods -- unless he is at home, being prompted by his parents to “eat his vegetables.”
2. According to Stevie’s parents (Pam and Terry), dinner was normally served at 4:30pm. And Stevie knew he was expected to be home at this time to eat. Stevie’s parents both stated that Stevie was usually very obedient and came home for dinner. Why would May 5 be any different?
3.If Jamie Ballard and her family saw the three boys playing in their backyard and then take off toward the Hobbs home, isn’t it fair to assume Stevie told his friends he needed to head home for dinner? This is when Jamie claims she saw Terry Hobbs on the sidewalk calling for Stevie to come home. Doesn’t it stand to reason that Hobbs was calling Stevie home for dinner?
One more thing to consider is David Jacoby’s statement about the evening of May 5th:
“I believe I asked Terry where Stevie was at and he told me he was out riding the bike that his grandpa had bought him. It’s been so long ago, you know, so I may not have it in the right order, but I know he (Terry Hobbs) did come over (to my house) around 5:30 or 6:00pm and we played guitar for a while before he said he had to go. And, uh, Steve was supposed to come by before dark, I think, because it was about this time of the year it got dark around 8pm or so, and he (Terry Hobbs) said he told him (Stevie) to get back before dark.”
Wait. What? Read that last sentence of David Jacoby’s statement one more time:
“And he (Terry Hobbs) said he told him (Stevie) to get back before dark.”
Terry told Stevie to get back home before dark? Doesn’t that imply that Hobbs saw Stevie that evening? Furthermore, isn’t it the most logical conclusion that Terry told Stevie AS THEY ATE DINNER to “get back before dark”….
I think there is more to Terry Hobbs than meets the eye.
Check back Friday for Part 3 of the Man and the White Tank Top: Murder in West Memphis.
