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Damien Echols
Jessie Misskelley
Jason Baldwin
Shortly after three eight-year-old boys were found mutilated and murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, local newspapers stated the killers had been caught. The police assured the public that the three teenagers in custody were definitely responsible for these horrible crimes. Evidence?The same police officers coerced an error-filled "confession" from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio-taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes. Jessie recanted it that evening, but it was too late— Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were all arrested on June 3, 1993, and convicted of murder in early 1994.Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. Unfathomably, Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus 40.For over 13 years, The West Memphis Three have been imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. Echols waits in solitary confinement for the lethal injection our tax dollars will pay for. They were all condemned by their poverty, incompetent defense, satanic panic and a rush to judgment.
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Of the afternoon of May 5, 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys were discovered in a drainage ditch in West Memphis, Arkansas. After a month passed with no arrests, the police focused their attention on a confused, mildly retarded boy. After hours of interrogation, he admitted to participating in the killing and implicated two other teenagers. All three were convicted and sentenced to death, although the evidence against them seemed scant and often contradictory. In this disturbing book, award-winning Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt investigates the tragedy and travesty of the case.
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Almost Home is a message to you from a faraway place. It is a message from a 12-foot by 9-foot cell in a cinderblock building surrounded by coils of razor wire in the middle of a dirt field in Arkansas. It was written by a young man named Damien Echols and it chronicles his life and his experiences in a way that clearly illuminates him, not as a monster, but as a human being. For over 10 years Damien has been an inmate on death row for a crime he did not commit. He, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley have become known as The West Memphis Three, and though the story of their arrest and conviction is widely known, most people don't know the real people behind the sound bits and the TV news segment clips. Damien has spent much of his time behind bars diligently maintaining his integrity and his sanity by writing.
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Following their acclaimed documentary about a controversial death in a small town, Brother's Keeper, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, explore another criminal case with even more complex strands. When the mutilated corpses of three eight-year-old boys are found near a wooded stream in West Memphis, AR, suspicion falls on a trio of young men, Jessie Miskelly Jr., Jason Baldwin, and Damian Wayne Echols. Stories that the men listened to hard rock music and fashioned themselves satanists fueled speculation of their involvement in the crime. Unlike Brother's Keeper, in which the citizens of the upstate New York town rallied to protect one of its own, an elderly man accused of killing one of his siblings, Paradise Lost portrays West Memphis as split on the question of guilt. Berlinger and Sinofsky offer equal time to both sides, but as this long and absorbing film rolls on, it becomes clear that they're skeptical of the prosecution's case, especially because it rests so heavily on an confession extracted from the mentally challenged Miskelly, and suspicious of the stepfather of one of the victims, who seems to relish the spotlight a bit too much.
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This video takes another look at the murders of three young boys in Robin Hood Falls, AR. Their deaths were the subject of a 1996 film entitled Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Many questions have been raised about the evidence against three young men who were convicted of the crime. Joe Berlinger, who co-produced the first film, returns to Robin Hood Hills to learn more about the investigation and to see how the small town is coming to terms with its loss.